October 8, 2011 – 8:42 am
I am old enough and experienced enough to know that no good thing lasts forever but I sure do miss Rosetta on my new MacBook Pro. For those of you who are still using a heathen Windows machine, Rosetta is a software solution that Apple included in its operating system when they switched to Intel processors. It allowed users to continue to run Power PC software until the developers upgraded their software or a suitable replacement program could be located. Unfortunately, Apple chose not to include Rosetta in OSX Lion. In their defense, it has been at least five years since they transitioned to Intel and we have had plenty of time to upgrade our software. However, my “why fix it if it isn’t broken” philosophy has finally caught up with me.
I can no longer use several freeware programs that I used occasionally for specific purposes but I can live without them. Unfortunately, I have also lost the use of Fireworks (an old Photoshop type program), Quickbook 5.0 (my business accounting program), Microsoft Office 2004 (including Word, PowerPoint and Excel) and Kompozer (a web page design program). I am still searching for replacements but I have located a couple of possible solutions.
Since I run Parallels Desktop and Windows XP on my Macbook Pro, I could just use the Windows version of Office. However, I normally only open Desktop when I need to use one of the two programs I need that don’t come in a Mac flavor. Instead, I have elected to give Libre Office a try. LibreOffice is a free, open source personal productivity suite for Windows, Macintosh and Linux, that gives you six feature-rich applications: Writer (Word), Calc (Excel), Impress (PowerPoint), Draw, Math and Base (Access). You can produce, open or edit any document, spreadsheet or presentation that was created in Microsoft Office. So far, it looks like a good replacement for my old Office suite.
I replaced Kompozer, which was an open source web design program, with Blue Griffon, another open source program. I normally use this program for simple website editing so I don’t need a really powerful program like Dreamweaver. I think Blue Griffon is going to work out fine.
Macromedia Fireworks was my “go to” graphics editing program for many years. It was Macromedia’s equivalent to Adobe’s Photoshop. However, Adobe has since bought Macromedia and the latest version of Fireworks costs $299 – way over my budget. Instead of emptying my bank account, I opted for Seashore, another open source program. I haven’t had a chance to use the program much but so far it looks like it will work for my limited graphics editing needs.
Finally, I had to deal with the loss of Quickbooks, which is going to be a bit of a problem for me. Natually, I was using version 5, which is a really old version. My plan is to continue using, Quickbooks on my old Macbook until the new year then either choose a new accounting program or install a virtual version of Snow Leopard on my Macbook Pro via Parallels Desktop. Fortunately, the next issue of Mac Life is going to tackle the issue of migrating from Quicken so they may help me make my decision.
Basically, I am turning to open source software to solve my Lion issues. The other option is to simply purchase the latest and greatest versions of Microsoft Office, Quickbooks, Dreamweaver and Photoshop. That option is just a little rich for my blood so I am going to see if the free open source software meets my needs first.
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