Windows7 - Your Accessment?

Internally, it is very similar to Vista. The user interface is considerably smoother.

Vista is clearly superior to Windows 7 for stacking purposes, since it comes on physical media - the betas of Windows 7 are downloads. Useless as coasters unless you burn them to DVD-Rs. I detect no difference in the flavor of my beer based on the contents of the disc I'm using as a coaster.

AOL

SCNR, Falk

It stacks up like horse manure against cow manure.

(DISCLAIMER: I'm a city boy. Horse manure and cow manure may be very different. But I'm guessing not.)

Seriously, I've seen a number of anti-Windows quotes recently, like:

a)The best way to accelerate a Windows computer is at 9.8m/sec**2.

b)Unix: the operating system of the future, as it has been for more than 30 years now.

I don't even see why Windows 7 is necessary. Vista works fine for me when UAC is turned off.

I don't see why the Microsoft folks make this so hard. Me and a bunch of embedded folks could sit down in a conference room for about a month, brainstorm everything that is wrong with Vista, and how to fix it. I could produce a technical roadmap in a month. The Unices are old; this is true. But they got multiuser security approximately right.

I would switch to Linux, but Microsoft office isn't produced for that platform.

Windows is what it is.

The Lizard.

Jujitsu Lizard schrieb: ...

A customer now requests documents im OpenOffice-format. The reason is, that his customers and contractors are using so many different versions of MS-Word, that they had some trouble using the documents.

If they can not read something created with a newer version of OO they simply download that version.

Falk

That is a genuinely interesting observation. I know I paid about $250 for my version of Office 2007 that I use at home; and I do understand why a lot of companies and individuals would delay upgrading.

It does surprise me slightly that they are desperate enough to go to Open Office. The approaches I would have expected are:

a)Saving in an earlier Office version's format (the programs allow this).

b)Sending .PDFs instead.

Interesting, interesting.

In message , Jujitsu Lizard writes

It is available on OSX which is a real Unix.

Jujitsu Lizard schrieb:

...

...

I think they considered it easier to say "OpenOffice" than "MS-Word V.XX.YY" and that they wanted a way to save money instead of buying each and every new version, that comes out.

Falk, happily using OO only :-)

I thought you were pulling my leg, but then I found this:

Interesting.

In message , Jujitsu Lizard writes

I have been using MS Office 2004 on the Mac for a while it's actually better than on Windows :-)

though that is on PPC Macs .

I have an iMac at home. Impressive piece of hardware.

There are definite serviceability issues (I wouldn't want to have to take it apart), but to get a quiet unit like that with a huge screen and aesthetically pleasing into production ... not a small feat.

I got rid of cable and I watch TV shows within a few days on the iMac. NetFlix works pretty well too. They just added the 1st season of Star Trek. Funny to do a few clicks and be watching a much younger Shatner and cheesy props ...

I left about 100G on the OS/X side in case I want to do iPhone development.

But I run so many Windows apps that I couldn't see it being practical to use OS/X for anything except specialized development. Not enough installable software base.

The Lizard

In message , Jujitsu Lizard writes

They are. I have an iBook and a G5

Not difficult. I added memory to an iMAC

Quite so.

I use the macs for photography work, Web sight work and writing (MS Office, End-Note etc)

So does OO ?

The problems occur in a) actually remembering to DO that. b) Losing information due to the subset effects

The File extension does not tell you the version.

Microsoft is especially slack in version-migration,

Hmm. so now you need Adobe Tools to edit the PDFs ?! ;)

Here, we use OO for everything, and export PDFs only where we know the downstream user does not need to edit the document.

-jg

MS Office is well-known for having trouble working with older formats. I once had to help out a customer who was having trouble with Excel 95 files that could be opened by Excel 95 but not Excel 2000. I opened them with OpenOffice, re-saved as Excel 95, and then both Excel versions could open the files. It takes a special kind of genius to make software that incompatible.

The default for any correspondence should be to send it in pdf format unless you know that the receiver has to edit the document.

Generating *good* pdf files is one of the strengths of OpenOffice - it is one of the reasons why I wouldn't bother with MS Office even if it were free.

Unspoken rule here in the US: Always turn on "Word-97 compatible". It's just one check box in the setup. After that, no compatibility problems. I don't know whether Office 2007 still allows this but I've heard from people that it is shunned around here. I would not use it myself either. There is plenty of opportunity to buy fresh 2000 and 2003 licenses and it's also much less expensive.

I am now using both. But on older systems only older versions of Word because OpenOffice is a monstrous memory hog. If you have 1GB or 2GB, fine, but on anything less than 512MB it is a real pain.

Yes.

In MS-Office you can check a box that tells it never to use features incompatible with Office-97 (kind of an industry standard). In OO you pull the "save as" menu and it clearly states all the versions it can store in. Which in my case is strictly 97-compatible, always.

With engineering projects where multiple locations are involved that won't work :-(

We may be thinking of different generations of iMac. I'm talking about this one:

Adding memory is easy enough (door in the bottom), but if you wanted to replace the hard drive or optical drive, you'd have a bit of work.

I personally wouldn't want to disassemble it. (A tower computer is fine, but that is a bit complex.)

Look at that motherboard! That is PCB art!

The Lizard

In message , Jujitsu Lizard writes

I have added memory to both the lamp stand IiMAC and the one in the picture

A G5 tower Is a joy to work on

le

for example?

in any case you can use windows virtualized on OSX. It works quite well.

Bye Jack