LAUG Podcast 08.07: Microsoft Free Lifestyle
A podcast from the August meeting of the Lawrence Apple Users Group. This month’s topic included a presentation on Living the Microsoft Free Lifestyle by Dave Greenbaum.
The meeting opened up with introductions, recent Apple news followed by a discussion of alternative office suites for the Mac. This included everything from iWork, Open Office, Mariner Write and host of others.
The meeting concluded with questions from group members and our monthly door prize, which included Andy Ihnatko’s iPod Fully Loaded and MacBackup by Macxware.
Click here for a PDF or Powerpoint file of Dave’s presentation at the meeting.
Check us out on the web and subscribe to the podcast at http://www.laugks.org/news/.
October 4th, 2007 at 9:24 pm
Hi,
i live in Fiji on a remote island. Trojans and viruses killed my last pc, i needed to buy a new laptop from USA so i asked a friend to bring me one when she visited four months ago. She brought a MacBook with OS X 10.4.9 because she owns a Mac. She is a teacher and she was tired of viruses killing her pcs. Both of my sons and my ex own Macs.
i found this site through Google, searching “Safari cant open, lost network connection, report bug to Apple. After reporting this bug to Apple like, 20 times, i figured they weren’t actually going to help me and i had better try to get help from someplace else. i like the clean, crisp layout of this site and the article “Worst Mac error message ever” was helpful. i stopped reporting this ‘bug’ too.
Anyway, being a new Mac user, having NO local support, no other Mac users on the island, and not beiing educated or particularly smart about computers, i find myself comparing pc to Mac rather unfavorably and hope someone/s out there can help me come to terms with my new laptop.
For instance, my pc came with a xp recovery disk. My Mac did not. i tried to make a spread sheet but it seems there is not a spreadsheet program included. its comes with all these gaget-like things but nothing for writing real documents. i download things but find i can’t read them. Everything ends up on the desktop, yahoo messenger and some others dont really open with an icon, i have to check ‘agree’ everytime, then they give me an icon to open. Because i am on dial up and it’s rather slow, i need to have at least 4 to 5 windows open at one time, one on top of the other. i have a devil of a time getting from one to the other, and if i am also using iMail, finding something under five safari windows is time consuming and frustrating. i dont like the online help much. i find the spotlight feature to be pretty ineffective. i have one program i want to install called VedaBase which is only made for pc. i heard about virtual pc but some say it opens the Mac to viruses again, defeating the purpose. i heard the Mac was easier to use but i think people must think icons are simpler than words. i got it to speak to me but not to listen to me. No delete forward button on the keyboard. I hope most of my problems are just ignorance on my part.
On the positive side, it’s quiet. Looks nice. works with iPod. Affordable.
Please forgive me if my complaints have hurt the feelings of any of you Mac fans and experts. If any of you know how i could improve my Mac experience, i would be sincerely grateful.