A quad core desktop says
Family 6 Model 23 (Intel Core 2 Quad Q8300 Yorkfield) Stepping 10, Genuine Intel
CPU(s) = 1 Core(s) = 4 Speed = 2499 Threads = 8
Computer maker model = Gateway SX2800 RAM = 4096 MBytes
L1 data = 32 KBytes L1 instructions = 32 Kbytes L2 = 2048 Kbytes
VRAM=1,894,344,704 description=Intel(R) G45/G43 Express Chipset
A netbook says
Family 6 Model 28 (Intel Atom N450 Pineview) Stepping 10, GenuineIntel
CPU(s) = 1 Core(s) = 1 Speed = 1666 Threads = 2
Computer maker model = Acer AO532h RAM = 1024 MBytes
L1 data = 24 KBytes L1 instructions = 32 Kbytes L2 = 512 Kbytes
GPU compatability=Intel Corporation
VRAM=268,435,456 description=Intel(R) Graphics Media Accelerator 3150
Crunching through a covariance matrix for more than 200 countries (or 4300 sub-countries)
times 10 years times 40 measures is somewhat taxing for a netbook, so we'd likely
prefer to do this work on the quad core. We note that some measures like currency exchange
rates and stock prices use a time interval of days.
In any case, measuring CPU busy ( which takes some web pages in itself to explain) and
memory available might provide one of two answers - the CPU(s) and cores(s) are not already
being red-lined by someone else, so let it rip OR we don't have access to quite all the
computing power we'd like. As examples of the latter - perhaps an anti-virus scan is running,
or it is too late, and some malware is already running.