The one nice thing about AWS and its ilk is the ability to spin up big chunky VM for few hours/days for ad-hoc data processing for pretty small amount of money.

The one nice thing about AWS and its ilk is the ability to spin up big chunky VM for few hours/days for ad-hoc data processing for pretty small amount of money. That can in many cases shift the boundary of annoying sized enough, with the added bonus that your own workstation is not fully occupied by the processing. Of course such approach is not applicable to all scenarios, but it is a useful trick to keep in your sleeve.