I'm still running Office 2003, in a Virtual Machine (Oracle Virtualbox) installed into Windows 10/64. Also have Autocad 2000, Viacad 8.0, Photoshop 5.0 and Micrografx Picture Publisher 8.0 running in the same Virtual Machine. While I can't do internet from the Virtual Machine I probably could if I wanted to spend a few hours poking around in the settings for the Virtual Machine. As it is, I have all these Apps 100% isolated from the Net so I don't have to worry about someone like Microsoft finding that I am running the same version of Office on both my Laptop and Desktop.

As for my Internet connection all I have to do is select the taskbar for Windows 10 that falls below the taskbar for the Virtual Machine. So going between the 2 is a simple single mouse click.

BTW, recently had the motherboard fail on my desktop and since it was using a Gen 5 I5 CPU I had to replace the CPU, motherboard, power supply, cooling fans, and Memory all at the same time. In addition to insure that a motherboard failure in the future didn't mean replacing all of the guts inside the computer I purchased a Spare motherboard along with all the other hardware. Because I was replacing the whole shooting match I decided that an upgrade was in order, so the finished computer is running an 8th gen I7 CPU with 32 Gb of Ram. One small bit of good news is that once all the hardware was installed and hooked up to my 480 Gb and 1 Tb SSD's everything sorted itself out with almost no intervention on my part. Now my Desktop is Flat Out Freaking FAST.

Ordered everything needed for Newegg and the grand total came to a touch under 1075 dollers. BTW, also got another 500 Gb HP SSD for only 60 bucks so I now have 3 spares that I can clone and have a plug in Clone in the event my primary HD fails.

Point is, if you like what you have there really isn't any reason to not continue using it. Oracles's Virtualbox works very well and can become easy to work with once you figure out how to set up the virtual machine properly. Another Benefit is that you can copy the file to other computers and have ALL of your software up and running once you install Virtualbox on the new computer. BTW, tip on setting up Shared Drives or Folders. That is that you will have to re-start Win XP in order to make these changes visible within the Virtual Machine.

quote:

Originally posted by sigcrazy7:
We are already seeing some very capable alternatives to Photoshop and Lightroom coming on the marjet.

What are the names of these alternatives?

quote:

Originally posted by deepocean:

quote:

Originally posted by sigcrazy7:
We are already seeing some very capable alternatives to Photoshop and Lightroom coming on the marjet.

What are the names of these alternatives?

I'm liking Corel's Paint Shop Pro 2019 Ultimate. Had previously used an older version (X4). It can be had under $30. Add plug ins like the supplied Athentech Perfectly Clear SE v3.5.7 and the still available free Google Nik Collection 1.2.15 (https://filehippo.com/download_dxo_nik_collection/) and you're pretty well set. PaintShopPro uses the Photoshop .8bf plugin standard.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: bald1,

quote:

Originally posted by parabellum:
I'm having a bt of trouble finding Microsoft's convertor.

Credit Chowser, who provided the link on page 2: https://www.microsoft.com/en-u...etails.aspx?id=33298

quote:

Originally posted by deepocean:

quote:

Originally posted by sigcrazy7:
We are already seeing some very capable alternatives to Photoshop and Lightroom coming on the marjet.

What are the names of these alternatives?

For the pro, I'd suspect Adobe has to be the most worried about Affinity. This is the most like photoshop, and easily uses all of your Photoshop plugins. There's also stuff like Acorn or Pixelmator that have continued to be improved rapidly for 95% of us who aren't pros. Heck, even GIMP (free) is an alternative to Photoshop in the same way that LibreOffice is an alternative for MS Office.

Only professionals are going to give Adobe $50 a month for their creative suite. The rest of us can't or won't. Many people become professionals after first being advanced amateurs. This simply weakens these companies going forward. Adobe tries to counter this with super cheap academic licenses, but they are still opening the door for competitors. Everybody's professional skills don't come through a college pathway.

quote:

Originally posted by sigcrazy7:

quote:

Originally posted by deepocean:

quote:

Originally posted by sigcrazy7:
We are already seeing some very capable alternatives to Photoshop and Lightroom coming on the marjet.

What are the names of these alternatives?

For the pro, I'd suspect Adobe has to be the most worried about Affinity. This is the most like photoshop, and easily uses all of your Photoshop plugins. There's also stuff like Acorn or Pixelmator that have continued to be improved rapidly for 95% of us who aren't pros. Heck, even GIMP (free) is an alternative to Photoshop in the same way that LibreOffice is an alternative for MS Office.

Only professionals are going to give Adobe $50 a month for their creative suite. The rest of us can't or won't. Many people become professionals after first being advanced amateurs. This simply weakens these companies going forward. Adobe tries to counter this with super cheap academic licenses, but they are still opening the door for competitors. Everybody's professional skills don't come through a college pathway.

Are there similar competitors for Adobe Premiere Pro? I am aware of a few options, but my list is by no means comprehensive. Thank you for your help.

quote:

Originally posted by deepocean:

quote:

Originally posted by sigcrazy7:

quote:

Originally posted by deepocean:

quote:

Originally posted by sigcrazy7:
We are already seeing some very capable alternatives to Photoshop and Lightroom coming on the marjet.

What are the names of these alternatives?

For the pro, I'd suspect Adobe has to be the most worried about Affinity. This is the most like photoshop, and easily uses all of your Photoshop plugins. There's also stuff like Acorn or Pixelmator that have continued to be improved rapidly for 95% of us who aren't pros. Heck, even GIMP (free) is an alternative to Photoshop in the same way that LibreOffice is an alternative for MS Office.

Only professionals are going to give Adobe $50 a month for their creative suite. The rest of us can't or won't. Many people become professionals after first being advanced amateurs. This simply weakens these companies going forward. Adobe tries to counter this with super cheap academic licenses, but they are still opening the door for competitors. Everybody's professional skills don't come through a college pathway.

Are there similar competitors for Adobe Premiere Pro? I am aware of a few options, but my list is by no means comprehensive. Thank you for your help.

I'm sorry, video editing is really outside of my experience. I'd *suspect* that the biggest competitor to APP would be Apple's Final Cut Pro, although Apple is good as pissing on it's professional user base, so I don't know the current state of FCP. Just look at the big steaming dump Apple took on those who were using Aperture in lieu of Lightroom.

Maybe someone will be along who knows more about it, especially on the Windows side of video editing.