Trilight Zone

[trihub]

Article by Tony Lawrence
Source: http://aplawrence.com

I've mentioned before that I have only a few reasons for keeping any Windows junk here. One is for the occasional time when I need to test something I'm about to do for a customer. I can always do that with a VM or access their machine directly. Another reason is that I use QuickBooks for my business invoicing and accounting. They do make a Mac version and although it lacks some features that the Windows version has, none of them are anything I use. That leaves me with just one reason to have that stupid XP machine: my wife uses it.

Life would be so much better if both of us were using Macs, but she stubbornly clings to XP. She complains about it constantly: it's slow, it takes forever to shut down and start up, there are all those stupid updates.. but every time I bring up buying a Mac, I get a big, firm, "No".

Sure, part of that is that in this economy we don't want to be wasting money. Her machine is troublesome and annoying, but it works. Upgrading to a Mac will cost a significant amount of money, I agree. It won't exactly kill us though - we can certainly afford it. Yet both of us hate wasting money..

And then there's the psychic cost. She'll need to unlearn Windows and learn OS X. There will be benefits, yes, but I have to agree that there will be a period of time where she'll be confused and unhappy. It's an adjustment, it's very worthwhile because we'll both end up much happier, but there is that period of pain.

Last night Quickbooks balked at emailing invoices. That's something that we do a lot more often than we used to. I still send copies by postal mail to be sure the invoices get there, but the email function is great. Unfortunately, Quickbooks now wants me to spend a few hundred dollars to upgrade if I want to keep that feature.

Aaargh. I have no reason to upgrade. I don't need any of the new features. But they are going to cut me off from emailing invoices.. what to do?

CutePDF™ Writer is a free utility that creates a PDF printer - that is, a printer that creates a PDF file. It's free, it's quick and simple to install and it just works. Select the new printer for output and it prints the file and pops up with a "Save-As" dialog where you name the file. That's it - couldn't be easier. Attach that file to an email and the job is done.

In a way, I'm sorry that worked so well. It would have been another data point in favor of switching to a Mac.