OT - don't do it!!!

Or as we say in Macland - Bill Gates is the devil ;^)

ellice

I think he is worse than the devil

Cheryl Isaak ,in rec.crafts.textiles.needleworkwrote: and entertained us with

I don't like MS tactics, or any monopoly but I have to say, my experience with windoze has been all good. I will not be parting with XP anytime soon. How much more speed or memory could I need ?

Twelve-year-old DS calls them "Micro-idiots". We run Macs exclusively but I won an XBox 360 so he's familiar with the frustration of operating a Microsoft product. He loves the games but hates the unreliability of the system - which we had to have replaced within a year of acquisition after Microsoft _finally_ admitted there were huge problems with the early units and expanded the warranty to a year.

Karen E.

I love AVG but Clam-Win looks promising. If it requires a ghostscript routine, I'm not sure if it will run on Vista.

Nope but it sounds more like an editor than a converter. I've currently got Doro PDF, a virtual printer, and have Primo PDF waiting in the wings to try.

I've been using WP since it came on 5 1/4" floppies and even have an SSI sleeve as a momento;-) I just bought WP Office X3 even though I hadn't budgeted for it -- I figured if I had to update an Office suite, I'd rather pay Corel than Micro$oft.

Publish to PDF has been around for at least 2 versions but it sometimes doesn't give as good results as a stand alone converter does.

No comment except that it was a sad day for us users when someone in the Evil Empire convinced PC manufacturers to install only M$ operating systems and M$ office products and peripheral makers to only write drivers for M$. These tactics essentially killed OS/2 and made Linux a labor of love for geeks and techies

IMNSHO, Jobs runs a very, very, very tight ship and exercises total control over who is allowed to partner with Apple for hardware and software.

That is true. Simply put, if you're going to do software to run on a MAC there are all kinds of agreements WRT standards for MAC keystrokes, shortcuts, how menus work, etc. The upside of that - you rarely hear MAC folks complaining about software, interoperability, backwards compatibility, etc. Got my first MAC in grad school - in literally the first batch of them that came out (not talking about the earlier Apples), and we also had IBMs, Sun Stations, DEC stuff, etc. The only problems with software I have ever had - seriously - have been with Microsoft products. And some very occassional glitches with a shareware product or the like. But, the folks we know who are developers seem pretty happy with their Apple interactions. I used to go to the MAC Science & Technology conference, with another engineer friend - we'd be doing something that would get us a couple of papers in. Great trip, and good opportunity to see what's out there. Haven't done that in recent times - but my old grad school officemate, and serious MAC geek is also a VP on the WWW Consortium - so we use him for all the constant what's new, what's a problem - on both sides of the world.

The latest issue for MAC people is rather than using Norton for disk repair

- as the systemworks MAC version actually can cause some problems - it's better to have a handy copy of Disk Warrior. The Norton anti-virus is fine, and there are some other products.

Now with the Intel processor, we've got several friends running Windows and MAC OS - but essentially running Windows because of some particular software, like Mathlab. It's amazing but for the most part it's actually faster to run Windows on the new MACs - or at the least comparable - than running on a PC type machine.

ellice

True, but you DO regularly hear them complaining that software and websites don't work on Mac.

XH bought a Mac to spite me, and, as they say, cut off his nose to spite his face. That weekend, we went to a software store and he had a long list of games he wanted to buy for his new computer. You got it -- not a one of them was available in a Mac version. :) Needless to say, he got no sympathy from me, since I had specifically told him to buy a PC.

LoveLoveLove Primo.

Not actually much of an issue with websites at all. Especially now with the machines that run either way. In all my years with MACs I've had about 3 websites - which were interactive applications - that wouldn't work. I have had to switch browsers from Safari to Foxfire, or to Exploreer or Netscape. That's just knowing to do that. In the last several years I've just now had

Software - some specialty stuff - but for the vast majority of mainstream stuff - it comes in both varieties. Clearly the MAC strongpoints are reliability, ease of use - I seriously recommend them for people that are at all intimidated about their computers (though most of our MAC friends are indeed scientists and engineers, and just prefer them), and graphics. Granted, you may be buying software via a MAC shopping place/web/catalog - but that's not a big inconvenience. Not too much at COSTCO - so to speak.

Well, true about some of the games. There are those that are specifically only PC. We have 1 friend whose idea of exercise is playing QUAKE - and he's a web guy. So, he bought what we refer to as the POS Dell just for playing his game - and all the other stuff is on one of the 3 MACs in their house. There are a bunch of games for the MAC - again - I think people buy them from the MAC suppliers rather than finding them in Best Buy, etc.

ellice

Speaking of Netscape, got any ideas why it would be crashing a *lot* lately? Especially when I go into webshots. I get to 2 or 3 pages and then, whomp! "Netscape has encountered and error and must close" or something to that effect. It will be fine for 2 or 3 days, maybe only crashing once, and then other times it's 5 or 6 times a day. It's getting rather frustrating.

Joan