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PIMs, Writing Software, and Windows XP, Vista, and OS X
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Posted by Chris Thompson
Nov 27, 2007 at 05:40 PM
Aperture is slower than Lightroom on the same machine, I definitely agree there. That’s one reason I use Lightroom. On the other hand, Aperture is the more versatile of the two.
—Chris
Ken wrote:
>I sometimes wonder if I live in two different, but parallel, worlds. I hear and respect
>your personal observations with the different OS’, but I also hear many people in the
>photographic community loudly complaining about the speed, or lack thereof, when
>they run Aperture on well equiped Macs. I will not judge any system on one program, or
>one personal observation, but it certainly makes me want to judge for myself before
>making any radical changes in my own computing set-up (currently XP Pro). I guess YMMV
>is more than just a disclaimer. I wish you good luck, and good speed, with whatever
>system you choose!
>
>—Ken
Posted by jamesofford
Nov 27, 2007 at 06:34 PM
Folks:
I have never been one to get involved in OS wars. OSes seldom drive computer purchases, applications software does. I have always liked the Mac a little better than Windows, mostly because of the software that I use. I have had a Windows XP machine at home for the last 6 years, and it worked fine for what I needed it for.
That being said, I just switched from Windows XP to Mac OSX. There were two drivers for me. One was the availability of software on the Mac. I currently use DevonThink Pro for most of my data accumulation. I also have Eaglefiler. I like them both. The other driver was cost. When I was shopping for laptops, there was little difference between a Macbook, and a Windows laptop running Vista, and so that and the availability of Devonthink made the difference.
There is lots of good, useful software on the Windows platform. And it is encouraging to see so many different info managers on the Windows side. I have always liked Zoot; Onenote has had a place of honor on my machine at work ever since the very first beta. Ecco, Evenote, the list goes on. There are also lots of good info managers on the Mac side. Devonthink, Yojimbo, Eaglefiler, Aquaminds Notetaker, Mori, and so on.
The bottom line is, decide what you want to do-then find the software to do it. At that point the choice of an operating system will be obvious.
On another note, I have been busy with work and haven’t had a chance to exercise Devonthink Pro and Eaglefiler to their full extent. I have been stuffing them both with data, and soon I will be turning to how to organize the information when you get it in, and how to do searches to get it out.
I’ll let everyone here know how things are going in that area soon.
Posted by Randall Shinn
Dec 3, 2007 at 03:39 PM
Jim wrote:
>That being
>said, I just switched from Windows XP to Mac OSX. There were two drivers for me. One was
>the availability of software on the Mac. I currently use DevonThink Pro for most of my
>data accumulation. I also have Eaglefiler. I like them both.
Yesterday I thought I had decided to stay with XP, but today I am leaning toward going through the process of switching to Mac OSX. One reason is that there are some programs available on the Mac that I would like to use (Scrivener, DevonThink Pro, Eaglefiler, and OminOutliner Pro), plus, as best as I can tell from user forums, my most used program (Sibelius) will run faster on a Mac Pro.
The second issue is that I have heard too many complaints about Vista to want to switch to that (I’ve talked to a couple of tech support people who rolled every machine back to XP after trying use Vista). And after researching buying a new machine with XP on it, I found that I was generally offered that option only on a limited number of models, and seldom on the most powerful.
>The bottom line is, decide what you want to do-then find
>the software to do it. At that point the choice of an operating system will be obvious.
The final straw has been the simple task of installing Quicken 2008. It installed fine on my wife’s XP. But on my desktop and laptop the installer removed the old version of Quicken and then failed to install the new. I went to the forum, and it is a problem that others are having. Apparently, somewhere in the depths of the Windows’ registry I still have some reference to an older version of Quicken that is hanging up the installation.
I have tried all the suggested work arounds to no avail, and I have even tried using regedit to search through the registry and remove all references to Intuit and Quicken. After working on this for a couple of hours last night with no success, I was reminded of numerous other times I had had installations issues related to the registry.
Although Quicken support staff seem to be looking for a solution, they are essentially blaming the OS. I have read several reviews of Vista that complained that MS did not try to revamp the arcane registry system, and when software programmers at a company that has been around as long as Intuit are struggling to figure out why the registry is killing their installation, you realize that this is a valid criticism.
I’ve prided myself that in the past I have eventually always been able to solve such issues (although on one other occasion with another software program the problem was never solved, even by tech support). Last night I decided that spending hours trying to solve registry problems was a poor use of my time. I’m sure that no operating system is going to be trouble free, especially when installing new programs. And I can appreciate that MS is trying to maintain backward compatibility, but at this stage of my life I’d rather move to a system that has been designed around a newer, less trouble prone core.
Randall
The other driver was
>cost. When I was shopping for laptops, there was little difference between a Macbook,
>and a Windows laptop running Vista, and so that and the availability of Devonthink
>made the difference.
>
>
>On another note, I have been busy with work and haven’t had a chance to exercise
>Devonthink Pro and Eaglefiler to their full extent. I have been stuffing them both
>with data, and soon I will be turning to how to organize the information when you get it
>in, and how to do searches to get it out.
>
>I’ll let everyone here know how things are
>going in that area soon.
Posted by Cassius
Dec 3, 2007 at 05:26 PM
I purchased a fairly powerful, Widows laptop a year ago, but after seeing how irksome Vista is and other irksome Windows “features” I think my next machine will be a Mac. Perhaps some of you have some knowledge of how the OSs compare? For instance:
1. Windows registry is an arcane abomination. Among other problems is that of reinstalling a program. Many programs save in the registry (rather than in an ini file) any special settings one has made. So one has to manually reenter these settings when one reinstalls a program.
2. Windows has an unbelievably heavy background overhead. It is constantly opening strange files and then saving them, even if they are unchanged. That is, it creates massive disk activity, often for no discernible reason. [If you have ever used GoBack, you know what I mean.]
3. MS is sloppy with its Windows updates. Often they “break” a previously running program. (A Toshiba manager suggested that I NOT run Windows updates.)
4. MS sometimes stealth updates one’s Windows OS, even if one has purposely set Windows NOT to update. What’s worse, some of these updates break parts of Windows! This stealth activity also suggests that MS has put a “backdoor” in Windows and that it may be secretly collecting info from one’s computer.
-c
Posted by David Dunham
Dec 4, 2007 at 03:08 AM
>Perhaps some of you have some knowledge of how the OSs compare? For instance:
>Windows registry is an arcane abomination. Among other problems is that of
>reinstalling a program. Many programs save in the registry (rather than in an ini
>file) any special settings one has made. So one has to manually reenter these settings
>when one reinstalls a program.
Typically Mac applications (such as Opal) save settings in your Preferences folder. Which makes it easy to back them up.
>2. Windows has an unbelievably heavy background
>overhead.
I have 15 applications open in my Dock, but my Mac is 85% idle.
>3. MS is sloppy with its
>Windows updates. Often they “break” a previously running program. (A Toshiba
>manager suggested that I NOT run Windows updates.)
IMO it’s not the update itself but the act of updating that often causes problems—including on the Mac. After all, if there’s a bad spot on your hard disk, the new files might end up on it.
>4. MS sometimes stealth updates
>one’s Windows OS
Never seen this from Apple.