Apple V. Microsoft?

[kib]

my "enough point", (not in a good way, but OK, ENOUGH!) was purchasing a lovely samsung note II with a stylus inside through verizon and paying through the nose for it and its service plan, and then discovering a couple of years later that my loving care of the device was pointless, the OS was outdated and app after app stopped being supported. I threw in the towel and got a cheap samsung with tracfone. i think $60 for the phone and about $10 a month for minutes, I just refill when I get low.

the experience is definitely not as nice, and 30 months in I'm starting to feel like the phone's not working as well as it once did, but I think I'd still rather go this route even though I do use the phone for a lot of things. maybe i'm being too cheap ...

[kib]

I use pretty much everything: Windows 10 machines, MacOS, Linux, iOS phones/pads, Android tablets, a Chromebook.

As a result, I've settled on doing most everything "in the cloud" using browser-based tools, so all my files are usable on all platforms and portable.

YOU, Lucy, are the reason I go on believing the fantasy that all this newfangled magically compatible technology exists for us Charlie Browns. Ok, snit over. Could you give me an example of a 'browser-based tool' that works across all platforms? For real, everything I experiment with winds up a dead end.

-- for example, how do you edit a spreadsheeet while using a Chromebook?

[bae]

YOU, Lucy, are the reason I go on believing the fantasy that all this newfangled magically compatible technology exists for us Charlie Browns. Ok, snit over. Could you give me an example of a 'browser-based tool' that works across all platforms? For real, everything I experiment with winds up a dead end.

-- for example, how do you edit a spreadsheeet while using a Chromebook?

I use the Google doc tools for most of my spreadsheet and wordprocessing needs.

They run inside the browser, and there are native apps for some of the platforms that can edit them directly as well.

I just go to the google docs web site, open up the thing I want to work on, and all is good.

They seem to be able to mostly import/export other popular document formats.

The advantage of being able to access My Stuff on any random computer I grab is priceless.

[kib]

The advantage of being able to access My Stuff on any random computer I grab is priceless.

No kidding!!! I will give it a whirl. Bet it doesn't like word perfect one bit, but maybe it's time for a change. You trust the security of the cloud, then?

[SteveinMN]

I've used just about everything that's run on a "personal" computer over the last 30 years. I started out supporting MS-DOS (I remember back when manufacturers had to make a point of being "MS-DOS compatible" or "IBM-compatible" because they did not mean the same thing). I've used pretty much every version of Windows, including "Runtime Windows", "Windows CE", and "Windows Phone" (R.I.P.).

When it was time to buy my own computer, I bought a Mac. The interface was intuitive and I could see the (cursive) writing on the wall -- eventually every computer was going to work like that. Macs didn't need the care and feeding and tweaking that DOS machines did. They (as the ad promised) just worked. I consoled myself for paying the "Apple Tax" (the premium price over roughly-comparable DOS/Windows hardware) by using the bejeebers out of my Macs. I got almost nine years out of the Mac laptop before this one and the only reason I retired it is because it literally was coming apart. I'm four years into this one so I'm about halfway through. We just bought a Lenovo ThinkPad for DW's nascent consulting business ("I want Windows; it's what I know from work" [besides DW's iPad, which is not suitable for this endeavor]); I'm doubtful it will manage eight or nine years before it's ready for computer heaven, primarily because it likely won't run that many versions of Windows before some piece of hardware in it bleats loudly about (not) being updated.

I didn't buy an iPhone until, what, 2012? Both DW and I have iPhones because their interface with macOS is just so seamless plus I don't like Google being all up in my business. We have an Apple TV (an old one) for streaming and even an Apple router (high-quality hardware and a smooth interface; now that Apple has discontinued routers, though, eventually it will be replaced by non-Apple gear).

I don't think that Apple gets everything right but, for us, it's been largely set-it-and-forget it. I don't need another hobby. I did the get-it-all-working thing for pay for years and having an Apple environment at home just made life easier. I do break with Apple on a lot of the apps they include; for example, I do not use Apple Mail or Photos, and Safari is the browser I hit only when Firefox doesn't work. That all holds true for the iPhone, too. I believe in giving them a little competition!

It does not have to cost that much. Every piece of Apple hardware I've bought for the last 10-15 years has been refurbished. Saved between 15 and 30% on the price and I've had zero issues with any of it. DW and I use shamefully low amounts of cellular data most months so we've done fine on a Consumer Cellular plan that gets us out for $45 a month -- and we could prune that a little further by moving to another carrier. And then there's the lifespan of it all. For us, at least, the total cost of operation has been pretty low. So we stay inside the "walled garden". When we want to leave, we'll leave. But not until then.

[kib]

The advantage of being able to access My Stuff on any random computer I grab is priceless.

Soo ... I copied and pasted a word perfect document into google docs, my drive. I can view it but no editing. Is this because it's .wpd or am I missing a step? (Or can I only edit files I created in google docs in the first place?)

[bae]

Soo ... I copied and pasted a word perfect document into google docs, my drive. I can view it but no editing. Is this because it's .wpd or am I missing a step? (Or can I only edit files I created in google docs in the first place?)

Hmmm -

I've had luck going to the Google Drive page, and Clicking on "New", which offers you a "file upload" choice, then going and opening the document with Doc or Sheets or whatnot.

You could also perhaps save your .WPD file in some other format, rich-text maybe, and upload that if there are issues.

[kib]

I'll try that. Thank you!

[catherine]

Started out on Mac in 1989/1990 when I was hired by a school system to create newsletters with Pagemaker on an SE (Whoa--256KB!!). Then I had to migrate to Windows when I went corporate, but in 2008, when I went off on my own, I went Mac and stayed Mac. Have iPhone, iPad mini, MacBookAir.

Have no interest in changing at this point, but I'd be open if there was a compelling reason to.

[happystuff]

Not an Apple person. My little netbook has the now unsupported Windows 7 on it, so I'm thinking of playing around the loading Linux on it. It will be my first foray into trying something like this, so any and all suggesting/hints/tips are welcome!