[NCLUG] Desire suggestions for college laptop

[Dennis Clark]

BJ,

   A Mac alternative for Visio is ConceptDraw.  Pretty cool, quite
flexible and much cheaper.  I've used it a lot when doing graphics
for my books.  To get 15" you'd have to go with the Powerbook, the
iBooks stop at 14.2", the PowerBooks are 15" and 17".  Oh yeah,
CIS groups dearly love their VB junk.  There is a Basic compiler
that has plugins for Windoze and Mac (and I think Linux), but I forget
its name...

Good Luck,
DLC

BJ Tiemessen wrote:
> Now don't get me wrong I would own an iBook if I had the money. My buddy 
> just traded in his Dell Insperon for an iBook and I love it. Tiger is 
> awesome and his battery lasts 3-4 times longer than mine. If I stick to 
> classes in the Computer Science department I usually don't run into any 
> problems because we do almost everything under Linux. When I go to other 
> departments to take classes is when I run into conflicts. The one 
> program that I use the most that is only Windoze (as far as I know) is 
> Visio. I have tried many different programs for UML, flow charts, making 
> GUI templates, etc. but have not found anything I like as much as Visio. 
> I took 3 classes in CIS that used Visual Basic, .Net and Access, and 
> there a few programs I have used for research that where written just 
> for Windoze, but I have also used programs for research that will only 
> run on Linux. Every once in a while I like to play some online games 
> that are only available for Windoze (although I plan to try out Winex). 
> I am sure one of you would point out that if a specific program is 
> required for a class that there will be a computer lab available to use 
> with that program, but many times I prefer to go home and work instead 
> of spending all night in a computer lab. So yes for most tasks it does 
> not matter what OS is used.
> Now that I am writing this I do remeber the last requirement I had when 
> I was looking for my laptop. I wanted a screen no smaller than 15", I 
> hate staring at a little monitor.
> 
> BJ
> 
> Paul Wehr wrote:
> 
>>> At 2:46 PM -0600 23/06/2005, BJ Tiemessen wrote:
>>>
>>>> <snip>
>>>
>>>
>>> Unfortunately many of the programs used in a college environment only 
>>> run on Windoze so this ruled out the Apple iBook.
>>>
>>>> <snip>
>>>> BJ
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> BJ,
>>>
>>> Would you please elaborate on this point and provide a sense as to 
>>> the names of some of the *many* programs.
>>>
>>> Best regards,
>>> Joseph
>>
>>
>>
>> Indeed, please elaborate. Certainly there are multiple programs that 
>> run on Linux that suffice for most general-studies programs at the 
>> university level. For that matter many (no cost programs) that run on 
>> Mac OS X that can masquerade as Windoze programs, not counting M$ 
>> (cost programs) that--well--behave as Windoze programs.
>>
>> I know of only too many programs, specifically programmed to work in 
>> the M$ environment, that simply _don't_ work. I don't have any faith 
>> in programmers using the M$ environment or the M$ (make a quick buck) 
>> environment itself. I'm thinking here of the databases put together by 
>> huge database companies. "You'll be up and running in a year," 
>> pronounced five years ago and they are still working on it.
>>
>> Paul
>> _______________________________________________
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> 
> 
> 


-- 
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* Dennis Clark  dlc at frii.com http://www.techtoystoday.com             *
* "Programming and Customizing the OOPic Microcontroller" Mcgraw-Hill *
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