Along comes a fox, out for a walk.
(incredulous pause)
They both disappear into the rabbit's burrow. After a few minutes, the rabbit returns, alone, to his typewriter and resumes typing.
Soon, a wolf comes along and stops to watch the hardworking rabbit.
(loud guffaws)
The rabbit and the wolf go into the burrow, and again the rabbit returns by himself, after a few minutes, and goes back to typing.
In one corner, there is a pile of fox bones. In another corner, a pile of wolf bones. On the other side of the room, a huge lion is belching and picking his teeth.
(The End)
It doesn't matter what you use for data.
What does matter is who you have for a thesis advisor.
So he disappears into his den with the watch. A few minutes later he returns: the watch is fixed.
Later in the week, Lion is sitting in the warm sun by the river, when Wolf comes running by, looking flustered.
So the Lion takes the laptop into his den. In a few minutes, he returns with the laptop, now working fine.
In one corner, next to the coffee machine, is a smug-looking lion lying on a couch cleaning his fur. In a second corner, there are piles of IEEE Computer, Byte Magazines, and Viz Comics reaching up to the ceiling. In the final corner, there are seven industrious rabbits surrounded by tiny parts and precision tools.
It doesn't matter whether you can do a slick demo or generate pretty pictures.
What really matters is whether your graduate students can.