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 (
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 (