Hi, here's just a quick suggestion how to simpify first time installation. In "Bioconductor FAQ, Version 1.1.0, 2002-11-18" is says: "Installing Bioconductor packages using the installation script getBioC.R 1. To install the relevant Bioconductor packages, open a web browser to the Bioconductor website and follow the links to either "Released Packages" or "Developmental Packages" under the "Downloads" section. Download the installation script getBioC.R. 2. Start the R program typing "R" at the shell prompt. 3. Change the working directory to be the directory where you saved the file getBioC.R, e.g., "setwd("~/Project1")". 4. Type the command "source("getBioC.R")" at the R prompt to source the installation script into your R session. Alternately, you could paste the entire length of the script into your R window." All this can be replaced by 1. Load the installation script by source("http://www.bioconductor.org/getBioC.R") which should ensure that the latest script is used too. Note that source(), or rather parse(), does not require url(), e.g. source(url("http://www.bioconductor.org/getBioC.R")). Happy holiday Henrik Bengtsson Dept. of Mathematical Statistics @ Centre for Mathematical Sciences Lund Institute of Technology/Lund University, Sweden (Sweden +2h UTC, Melbourne +10 UTC, Calif. -7h UTC) +46 708 909208 (cell), +46 46 320 820 (home), +1 (508) 464 6644 (global fax), +46 46 2229611 (off), +46 46 2224623 (dept. fax) h b @ m a t h s . l t h . s e, http://www.maths.lth.se/~hb/