Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Living the dream...


...and it's a not a good one.

Yesterday I shared with you my horrific nightmare, in which I accidentally purchased a Dell computer instead of a Mac PowerBook.

Computer Karma got the best of me today, however, as I spent two futile hours attempting to perform what was supposed to be the straightforward task of converting my dissertation from a Microsoft Word document to a PDF file (without losing any of the formatting, bookmarks, or links). My department's Mac Information Technology professional and I attempted to use three different Mac computers and countless combinations of older and newer Microsoft Word and Adobe Acrobat versions to effect the .doc-to-.pdf transition.

After over two hours of fruitless labor (and a discouraging email from the Electronic Theses and Dissertations help desk), we threw our arms up in surrender. I conceded defeat, swallowed my pride, and took my dissertation to the computer lab-- where I used a brand new (and yet still strikingly sluggish and decidedly non-multitasking) Dell Computer to successfully complete the task.

Dude, I am still a Mac snob.

6 comments:

Unknown said...

Oh that's rough...

yajeev said...

russ...
it's a tough decision. i'm thinking about going on a mac crusade.

mark...
you got that right. i consider myself lucky that i lived to blog it.

Duly Inspired said...

Thank you for your kind comments on my website. I appreciate them. And, um, sadly I am writing you from a PC.

Anonymous said...

You've been Mac'ed!!

Mike said...

Google docs will happily import your Word file and then output it as a PDF. In fact, that's how it outputs all files for printing.

It is possible, however, that if your Word doc uses complex Word features, that it won't import correctly.

yajeev said...

duly inspired...
how sad. i once had a friend who was a "mac" person but owned a pc and couldn't justify purchasing a new mac until her pc died. in the meantime, she affixed an apple logo sticker to the back of her screen to cover the pc logo. it was really sad.

justin...
is that a good or a bad thing? and, how do you procounce it? hard or soft c?

mike...
it's those darn complex word features that the university requires that i implement and maintain in the word-to-pdf transition. otherwise, converting a doc to a pdf is really easy with a mac.