XYMer's Home away from Home

With support waning for Tiger I can only reflect on my situation...

My job still has me working with QuarkXpress 5 in Classic (as the industry passes me by).

The irony is that in "these times," my job is pretty durn stable while I fall waaaaaaaaaay behind the curve. We service a major metropolitan hospital and I'm the "keeper of the forms," meaning I do almost ALL of their forms in a print shop environment. Shudder - a print shop, in THESE times? But the hospital is so messed up and dysfunctional in regards to their forms that we are effectively the "gatekeeper" and have been for nearly 20 years. Some of the higher ups at the hospital actually acknowledge this and so they know that they can't bring this function "in house" because of the explosive nature of internal politics. So as long as there are hospital forms to create and revise, it would seem that I have a job. The cost is my remaining in Classic.

There are "plans" someday to upgrade here to a more current version of QuarkXpress at which point I wouldn't need to be in Classic anymore (but this opens a can of worms in regards to font issues - OT versus PS), but money is tight and there isn't enough in the budget for an upgrade in software and hardware, I was as much told so. So I just deal with doing the work in Classic.

Because the rest of the Graphics Department is using the Adobe Suite and QuarkXpress 7, I cannot participate in any of their projects, and, like I said, it makes me more and more of a dinosaur. I'm relatively well paid, work from home two days a week, but I can't help feeling nervous about being so far behind the curve in a seriously threatened field.

Nonetheless, I'm convinced I'm good for at least 5 more years, and possibly "forever" with this company (unlike many other places, they want to keep their employees as long as possible). I just hope to have the opportunity to "upskill" at some point, I'm not exactly a spring chicken, y'know. Regardless, I am grateful that I've fallen into such a stable "gig."

Anyone else stuck behind the times?

I still routinely use Photoshop 4, since it works perfectly, does 99 44/100% of what I need, and involves no modern Adobe BS. Also, I can't afford a new version, let alone another new version after that when Adobe won't fix the critical bug that kills it with the latest OS X update.

I just don't use the 10.4 + Classic machine on the web anymore, and I figure it'll run pretty much forever.

I'm also using a Sawtooth tower as a web server. Again, this should keep going until the Earth crashes in to the Sun.

New stuff is great for people who have lots of spare time. I'm a bit jaded: once it's working I try not to screw with it unless there's some really compelling reason to do so. New stuff can be useful, but it also always comes with new headaches. I have enough of those without new stuff. The burden of proof is on whatever promises to be new and improved.

- Anonymous

.... ya think?

I still use Ataris & a Quadra/640 everyday at work, couldn't do it without them, can use OS9 to do most real work, can use Tiger to do some/much work, Leopard is becoming almost usable, Sno isn't there & going backwards... I hate the fact that you now have to click on a Menu & let up to select an item, the click again & letup to choose it, used to be one click, steer to item & letup... twice as many steps thousands of times a day.

I still think Photoshop 4 was the best version ever. 7 wasn't bad, and at least runs natively in OS X.

I still use PhotoShop 4 on a Beige G3 in OS 9 at work. It keeps me from having to knock the Graphics Department off of the use of their scanner. It is actually on my personal machine and SCSI scanner (which still works GREAT), and for which I have no room at home.

BDA - Hm, with Tiger being phased out I was thinking of putting Leopard on my G5 (on another HD) just to stay as current as possible. Is it REALLY that bad???

I miss SCSI scanners. Everything now seems to be cheap, slow, bus-powered USB scanners. My Umax Vista S6E, which I bought in like 1995, was faster and gave much higher quality scans than the Epson USB scanner I bought two years ago. Of course it was also 5 times as big and cost 6 times as much, but I expect things to get smaller and cheaper over time, without getting slower and crappier.

Mine is a UMAX Astra 1200S - scans up to legal sized documents! That's a keeper!

Naw, Leopard isn't that bad, Sno is though, but no worry on you G5 with that!

I have Leo on my G5 should the day come I'm forced, but I still enjoy a few Classic APPs that'll never be made for OSX as they're far to useful!

Leopard runs decent on older hardware so long as you flip off Spotlight. The constant indexing always grated on my nerves.

As far as I can tell, Spotlight is incompatible with file servers where users save MS Office files directly to the server. Unloading Spotlight, not even merely adding something to the privacy section of the preference pane, was the only way I could get even vaguely acceptable reliability out of Office + OS X 10.5 Server.

Spotlight motto: It's what doesn't work!

- Anonymous

Spotlight is quite handy though when you can't decide whether you really want to find something or not though!

That was a great scanner in its day. Shame the company screwed over all its users by promising and then not delivering OSX software. I have an MX/3 knocking around somewhere.

I've just put a Sawtooth into semi-retirement but haven't fired up Classic in many a moon though. I rarely have the latest and greatest Mac OS, preferring to remain one or two major releases behind the curve. I think Tiger was to OS X software, what the Sawtooths were to Macs. Great all round performers and safe bets. I'm only using Snow Leopard as it came pre-installed on the iMac.

I use PS 7 (i think PS has a lousy JPG compression engine dunno if it has gotten better in CS).
I am in the process of getting a wintel machine set up with Paintshop pro so I can convert my FPX (kodak proprietary format) archive files over to tif of png or something lossless.
IMHO fpx is a great format.
pict is also a great format especially with the old file compression software that could take a 4Mpx file down to a losslessly compressed 110k.

Forms are a pain in the ass. I just finished making a brochure in Neo Office and it was a royal pain in the ass, but it was the only "crapless" plain page brochure template I could find. I really miss the layout of Alduspagemaker (?) MacWrite pro? jeez it has been that long.

I would suggest getting a laptop for using X

If I could figure out some way to create actions as easily as I can in PS over on Linux I would be gone.
As to scanners I have an old Epson 8400 and it does very good scans, with little set up requires. It also has a nice dppth of field that is lacking in most other scanners. However I only fire it up occasionally as the lamps can burn out and they are NOT replaceable!
oh honorable customer buy new honorable scanner, latest model very cheap made in China.
-v