OT - Computer

[Steve Firth]

Well no you can't please feel free to assert that you can.

[Andy Champ]

Mac Mini starts at UKP612 (apple's store).

Adobe Creative Suite 5 Production Premium Starting at£1,725.24 (Adobe's store).

Steve gets that one...

On the other hand, Dell will sell you a similarly-specced Vostro for about UKP350... so I see John's point.

Andy

[Ian Jackson]

But I prefer

(which doesn't need Postscript).

And there are even more still.

I used to use FreePDF XP, but it seemed to leave Postscript copies of what you had 'printed' to PDF in various unexpected places in my PC.

[Andy Burns]

onto a form (e.g. for invoice printing from an accounts package).

[Ian Jackson]

I've never used that facility in Bullzip. Can it do that? I add text etc to PDF documents using my usual PDF viewer (PDF-XChange Viewer).

[Andy Burns]

Yes, it can automatically merge the print-to-PDF stream onto an existing PDF file, so I produce the invoice layout in OpenOffice, save it to PDF, then printing from Sage produces invoices suitable for emailing or printing on plain paper (because Sage refuses to print the invoice including the form, presumably to protect their pre-printed stationary business).

[John Rumm]

Creative suite is not Acrobat alone but a complete suit of other tools such as photohshop, illustrator, indesign etc *and* Acrobat.

Acrobat 9 Pro on its own is more like £200 - £250 trade.

Another thing to keep in mind, is that there can be more to creating PDFs than just printing stuff to a virtual printer driver. PDFs can also contact editable form components, and are fully programmable as well, with an internal javascript interpretor. So they can contain business logic as well if you want. Most folks don't use the capabilities, although if you do, you will find many of the simpler creation strategies don't address these aspects.

[Steve Firth]

Ah, so when you said "I bet I can but a decent PC, and the poshest version of acrobat for good deal less than even a crap mac" You didn't mean "the poshest version" you meant "an old copy at a knock-down price".

FWIW a copy of "the poshest version" which is Acrobat XL Pro will set you back £532.80. As Andy pointed out a new, shiny Mac will set you back £612. Although I admit that PC hardware is almost worthless, I can't see you getting a new PC for less than £80.

[Andy Champ]

That's the old version. X Pro is 500 quid list. Interestingly the same price for MAC as well as Windows, which tends to suggest you get rather more than is shipped with the MAC.

Andy

[Ian Jackson]

Thanks. I'll have a look at some of the other features in Bullzip. However, mention of invoices has reminded me that some freeware is free for personal or non-commercial use only.

[Andy Burns]

As a small business, we're in the clear on that one due to Bullzip's generous licence ...

"This program is FREEWARE with limitations, which means that it is FREE for personal and commercial use up to 10 users".

[Ian Jackson]

Noted.

[John Rumm]

I did not specify which version, and "Pro" is the poshest version of 9 currently available. It would also be more than adequate and certainly more capable than most of the other suggested PDF generation options.

However I freely admit I underestimated the current price of the top version of X and did not bother checking. However the point I was making still stands.

£519 for X Pro. (if you want to get silly you could claim the poshest version is now Acrobat "capture", and that starts at over £3,600+VAT trade)

No, the cheapest I can usually get are about £100+VAT... although the odd deal for something like a Asus AMD-140(2.7GHZ)/160GB/1GB/DVD system turns up from time to time at £80+VAT (sans OS)

Either way, the point stands that buying any mac for the sole purpose of getting out of the box PDF generation capability is not financially sound option unless you particularly want a mac.

Another option worth investigating is most PCs now get delivered "office ready". I.e. will run office in demo mode for 30 days, and can be turned into full versions with the purchase of a key. Not as well promoted however is that they can also enabled in "Office Starter" configuration, which gives you a "free" (i.e. ad supported) version of office with reduced functionality (just word and excel with cut down functionality). However the PDF creation capability is still present I believe.

[Steve Firth]

I don't think anyone suggested that one does that. However the fact still stands that Mac OS is the more capable one in this respect.

Oh, and of course that when PC weenies go on about Macs being expensive the expensive is over-exaggerated.

Now, if I wanted a crap Mac with the facilities of OSX, I could get one off eBay for £100. You'd still be looking at the thick end of twice that for Acrobat.