Last modified: March 7, 2005 8:35 AM PST
Jumping through hoops
In response to the Perspectives column written by Charles Cooper, "Why does PC support stink?":
Your article brought a smile to my face. Only a few days ago I had a similar experience, but with a different twist.
I use Linux, but also dual-boot XP for some Windows-only software. Example: Last weekend I helped my mom and dad prepare their tax returns. I planned to e-mail the tax returns as PDF files, when I discovered that I couldn't do that. Many years ago I used Adobe Acrobat's free PDF printer driver. Just "print" from any application to generate PDFs.
Well, can't do that anymore! No more free PDF driver in Adobe's Acrobat Reader--please pay Adobe for the "full" Acrobat.
I searched for a free PDF printer driver. Everywhere I looked there was either some "trial" version, with the full version "for only $19.95," or something that I wasn't sure didn't include typical Windows spyware/parasiteware.
My final solution was adding a new printer driver for a generic Postscript printer, which saves Postscript output into a file. I printed all the tax returns, rebooted into Linux, converted the Postscript files into PDFs, and e-mailed them to my folks.
Here's a better title for your article: "Why Windows stinks."
Sam Varshavchik
New York, N.Y.
