In article , Andy
Burns writes
Tim Lamb wrote:

Andy Burns writes:

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/171424219178
That's about a 5 year old model

Are they all likely to be that old? Is there an easy way of checking
vintage?

The clue on those ones is that it is a "Pentium D" which pre-dates the
Core and Core Duo processors, and the current Core2 processors, likely
to be a bit more power hungry if leaving it on 24x7.

Some of these "refurbs" are machines from a large corporate that have
been used, abused and replaced, then someone's bought up the job lot and
made 50 usable ones from 100 half-dead ones.

Some might be brand new old stock that's been sat in a warehouse or a
cupboard as spares for 5 years.

Not a bad concept but it's difficult to trust a seller eg. that
misrepresents a 3G dual core as a 6GHz processor and quotes UK mainland
delivery as free with Ireland and Wales 15quid extra.

Fine for the switched on but perhaps not something I'd suggest for a
noob.

--
fred
it's a ba-na-na . . . .

On 20/09/2014 19:04, fred wrote:
In article , Andy
Burns writes
Tim Lamb wrote:

Andy Burns writes:

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/171424219178
That's about a 5 year old model

Are they all likely to be that old? Is there an easy way of checking
vintage?

The clue on those ones is that it is a "Pentium D" which pre-dates the
Core and Core Duo processors, and the current Core2 processors, likely
to be a bit more power hungry if leaving it on 24x7.

Some of these "refurbs" are machines from a large corporate that have
been used, abused and replaced, then someone's bought up the job lot and
made 50 usable ones from 100 half-dead ones.

Some might be brand new old stock that's been sat in a warehouse or a
cupboard as spares for 5 years.

Not a bad concept but it's difficult to trust a seller eg. that
misrepresents a 3G dual core as a 6GHz processor and quotes UK mainland
delivery as free with Ireland and Wales 15quid extra.

Fine for the switched on but perhaps not something I'd suggest for a noob.

Especially when you can get, for example, a brand new laptop which will
quite possibly out-perform it, with W8.1 already installed (and,
obviously, licensed), as you imply it will use less electricity,
built-in monitor and UPS! For £230.

--
Rod

On Sat, 20 Sep 2014 18:53:40 +0100, The Natural Philosopher
wrote:

That, and a couldn't be arsed with the Linux
equivalents of uTorrent and a couple of other things, but they were
relatively minor.
Same here.

I forgot to mention Photoshop; from what I could see, under WINE that
would have been problematical. Even so, I would have persevered and
likely have run PS in a virtual machine.

This time around, I'll put a Linux guest via Virtual Box on Win7/64
and retain my sat card on the host, while getting the Linux web access
I liked.

what card is it? as I say I managed to get mine working OK.

Technistat Skystar2 pci.
The drivers were there, and it was recognised and I could actually get
it working a channel at a time in VLC, but XBMC was just impossible.
It has a set-up interface designed by a sadist.

On 20/09/14 19:36, Grimly Curmudgeon wrote:
On Sat, 20 Sep 2014 18:53:40 +0100, The Natural Philosopher
wrote:

That, and a couldn't be arsed with the Linux
equivalents of uTorrent and a couple of other things, but they were
relatively minor.
Same here.

I forgot to mention Photoshop; from what I could see, under WINE that
would have been problematical. Even so, I would have persevered and
likely have run PS in a virtual machine.

This time around, I'll put a Linux guest via Virtual Box on Win7/64
and retain my sat card on the host, while getting the Linux web access
I liked.

what card is it? as I say I managed to get mine working OK.

Technistat Skystar2 pci.
The drivers were there, and it was recognised and I could actually get
it working a channel at a time in VLC, but XBMC was just impossible.
It has a set-up interface designed by a sadist.

Try kaffeine. Best setup program - just does a full scan

XMBC is designed for 'media cenres' not GP PC.

The other option is ME-TV.



--
Everything you read in newspapers is absolutely true, except for the
rare story of which you happen to have first-hand knowledge. €“ Erwin Knoll

In article , Grimly
Curmudgeon scribeth thus
On Sat, 20 Sep 2014 18:53:40 +0100, The Natural Philosopher
wrote:

That, and a couldn't be arsed with the Linux
equivalents of uTorrent and a couple of other things, but they were
relatively minor.
Same here.

I forgot to mention Photoshop; from what I could see, under WINE that
would have been problematical. Even so, I would have persevered and
likely have run PS in a virtual machine.

This time around, I'll put a Linux guest via Virtual Box on Win7/64
and retain my sat card on the host, while getting the Linux web access
I liked.

what card is it? as I say I managed to get mine working OK.



Technistat Skystar2 pci.


That works fine her on that winders thingey..

Mind you theres not that much of Sat TV these days thats appealing, but
that's TV generally;(..



The drivers were there, and it was recognised and I could actually get
it working a channel at a time in VLC, but XBMC was just impossible.
It has a set-up interface designed by a sadist.
--
Tony Sayer

In message , Clive
George writes
KVM is a bit 1990s isn't it? One computer you're using, RDP or X or
whatever to get to the others.

Though the other question is what are the four doing that a single one
or single + server can't do?


I think I'm still 1980's rather than 90's, but I actually use more than
one KVM.

We have
1. The Linux backup server,
2. a general purpose elderly machine with a lot of ports, TV tuner etc,
3. an old Acer that I was trying to replace. This sits with 2 external
drives as additional temporary or semi-permanent backup and interfaces
with the colour printer/scanner
4. a W2k machine as the server for the old workhorse laser printer
5. Additional small machine for testing various audio configurations
under various OS's.
6. Audio recording and editing XP machine hosting 2 separate audio
interfaces for the analogue mixers
7. Audio recording and editing 64-bit machine for the digital firewire
multitrack Tascam FW-1884 interface

Some of these, particularly the XP audio machine, have the network
interface disabled so that updates and malware are avoided.

On top of this, I run several laptops with various OS's and various
software configurations so that I can test setups and support a few old
colleagues as they hit problems. (Today's was a writer friend whose W8.1
Control Panel has completely disappeared. We haven't yet solved it.)

KVM is vital, especially for the non-network machine.
--
Bill

On Sat, 20 Sep 2014 20:05:07 +0100, The Natural Philosopher
wrote:

Try kaffeine. Best setup program - just does a full scan

I'll look at that for next time.

XMBC is designed for 'media cenres' not GP PC.

I don't see the difference - if it had been successful, the next
installation of XBMC would have been on the AV-PC in the back room.
The installation on this box was nothing more than a convenience to
familiarise myself with it before installing on the other.
It was like pulling my toenails out with rusty pliers and I didn't
want to repeat the process.

The other option is ME-TV.

Noted, ta.

"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
...
On 20/09/14 08:34, Tim Lamb wrote:
What software do you want to transfer.

Umm.. Turnpike although there is a fair bit of *knowledge* on how to do
this from previous moves.

I guess the obvious is a working browser so I can fetch the rest.

why not be adventurous, and install linux mint, and then see if turnpike
will run under WINE?

I thought he said he wasn't a geek .... ;-)

Arfa

"Grimly Curmudgeon" wrote in message
...
On Sat, 20 Sep 2014 11:16:50 +0100, Tim Lamb
wrote:

Oh! Technical. Is there anywhere you can *experience* linux without
jumping in with both feet?

Nearly all the distros will do a try-before-install boot up and run
from a CD, albeit slower as it accesses the steam-age device. It's
actually quite useful.
I was so ****ed off with Windows last year I jumped into
Lubuntu/Kbuntu and ended up with a very nice installation that was the
******* child of both, that I really enjoyed using. The only thing
that ****ed me off was the lack of working of the satellite card and
the utterly useless, worse than a barrowload of ****-smeared monkeys,
media suite, XBMC. That, and a couldn't be arsed with the Linux
equivalents of uTorrent and a couple of other things, but they were
relatively minor.
This time around, I'll put a Linux guest via Virtual Box on Win7/64
and retain my sat card on the host, while getting the Linux web access
I liked.


Interesting that you had problems with XBMC. Was it some 'special' version
to run on a Linux machine, or just a bog-standard XBMC ? The reason I ask is
that XBMC was installed on my Apple TV as part of the Green Poison jailbreak
that I did on it so it would play stuff other than in Apple proprietry
formats, and it works just fine, playing any format that I throw at it
without complaint or issue. Also, my son uses an actual XBox as a media
device to stream to from his network, and again, XBMC does a fine job of
handling all formats.

Arfa

"Michael Chare" wrote in message
...
On 19/09/2014 21:15, Tim Lamb wrote:
Right, if you have all finished stressing about Scotland.... back to my
computer problems.

As has been pointed out, Towers with Windows 7/32bit are readily
available on the refurbished market.

What problems am I likely to run into attempting to transfer software
for which I do not have installation discs. Clonezilla was suggested.

Also, will such m/cs have licensed software such that MS will continue
upgrading/fixing?

Kindly bear in mind my lack of geekyness:-)

Are you trying to transfer the license from a machine that you have now or
from one that you are buying?

A full retail license that you buy by itself on DVDs is normally
transferable to a different computer. You might have to do a tedious
telephone activation.

This machine has just been rebuilt with a different motherboard, processor,
memory and graphics card. Windows got a bit upset and started throwing up
nasty little messages about having 3 days to revalidate it. I did follow one
of these messages, and clicked on the activate online button, but it
immediately responded by saying that it couldn't find a modem ... WTF ? So I
abandoned it, as I didn't want to do the tedious telephone re-activation at
the time, and I wasn't convinced that it *really* needed doing as the
machine was working just fine, and the messages were brief and then just
went away. A couple of days later, the screen background went black, and I
now had a new and permanent message telling me that I now had zero days
before they were going to come round and cut my legs off for not
revalidating ...

So I sighed and followed the message again to the validate online button.
This time when I clicked it, it came straight back and said "validating",
and in a few seconds said "ok, all done" ...

The background stayed black, mind. To restore that, I had to right click my
desktop, and turn the theme back on.

Arfa



A license that is sold with a new computer is normally not transferable.
You might be able be able to argue that re-registration is necessary
because some part has failed.

A Windows 8 license is a bit more flexible.


--
Michael Chare

In message , Arfa Daily
writes


"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
...
On 20/09/14 08:34, Tim Lamb wrote:
What software do you want to transfer.

Umm.. Turnpike although there is a fair bit of *knowledge* on how to do
this from previous moves.

I guess the obvious is a working browser so I can fetch the rest.

why not be adventurous, and install linux mint, and then see if
turnpike will run under WINE?

I thought he said he wasn't a geek .... ;-)

I did and I'm not!

Somebody once tried to teach me Elliot Algol back when things were done
with punched tape. I managed a few things on the kids Spectrum and BBC B
which included cheating on Colossal Adventure by looking through the
software. Very little progress since then.

I don't go fiddling with the oil pump on my motor car and don't expect
to have to do it on a computer.

Arfa



--
Tim Lamb

On 21/09/14 08:43, Tim Lamb wrote:
In message , Arfa Daily
writes


"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
...
On 20/09/14 08:34, Tim Lamb wrote:
What software do you want to transfer.

Umm.. Turnpike although there is a fair bit of *knowledge* on how to do
this from previous moves.

I guess the obvious is a working browser so I can fetch the rest.

why not be adventurous, and install linux mint, and then see if
turnpike will run under WINE?

I thought he said he wasn't a geek .... ;-)

I did and I'm not!

Somebody once tried to teach me Elliot Algol back when things were done
with punched tape. I managed a few things on the kids Spectrum and BBC B
which included cheating on Colossal Adventure by looking through the
software. Very little progress since then.

I don't go fiddling with the oil pump on my motor car and don't expect
to have to do it on a computer.

Precisely.

Which is why you should abandon windows..



Arfa





--
Everything you read in newspapers is absolutely true, except for the
rare story of which you happen to have first-hand knowledge. €“ Erwin Knoll

In message , The Natural Philosopher
writes

I don't go fiddling with the oil pump on my motor car and don't expect
to have to do it on a computer.

Precisely.

Which is why you should abandon windows..

Umm.. I was the chap left sitting on the edge of the swimming pool while
everyone else was having fun!

Message so far:-

Transferring my existing stuff to a later version of Windows is
not likely to be easy.

Free office software is readily available (Kingsoft) for word
processing. My existing data files may not be accessible if transferred?

Where I have original installation discs and the software version is
compatible, I will be able to load and use. (Quickbooks, Photoshop
7etc.)

A re-furbed. computer will have a working browser and be licensed. It
may not last many more years.

Care should be exercised in assuming E-Bay descriptions are accurate.

Windows 32 bit will limit addressable memory and constrain performance.
(gaming was never an ambition)

A tower sold for use in a noisy office environment may not be suitable
for home use.

Available connections may not match printer and other peripherals.

anything else?

The current m/c is ticking OK at the moment so I'll hold off rushing
ahead. Thanks to all who have sympathised and contributed.
--
Tim Lamb

In article , Tim Lamb
scribeth thus
In message , The Natural Philosopher
writes

I don't go fiddling with the oil pump on my motor car and don't expect
to have to do it on a computer.

Precisely.

Which is why you should abandon windows..

Umm.. I was the chap left sitting on the edge of the swimming pool while
everyone else was having fun!


Well it's up to you..


Message so far:-

Transferring my existing stuff to a later version of Windows is
not likely to be easy.


Its not that bad!.

Free office software is readily available (Kingsoft) for word
processing. My existing data files may not be accessible if transferred?

More or less..


Where I have original installation discs and the software version is
compatible, I will be able to load and use. (Quickbooks, Photoshop
7etc.)


Yep if their WIN 7 compatible..

A re-furbed. computer will have a working browser and be licensed. It
may not last many more years.

It well might..


Care should be exercised in assuming E-Bay descriptions are accurate.

..

Windows 32 bit will limit addressable memory and constrain performance.
(gaming was never an ambition)


Not a real problem..

A tower sold for use in a noisy office environment may not be suitable
for home use.


In fact the ones I've got a very quiet indeed you'd hardly know their
running they have a fan speed control programme.

Available connections may not match printer and other peripherals.

Well USB and Ethernet are now a given but you may well not be able to
find a Parallel port but if your printers that old time for investment
in a new one!.


anything else?

The current m/c is ticking OK at the moment so I'll hold off rushing
ahead. Thanks to all who have sympathised and contributed.

Yes just do it. I upgraded to a new machine from WIN 2K Pro to WIN 7 and
it all just works and works well. Hardly any problems to report of

Yes been there and tried Linux and yep its OK but there were a few
oddities on it that I didn't particularity like but thats a personal
thing ..

--
Tony Sayer

In message , tony sayer
writes
In article , Tim Lamb
scribeth thus

Free office software is readily available (Kingsoft) for word
processing. My existing data files may not be accessible if transferred?

More or less..

Is Kingsoft any better than LibreOffice that I am now settled on? LO and
OO have a huge user base for help, and I manage almost perfectly in
dealing with incoming docs, sheets and Powerpoint from all sorts of
corporate users.

Where I have original installation discs and the software version is
compatible, I will be able to load and use. (Quickbooks, Photoshop
7etc.)


Yep if their WIN 7 compatible.

.
If you have an old, valid Photoshop licence, I would think you should be
morally able to find and install the version that Adobe made available
when it messed up its registration setup. I know the Elements version
was available. I think the CS2 Suite includes Photoshop. I haven't
looked recently, so I'm not certain if this is all still accessible.

--
Bill

In message , Tim Lamb
writes

Transferring my existing stuff to a later version of Windows is
not likely to be easy.

Transferring stuff from one PC to another is never 'easy' even if same
operating system :-) TBH, it is more time consuming that difficult, and
I know some people love images of their hard drives, but I take a new
hard drive as an excuse to not bother transferring anything that seemed
a good idea at the time, but I never use.

Free office software is readily available (Kingsoft) for word
processing. My existing data files may not be accessible if transferred?

I now use open office because I'm too tight to buy a licence for Word,
Excel etc. Works perfectly, and opens/saves all my old Word/Excel
files.

Where I have original installation discs and the software version is
compatible, I will be able to load and use. (Quickbooks, Photoshop
7etc.)

Should be fine, unless you buy a 64 bit machine and try to run 32 bit
software like Turnpike.

A re-furbed. computer will have a working browser and be licensed. It
may not last many more years.

OTOH, it may last years. One I bought second hand did.

Care should be exercised in assuming E-Bay descriptions are accurate.

That should be engraved on every buyer's heart.

Windows 32 bit will limit addressable memory and constrain performance.
(gaming was never an ambition)

Has never been a problem for me.

A tower sold for use in a noisy office environment may not be suitable
for home use.

Not a problem with one I bought.

Available connections may not match printer and other peripherals.

True, but converters are available. My mouse and keyboard both have PS2
connectors, so I bought something like eBay item 161428852386 which
works perfectly. Similar converters are available for printers, but my
big problem was modern drivers for an old printer. I gave up in the
end, and bought a cheap Canon printer which does the job.

anything else?

Really depends what you want to do. You're not a gamer, and probably
have no need for a brand new super fast machine. I certainly don't. I
use two PCs, my son's hand me down W7 desktop, and this little Toshiba
NB200 netbook, both of which do everything I need, although the Tosh
sometimes struggles with large images, using Paint Shop Pro 5. Then I
just switch to the desktop.

I think Windows and Turnpike are the only paid for, licenced software I
use. PSP5 came from a cover disk. I use Blue Moon/ Firefox browser,
Open Office suite, and various other downloadable stuff for FTP, anti
virus etc.

My only luxury item is an external USB hard drive onto which I backup
all my data files [1]. Should either PC or hard drive die, I'll buy a
new hard drive or used PC, reinstall the programs and copy my data. No
more difficult than upgrading to another PC through choice.

[1] And the complete Turnpike folder.
--
Graeme

On Sun, 21 Sep 2014 02:49:56 +0100, "Arfa Daily"
wrote:

Interesting that you had problems with XBMC. Was it some 'special' version
to run on a Linux machine, or just a bog-standard XBMC ? The reason I ask is
that XBMC was installed on my Apple TV as part of the Green Poison jailbreak
that I did on it so it would play stuff other than in Apple proprietry
formats, and it works just fine, playing any format that I throw at it
without complaint or issue. Also, my son uses an actual XBox as a media
device to stream to from his network, and again, XBMC does a fine job of
handling all formats.

XBMC as a media centre worked fine and until it encountered the sat
card, was perfectly ok to live with. Configuring it to recognise the
card, then actually work with it, was hair-tearing.
Merely playing files with it was a breeze.

On Friday, 19 September 2014 21:15:07 UTC+1, Tim Lamb wrote:
Right, if you have all finished stressing about Scotland.... back to my

computer problems.



As has been pointed out, Towers with Windows 7/32bit are readily

available on the refurbished market.



What problems am I likely to run into attempting to transfer software

for which I do not have installation discs. Clonezilla was suggested.



Also, will such m/cs have licensed software such that MS will continue

upgrading/fixing?



Kindly bear in mind my lack of geekyness:-)

--

Tim Lamb

Download any live cd version of Linux and it will be able to save any files and folders you want to keep. Better still put a linux partition on the PCs you want to work on and save the files in them.

Then when you have gained experience and confidence chuck to Windows partition out. Or just leave it where it belongs until you are old enough to act like a big boy.

In article , Bill
scribeth thus
In message , tony sayer
writes
In article , Tim Lamb
scribeth thus

Free office software is readily available (Kingsoft) for word
processing. My existing data files may not be accessible if transferred?

More or less..



Is Kingsoft any better than LibreOffice that I am now settled on? LO and
OO have a huge user base for help, and I manage almost perfectly in
dealing with incoming docs, sheets and Powerpoint from all sorts of
corporate users.

Well her indoors has a lot of Word doc's and suchlike sent to her and
was always complaining re OO or LO would not open them or sodded up the
formatting etc but since using KO no further problems reported..



--
Tony Sayer

On 21/09/14 14:17, tony sayer wrote:
Well her indoors has a lot of Word doc's and suchlike sent to her and
was always complaining re OO or LO would not open them or sodded up the
formatting etc but since using KO no further problems reported..


Libre office is a lot better and if you install the stock windows fonts
as well it gets EVEN better.

But you cant allow for people who have made a pigs ear of their word
docs in the first place.



--
Everything you read in newspapers is absolutely true, except for the
rare story of which you happen to have first-hand knowledge. €“ Erwin Knoll

In message , News
writes
In message , Tim Lamb
writes


Where I have original installation discs and the software version is
compatible, I will be able to load and use. (Quickbooks, Photoshop
7etc.)

Should be fine, unless you buy a 64 bit machine and try to run 32 bit
software like Turnpike.

Loads of software is just 32bit still, most 32 bit software is fine on
64bit windows. Turnpike 6 is a bit of an oddity as it is tied in closely
to Windows - basically it uses Windows Explorer. IIRC it worked ok in
the RC, MS introduced a bug into the RTM of Win7 that broke Turnpike and
it was never fixed.

Some old programs struggle, but compatibility mode normally fixes that.



Windows 32 bit will limit addressable memory and constrain performance.
(gaming was never an ambition)

Has never been a problem for me.

I doesn't seem to make any difference to performance, but if you run
stuff that benefits from the extra RAM then it might be a limitation.
For general day to day use 4GB is fine though.

A tower sold for use in a noisy office environment may not be suitable
for home use.

Not a problem with one I bought.

My experience is that office machines are ok - they tend to be from
Dell/hp/IBM etc. and loud machines aren't appreciated in an office.

It's cheap no names I'd be wary off using a cheap noisy power supply.



--
Chris French

In article , The Natural Philosopher
scribeth thus
On 21/09/14 14:17, tony sayer wrote:
Well her indoors has a lot of Word doc's and suchlike sent to her and
was always complaining re OO or LO would not open them or sodded up the
formatting etc but since using KO no further problems reported..


Libre office is a lot better and if you install the stock windows fonts
as well it gets EVEN better.

But you cant allow for people who have made a pigs ear of their word
docs in the first place.




Well these were one's from academic establishments and I rather doubt
they'd sod them up, and I have heard of others who still have
compatibility problems. It seems that there are still issues when using
all three programs..
--
Tony Sayer

On 21/09/14 15:00, tony sayer wrote:
Well these were one's from academic establishments and I rather doubt
they'd sod them up,

touching naievete ;-)

and I have heard of others who still have
compatibility problems. It seems that there are still issues when using
all three programs..


Even people with Word have problems with Word compatibilty - google it..


--
Everything you read in newspapers is absolutely true, except for the
rare story of which you happen to have first-hand knowledge. €“ Erwin Knoll

On Sun, 21 Sep 2014 10:02:34 +0100, Tim Lamb wrote:

Free office software is readily available (Kingsoft) for word
processing.

Or you could just use LibreOffice like everybody sane.

On Sun, 21 Sep 2014 14:17:14 +0100, tony sayer wrote:

Well her indoors has a lot of Word doc's and suchlike sent to her and
was always complaining re OO or LO would not open them or sodded up the
formatting etc but since using KO no further problems reported..

LO does a better job, ime, than trying to shift complex documents between
versions of MS Word itself.

Formatting issues are usually due to font substitution because of
differing available fonts.

On Sun, 21 Sep 2014 15:00:38 +0100, tony sayer wrote:

But you cant allow for people who have made a pigs ear of their word
docs in the first place.

Well these were one's from academic establishments and I rather doubt
they'd sod them up

wipes tear of laughter
That makes it more likely, not less.

In article ,
Adrian wrote:
On Sun, 21 Sep 2014 14:17:14 +0100, tony sayer wrote:

Well her indoors has a lot of Word doc's and suchlike sent to her and
was always complaining re OO or LO would not open them or sodded up the
formatting etc but since using KO no further problems reported..

LO does a better job, ime, than trying to shift complex documents between
versions of MS Word itself.

Formatting issues are usually due to font substitution because of
differing available fonts.

or because the margins on the receiving machine are set differently to
those on the sending one.

--
From KT24

Using a RISC OS computer running v5.18

On 21/09/14 16:05, Tim Streater wrote:
In article , The Natural Philosopher
wrote:

On 21/09/14 15:00, tony sayer wrote:
Well these were one's from academic establishments and I rather doubt
they'd sod them up,

touching naievete ;-)

and I have heard of others who still have
compatibility problems. It seems that there are still issues when using
all three programs..

Even people with Word have problems with Word compatibilty - google it..

+1

Word is incompatible with itself, basically. Cross-platform? Yes, you
can get Word for Mac and Windows, but even within either platform
different versions can do different things.

To be fair, it works *mostly*. Too many people, though, just use spaces
and the return key to format their docs. They've barely heard of the
tab key (or setting tabs), and even more rarely of page breaks or
styles. I've even seen multi-column stuff done that way, too.

yeah, and when a PR professional tells you that 'PDFS are not a
universal format' .DOCX (Microsoft office 2014 is)' you spend a happy
hour showing why the government specifies all documents for distribution
should be in PDF format, and the first few hundred instances of
incompatible docx formats you can find on a rapid google.

The ONLY way to guarantee format, and that is why printers now
universally accept it as the primary way to receive digital copy, is a
PDF with the correct fonts embedded.

PDF can and does specify each letter to a microinch, what exact font is
to be used and what color it should be.

Prior to that you had to specify the program (quark Xpress usually) and
send a complete 'collection - all the fonts and images to be used.

There can be no guarantee that a given Word document will look the same
on two machines since it doesn't do microinch spec and it doesn't embed
fonts.

At best it works on two identical operating system equipped machines
with exactly the same version of Word and exactly the same font set.

I expect that if I get a WORD document it wont be correctly formatted.
Tex overflowing text boxes, and pagebreaks in illogical places, usually
because some 'artistic' genius has selected some weird font that's only
available on their machine. And instead of setting up style sheets has
done it all with a space bar.







--
Everything you read in newspapers is absolutely true, except for the
rare story of which you happen to have first-hand knowledge. €“ Erwin Knoll

On 21/09/14 16:26, Adrian wrote:
On Sun, 21 Sep 2014 14:17:14 +0100, tony sayer wrote:

Well her indoors has a lot of Word doc's and suchlike sent to her and
was always complaining re OO or LO would not open them or sodded up the
formatting etc but since using KO no further problems reported..

LO does a better job, ime, than trying to shift complex documents between
versions of MS Word itself.

Formatting issues are usually due to font substitution because of
differing available fonts.

Pretty much my experience.

Latest version of LO seems to be able to read latest MSwank format, and
is not overly burdened with ridiculous facilities that render it inoperable.

Its still ****e and Word in many respects though.

Next time I write a paper I might well use Scribus instead.


--
Everything you read in newspapers is absolutely true, except for the
rare story of which you happen to have first-hand knowledge. €“ Erwin Knoll

On 21/09/14 16:26, Adrian wrote:
On Sun, 21 Sep 2014 15:00:38 +0100, tony sayer wrote:

But you cant allow for people who have made a pigs ear of their word
docs in the first place.

Well these were one's from academic establishments and I rather doubt
they'd sod them up

wipes tear of laughter
That makes it more likely, not less.

+10^9

--
Everything you read in newspapers is absolutely true, except for the
rare story of which you happen to have first-hand knowledge. €“ Erwin Knoll

On 21/09/14 16:30, charles wrote:
In article ,
Adrian wrote:
On Sun, 21 Sep 2014 14:17:14 +0100, tony sayer wrote:

Well her indoors has a lot of Word doc's and suchlike sent to her and
was always complaining re OO or LO would not open them or sodded up the
formatting etc but since using KO no further problems reported..

LO does a better job, ime, than trying to shift complex documents between
versions of MS Word itself.

Formatting issues are usually due to font substitution because of
differing available fonts.

or because the margins on the receiving machine are set differently to
those on the sending one.

That is supposed to be encoded in the document.


--
Everything you read in newspapers is absolutely true, except for the
rare story of which you happen to have first-hand knowledge. €“ Erwin Knoll

On 21/09/2014 17:06, Tim Streater wrote:
In article , charles
wrote:

In article ,
Adrian wrote:
On Sun, 21 Sep 2014 14:17:14 +0100, tony sayer wrote:

Well her indoors has a lot of Word doc's and suchlike sent to her and
was always complaining re OO or LO would not open them or sodded
up the
formatting etc but since using KO no further problems reported..

LO does a better job, ime, than trying to shift complex documents
between versions of MS Word itself.

Formatting issues are usually due to font substitution because of
differing available fonts.

or because the margins on the receiving machine are set differently to
those on the sending one.

The margins are part of the document settings, Shirley? Or is it the
case that if you don't explicitly set the margins to something, you get
the site defaults?

You might be amazed at the impact of changing the default printer has on
the appearance of a Word document. Even if you never have nor ever will
use that printer to actually print the document.

It tends not to be as bad these days as most printers can have a stab at
printing most fonts and minimum margins are much narrower than they used
to be. But try installing a printer which resolutely has wide margins
and has limited font capability, set it to be your default printer, and
open a Word document.

I have at times done things like install CutePDF as the default printer
in order to avoid the impact of someone who genuinely has no acceptable
printer installed/configured. E.g. a workstation used for printing
labels or one which never needs to print anything but does need to view
Word documents.

--
Rod

On 21/09/2014 13:22, John Rumm wrote:

Any of the compatible suites will open docs from older versions of MS
office (sometimes better than later versions of office). The time you
run into compatibility problems is when round tripping back and forth
between different versions.

The big problem is when you get people using the various versioning,
tracking, master document and such like facilities under different
Office programs. Or macros.

--
Rod

In article , Adrian
scribeth thus
On Sun, 21 Sep 2014 15:00:38 +0100, tony sayer wrote:

But you cant allow for people who have made a pigs ear of their word
docs in the first place.

Well these were one's from academic establishments and I rather doubt
they'd sod them up

wipes tear of laughter
That makes it more likely, not less.

Well these were from more than the one establishment, and some of them
were from people in IT and software..
--
Tony Sayer

On 21/09/14 18:01, tony sayer wrote:
In article , Adrian
scribeth thus
On Sun, 21 Sep 2014 15:00:38 +0100, tony sayer wrote:

But you cant allow for people who have made a pigs ear of their word
docs in the first place.

Well these were one's from academic establishments and I rather doubt
they'd sod them up

wipes tear of laughter
That makes it more likely, not less.

Well these were from more than the one establishment, and some of them
were from people in IT and software..

Its endemic. There is only one class of people who truly understand
typesetting, and that is the print industry. Not even the people who
should - the typesetters themselves - understand the software they use,
and I should know because that was my wife's job - professional Quark
jockey, and the stories she has to tell about receiving work from
colleagues ('just needs a few corrections') that kept her up all night
reformatting and putting in proper style sheets to get a uniform result..

...then tehre was the printer himself who bull****ted us that 'getting a
matte print was only a matter of the paper' before we discovered that in
fact it isn't. It's a matter of using offset litho and not a laser
printer which will always gloss up a paper that is suitable for it..#

(Laser printers fuse powder on TOP of the paper. Offset litho puts real
ink INTO the paper.)

The level of incompetence and basic inability to actually do stuff right
is alarmingly high these days.

I don't think anyone I know actually understand what any given thing in
a word processor actually does any more.


--
Everything you read in newspapers is absolutely true, except for the
rare story of which you happen to have first-hand knowledge. €“ Erwin Knoll

On 21/09/2014 17:51, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

That is supposed to be encoded in the document.

The margins are encoded in the document. But Word takes the "margins
this document wants" and tries to shoehorn that requirement into the
default printer's capabilities, or rather the capabilities that the
printer driver lets Word know about. You end up with a very uneasy
mashup of the two.

Many is the time we have ended up only being able to get the upper-hand
on Word printing by printing to PDF then printing the PDF, as an image
if necessary. Which process itself sometimes needed the PDF to be copied
from the machine it was created on to the one that has a suitable
printer attached.

--
Rod

On 21/09/2014 19:07, polygonum wrote:
On 21/09/2014 17:51, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

That is supposed to be encoded in the document.

The margins are encoded in the document. But Word takes the "margins
this document wants" and tries to shoehorn that requirement into the
default printer's capabilities, or rather the capabilities that the
printer driver lets Word know about. You end up with a very uneasy
mashup of the two.

Many is the time we have ended up only being able to get the upper-hand
on Word printing by printing to PDF then printing the PDF, as an image
if necessary. Which process itself sometimes needed the PDF to be copied
from the machine it was created on to the one that has a suitable
printer attached.

Meant to say, it can be amusing that the self-same physical printer can
have different capabilities depending on printer language - i.e. the
PostScript driver manages to do things the PCL can't or vice versa.

--
Rod

In message , Adrian
writes


Or you could just use LibreOffice like everybody sane.

I have been using ordinary Open Office for years. Would changing to
LibreOffice be worthwhile?
--
Graeme

"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
...
On 21/09/14 08:43, Tim Lamb wrote:
In message , Arfa Daily
writes


"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
...
On 20/09/14 08:34, Tim Lamb wrote:
What software do you want to transfer.

Umm.. Turnpike although there is a fair bit of *knowledge* on how to
do
this from previous moves.

I guess the obvious is a working browser so I can fetch the rest.

why not be adventurous, and install linux mint, and then see if
turnpike will run under WINE?

I thought he said he wasn't a geek .... ;-)

I did and I'm not!

Somebody once tried to teach me Elliot Algol back when things were done
with punched tape. I managed a few things on the kids Spectrum and BBC B
which included cheating on Colossal Adventure by looking through the
software. Very little progress since then.

I don't go fiddling with the oil pump on my motor car and don't expect
to have to do it on a computer.

Precisely.

Which is why you should abandon windows..

I wouldn't dispute that Linux has its uses, but to be fair, it does have a
bit of a reputation as being an 'enthusiasts' operating system, which is how
it came into being in the first place, really. To some extent, I think that
for what it is, Windows gets a bit of a 'bad press' in discussions like
this. For most people doing just fairly ordinary things on their computer,
Windows, left to its own devices (no pun intended !) is just fine. It pretty
much does what it says on the tin, and in a way that Joe Average User can
get along with. Yes, for sure, it can be a pain when things go wrong, and
sometimes, it doesn't do "computer-y" things very well, but then that's
where things like Linux come into their own.

For me, the odd Windows problem, and coping with its foibles in some areas,
is far outweighed by it's ability to load and run pretty much anything
written in the world of 'commercial' software, and for most average computer
users, I would suspect that this is the case. Were it not for Windows, in
all its iterations throughout the years, I don't think that 'home' computing
would have come anything like as far as it has.

Arfa





Arfa





--
Everything you read in newspapers is absolutely true, except for the rare
story of which you happen to have first-hand knowledge. €“ Erwin Knoll

On Sun, 21 Sep 2014 19:53:36 +0100, News wrote:

Or you could just use LibreOffice like everybody sane.

I have been using ordinary Open Office for years. Would changing to
LibreOffice be worthwhile?

I've not used OOo for a few years, since The Great Schism, so can't say
how they've diverged. But, politically, I find LO preferable - and I
don't find any issues with the software, so've had no cause to
investigate.