Hi,

I think it is a personal preference and depends on the amount of time one wants to spend.

R is a freeware, flexible with a considerable amount of online help. With R, one can do pretty much all statistical analyzes but it requires some time and understanding (i.e. coding). I favor this software as it pushes the user to understand exactly what to do.

SPSS is NOT a freeware, but very easy and based on a point and click interface. This software (like Statistica) is very useful for data visualisation, plotting and basic statistics.

Excel is not great for data analysis as it only had a couple of useful functions for statisitcal analyses. There is however some macros for more complex statistical tests. Data visualisation in Excel is quick and easy.