Posted on 05/01/2008 5:11:26 PM PDT by Swordmaker
This may all be true, but I probably use about 10% of the features on my computer. This sounds like an additional 18 features I would never use.
OK. Thanks!
I'll will remember your method when I need to do it on a PC. It seems a lot simpler than the way they do it now.
Does it? Don't think so. Have you actually used Time Machine?
Integrating PDF support at the OS level makes it available to any application, and easy for developers to implement. It's built into the Apple print driver architecture. I can create a PDF of literally anything I can print, as easily and a lot faster than printing.
That means I can send anything I do to anyone, viewable on just about any desktop machine and most PDAs. It's also amazingly handy for relatively simple print jobs -- if I need to print something larger than any of my printers can handle, I just print to PDF and take it to Kinko's on a flash drive. I don't have to go through all the preflighting, don't have to worry about gathering up the supporting files.
It's a much more elegant approach than making the user hunt around for freeware apps and wait for a version of Open Office that might offer PDF support someday if a programmer feels like implementing it. It's not a critical feature, but it's very very nice.
Its still early, but I'm beginning to believe that MS botched the introduction of Vista more than the system itself by trying to convince people it would run on the last generation of hardware. Remember the "Vista Ready" and "Vista Compatible" stickers which have led to some class action lawsuits?
Apple, on the other hand, released an OS revision that runs, and runs well, on the last few generations of hardware. Imagine that.
Two people at work have asked me to try to sanitize their (Windows) virus problems. I got started on the first one, and have identified it; it’s one of those ever-helpful “install now” online things I suppose. I get to edit her registry tomorrow, and maybe fool with boot.ini, I’m just overjoyed. ;’)
OTOH, I've never dealt with anyone from tech support that could handle requests for assistance about anything more complicated than basic operations.
Ironically, that’s still far more complex than it needs to be if all you want is one screen shot. But then, it’s Windows. Everything is more complex than it has to be.
1: Hit PrtScreen.
2: Go to the Start menu, select Run, type in “paint”, hit enter.
3: Hit Control-V, then go to the File menu and select Save As.
4: Save in whatever format and location you want (so long as Windows supports it).
I hate dumpster diving... but sometimes it is absolutely necessary.
Have you ever used backup and restore in Vista?
Substitute - Object Dock
I have a Mac and use this on my work PC. It's not nearly as good but it's a reasonable substitute.
Adding MKS Toolkit and ActivePerl go a long way toward making Windows tolerable. :-)
Not to mention SlickEdit...
I was thinking the same. lol
If anyone is going to run a web server at home, they would be well advised to use Apache.
Windows still doesn’t do ISO burning? Wow. Does anyone know if you can create an ISO with out 3rd party tools on Windows? Unix has had that since forever. (”dd” is one of the oldest commands.)
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You can credit Bill Gates for getting the original DOS as the standard for government work, thereby requiring anyone who wanted to work with the government to have it as well.
Not better, just government better.
Your points about printing to pdf are well taken. I use that quite a bit on Linux. I also print to postscript a lot, because I have tools that will let me do a lot of things to it later like reorder the pages for booklets and such. I really like the portability of PDF files, the only drawback being that unless you have Acrobat, you can’t edit them.
Bug, or feature? PDFs let you send along filed in a read-only format, and if you have the original source document, you can always make revisions. But you do raise the valid point that that Apple print driver only includes in a PDF what you can print -- you cannot, for example, add hyperlinks. There's still a market for the full Acrobat package.
My personal pet peeve is that what people think an OS does ends up being an endless grab-bag of “features” many of dubious worth. Stickies notes being an OS function? That type of thinking is the *problem* not the solution.
The best thing any OS can do is to do what it does best (schedule processes, manage memory, manage devices, run some background processes, provide a file system) and then GET THE HELL OUT OF THE WAY.
Decouple the OS from the UI, the applications, the services and leave that out of kernel space. Erect a firewall between OS and applications so that a problem in an application doesn’t bring down the whole box.
Certainly in the microsoft world, the trend has been the exact opposite. Exhibit A, the integration of the browser with the OS.
This is exactly the wrong approach, IMHO.
You have to have Vista Business or Ultimate for that feature, it’s not included in the Basic or Premium versions. Microsoft should have only had 1 version of Vista (Ultimate) if you ask me, and leave it to the users if they want to turn off Aero for performance gains etc., but since they didn’t they hurt sales and make it difficult to distinguish the features in discussions like these.
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