How to speed up reading data from a txt file in R?

Hi,

I have a very large file (800 MB) to be read in R from a txt files and it takes several minutes to do so. I need it to be much quicker.

 Is there any functions, packages, or tricks to read in data much quicker than what I am doing?

I have included my code and the dataset.
I use a HP laptop with intel i7 and windows8.

Thank you for you help.

### time the first way
start.time.data1<-Sys.time()

data1<-read.table("XYZ_EE.txt",sep=",",stringsAsFactor=F,header=F)

time.data1<-Sys.time()-start.time.data1
time.data1  ## Time difference of 1.523134 secs


### time the second way
start.time.data2<-Sys.time()

data2<-read.table("XYZ_EE.txt",sep=",",stringsAsFactor=F,header=F,
                  colClasses=c("character","character","numeric","numeric"))

time.data2<-Sys.time()-start.time.data2
time.data2  ## Time difference of 1.497055 secs

Select allOpen in new window

XYZ-EE.txt