My dell laptop finally crashed and burned. For the past 6-7 months I've
been looking for a replacement anyway. Laptops have gotten so small and
light and the Dell was *very* heavy. Hurt my shoulder taking it to
shows and judgings. So after consideration I decided to buy a Macbook.
Macs can operate in either Windows or OS X. You need a second
separate program to switch between the two. A friend showed me how
Parallels Desktop looks and runs on a Macbook. Very cool! I decided to
stop dithering and buy the Mac.

What makes this an 'on topic' post is that I had a wonderful experience
getting the two orchid awards programs installed.

I purchased Parallels online ($80), downloaded it to a CD and printed
out the 'Quick Start' guide. After reading the instructions I loaded
Parallels. Worked like a dream. Just like the instructions said it
would. No glitches. In fact getting the Mac started was a dream. No
glitches. Truly 'plug and play'. I loaded my XP Home disk. Again
following the instructions. No sweat. Worked like a charm. Parallels
even has antivirus software included so you can immediately start
protecting the Windows side of your machine. That was a little slow to
load, but over all no worries.

Then came uploading the orchid software.

OrchidWiz loaded perfectly. The OW 3.0 disk loads first, then the most
recent update (3.04 in my case). My only trouble was remembering that
my license is Case sensitive, a fact OW tells you had I *read* the
page...*G*. (and I was doing so well reading instructions before
installing anything!) I guess computers have gotten better/faster in
the 5-6 years since I bought the Dell.... OW operates very fast now.
Must have something to do with the RAM and processor speed.

The AOS's e-AOS program loaded perfectly from the CD. I only have to
get a new password from Pam Giust to allow me to use it. I was too
chicken to try to upload everything on Friday, a business day, when I
could have emailed Pam and gotten a password that same day. I thought
this whole experience would be Install Hell, and figured it'd take all
weekend. Instead it took me a few hours Friday night. Now here I sit,
panting, waiting till Monday for Pam to get back in the office so I can
get a password, LOL!

Loading the two judging center web pages from CD was easy. Heck,
everything has been easy. I can't believe it. I'm waiting for the
other shoe to drop. Even my programs written for Windows 95 loaded well
and operate well.

Anyway, that's my story and I'm sticking to it.

K Barrett