Well hello maccies, here is what I learned today

from the WINDOWS techs no less.

You see I took the damn *^^((^ to get downgraded to XP... yes I've had it. Vista is not just a piece of crap, but not worth the disk it came in.

I made the comment that yes I USE a Macbook.

His words...

That is the way to go.

Never mind that if all the PC users moved to mac (and the gaming rig would if we had them games available), would drive him and his small local shop out of bidness.

He's had it with Vista, even if he's doing a healthy bidness installing XP on vista machines. So there you have it, even from folks who work on PCs for a living... vista is a piece of crap.

On the bright side there is this little progie that will NOT run on vista (yes it is windows) that will run on XP... so now I can go back to making CAD created beautiful maps.

I also stopped at an indie retailer this morning for mac and we were chuckling on how different is to work with these damn things

And yes, I COULD have done the downgrade myself... but somebody else is dealing with the headache... for the same amount of money... my time is worth it.

your work. Sure you have to learn the key combos and such, but that's OK.

We switched all our CAD from PC to Mac and we are *still* compatible with our Windows-based clients.

tried... many a times.

We switched to Vectorworks. Fully cross platform, but started on Mac. Fully AutoCAD compatible. Fully 3D. Has a VERY strong civil/landscape component, but don't know if it could help with actual mapping.

three years.

I gotten good... Got the other loaded and got a couple expansions for it.. but I fear it will be a combo of both. I can do all the rough on CC and then move to my other app... the art program. I gotten good.

I found a CAD program for the MAC that if I can import the symbols MIGHT work though

ArchiTOSH and Vectorworks are the biggest and most serious.

The Mac Store sells a few more, but they're kinda lightweights. TurboCAD, IntelliCAD, SwiftCAD, and several more nnnCAD AutoCAD wannabes.

cad engine... first written for 8bit. It was state of the art years ago... for cad programs. These days they've tweaked it severely, added some sheet effects and I don't care what they say don't work on Vista 64, but it is sweet on XP... I did a practice map (fantasy) in black and white... have not done that in a while, and trying to understand how to do the relief maps that you can do with that sucker... I guess I will have to study some USGS real maps before I try to figure it out. But for gaming and sci fi, that will be perfect, and probably faster than Corel Painter... which is what the real pro mappers use,

.... *I* was state of the art years ago!

:)