Channeling Walter Mossberg
Still struggling to find a way to make my coursework doable on my Mac with the least contortions possible, I’ve spent the last week indulging my inner geek and trying on different software for size, and I have to say I’m enjoying it immensely.
My Computers In Healthcare course has presented more than a few challenges, not the least of which is that the text is written around things like Word 2003--absolutely ancient, in software terms. Granted, they mention frequently that students are not required to own M$ products and we can do the exercises using open source apps like OpenOffice (or any of its permutations--available for every platform out there). Now, last week I had slogged through all the chapters from Word to Access to Excel to Powerpoint, using my favorite of these, NeoOffice. This is basically a clone of OOo, except that it runs as its own application (OOo actually utilizes X11 and runs through UNIX, which can get a little tricky if you get confused by seeing that command line business.) It looks like the M$ Office applications. . . but as I discovered, there are occasional bugs in that a crucial button or function is missing here and there (hello, no one at OOo thought we might like to delete a record from a database?) I got through the exercises okay, but I knew it had been harder than it should have been.
I’m not sure why it took me until afterward to hit upon the idea of using the Mac counterparts I already had and simply saving them as Office-friendly formats. Rummaged around my hard drive and tried out my old iWork applications--which are so completely wonderful in comparison, it isn’t funny. Keynote versus Powerpoint is like comparing satellite HDTV to that 13” B&W set with rabbit ears that barely got four channels. It’s slick, it’s easy, it packs so much stuff in there that my mother (who didn’t do Ziploc bags until they came out with the ones with a zipper) could grope around it and look like a professional in the end. Likewise, Pages is Word to the nth degree--not just a WP app, but complete enough to do desktop publishing. Except. . . dang--Numbers is simply a spreadsheet app and I needed to be able to work with a relational database. It compares to Excel, but there was no way I could substitute that for Access. . .
So I flitted around the internet a bit and found the solution is Bento (lovers of Japanese cuisine will appreciate how cute and clever that name is), which is not just a database app from the makers of the old fave Filemaker Pro, but may be The Ultimate Database app. It syncs everything you’ve got into one place so your calendar, address book, iTunes library, iPhone/iPod, projects, event planning, and anything else you want to throw at it is in one cool spot. No fumbling around with formulas, queries, and awkward menus like I just learned in Excel--this is gorgeous, effortless, and powerful. Of course, I’m only able to vouch for that because I have no life and spent a morning watching all the tutorials. . . As I never got around to upgrading my OS from Tiger, I can’t even run the trial version yet. I had to throw some money at Apple and am awaiting my new Leopard installer this week so I can try it, but I have no doubt I’ll be paying to keep Bento around, even if I never use it for work.
In the meantime, however, how do I deal with this coursework? Well, much as I am loathe to install anything M$ on my computer, I decided just to bite the bullet and get the trial of Office 2008 and see if that didn’t make me see my homework in a little different light. Harumf--what a difference 5 years makes! It’s still a fairly ugly bunch of applications, but it’s nowhere near as basic as 2003. You can call up windows for tools, rather than just the mishmash of icons on the toolbar at the top of your window. You still have to run queries as a separate function, rather than filtering within the spreadsheet as you can do in the Mac apps (where you simply hold down a cell to bring up a menu), but it seems a little less clunky than what I’ve been working with. The jury is still out until I have time to go back and re-do all my exercises for comparison. In the end, however, I don’t see this as worth the price tag of over $300 because they chose not to include the most important part of the suite: Access! What the heck? In the end, it’s going to be cheaper to stick with my Mac apps and cough up another $70 for Bento, which I’ll use for everything IRL anyway, or continue plugging away with OpenOffice (FREE). Office 2008 without the database application is insane. I'm just glad I didn't buy the suite outright and then find it isn't complete!
I don’t know who decided that business applications needed to be ugly, boring, and soulless because keeping things cutting edge certainly makes the job easier to focus on, easier to impress people, and just more fun. If you're going to go utilitarian, it does make sense to use open source applications; I've encountered some pretty slick ones currently in use as ER and other hospital platforms, like Synapse EMR, which I believe was originally written by a doctor. The beauty of open source apps is that no one profits from their sale, only from providing support (ask Linux!), which means actual users can have a hand at developing products to maximize their usefulness, rather than software vendors who simply throw things together and make a fortune by endlessly correcting their problems. As a former accounting major, I do have a strange joy at plunking numbers into neat little boxes, but in the end, I really thrive on a 3D, Technicolor world. I don’t think I’m unique in that. Of course, in the end I’m going to wind up in a job that most likely will use the ugly, utilitarian, 2-dimensional applications because that’s what they do. I really have had a blast geeking out this week and playing with all the possibilities, though.