Need 50 slick-looking sheets of letterhead [OT]

[Willy Eckerslyke]

This is what stopped me persevering with Illustrator after being presuaded to try it by our printers.

[Willy Eckerslyke]

To be honest, nowadays I tend to export most of my finished work for printing as high res TIFFs. It goes against all I've been taught, but can make life an awful lot simpler. So RGB export from Corel, check and convert to CMYK in Photoshop and there's nothing left for the printers to bugger up. (Yeah right)

[Willy Eckerslyke]

I've only had problems with Epson heads clogging while using 3rd party inks - which I now avoid like the plague. Unfortunately, bulk ink conversions for the 2400 are not available for Epson inks, so I'm stuck with their own tiny cartridges. But the print quality is better than anything else I've seen, so it's worth it.

[bof]

Amongst the 'user invisible' M$ systems I've seen booting are cash points, in flight entertainment systems, airport flight announcement systems, and supermarket tills, as well a loads of specialist test equipment. And all NT4, IIRC.

[John Cartmell]

Technically. But this is the law that we're discussing. ;-(

It's grossly oversimplifying the case ;-) - but more correct than saying that ARM designs are owned by Intel. As soon as you try to explain the details it gets very complicated. Like Steve's confident assertion that Acorn and RISC OS is dead which, looking at the comparative numbers of Windows and RISC OS users, seems to be close to the truth - until you factor in the facts of new RISC OS hardware, new versions of RISC OS designed to run on new processors, the use of the designs in industry, the legacy of RISC software ported elsewhere (ArtWorks/Xara, Sibelius, most good educational software, &c), ARM processors, and more.

I'd add the consideration that, unlike Windows, RISC OS was designed to run on processors that use minimal power and we cannot afford to continue to use power-hungry processors...

As you indicate, there is danger in being too simplistic. ;-)

[me]

In message , Amanda Angelika writes

Hint: Openoffice

[Mary Pegg]

I've never seen a broke cash machine / till / train arrival screen that *isn't* NT4.

[August West]

Wich measn that all the ones running other OSes don't break...

And didn't IBM cash points used to be OS/2. And I have seen a VxWorks screen on a broken Chip & PIN credit card box. But, since it was on my desk at the time, I don't think counts.

[Tony Bryer]

Most of them were (still are?) OS/2

[Amanda Angelika]

Well maybe the processors still have specialised uses in industrial and military hardware, in science and space exploration, because they have a particular architecture which is more favourable to certain tasks. This would of course apply to both the processors and the software.

The reason I say this because I was listening to a NASA Podcast the other day and they were talking about the Solar Wind and the problems this causes with electronics in Outer Space. Basically up till now the sort of computers NASA have been able to send into space have been about one fifth the power of State of the Art consumer technology on earth. This is because space computers have to have a certain architecture and fail safe systems and have to be able to cope with the stray electrons in the solar wind. Also I've got an Idea RISC processors are in Use on the Mars Rovers Spirit and Opportunity.

So whilst RISC may be dead in the consumer electronics market here on planet Earth. I dare say there things still have specialised applications.

"It's life Jim, but not as we know it"

[August West]

I have a friend who's just submitted a PhD on this subject, and is off to NASA in the summer to continue work on the problem.

should you care to read it.)

RISC is very far from "dead in the consumer electronics market"- it's the only game in town! My phone and PDA contain ARM cores, my digital TV, router, modem, and camera all contain a MIPS cores... and that's just the ones I know for sure.

Perhaps you meant to say "dead on the desktop"?

[me]

We are talking about printing letters, I haw a 15 year old laser and for a plain letter with a logo you have to look quite closely to tell the difference between it and something rather newer and more expensive.

[me]

In message , Amanda Angelika writes

However that's a marketing resolution as opposed to a real one.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

It's not dead. You can buy several different home machines new. A minority interest would be more accurate.

[me]

In message , Steve Firth writes

I also have a Phaser and its fine. There are single pass lasers now. My other machine is a second hand 1/4 ton colour laser copier, which produces very good output on el cheapo paper.

[John Cartmell]

But not my desktop - which has* a 10 year old RiscPC (RISC OS 4.02), 3 year old Iyonix (RISC OS 5.09) and an about-to-be-released A9home (RISC OS 4.42). ;-)

*discounting various 'spare' A7000s, A5000s, &c that are awaiting caring homes elsewhere and the RiscStation (RISC OS 4.03) on another desktop in the house.

[Amanda Angelika]

Yes Illustrator is a bit limited in that way and doesn't have anywhere near the scope of CorelDraw in lots of areas.

That said Illustrator does what it does very well. I find with a pressure tablet it is fantastic for producing freehand vector illustrations, cartoons etc. It interprets lines and pressure perfectly with just the right amount smoothing which seems to vary according to the speed of stroke, it's very responsive and pretty much faultless and can deal with thousands of lines and details over multiple layers, amazing really.

Freehand Drawing in CorelDraw OTOH is a bit clunky. The other thing about using a pressure tablet in CorelDraw is it seems to have a bug whereby enormous line loops are caused at the corners of some artistic strokes and in some cases this fault simply crashes the program probable because the bug causes infinite vector line loops which get scorched when they reach the Sun LOL

[August West]

Which machines? Where from?

[August West]

Sure, but, as of Apple buggering off from PPC to Intel, the volume market for RISC machines on the desktop has vanished. Specialist machines - like RISC OS boxes, or Sun workstaions - don't really matter, as you can't buy them in PC World, or John Lewis. As far as the consumer market cares, they don't exist. Even Linux has a higher profile that RISC boxes with the Great Unwashed.

[Guy King]

The message from bof contains these words:

They're not user-invisible when they crash! I've seen all sorts of things with the BSOD, including most of the ones you suggest.