Loud ramblings of a Software Artisan

Adobe is gently providing an Acrobat Reader for Palm. But why the hell do I need to have a Windows or MacOS computer to install it ? Can't they provide a .zip version of the package instead of these proprietary format ? Obviously not. Much like Canon and their firmware.

And as usual, no contact info.

Gotta have to look for an alternative.

Update: found more info why this require a Mac or Windows.

Since I no longer do MacOS X development, for AbiWord, I unsubscribed from the MacOS X development mailing lists to free up some e-mail reading time and mailbox cluttering.

Let's make a brief history. In September 2000 I was no longer really believing in Mac, even though I have been a real Mac freak, advocating with more and less pragmatism Mac as the best computing solution. But there was that thing, MacOS X, about to be released as a public beta, that raised my interest. At that time I was already using Linux on the company provided IBM ThinkPad 600E, and it was working great for me. But I decided to go ahead, and bought an Apple PowerBook G3/400 FireWire. I bought this machine because it was a laptop, did run MacOS X Public Beta about to be released, and did run Linux correctly already. My main goal was to port AbiWord on MacOS X. That is what I mostly did, in too much time.

Today, my PowerBook is running Linux and it is my fastest Linux machine. It is running Linux bacause I needed a faster Linux machine, because MacOS X development on that machine, despite the 384MB of RAM has been far too painful, and because at that time I had an iMac G4 1.25GHz available to me. I currently don't have any longer another Mac capable of running MacOS X, that's why I'm no longer developing on MacOS X. AbiWord now has a running version 2.2.2 for MacOS X, thanks to Frank who took over a couple of month ago after the code stalled because of my lack of hardware resource. I consider my goal achieved, even though I did not finish it. Such is life. Of course, I'd have such machine, I'd happily spend time work on it.

From Slashdot Walmart now sells sub-$500 (USD) notebooks. The don't run Windows, because of the cost of the OEM license, they run Linspire, a Linux based operating system. It is not a fast laptop as VIA-C3 1GHz CPU is not really snappy, but it is decent for most people use.

They also have more expensive models with faster CPUs include AMD Athlon, inlcuding one 50$ more expensive, with wireless and Window XP Home (sigh). The makes me think that the sub-$500 notebook is just overpriced, but under the $500 barrier.

So I wonder what is the real justification of using Linspire ? Because it just cost less enough to bring the price down under $500 ? I don't think, given that the XP license is something around $100, they could have done it on the other laptop as well, as well as stripping out wifi. And they would provide Linspire on the other models as well.