Macs running XP
For those of you who missed the news at the beginning of the month, Apple Computer has released a product called Boot Camp that will allow Macs running Mac OS X to run the Windows XP operating system. MACWORLD ran an article on it that is pretty good reading.
The reason this gets put on our blog is this: Mac users who want to download digital books (e-books and e-audios) from the library have been stymied by the fact that the media console needs Windows Media Player 10 to work. With Apple's new program, Mac users who want to have access to the downloadable digital books can choose to purchase XP and can download and listen to or read to their heart's content.
posted by Greenfield Public Library @ 2:01 PM
4 comments
4 Comments:
I find it unconscionable that your public resources require the use of proprietary software, and elitist that you recommend the purchase of additional software at considerable cost to be able to do so.
Might I suggest that you take a more humanitarian course and ask your technology department to investigate the resources used by Project Gutenberg and those available at no cost from vorbis.com .
Hmm... purchase XP: $199. Add Virus scanner, firewall, etcetera: $99. Total: $298 - just to be able to read a book? Sorry, I don't bite.
The XP-on-Mac idea for reading your books is only suitable for people who wanted to run XP on their Macs for other reasons anyway. That's a really small percentage of Mac users (these people didn't buy Macs for nothing. They bought them because they did *not* want a Windows PC).
No (sane) person is going to spend $298 just to be able to use your DRM'ed digital library. I agree with the poster above: find a less harmfull way to open up your digital library. Microsoft and DRM are *not* the way to do it.
I own a MAC, but I can't purchase and install Windows XP on it. It's only brand new Macs based on an Intel CPU that can possibly run Windows. The vast majority of Mac owners have older versions running IBM's PowerPC CPU, like my G5 does.
So unless I replace my one-year old MAC with a new one, I'm out of the water :-(
I think it's amazing that a public library would so openly enforce the use of a single corporation's software to gain access to their works.
This is even more amazing considering that the single corporation has been repeatedly found to be abusing its monopoly position in the market.
It's a bit like telling me I can't read your books because the glasses I wear are made by the wrong company.
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