1) About transferring from Excel to/from R: I think saving as csv and using read.table is a pretty cumbersome way of interacting with Excel and will put people off, especially people who usually only use Excel. Personally, I have some simple CopyClip() and Paste() functions which can be used to copy and paste data frames to and from Excel. If anyone is interested I can post them, but there may be better stuff out there. Also, there is RExcel, which is more sophisticated, but I could never get it installed.

2) About "Data Storage in R": I think it gives a misleading impression about R and memory. In almost all mainstream computer languages with the exception of SQL, any created object is by default created in memory. This is true of C, C#, java, python, VBA, whatever. No one complains that C is memory limited, but R's treatment of memory is the same. Furthermore, R has great packages like RODBC and especially sqldf which make it very easy to move data into and out of databases. Whether or not R runs only in memory depends only on the implementation of the particular R function. For instance, the default lm function loads all of its data into memory, but the biglm function leaves most of its data on disk. I think you could just say something like "R is similar to most mainstream computer languages—-most of its functions operate on objects in system memory. Functions must be specifically written to use disk space instead of RAM. However, R includes several packages that facilitate reading and writing to popular databases.

3) Is the sound supposed to work in the AVI files? I didn't hear anything, but perhaps it was an issue with my computer.