[R] Very slow startup on Win32

[Lowden, James K]

Hello, 

I installed R on Windows Terminal Server (a variant of NT) from the binary release.  This is my first encounter with R.  I have two questions.  

The initialization time is very long, several minutes between clicking on the "R 1.7.0" icon and getting to the ">" prompt.  During that time, the machine appears to be idle.  

When it finally comes ready, I'm presented with a warning that might be related:

	[...]
	Type `q()' to quit R.

	> x <- rnorm(50) 
	Warning message: 
	package nls in options("defaultPackages") was not found 

Given that the CPU is idle during the delay, it seems likely R is waiting for, and timing out on, some resource.  Can I perhaps restrict or display what happens at initialization?  It may be I don't need whatever it is that's causing the delay.  

FWIW, the machine is a dual-processor Pentium something @ 450 MHz w/ 512 MB RAM.  

The second question is simple:  How do I list the installed packages?  I haven't found the answer in the "Introduction to R" or the data reference.  I would just like to confirm that the ODBC package is included in the Win32 release binary.  

My next step is to hook up R to our database and compare its performance to SAS's.  Some of my colleagues had bad experiences with S some years ago, and are wary of using R for that reason.  

Thank you for your kind attention.  

--jkl

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