On Wed, 08 Oct 2008 11:59:49 -0700 NoOp <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> dijo: > Lightscribe CD burners are within the price range of many these days (I > don't have one... I'm poor :-). Not as fast as commercial burners, but > with some actual "official" cd artwork to burn to the lightscribe CD's > it eliminates the need to hand stick CD labels (I do that & it's not > much fun).
Actually, my desktop computer has dual DVD drives that are both Lighscribe enabled. I can heartily disrecommend them. First, all they will do is gray - no colors. Second, they are slower than the second coming - about ten minutes to place the image on the media. Third, you have to buy special Lightscribe media, which costs twice as much as regular media. And fourth, the software supports only a couple of image formats. And finally, getting the software to run on 64-bit OSs is not trivial. > However, in addition to the artwork, you also need a proper & up-to-date > OOo ISO to burn to the CD. Unfortunately, these don't get updated very > often... note that the latest is: > <snip> > As you can see, the last time an ISO was created win/linux/mac was > 04/02/2008 and considerable changes have been made to the 2.x versions > since then. Than in itself wouldn't be too bad if OOo provided a method > for incremental updates between versions, but unfortunately you'd have > to download the entire 2.4.1/x or 3.0 again anyway to be current. Note: > I'm downloading now just to see what is in the ISO. > > Perhaps the way to go is to do a Portable Apps > (http://portableapps.com/apps/office/openoffice_portable) CD instead. > They even have OOo3.0Beta2: > http://portableapps.com/apps/office/openoffice_portable/test > > Or hand out prebuilt OOo logo'ed thumbdrives instead. Students would > take those immediately as they know that they can overwrite them with > whatever they want. But at least they'd have the most recent version on > the drive to use rather than a 6 month old CD. Unless of course you want > to spend $8.69 at the OOo lulu store for the same 6 month old CD: > http://www.lulu.com/ooo Portable drives would also need to be painted with the OOo logo and artwork, plus they are kind of expensive. More importantly, I need to overcome the fear factor. I just came home a few minutes ago from the university where I had been invited to speak to a phonetics class about how to use the international phonetic alphabet on their computers. I assure you that the level of computer illiteracy among university students is appalling. Of the 24 people in the class one was using Linux, four had Macs, and the rest XP. Not ONE of them knew how to install a font. Half of them couldn't figure out how to download a font. And only a couple of them knew how to uncompress a zip file. At least half the class had never installed any software on their computers - the computer came with the OS and an office suite, and that is all they have ever used. And I am including the professor in my comments. Once I handed an Ubuntu live CD to a graduate student and explained how it worked. She replied "I can't install any more programs on my computer because my husband used up all the memory." I am not making this up. Now, the problem is that we humans fear that which we do not know or understand. That is human nature and there is no changing it. I have handed homemade CDs with OOo/Windows on it to students and they quickly thrust it back at me. They have heard so much about viruses and other malware that they don't even want to touch it, as though they could transmit a virus to their computer just by hand contact. That is why I think I would do much better with professional commercial quality CDs. I would also make foldout CD sleeves with OOo artwork and instructions. I do have access to printing equipment and I can produce the sleeves myself, although time is occasionally at a premium. What I don't have is access to CD printers, but I suspect that somewhere in the OOo organization there exists a high speed CD printer. I would be willing to pay whatever the CDs cost OOo. > Obviously the OOo marketing folks that have their gala meetings in > Beijing and Paris prepare CD's etc for handouts. If they can do that, > then I suspect that they can assist the education project and/or someone > like JJJ with his small request. (JJJ I'd send marketing an email and > ask - certainly can't hurt). That is a good idea. I'll do so as soon as I figure out their e-mail address. -- --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
