thanks to all for the feedback on word processors.... i had typed a reply to all the emails and went to send it.... however Win95 ate it, so now i have to start over. gotta love M$. of course i deleted all the mail from my in box, so now i have to work from memory (a dangerous thing for me to do) but anyhowz... i'm really long winded... go get a cup of coffee before you start this. somebody suggested Applix. i'm trying to look into that, however their web site is one of those nasty things with animations & is larger than the size of the screen so you can't see it all, and god forbid they have a simple way to navagate to a page which talks about their products..... no, but they have lots of propoganda about how great they are. so, if i can weed thru the layers of trash i'm going to look at that software. i did find some very positive reviews about Applix on the web. The entire suite is about $100 and the person who suggested this said he thought ApplixWord was about $40. as to paying for software for linux, i have no problem paying for software. i have a problem paying for bad software. for example, Office2000 premium -- $800 when it first came out. no one can justify that cost.... and here is something that may interest you. i use to work at a place called StarPac. they package software for M$ amongst other companies. i personally put thousands... probably about 2500, perfectly good, complete CD sets of Office2000 into a shreader. why? because M$ made too many of them. now, if that were really worth $800, would we have been told by M$ to destroy them? i doubt it. regarding Koffice -- i see there are people on both sides of that debate. i'll just have to try it out also. now, StarOffice. someone asked what it is about SO that is (my words) "too much for me". well.... SO really isn't that bad. it does have some of the advanced features that i need. here are my.... um, i don't want these to be seen as complaints, but here are the things i would like to see improved or "fixed": could i please control the colour of the program? i would like a black background with light coloured text. winblows can control the colours, tho not reliably. interestingly enuf, MS Works will often give me black text on black background (very hard to read as you might guess) instead of yellow text on black background & this is a M$ application with a M$ OS. you would think they might be compatable. and yes, i know you can set up the colour of the documents... but that is not what i mean, i simply mean the screen colours. could SO please get rid of that stupid little "start menu" and "task bar" at the bottom. yes, i realize that is so windoze users will feel at home.... but windoze is becoming more & more foreign to me and i like it that way. could SO be broken down into seperate apps & get rid of that desktop. it takes (not making this up) 27 seconds for SO to start up on my system. how about floating icon boxes (like AmiPro 3 -- greatest word processor ever written). and how about one icon box that i can customize instead of multiple icon boxes. how about the ability to open an ASCII file without inserting paragraph returns at the end of every line (like AmiPro 3 -- greatest word processor ever written). how about..... someone liven things up a bit. every word processor in the world looks just the same.... geez guys.... how 'bout a slick, cool, pleasing to look at interface.... i love the way the GIMP looks, the floating boxes thing.... that's great. imagination goes a long way. look at the imac. not really a great computer -- but they moved because someone said "hey, white bites". simple, but effective. and, since they are trying to be compatable with M$, how about not being so compatable that it crashes. just last night i was messing with SO, so i could give an intelligent reply to the question of why i don't like it. i shut down SO and went to have dinner. come back, start it up... the desktop appears behind the splash screen. the spash screen does not go away, the program locks up. long story short.... it will not run when i try to uninstall using the SO setup it tells me i have to exit the program when i try to uninstall the RPM it says it is not installed when i try to install the RPM it says it is already installed it took me over an hour to finally destroy all traces of SO on my computer and then put it back on. of course now i have to set up all my preferences again. i think they have gone too far in being M$ compatable. so yes -- some of you already figured this out, but when it comes to word processors i am just too damn fussy. but i've also become quickly spoiled by linux. i mean there is so much out there for linux. look how many CD burners there are, how man text editors, how many e-mail programs, how many graphic programs. how can you not find something that is perfect for you? i never thought i could give up PhotoShop but now that i've starting using GIMP... i'm dropping PS like a bad habit. my point is this.... with all the variety out there, it seems i could find a word processor that is perfect for my needs. maybe not... it seems there are not that many word processors around (not even for windows when you think about it) and i can't say why this is.... i know very very little about programing (just enuf to be dangerous) but it seems to me that writing a word processor would be a difficult thing. is this true? i don't mean to be critial of any linux program out there.... it's not like i'm smart enuf to write one... i just mean to say there has to be more than StarOffice and AbiWord..... and if it's really good, then hell yes i'll pay $40 for it. hope i didn't bore you too much. =) PS -- thanks for the info about the SCSI vs IDE question. yet again i have learned something. wow..... =) Adrian Smith 'de telepone dude Telecom Dept. x 7042 [EMAIL PROTECTED]
