Somehow the Microsoft juggernaut managed to roll over one of the first and best spreadsheet programs ever. Lotus 1-2-3 has all the features I've ever needed in a spreadsheet, and I'm still using keystroke macros I write in 1982 in some areas. Like Bob, I maintain my company cashbook and draft accounts in Lotus, and the integration of half-dozen workbooks into the one that ties it all together was a no-brainer in 1991 and still works perfectly today. Unlike Excel, where you had to rewrite every macro at least twice after version 3, and where, until version XP, it was a nightmare to go back and open an older version file in the later versions. Word is a better word processor than the Lotus equivalent that I have, but it still tries too hard to be a high-end program like PageMaker, so consequently there are large chunks of it which most people will never use.
On the other hand, there isn't one piece of pirated software on any of our PC's: as a developer myself, I want to be rewarded for the effort I put into creating these things, and I see no reason why the major software manufacturer's shouldn't be also. When you look at the work that has gone into programs such as CS4, you should be amazed at the ingenuity in devising the algorithms in the first place, and I admire the amount of testing that must have taken place to ensure everything worked so well - that's with Adobe, of course, MS isn't quite so good at it! I have some sympathy with Joseph and Quicken - in my early days in the business, I though I could use my accounting background to install and support accounting packages, but very quickly found out that most were badly written, hard to maintain, and inflexible to a degree that made customisation impossible. Nowadays, major integrated packages such as PeopleSoft are even worse: in Australia, some government departments have spent hundreds of millions of dollars with packages of this type and they don't work after thousands of man-hours of 'customisation'. It makes me boggle to think what I could do with the $454 million our Customs and Excise department alone has spent! John Coyle Brisbane, Australia -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Bob W Sent: Saturday, 25 October 2008 5:27 AM To: 'Pentax-Discuss Mail List' Subject: RE: PS CS4 It's possible to get a lot of the big name software for nothing, or next to nothing, quite legitimately. I got the entire Office 2003 suite for less than US$20- under the Home Use Programme which my employer subscribed to. I would never pay the full price for something like that, and Microsoft seem to understand that, so they make the best of it with something like home use. It's also fairly easy to get things for the student price by enrolling in a course which gets you a proper student id. The Open University here offers a number of courses quite cheaply for that. If all that fails, then there is a lot of high-quality free software available, such as OpenOffice which does a perfectly good job for most of the things that MS Office does. Microsoft themselves give a lot of good stuff away. Some products, though, have no cheap or free parallel unfortunately. Lightroom is one of those, although I happen to think it's very fairly priced considering its market. I'm still in the process of recovering my system after having to reinstall the operating system, so I've just been forced to upgrade to Lightroom 2 earlier than I might have planned, but that's just one of my punishments for stuffing my OS. Things like accountancy packages are available for nothing very easily, or are very easy to deal with on spreadsheets. When I had my own business I did everything in Excel. It helps to keep things simple. Bob > > It's been a long long time since I've filled up my hard drives with > LimeWire downloads that I hardly or never used, and I understand the > corporate need to perpetuate. > > That being said, I get cranked every time I run into the invisible > wall created by the collusion of hardware and software producers, > causing you to HAVE to upgrade your software to run on the newer > hardware, which you HAVE to buy because the software producer ceases > support for the older versions. Not a problem for the corporate worker- > bees, or government drones, but a substantial burden on the self > employed or retired. > > Most of what I do today I could still be doing in PS 4, Pagemaker 4, > Quicken 2000, and AppleWorks. But none of those will run on current > equipment, or are no longer around nor have any support, no minor > upgrades to run on newer hardware, not even an upgrade 'path'. > > The worst is Quicken, who forces you to upgrade at full price every 3 > years, as they roll off support for the older versions. My Quicken > 2006 will not run on my iMac under 10.4 or later, and there is no > upgrade path. I just want to use it to keep track of my checkbook and > charges. I don't need all the 100s of NEW features for tracking my > investments, graphing everything in seventeen different forms. Back in > the 90s they even got the banks to change to a new form of download > files so you couldn't use the older versions of Quicken at all. > > So when I'm offered (as I am almost every day via email) the latest > greatest version of even $50 software, let alone $1400 stuff, for $.10 > on the $1.00, it gives me pause for thought. > > Joseph McAllister > Lots of gear, not much time > -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions. -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
