[DM-MUG] Too good not to share...

[Victoria L. Herring]

>
>Subject: [MacLaw] Mac "fixes" Windows CD
>An interesting experience today re Mac and Windows.
>
>An installation disk for some specialized software for my Windows 
>laptop, from a major software company, arrived yesterday at my office 
>in the late afternoon, just in time to give me the weekend to work 
>with it.
>
>Inserted the installation disk early this morning in the Windows 
>laptop and it growls and growls and the laptop can't find the CD. 
>Tried all the usual tricks to no avail - ejecting and reinserting; re-
>starting with the CD in the drive; trying to find the CD through Run 
>instead of Autostart; playing around with cleaning the CD surface, 
>etc., etc. No dice. Tried for about 90 minutes. The CD is bad.
>
>Tried other CDs in the Windows laptop - they work fine.
>
>Emailed the company. It's Saturday of course - no reply. Not even a 
>keyword auto-acknowledgment.
>
>Put the Windows-only installation CD in my Mac's external CD drive. A 
>little growling and struggling and then bingo - it shows up on the 
>desktop and can be opened to reveal its contents. The Windows 
>computer can't read the Windows CD but the Mac can.
>
>So I tried Toast several times to make a disk-to-disk copy and of 
>course the CD is subject to some Windows copy-protection scheme and 
>validation of the CD copy fails over and over due to some "illegal" 
>instruction, and is ejected.
>
>But Mac users don't give up that easy: I put the disk back in, ran 
>one of those "make invisible files visible" apps, created a folder on 
>my hard drive, dragged all the contents of Windows CD install disk 
>over to the folder, ejected the disk, ran Toast and this time chose 
>the option to make a data disk, dragged all the contents of the 
>folder into which I had copied the contents of the Windows CD, burned 
>a new data CD successfully and ejected it, turned invisibility back 
>on for Mac files, insert my CD copy into my Windows laptop.
>
>The Windows installation CD, created on my Mac, starts up immediately 
>on my Windows laptop, self-runs its installer program, installs the 
>software, goes onto the internet and registers the program with the 
>company and all is okay!
>
>How many Windows-only users could have extricated themselves from a 
>situation like this one?
>
>Mac OS X rules!
>
>Nate

-- 
VICTORIA L. HERRING****Attorney at Law
****4331 Greenwood Drive, Ste. 100, Des Moines, Iowa 50312
*******ph. 515-255-4475 ****fx. 515-255-4477
http://www.HerringLaw.com*****
Consulting in and handling civil rights, discrimination and 
employment law matters.
"The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance 
of those who have much;  it is whether we provide enough for those 
who have too little."   Franklin D. Roosevelt