Comments on: Me and HP

By: Corey

Corey — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 01:40:13 +0000

I guess as a web designer, I can never really be fully liberated from Windows . . . making web sites involves ensuring the site looks good and behaves how it should in multiple browsers on multiple platforms . . . IE/Win, IE/Mac, Firefox, Opera, Safari . . . ugh.

You’re a lucky guy Mike.

By: Mike B

Mike B — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 23:02:28 +0000

I use ONLY LINUX!!! I have a Ubuntu box running as a file server and I run OpenSuse on my laptop. I realize that for you designers that Photoshop is basically a necessity and since my company works mainly with MS software they wanted me to run only Windows. However, I was never going to agree to that. I tried to run Office in Wine with success. However, it didn’t work as smoothly as I would have liked and crashed a lot. I dealt with it until I started to use Photoshop. I got Photoshop running in wine and I dealt with it for a while, but it just became too cumbersome.

I went the VM route. This was a Godsend to me. Basically I installed Windows to run my Photoshop/Office/Visio/MS Project. I just fired up my VM first thing and created a bunch of shared folders (shared between my Windows and the host system), tweaked some settings and I was good to go. I realize that I still had to have a license (after all, I use it for work), but lo and behold the unused key on the sticker on the bottom of my laptop.

The only problem is that I’ve only used VMWare which isn’t free. I know that some of my co-workers use free vm players, but I can’t give a personal review on any of them. Google to the rescue.

By: Dave

Dave — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 19:09:32 +0000

Oh, also, if you’re buying a new desktop Dell has some nice ones that come without an OS. They’re the business class desktop (N series), have some good specs, and are some of the cheapest I’ve seen around.

By: Dave

Dave — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 14:06:38 +0000

For awhile I used the propitiatory version of it called CrossOffice in order to specifically use Powerpoint (which I need for my job, but OpenOffice does a relatively good job of it now), and my experience was that it did a decent job. Like most of these things the more people who use a particular piece of software with Wine/Cross Office the better a chance it works seamlessly.

By: Corey

Corey — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 12:34:09 +0000

Have you tried Wine? I’m tempted to, but haven’t had the guts or time to experiment with it.

By: Dave

Dave — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 12:19:53 +0000

Yeah, I have an 8 year old machine running Ubuntu now and its dependable (slow, but, then again its an 8 year old machine). Sadly, when I bought the PC that’s now in for repairs I wasn’t thinking andgot an AMD processor which means its got a broadcom chipset for the wireless which means its a real pain to set up linux on it.

The only applications that I use that are windows dependent are Itunes (which recently I’ve gotten over that) and Sony Vegas, but I may just run that from the media center desktop.

By: Corey

Corey — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 01:20:08 +0000

Ubuntu rocks! It’s the way to go. If I wasn’t so heavily dependent on Photoshop and Illustrator, I’d scrap Windows for good and go all Linux. I currently have one Ubuntu machine, and it’s slick as hell. Runs fast, never crashes, totally reliable.

By: Dave

Dave — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 00:33:36 +0000

Its getting worse. The problem this time around is that it wouldn’t charge, so they sent me a new power adapter. I just found out the new adapter was the wrong kind (65 watt instead of 90). So now I have to call and wait on hold to do an exchange, plus they’re replacing the mobo… for the third time.

Its a shame because my wife has my old Compaq (same company) that’s several years old and its rolling along. Time to get a Dell, the XPS m1330 looks nice plus I can get it with Ubuntu pre-installed and avoid the MS tax.