OFF TOPIC funny

My laptop has Vista and it loaded PSP okay, and I have other old software on it as well. Oddly enough it wanted to baulk at Capture NX (the Nikon software for opening/editing RAW pics) which is relatively new, but I made it do it in the end, though I find the response slower than I do on this one with XP sigh.

If it's Wondows based software, than it would depend on the version of Windows you install on the MAC. The newer, intel based MACS, run both operating systems, but the Windows system will be a function of what you install for that OS, and if you're just running it alone, or using Parallels

- the program which has you running both Windows and MAC OS at the same time. You may be able to do it - best thing is to go to the Apple users forums and check around, ask a question. It's an amazing source of information. I also keep the current Mac OS book by Andy Ihnatko on hand - font of info. And the "Missing Manual" from O'Reilly.

WRT using any of the Microsoft programs, such as in Office, on a MAC OS, my Mac versions have switches that let you save "backwards compatible" file formats, and will similarly read old files - generally adapting the file. My only harsh experience was some years ago when the OS X systems came out, and we upgraded our then tower. The really nice, large, scanner that I have did not get an updated driver from HP (my Epson printers all did). So there was a large rush amongst Mac people to get bridging software - which for the most part was free - that would allow you to use a OS 9.x stuff in the new OS X world.

Aside from the scanner situation, I've never had a problem with updating the Mac software. Sometimes it involves a minor fee to upgrade - but that's been about 4 years since going from OS 9, or the classic OS, to the newer OS X versions. Within OS X, it will read any OS X based software, whether or not you have Leopard or Tiger. But, there is some software, that will be specific to the system (Leopard being the newer system that works on the Intel based Macx). I can still use my older Adobe Illustrator software that would work on the initial OSX, and has been updated twice since.

Sorry if this was no help. Ellice

On 2/22/09 4:25 PM, "Trish Brown" wrote:

Even if you can't exactly spell a word, you usually can come close and skim a dictionary page- or use a thesaurus and look up a synonym.

While reading certainly helps, I often wonder how many people actually will look up the details of an unfamiliar word when coming upon it while reading. Some years ago - wow - at least 25 - I remember reading a then new Saul Bellow book called "The Dean's December." The blurbs had it as an NY Times bestseller, etc. Excellent, and interesting story (Dean of a journalism school in Chicago - thinly veiled Northwestern - married to an Eastern European woman, IIRC a doctor, and they have to go back to her former home in the Soviet block country to deal with her mother). Complicated plot of life and politics. Beautifully written. But, here's the catch. I'm a fairly literate person, with a good vocabulary - much more than the norm if you go by things such as GRE scores, etc. I had to crack the dictionary before I was through 20 pages. This was the first time in my life I ever had to have a dictionary close-by for the entire time I was reading this book. In then discussing the book with my friends at school (I was an undergrad at the time), I had to ask - how is it possible that this book is a bestseller? Do you think people just buy the book because of the famous author, and then don't read it, or just don't understand it - because if I'm really having to look up words - that what are all those others doing - given the book has had such great sales? Or do they not care. The thing to me is that as a writer, Saul Bellow's use of language was so precise, particular to what he wished to convey, that if you didn't know the words you would miss something. I just always have remembered having to use a dictionary so regularly while reading this book. It just made me think.

FWIW- I do generally have a foreign language dictionary when reading in other languages as I know that even being relatively fluent, there will always be something I'm not quite sure of, or just don't know.

ellice

My spelling challenged husband read a lot and had as good a level of comprehension as anyone I know, but he couldn't spell and had a problem looking it up because he couldn't spell.

We always laughed about that and I teased him about his excellent marks in English when in high school and college and his problem. He claimed his crummy handwriting made up for a lot of the problem because they couldn't read it anyway.

Or how about the WANG word processor? I was using MacWrite & MacDraw in grad school - and we were so thrilled with MacWrite - much better than having to go use a WANG, or a main-frame. But the secretaries at my first real job had WANG word processing stations, with big disks. None of the guys could use them, but I was at least a bit familiar, and could then go do some of my own typing on that rather than wait for the difficult secretary to get to my stuff.

I switched to WordPerfect sometime in the 80s, but then also had Word - which I didn't use. Until eventually the switch had to be to Word.

I do remember Multi-Mate.

ellice

I think the disk switches were in the mid-late 80s. But I remember the 3.5" flopppies being really pricey then, and we'd have to order boxes at work and guard them. Finally the shop at lab started carrying them, and we'd have so much fun going to shop and grab some boxes. Then the thing was being able to reformat them because they'd always get IBM formatted disks, so it would be sitting with the Mac and reformatting them. Fortuanately, the Macs have always been able to read the PC formatted ones but not vice versa. So, I'd do work for me to keep on Mac disks, but keep others that were dual formatted and save files to be PC compatible for others to use.

Such fun to remember. But much better than carrying mag tapes or boxes of keypunched cards around.

ellice

I think we all have some horrid lesson like that. I was upgrading my Illustrator version, which had the stitch diagrams and charts for a design I was about to teach. I forgot to move the design files into a separate folder, on the other hard drive, and when I put in the new Illustrator version - well, it somehow lost them. Not good. This involved quick and painful reconstruction (DH quickly built a new diagram and chart using the tools in Powerpoint of all things). I'm still on the hook to finish the reconstruction of the clearly, full diagrams and chart. I hate when you lose stuff switching between programs.

Ellice

I just checked in Word and you can have dictionary functions for - this is in English alone - Australia, Belize, Canada, Caribbean, India, Ireland, Jamaica, Malaysia, New Zealand, Philippines, Singapore, South Africa, Trinidad and Tobago and last, but not least, Zimbabwe - that's the one that hopefully spells everything 'death to Mugabe'

I have the Chinese characters downloaded on my computers because some of my Chinese friends have the characters in their email addies, so I need them.

I totally understand that - as my DB is that way. But what I was referring to above, wasn't a spelling issue so much as just word knowledge.

Probably some truth in that!

Ellice

Good checking. I have several alphabets on my system, and sometimes with the others they're handy if I just want to incorporate them in some design - just pull it up in a huge font size and play a bit.

Ellice

I think most of us discover the meanings of words in the contexts in which we hear them. Sometimes, that backfires, but dictionaries are there to help. Trial and error is useful too. Colloquialisms are the hardest thing to learn when embarking on a new language.

Hee! Did you ever *drop* one of those boxes of keypunched cards? What a horror that was!

My first task when I went to work for the Mac dealership was to sit and remove the labels from a hundred used 3.5" floppies, format them and apply new Apple labels. Apple disks cost $100 a box (!!!) and so they were well worth cleaning and reusing. Nearly wore the nails off my fingers, though!

I think the unwillingness of people to actually look up a word's meaning leads to a lot of garbled communication and misunderstandings. I had a deputy, well spoken, educated - going to grad school, who constantly would either misuse or misunderstand some verbal nuance. Then we'd have a discussion about what he thought something meant, which would of course be what he'd sort of assumed it meant - and argue the meaning - I came to refer to this as his "private dictionary." IME, the "private dictionary" is pretty common, unfortunately. It is true you can glean some sense of meaning from context as that's part of how we learn language. For me, when in a conversation not in my native language, especially one in which I'm only mid-fluent context is really important for me to understand - but I'll be sure to ask anything that may be confusing. I'm regularly asking how to say something or for a bit of explanation in the other language (generally asking in that language how to say some English term).

WRT colloquial expressions that is so true. When I was first working in France, after a few weeks on site, my next trip to Paris I bought 2 special dictionaries - one Science/Technical English/French, and the other a dictionary of idioms English/French (couldn't find American/French - but it worked). Truly helped. Plus, I was lucky enough that the 2 head techs (who sort of spoke English - or knew it from college days) & I would make time every afternoon for a 30 min language lesson. Great break, and good for me, them and whichever of the crew wanted to participate!

Ellice

I think Quark is pretty much the publishing industry standard, though some people use InDesign. It's so much fun playing with layouts - but it's easy to kind of obsess.

I do love most of the Illustrator tools. It does let you really refine designs. I don't know how new your version is, I'd been using 10, and then went to CS (which is 2 versions ahead) and I was ecstatic. I hadn't bothered buying the in-between upgrade - not enough of a difference. But the newer tool collection, especially for making symbols and grids are awesome.

I had MacDraw and SuperPaint, When CorelDraw came out, got to test it. The graphics dept at my lab switched to Macs in about 86, 87 because there were a handful of us with them, and we did a lot of our own graphics - and they were able to convince the powers that be to do it. Same thing, when I changed agencies in 91 - the next year, helped the graphics group make the upgrade. They had some Max, some PCs and needed a bit of an ally to coompletely upgrade. It was great when they did, as it helped me and the couple of guys from the program office to keep/upgrade our own. Even in the 80s, I had Persuasion for doing presentations on the Mac - so much better than Powerpoint at the time. Eventually, IIRC, Powerpoint subsumed (bought) Persuasion. But for a good few years that they were both around, Persuasion was well ahead in tools, capability. I enjoyed telling the guys too bad, I'm not a secretary, when people would come to me to do their briefings - cause they were in a queue with their secretary, or waiting on graphics. But, of course, a couple of us from the Mac group would end up doing "other duties" . We told the IT people we didn't care about them supporting us, we'd take care of it, just make sure that we got software we ordered. Had our own Apple (Mac) Users Group at the lab, affiliated with the Federal Group, the huge (now) DC area group - Washington Apple Pi.

Now I use Illustrator, Dreamweaver, Fireworks/Flash. If I ever get a job then I'm completing my upgrade with the Adobe suite.

Fun to think about.

ellice

Never had a big drop - but certainly dropped a stack of over 100 (hence why it was important to put line numbers out in the end comment area when writing code). But, I have witnessed a friend carrying several boxes, when a lid flew open, and disaster came - dumping the contents in part of many! Uck.

I think the regular boxes were about $45 here. I was alwys careful to label

- somehow. Which eventually became sharpie on floppy! We actually have a floppy reader on USB with this machine for reading some old stuff that hasn't been moved over, or for doing the move. Hey, the old disks make good coasters.

Ellice

It used to be Quark, but not any more....people have *flocked* to InDesign. It's much cheaper, interfaces better with other programs, and once you're over an initial hurdle, is easy to use. The most frustrating thing about the changeover was that it calls things by different names than Quark, and it was hard to look up something you didn't know the name for in help! But that didn't last long.

InDesign is SO much better in text flow. I used to spend hours fiddling with Quark files to get the text "just so" (good Virgo that I am, LOL!)

-- lining up columns, getting past bad line breaks, etc. etc. - that InDesign does much better from the get-go.

Sue

I was thinking that has a lot to do with being part of the Adobe Suite. I've been deciding which suite to do my upgrade with - as I can get the education pricing, they vary as to what comes with Illustrator - the full web stuff or just little web stuff but InDesign.

Nice to know. A bunch of folks I know are still using Quark. But, I think for small businesses it's about the $$ to make a change.

ellice

Ah, I used Pagemaker in the early stages, then went to Quark Express. Don't feel like a Dinosaur. Pagemaker linked with Persuasion, both of which become overtaken/bought IIRC.

Ellice