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  • Posting of Replies to 'Software for PC's' Question

    To All,
    Thanks to everyone who replied. The following is a list of the information I
    received. You can form your own opinions.
    Suzanne

    ORIGINAL QUESTION:
    To All,
    We are considering switching from Mac's to PC's for our office computers.
    Presently, we primarily use Microsoft Word, Excel, DeltaGraph, and Statview (on
    Macs). I have been told that all of this software is available for PC's but
    would like to know that it has been used successfully without too many
    problems. I am fairly certain that Microsoft Word and Excel work fine because
    we have other people within our company using this software. I would like to
    know if the PC versions of DeltaGraph and Statview software are bug free and if
    users have had good sucess with these packages. If anyone would like to share
    their experiences with me, you can email me. I will post responses. Thanks.

    REPLIES:
    DeltaGraph Pro works fine on Windows. OK, I have had some problems,
    but I think it is figured out now. I am using W95.

    Why switch from mac to pc? Cheap PC's are slightly less expensive than macs
    but poorly made and generally do not come equipped with the stuff that is
    standard on a mac. The macintosh powerPC running MacOS is much, much
    faster than a pentium at the same Mh (running windows95, at least), so you
    cannot compare the price of a 200 Mh pentium processor to a mac with a
    200Mh processor. If you've gotten used to plug and play on the mac - don't
    expect the same ease of use on the pc - despite the early fanfare,
    plug-n-play is still not that great on Wintel machines. Finally, every
    study I've seen have clearly shown that macs are much cheaper to operate
    through the years (in terms of cost of maintainence, number of techical
    support staff, etc.).

    A couple of good pages to find the detailed comparisons are
    http://www.dol.net/~Ragosta/complmac.htm
    and
    http://www.evangelist.macaddict.com/

    Oh yes! Excel and Word run faster on PC's than they do on macs (generally
    microsoft software is much slower on macs than on pc's while nearly all
    non-microsoft software is faster on the mac) so they may be better run on
    that platform. I don't know about DeltaGraph for Windoze. I find the mac
    version pretty buggy but it is the best of what is available. I didn't
    think Statsoft made Statview for Windoze but I don't know for certain. Have
    you used JMP from SAS, inc? JMP is _excellent_ exploratory statistical
    analysis software. There is not publication quality graphics from JMP (use
    Deltagraph for this) because the graphs are highly interactive rather than
    cold and inert like most other software's graphs.

    Look at JMP from SAS's page at,
    http://www.sas.com/otherprods/jmp/Home.html

    We use both PC and Mac and therefore we try to use software that will allow
    files to be transferred across platforms. Word, Excel, and DeltaGraph are
    the same on both platforms and I've had no problems. DeltaGraph can be
    sticky if all users don't have the same version. DG 4.0 doesn't allow you
    to save as a previous version, this was a real problem because the Mac
    version came out around 6-10 months before the PC version. Now the PC
    version it out, so its less of a problem. We also use StatView on the Mac,
    but have yet to try the PC version. I once heard the PC version had
    problems, but I think thats been corrected. I would be interested in
    finding out more on the PC version.

    I was using the PowerMac version of Deltagraph and since moved to the
    Windows Version. I am running Windows NT Version 4.0 and Deltagraph 3.5
    has the same capability as the Mac version. The stability of the program
    is the same as for the Mac version also.

    I use to be a MAC user and I switched to PC when windows became good enough,
    which it is now. I use mostly MS OFFICE 95 (WORD, EXCEL, POWER POINT,
    ACCES, and SCHEDULE+) on WIN 95 and it works great. I don't know for
    DeltaGraph but I know that Statview works great since I've used it. For
    graphics and stats applications on the PC with WIN 95 I prefer to use the
    SYSPLOT and SYSSTAT software, they work great and let you do everything you
    want. Finally, if you were told that the DeltaGraph application works on WIN
    95 I
    would believe it because now, all serious software companies develop for
    both platforms.

    You should consider why do you want to migrate first of all. One of
    the biggest mistakes people do is changing things that work without
    any obvious reason other than market momentum.

    If your Macs cover your needs, moving to PCs will only give you lots
    of extra time of administration, reinstallation and stupid things
    like that. I have been doing that for three years and something you
    can take for sure is that you are going to reinstall every single
    machine every six months to keep them running properly.

    That reinstallation scheme counts that you have a good experience
    doing it, you have perviously simplified installation and your users
    do not install software on their own. If they do that (if they have
    used Macs before, they will) your reinstallation period will shorten
    dramaticaly.

    So my advice is that if you don't have any real strong reason to
    migrate, don't do it. Macs are by far cheaper to maintain.

    We use those packages on both macs (macos 7.5.5) and pcs (win95) and they
    are nearly identical.
    They are equally stable; crashes are more dependent on the individual machine
    setup, i.e. if you
    are trying to run with low amounts of ram (
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