on 20/2/03 9:32 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > VPC is kind of an umbilical cord that would prolong such dependency and > notion that Apple has to "fit in" to the M$ world to survive.
I wish that were the case but it isn't -- I'm running so many different apps under VPC that I'd _have_ to have an Intel Piece of Crap on my desktop otherwise :(. The one place where Apple will always have a paucity of software is in the niche markets. I am afraid to say that affordable (and even unaffordable) stats software has always been sorely lacking on the Mac platform (& especially so b/c our site licences are for Windows-only since that's what the bulk of users run). Apple does need to fit into a M$ world to survive. Microsoft Word and Excel are the de facto standards for file transfers. WordPerfect and 123 at one point gave M$ a run for its money but they've fallen by the wayside. If you cannot seamlessly and without fault read-and-write those formats you're not going to be taken seriously. Rational or not, I distrust interoperability with any word processor that is *not* Microsoft Word (insert version #). I used to have nothing but headaches converting files between AppleWorks, WordPerfect, MacWrite and the various versions of Word. Word is no angle when it comes to compatibility but it does cut out one source of incompatibility (the non-M$ element). I've completely given up on any non-MS Word format docs (except for RTF) for personal use, and when students e-mail me documents I now insist that it be Word format (this was especially a problem when I discovered that a default install of Word for Mac no longer included the converter for WordPerfect 5.1 <grumble>). MS may not be the only game in town (if I didn't need to exchange documents with people AppleWorks would be a perfectly viable solution for me (provided I didn't distrust the app the way I do (all-in-one solutions left a bad taste in my mouth in the early 90s with M$ Works and the early versions of ClarisWorks))), but for me it's a cheap office suite (& the one I'm most familiar with)... bulk institutional licences (*not* site licences) for academic institutions are a good deal: Office X/XP $110/130 CDN ($66/75 USD), Windows XP Pro ~$120 CDN (of course, I have no use for Winblows higher than 98 (that's my VPC) but if I had to run XP I'd certainly not use the home edition). L8r, Eric. -- G-Books is sponsored by <http://lowendmac.com/> and... Small Dog Electronics http://www.smalldog.com | Refurbished Drives | -- Check our web site for refurbished PowerBooks | & CDRWs on Sale! | Support Low End Mac <http://lowendmac.com/lists/support.html> G-Books list info: <http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-books.html> --> AOL users, remove "mailto:"; Send list messages to: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To unsubscribe, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For digest mode, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subscription questions: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Archive: <http://www.mail-archive.com/g-books%40mail.maclaunch.com/> --------------------------------------------------------------- >The Think Different Store http://www.ThinkDifferentStore.com ---------------------------------------------------------------
