On 2004-10-26 16:31, Jian Guang Xu <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > My current system follows: > AMD Athlon 1600+, 1 Gigabytes RAM, 40 Giga harddrive, GeForce 2 with > 32 Mb, AC97 Onboard Audio Adaptor, D-Link DFE-538TX.
The hardware is more than ok for running recent versions of FreeBSD. You shouldn't have problems, as far as the hardware is concerned. The comments below refer to each of the software packages, applications or services you currently use. It's probably a long reply -- too long for all of it to be correct -- but, since it's always good news to find out that people want to try using FreeBSD, let's hope I get most of it right ;-) > The system got follow applications: > . W2K Workstation Professional runs very smooth right now. > . Firefox 1.0 for most of the web surfing. I recently switched to Firefox 1.x from Mozilla 1.7.x and all the sites I have to visit work like a charm. There is one minor point that I miss from the Mozilla menu (being able to zoom at specific percentage, i.e. 105%), but in general the change seemed ok. > . IE occasionally but necessary for some of the web-sites I need to go to due to > personally reason. This could be a problem. Don't these sites work with Firefox at all? If not, and you do decide to work with FreeBSD, you can always fire up VMWare and boot into a Windows installation, but I am not sure how well that would work, as I don't use VMWare. > . Thunderbird for me email and newsgroup reading. This should work on FreeBSD too. > . VMWare to testing FreeBSD. Not sure. I haven't used VMWare on FreeBSD. Perhaps another member of the list who has can reply here. > . ACT! 2005 as a CRM software (personal organizer as well) but I'm trying > to move to a internet application via www.freecrm.com I'm not sure about `ACT! 2005', you'd have to ask the company that releases it regarding availability of FreeBSD versions, but freecrm seems promising and all it needs is a browser. That's cool. > . OpenOffice currently runs in my system with MS Office removed. This runs on FreeBSD too. If you are not using MS Office at all, the transition should have no ill effects on the way you work with Office formats. > . Acrobat 5.0 for form editing(Occasionally) Form editing is something I haven't used, so I don't know if it's supported by some PDF reader in FreeBSD. Previewing of PDF files works beautifully though. There is print/gv, graphics/xpdf and an integrated PS/PDF viewer in both Gnome and KDE. If you ever test the print/gv or graphics/xpdf packages, please let me know. I'll tell you how to configure your browser (Firefox or Mozilla) to use one of these for opening PS and/or PDF files and a few tricks that will make your previewing easier. > . MusicMatch for online radio (all the time) > . Realplayer for DVD/Movie(Occasionally) I usually listen to online broadcasts with audio/mpg123 or audio/x11amp (a winamp clone for X11). I'm not sure if these two can work with the online radio stations you like listening too though. Perhaps if you mentioned the names of the stations or the format of their broadcast someone else can help with this one, telling us if FreeBSD has all the proper utilities/packages. For movies I use multimedia/mplayer. It cna play almost anything I can swing at its face. It lacks the bells and whistles media player has on Windows, but it works fine and that's what I mostly care about. > . I have online conference calls using MS Media Player Plugin which is very > important for me. This is probably the most important reason why you should do a very careful research, to decide *if* you want to switch to FreeBSD and then *how* it's going to be done to minimize down-time. Bearing in mind the history of Media Player and the way non-standard, proprietary, closed protocols or formats are used by its plugins, I don't think compatibility with the conference calls plugin will be easy to achieve with FreeBSD. I'd be happy to be proven wrong here, but until then I doubt. > . Zonealarm as my firewall, Norton Antirus. Firewalls are a strong FreeBSD point. ZoneAlarm has always annoyed me. I am more a fan of firewalls like ipfilter or pf, which don't depend on the program name or the program's executable file name to work correctly. FreeBSD has three different firewalls integrated into the system. Their close-integration with the system is an important point to note. The firewalls in our world are not third-party add-ons that may or may not work, depending on how well they followed incomplete specifications about the internals of a proprietary, closed system (like Windows). They are developed as part of the system itself, using the same procedures and QA processes that the rest of the system uses. Being available does not mean they are forced upon you either. You have the ultimate choice of using one, two, all three of them or none at all. > . I'm using a home network connected to Rogers High Speed via DHCP protocol, > another machine is a XP laptop. This should work too. > My job is in Marketing field so I do need the system to be robust and more > productivity. At the same time, I have the dream to play OS around and hack > into the system at my spare time. Robustness, stability of both runtime behavior and interface, performance and security are fields in which FreeBSD excels. Productivity is something that depends on the job you have to do, the tools you choose to do it and the myriad of minor, subtle details that make a difference while you work. This is something that you will have to judge for yourself though. Nobody can tell you if you are going to be more productive with FreeBSD, because nobody is... well... you. > To be honest, I'm pretty happy with my current system with all the feature I > specified. You are happy with the current setup, but it's also nice that you consider trying out something different. The fact that you have no problem with your current setup should weigh a lot more than anything else, if you ask me. I'm not advocating that you should stick with Windows forever. Just that you should take your time and test FreeBSD for your type of work; test it as much as you need, in order to decide if it can fit your style. > Is there anybody could point out a way to play FreeBSD around and at the > same time, I could perform my job easily? As I said, I need the Media Player > plug in a lot, and any suggestion for a CRM software under BSD would be much > appreciated. My job is in software development. Thus, I haven't used Media Player or any sort of CRM application. I'm sure that anyone who has and is a member of this list will help you a lot more with these two. Regards, Giorgos _______________________________________________ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"