>Hey now! I *used* to work in a Radio Shack and was able to help people >(besides catching flak for having an Apple computer). ;-)
Rat Shack USED to be a great place with really good employees. Then they turned themselves into a cell phone pushing, over priced, home electronics store. That was when they adopted the moto "You've got questions, we've got blank stares". >Me, my current problem is that my daughter is thinking of switching to >the Dark Side (as we both refer to it), mostly due to file/format >translation problems in her (college senior) classes. I've tried >suggesting that 1) there are way more viruses/virii on Windows, 2) >because I know much less about Windows problems I won't be able to help >her with problems if she switches, 3) I can't even make a good suggestion >on which Windows system to even consider buying. Haven't heard back from >that email yet - hoping she'll realize there are translators or even >(gasp!) Office (which version runs under 9.2.2, anyway?) and other ways >to manage to get it down instead of switching. Its highly unlikely that she will run into any serious files from college beyond Word, Excel, PowerPoint, JPEG, MPEG, GIF, and Zip archives. MS Office 98 runs on OS 9.x. MS hasn't changed the underlying file format of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files since Office 97 on windows, so Office 98 will be able to open and resave anything she runs into. Stuffit will handle all zip files (commercial version will also create them, but there are also free Zip programs for the Mac). GraphicConverter will handle any image format she will find (think of it as the poor mans Photoshop... but one that opens any picture people make). QuickTime will handle MPEGs. QuickTime with DivX will handle many AVIs. VLC (OS X only) will handle just about any videos except for the cheap amature porn (and if she is worrying about that in college, then you might want to worry too!) So that leaves her with MS Access database files. If she REALLY needs that, (and not just the stored data, Excel can open the data tables, just not operate the database structure), she can always use a school computer for that, or run Virtual PC, or pickup a $300 used PC laptop. My personal opinion is of course that she would be better off buying an iBook with OS X, and a copy of MS Office (or try out OpenOffice which can read/write MS Office files... and since OpenOffice is free, unless she will pass up a good bundle deal for MS Office when she buys the iBook... she can always try OpenOffice and then buy MS Office later if it isn't working out as well as she would like). But going that route will cost her twice what it will cost to get a more generic branded PC laptop of comperable features to the iBook. But then with the iBook she can laugh at all her PC friends as they can't get half their work done because the Anti-Virus software is slowing down the machine, or the Personal Firewall software is blocking their access to the internet, or the spyware that loaded itself is crashing the machine. -chris <http://www.mythtech.net> ___________________________________________________________________________ To unsubscribe send a mail message with a SUBJECT line of "unsubscribe" to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> or <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
