TO RENT OR BUY DASHBOARD ANALYTICAL TOOLS FOR +10000-20000 EURO PER ANNUM ?

I just evaluated a fancy dashboard/analytical toolset in my search for solving a specific problem; very nice to drag and drop stuff and get some fancy pictures out.

I then received the quote for the perpetual/annual licence agreement/pay-me-as-much-as-possible-for-fancy-graphs.

Got a bit green when I saw the price and then to calm myself I went and grab a few lines of brilliant opensource R code from a blog to do a dynamic network model (I am busy trying to calculate the diffusion rates in market segments from complex network structures).

Here is the result: http://youtu.be/oBb5RjorMP8

The next step will be to insert 3 lines of R code to calculate and model a random attack on the network to see the level of network robustness. And add another 3 lines to model a structured attack on the key nodes and understand the overall fragility of the design. Then plot it all with R ggplot which is free.

Advice asked & advice given is free.

Can check all code and see all results, can also mingle a bit of Monte Carlo simulation into it as well; it still stays free. It feels like a good deal to me, especially having the freedom to do as I like.

Don't see how a scientist or engineer can work with analytical tools which generates by "magic"
answers which cannot be verified - too restrictive and dangerous for me. Not to get it wrong, there are some very specialist good ones out there like for example the Disco toolset from www.Fluxicon.com , but then at least I can read the Phd's from the founders and understand what the
wiring is all about... that's cool.

I still think that a fool with a tool is still a fool - even if the tool is Visio or Powerpoint or Excel.