[nick_charles]

My department chair has just told me that we have a $10K budget (woo hoo !) for software and hardware between the three of us. I need a good reliable stats package preferably with some limited charting abilities for my research. Previously as a student I used SPSS but even the faculty price for this is now over $2K and we are too small to negotiate a site licence. Are there any decent commercial packages that are not outrageous. I guess my budget is no more than $1K for hopefully a lifetime licence...TIA

 

[Omega]

R is free.  There's a learning curve though.
http://www.r-project.org/