Editing blues (and reds)

Posted on February 11, 2009 by Cath@VWXYNot?


(Clearer version on Flickr)

About Cath@VWXYNot?

"one of the sillier science bloggers [...] I thought I should give a warning to the more staid members of the community." - Bob O'Hara, December 2010
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32 Responses to Editing blues (and reds)

  1. Bob O'Hara says:
    February 11, 2009 at 6:52 pm

    You should switch to OpenOffice and join the Rebellion. It is your destiny.
    Is the first thing the way Word shows changes now? OO has been doing that for years. I’m not a great fan of it either.

  2. Cath Ennis says:
    February 11, 2009 at 6:57 pm

    Google documents all the way. I have foreseen it.
    “Is the first thing the way Word shows changes now?”
    Yup, since the new version came out. It used to mark all edits in the same way as the formatting changes in the bottom example. That would get messy pretty quickly if you needed substantial edits, but it was much easier to see what the final version would look like.

  3. Caryn Shechtman says:
    February 11, 2009 at 7:21 pm

    Call me close-minded, but I really don’t like the new office all together:(

  4. Cath Ennis says:
    February 11, 2009 at 7:27 pm

    I struggled at first, but I’m getting used to it now.
    I am 90% sure that I’ll be buying my first ever Mac sometime in the next month or two. Now that learning curve will provide some good blog fodder. (blodder?)

  5. Katherine Haxton says:
    February 11, 2009 at 7:37 pm

    I would buy a mac but I’m happy with my new EeePC. It’s got open office and I have a few issues with open office – microsoft office inter compatibility. I’m a heavy user of google documents for non-confidential stuff because the EeePC has a 16Gb harddrive.
    I prefer new office to old office, and old office has stopped working properly on my work laptop so I’m going to upgrade.

  6. Cath Ennis says:
    February 11, 2009 at 7:40 pm

    I just want to look cool in cafes.

  7. Richard P. Grant says:
    February 11, 2009 at 7:46 pm

    If you’re getting a Mac, I’ll plug iWork here. Is very pretty, and seems to understand MS documents better than MS progs themselves do.

  8. Cath Ennis says:
    February 11, 2009 at 7:51 pm

    I refer the right honourable gentleman to my answer to the previous comment.
    No, seriously, I have no idea what I’m doing with Macs, but enough people who I trust have talked about their superiority for long enough that I would like to try one for myself. The sheer beauty and utility of my iPhone pushed me over the edge… I will be looking for any and all advice from seasoned Mac users!

  9. Richard P. Grant says:
    February 11, 2009 at 8:08 pm

    Mmm, but if you’re going shopping you need a list.

  10. Eva Amsen says:
    February 11, 2009 at 8:13 pm

    I got a Mac when Vista came out and I needed a new laptop. Also, to look cool in cafes, of course. Or on the floor:

    I am very cool, with my MacBook with Hungry Caterpillar stickers on it and my name tag on, sitting on the floor like that. Without the Mac I’d just be lame-o sitting on the floor with my legs turned inward in a dorky way like this.

  11. Cath Ennis says:
    February 11, 2009 at 8:30 pm

    Eva, we need a better photo of the sticker. Also, where did you get it?
    Richard, full list of required features for my new laptop:
    Internet access
    Word processing
    Powerpoint or similar image handling system
    Spreadsheet function
    Webcam would be nice
    Nice bag
    Caterpillar sticker
    I really think that Google docs and/or Open Office will do the trick. I have a desktop PC, which I’ll use for anything complicated (at least as first), and I can always buy any additional software at a later date. Otherwise, my Really Smart Plan is to buy as much memory as I can afford.

  12. Cath Ennis says:
    February 11, 2009 at 8:35 pm

    Gah! No track changes in the comments…
    What I meant to say was “I really think that Google docs and/or Open Office will do the trick – but I may be wrong“.
    What does iWork do? How much does it cost? And what would it give me that GD/OO wouldn’t?

  13. Henry Gee says:
    February 11, 2009 at 8:47 pm

    I’m just about to get a secondhand iMac. A hundred notes – the CD drive don’t work, you see, but you can get an external one, and anyway it’ll slurp stuff up the USB from my stand-alone hard disk. Once it’s here and we’ve shaken hands I’ll be asking for some free tech support friendly advice, I am sure.

  14. Richard P. Grant says:
    February 11, 2009 at 8:49 pm

    It’s Apple’s Office application. It’s US$79, and it is very, very nice. There’s a free 30 day trial. You’ll adore Keynote, and Pages is just lovely. Numbers is a little behind Excel in the ’08 version, but I might upgrade (again) when I get back to the UK. I’m that impressed.

  15. Cath Ennis says:
    February 11, 2009 at 8:54 pm

    ooooh, shiny. And not that expensive. You might just have convinced me.

  16. Eva Amsen says:
    February 11, 2009 at 9:18 pm

    Cath, it’s actually a set of stickers, with all the images from the Hungry Caterpillar, and I bought them in Holland. I had them for a while, not thinking I had a good place to put them, when I suddenly saw the Apple-connection and recreated the entire storyline on my laptop with the Apple logo in place of the apple sticker.

  17. Richard P. Grant says:
    February 11, 2009 at 10:22 pm

    The Macs come with built-in webcam. Internet access is a given. Can’t help with the caterpillar sticker. You also get iPhoto (great for image storage/filing), iMovie, etc.
    And yeah, as much memory as you can afford. At least these days the base models have a decent amount of memory: just three years ago you’d never get a Mac with the base amount of RAM.

  18. Cath Ennis says:
    February 11, 2009 at 10:24 pm

    What browser do you run? Just Safari, or do you prefer Firefox / Chrome / other on the Mac platform?

  19. Stephen Curry says:
    February 11, 2009 at 11:27 pm

    Safari works well (there is a PC version if you want to try it out), as does Firefox. I would second Richard’s comments on iWork. I read that the new version of Pages should now work with Endnote. And Keynote now works with the MathType equation editor. So I am also tempted to upgrade.

  20. Richard P. Grant says:
    February 11, 2009 at 11:31 pm

    I’m running Webkit, which is the latest Safari. ‘Latest’, as in I subscribe to the nightly builds (although I only upgrade a couple of times a week).

  21. Cath Ennis says:
    February 12, 2009 at 12:56 am

    I have Safari on my iPhone, which also somehow installed it on my home PC (I ignore it and use Firefox). I assume that the real Safari is compatible with Flash and Java? (the iPhone version is not – booooooo).

  22. Richard P. Grant says:
    February 12, 2009 at 12:59 am

    Yah.

  23. Kristi Vogel says:
    February 12, 2009 at 4:19 am

    I just want to look cool in cafes
    Wait … what? I’ve had a MacBook Pro for 3+ years, and have never once looked cool in a cafe. Perhaps that’s because I never go to cafes. Or that I’m congenitally incapable of coolness.
    I’ve switched between Macs and PCs at work several times over the years, depending on the dominant paradigm of the lab or department, but I wanted a Mac for my own multipurpose computer. When I have to play along with the oppressive PC culture at work for manuscript writing/editing, grant proposals, or Powerpoint lectures (eewww), I use Parallels.
    Our dental students have an electronic curriculum, and each has a laptop loaded with lecture notes, lab manuals, e-textbooks, etc. Up until this year, most of the freshman students had Dell PCs, and few chose the MacBook Pro. Now the distribution is about 50:50; a few of my colleagues (none of whom use Macs) have jokingly blamed me for this change.

  24. Mike Fowler says:
    February 12, 2009 at 7:37 am

    Firefox works very well with the mac, although I still use Safari predominantly. I also still create presentations on Powerpoint and convert them to a pdf for presentation on other computers, to avoid any image conflicts between OS’s or versions. This is dead simple and, dare I say it, foolproof.
    I’ve stuck with MS Word for Endnote reasons, but if the new iWork version handles this, I may be tempted to switch. I think my tame PhD student has a copy I can filch testdrive.
    And the best way to look cool in cafes is to read French philosophy. Any humanities student knows that.

  25. Cath Ennis says:
    February 12, 2009 at 3:46 pm

    Kristi, you mean it’s not automatic? Damnit, I may have to rethink the whole thing now.
    Mike, please don’t say foolproof in the context of me and computers… especially a new kind of computer…
    Henry, I hope you’ll be blogging about your learning curve!

  26. Richard Wintle says:
    February 12, 2009 at 4:17 pm

    Office. GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR.
    Cath – many Sony Vaios come with built-in webcams. I love mine, but if you go Vaio you have to be prepared to enter Sony world, where everything uses some weird format that Sony thinks is better than the formats everyone else uses (Memory Stick jumps to mind).
    But they are lovely things… not as pretty as Macs though.

  27. Cath Ennis says:
    February 12, 2009 at 4:19 pm

    My first ever laptop was a Vaio. Unless they’ve come on a lot since 2004, I won’t be buying another one.

  28. Kristi Vogel says:
    February 12, 2009 at 4:25 pm

    I had a few problems with Safari (nothing like AII*IE*EEEE!aBalrogiscome, though) so I switched to Firefox. Very happy with that.
    I almost always convert Powerpoints to pdfs, so that I can run them in Preview on the Mac. Occasionally, I’ve seen weird lines running through the slides in the pdf version, but I suspect that might have something to do with the Adobe Acrobat “printer”.
    Cath, YMMV. Let’s hope so. I’ve no intention of hanging out in cafes, with or without my MacBook Pro (which is named Berguv, btw).

  29. Cath Ennis says:
    February 12, 2009 at 4:30 pm

    Mine will have to have a Scottish name.
    My boss uses a Mac, and I often have to fix compatibility errors in his slides, but never in his other documents.

  30. Eva Amsen says:
    February 12, 2009 at 5:12 pm

    “Mine will have to have a Scottish name.”
    It already does – it’s called MacBook!

  31. Cath Ennis says:
    February 12, 2009 at 5:53 pm

    A colleague in Glasgow used to get the MacUser magazine delivered to the lab, and we always said it sounded like a support group for local drug addicts.

  32. Ian Brooks says:
    February 20, 2009 at 4:58 pm

    @Eva: Boom boom. Speaking of which, in the photo opp top, it looks like someone took a 9 Iron to your legs and you’re going on line looking for medical help…
    I could have a had a Mac, I found out after getting my PC 🙁

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