Oxford Rus Dictionary on CD-ROM

[George Fowler]

Ben Rifkin provided some useful information about acquiring the
Oxford Russian Dictionary on CD-ROM. Then, however, he said:

> One other note:  the CD-ROM is currently available only in PC format.  The
> Mac format will be available, they say, in about a month or two.  However,
> if you're running a recent Macintosh and have Virtual PC, I would expect
> that it wouldn't make much of a difference if you had the PC version.  For
> instance, I myself use both platforms, so the PC version would be better for
> me as I could use it on either machine, whereas the Mac version would not
> run on the PC.

Seems to me this is a misjudgment on two counts, one big and one tiny.

First, it isn't very convenient to attempt to use any application
within Virtual PC while using the Mac for major business. That is, if
you are writing something in MS Word, it is a pain in the butt to
switch to Virtual PC (even if it is running), and look up a word,
then switch back. It is slow; there isn't full Clipboard support back
to the Mac side, and if you save a snippet and then try to move it to
the Mac and import it into something, it will be in the wrong
Cyrillic encoding. Instead, one really wants the dictionary on
whatever platform one uses for most serious work which might evoke
the dictionary. Virtual PC is really useful only if you occasionally
need to do something using PC software, such as file conversions (my
major use). To be fair, however, I should note that my 14-year-old
son has Virtual PC running fast enough on his iMac that he can
actually use most recent PC games that haven't been released on the
Mac, such as Starcraft.

Second (this is the minor one), there are no less than TWO Mac
emulators for the PC! The best is called Fusion, and it enables a
good Pentium PC to act like a high-end 68040 Mac (that's equivalent
to a 486 PC), such as a Quadra 950. There is a www page posted by a
Mac user with a good Power Mac running Virtual PC (thus emulating a
low-end Pentium Windows machine) who then installed Fusion under
Virtual PC (thus running a Mac emulating a Windows machine emulating
a Mac!). He said it was surprising bearable.

George Fowler
**************************************************************************
George Fowler                                  [Email] gfowler at indiana.edu
Dept. of Slavic Languages          [dept. tel.] 1-812-855-9906/-2608/-2624
Ballantine 502                                  [dept. fax] 1-812-855-2107
1020 E. Kirkwood Ave.                 [home tel./fax] 1-317-726-1482/-1642
Indiana University                 [Slavica tel./fax] 1-812-856-4186/-4187
Bloomington, IN 47405-7103 USA           [Slavica toll-free] 1-877-SLAVICA
**************************************************************************