Is OS X worth $149?

[Tim McIndoo]

In reading the new features of OS, I find nothing compelling (aside
from the Aqua interface) me to make the purchase. But I may be missing
something. I'd love to hear from others who have made the switch. (I'm
currently running OS X 10.2.6 on a dual processor G4.)

Thanks!
tim

 

[M. Katz]

In reading the new features of OS, I find nothing compelling (aside

from the Aqua interface) me to make the purchase. But I may be missing
something. I'd love to hear from others who have made the switch. (I'm
currently running OS X 10.2.6 on a dual processor G4.)

I'm sorry, I don't understand.
You're running 10.2.6 on a G4 and you're considering switching to what
version of OS X? Are you talking about Panther (10.3) which hasn't
been released yet? Or are you talking about switching from OS 9 to OS
X?

M. Katz

 

[Tim McIndoo]

I'm sorry, I don't understand.
You're running 10.2.6 on a G4 and you're considering switching to what
version of OS X? Are you talking about Panther (10.3) which hasn't
been released yet? Or are you talking about switching from OS 9 to OS
X?

M. Katz

Sorry about the confusion. I should have written "Is Word for OS X
worth $149?" I'm using Word for OS 9 and have a trial version of Word
for OS X, but there seems to be not all that much worth the additional
cost in upgrading to Word for OS X. Your thoughts would be
appreciated.

Thanks.
Tim

 

[Elliott Roper]

(e-mail address removed) (M. Katz) wrote in message


Sorry about the confusion. I should have written "Is Word for OS X
worth $149?" I'm using Word for OS 9 and have a trial version of Word
for OS X, but there seems to be not all that much worth the additional
cost in upgrading to Word for OS X. Your thoughts would be
appreciated.

Depends which Word you have in OS9. Depends on whether you can still
bear to fire up Classic.

If you are already in OS 9 for Quark or some other dinosaur and you are
running Word 5.1a, stay where you are. There has never been a version
of Word better than 5.1a from 1994.

Otherwise, I think your decision will be driven by how horrible OS 9
is. That's what got me off Word 5.1a. I can't be bothered starting
Classic any more. I haven't booted into 9 since last December.

If the prodding here has had results, I'd recommend hanging off a
purchase till you see whether Office 11 is another downward step
sometime before Christmas. The scuttlebutt says it might be better. It
could hardly be worse. Look on the bright side.

 

[J.E. McGimpsey]

It could hardly be worse.

Excuse me... have you forgotten about Word 6 so quickly? It took 2
Moore's Law cycles before the hardware caught up enough to boot it
within the first cup of coffee...

<g>

 

[M. Katz]

Aside from all the harping about awful Word 6, I found Word 98 to be
okay when I was still in OS 9 and my early days of running Classic
mode in OS X. Now I'm using the latest Word for OS X, on OS X 10.2.6.

I can't say that Word for OS X is any "better" than Word 98. I mix
text and graphics and I use sections and styles, and Word is still as
reliably crappy as ever. Let's be honest. It still tries to take
control of your document when you have auto numbering and bullets;
it's still impossible to guess (or sometimes locate) the 15 letter
mystery codes that are used to customize menu items and keyboard
shortcuts; pictures still freely jump from one page to another
willy-nilly; the animated helper still spies on you and pops up to
tell you things you already know until you dismiss him; font kerning
control is still an evil hack at best; and my list goes on.

There are some new "features" to endear this version to you. Apply
formatting to a paragraph and the *following* paragraph is often
affected adversely. There's a bug that makes a document unsaveable
after X saves where X is something like 60. That one drove me nuts and
caused me to lose work more than a few times until I read about it on
this forum.

Word X still just a word processor so you shouldn't hope for more with
this version than before.

One reason to use Word X is that OS X will let you make nifty PDFs in
just one step. That can be really handy, but I have a word of caution
for you. Early on, I noticed that the graphics in my PDFs were always
coming out 72 dpi. Then I made a new file and the graphics came out at
full resolution and I realized that they didn't have to be in low res
all the time. I narrowed the problem down to the following: if you
start with a document created by Word 98, the PDFs are limited to
low-res graphics. If you create a new document from scratch in Word X,
there's no such limitation. I wonder if others have found this.

I forgot to mention that nice feature that if you have a document with
a "different first page" style, the PDF output comes as two separate
files. Same with postscript output.

<soapbox>
With > $10 BILLION in the bank, MS shouldn't give shareholders a
dividend, they should make a decent word processor for a change.
</soapbox>

M. Katz