Re: OT: MacBook

T i m <news@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Huh? Not from what I've seen

No, I meant his 'graphical view' as opposed to just yer typical
indented view?

Er, yes, the Agent I just downloaded (v5) has a plain indented thread
display.

- I have now run Agent (using
XP/VirtualBox), and still can't see what the fuss is about.

Exactly, no fuss, it just works pretty well out of the box and without
the need for any learning.

That's not really what I meant!

What I meant was, I can see nothing special about it that would cause
anyone to spend ££s on buying VM software, another OS, and news reader
software just to read newsgroups.

Come to that, even abandon an entire platform for this.

Certainly MacSOUP is not good enough as a main reason not to move to
another OS or platform, and likewise I just cannot see Agent being
enough to be a main reason either.

Of course, if newsgroups were your main activity, then I could see it,
but then you would probably need to think about getting a life if it was
that much of a concern? ;-)

<snip>

I can't think of anything less confusing than using Agent (and I guess
why I and many feel the same way about that in particular). I have
never had to read any How-to manuals or ask questions (outside OSX /
Linux of course!) to use most of the packages I use and that is partly
*why* I use them.

I rarely need to use manuals myself, although it has been essential at
times (such as learning SuperBase or Protext in the past and even now
with LaTeX), you certainly won't get the best out of things like
PhotoShop, GIMP or other 'pro' software without doing some reading.

Well of course, because they are bound to be 'complicated' because of
the power of the app and depth of the subject (visual effects and
layers etc). However, a newsreader shouldn't be difficult, confusing
or complicated and that was just how I found all the Mac ones I tried
(and I'm not unique in saying that). Even you had to 'persevere with
MacSoup .. (I don't have the patience any more).

True, but then I was also new to newsgroups, and indeed the Internet.

[..]
Fine as long as you can remember them all I guess.

I don't even think about them, I've used them for years.

Exactly, and many of us can't, don't want to or are unable to invest
'years' learning something we don't need to. Seriously, this was the
biggest stumbling block to me trying OSX as an alternative day to day
desktop (in spite of all your help etc). Email and web browsing was
transparently identical, even burning CD's or other utilities were
sufficiently similar to not be a real issue but the lack of an
Agent-alike newsreader (outside of more clutter re Crossover / VM's)
was the final straw. I even started to get used to the red button not
being = to the red cross! ;-)

I still find that quite astonishing, but YMMV always applies :-)

Maybe if it was something that was less real-time I could get used to
it, but time, tide and NG's wait for no one! ;-)

Sometimes change is the hardest thing to deal with :-)

Cheers, T i m

Regards.

--
Andy Hewitt
<http://web.me.com/andrewhewitt1/>
.

Relevant Pages

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