pc v mac, interesting?

never mind the usual pc is not as good as mac, and all that stuff. I had a very interesting conversation with a parent of a student I teach today. her husband is a designer and his computer of choice is a mac, so their home computers are macs. nothing strange there. however both the mother and daughter are dyslexic and haven't really got on with computers that well until now. one of the courses I teach is all pc based, using for the most part microsoft based stuff as well as a bit of (adobe macromedia studio) dreamweaver fireworks flash, etc. nothing that complex. since the daughter started working on a pc with my classes she has found the whole operation system (XP) and software more intuitive (her words) and the family have bought a pc laptop for both mother and daughter to use at home. I have to say that I was very surprised to be told this today as I am constantly working between the two systems and genuinely find mac based software & operating system(OS X) much more logical.

I know more software is written for the pc, so there would be likely for there to be something amongst all the available stuff around that could make it easier for pc users. but when I suggested this I was told it's not any particular software just the way the operation system works, interesting?

jing >> actually useful

its not that often you find something that is useful and free, but this is a good application while I was searching for something to use in a teaching context, it seems that 'jing' could be the thing as far as screen capture.

‘jing‘ is a project from techsmith that allows you to capture stills and video from your screen and share them online, and the good thing about it is that it works on both pc and mac.

I wont give it a full seal of approval until I have tested it with a class of year 9's next week at work.

candyjar >> & I don't want an iphone

I was having a look round cyber-land when I came across this blog dave ward (candy jar). as you may know I work a lot with adobe illustrator and to a much lesser extent adobe photoshop with the work I do with students and the web design work I do for educational stuff. the blog has got some pretty good help and information on both illustrator and photoshop short cuts, so could be very useful for some.


I am currently working on another major web re-design where some of the work can only be done on illustrator (well I cannot find anything that is better) but the strange thing is that all the work for is being done is on pc (well on a reasonably powerful pc laptop).
it does all the things I need I would prefer to use a macbook pro but it is not the cost but simply that the network at work is microsoft driven (oh well) so to use a mac would be difficult.

so I am not at all anti mac (or apple) but having said that I don't want an iphone, having found a phone that suits me just fine. so I will be staying with the blackberry I have on orange.