My dell laptop finally crashed and burned. For the past 6-7 months I've been looking for a replacement anyway. Laptops have gotten so small and light and the Dell was *very* heavy. Hurt my shoulder taking it to shows and judgings. So after consideration I decided to buy a Macbook. Macs can operate in either Windows or OS X. You need a second separate program to switch between the two. A friend showed me how Parallels Desktop looks and runs on a Macbook. Very cool! I decided to stop dithering and buy the Mac.
What makes this an 'on topic' post is that I had a wonderful experience getting the two orchid awards programs installed.
I purchased Parallels online ($80), downloaded it to a CD and printed out the 'Quick Start' guide. After reading the instructions I loaded Parallels. Worked like a dream. Just like the instructions said it would. No glitches. In fact getting the Mac started was a dream. No glitches. Truly 'plug and play'. I loaded my XP Home disk. Again following the instructions. No sweat. Worked like a charm. Parallels even has antivirus software included so you can immediately start protecting the Windows side of your machine. That was a little slow to load, but over all no worries.
Then came uploading the orchid software.
OrchidWiz loaded perfectly. The OW 3.0 disk loads first, then the most recent update (3.04 in my case). My only trouble was remembering that my license is Case sensitive, a fact OW tells you had I *read* the page...*G*. (and I was doing so well reading instructions before installing anything!) I guess computers have gotten better/faster in the 5-6 years since I bought the Dell.... OW operates very fast now. Must have something to do with the RAM and processor speed.
The AOS's e-AOS program loaded perfectly from the CD. I only have to get a new password from Pam Giust to allow me to use it. I was too chicken to try to upload everything on Friday, a business day, when I could have emailed Pam and gotten a password that same day. I thought this whole experience would be Install Hell, and figured it'd take all weekend. Instead it took me a few hours Friday night. Now here I sit, panting, waiting till Monday for Pam to get back in the office so I can get a password, LOL!
Loading the two judging center web pages from CD was easy. Heck, everything has been easy. I can't believe it. I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop. Even my programs written for Windows 95 loaded well and operate well.
Anyway, that's my story and I'm sticking to it.
K Barrett