Un-occupy Gmail, Part 2

Since noting our strong objections to Google/Gmail's latest shenanigans in yesterday's post, Un-occupy Gmail, we're discovering other voices critical of their heavy-handed redesign.


Scott Wilson sees the Google/Gmail re-design rationale "shaping up to be an unmitigated disaster".

Un-occupy Gmail

If Necessity is the Mother of Invention, Who's Baby's Daddy?

Why We Won't Switch Voluntarily to the New Gmail UI

Over the past week or so, we've read all the blogs, news, and comments about the roll-out of Gmail's new look.  In the pursuit of truth, justice, and leaping tall buildings in a single bound, we even tolerated a couple of videos, and this is what it comes to:  until the G-men force us to change to the new look, we'll skip it.  It can roll right past us, thank you.

First, the "new and improved" Gmail UI is rife with advertising distractions.  The subtle "oh, by the way" is bye-bye.

The PDF Lottery

A couple of weeks ago, a friend whose antiquated desktop computer will have to keep plodding along with Microsoft Office 2003 (MO 2003) until she wins the lottery, wrote asking how she could create PDF's without upgrading to MO 2010.

Here are a few solutions we found; we hope they'll help other harried netizens facing a similar challenge.

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Dear J,

With apologies for how long it has taken me to reply, here are some FREE options which will enable you to create & use PDF files from MO 2003 without updating to 2010.  The solutions fall into two principal styles of PDF'ing:

1. Create & store PDF's online, or
2. Create PDF's offline via freeware.

The solutions at #1 don't require you to download new software, will be compatible across multiple operating systems, and even if your computer crashes or you're away from your own computer and on the other side of the planet, the website has your documents and images safely filed and available to you via the internet from any computer anywhere.

It doesn't take a degree in rocket science to understand these "in the cloud" and "on-the-fly" web services are a godsend for computers with older OS, with limited memory capacity, or computers tottering along on their almost-obselete legs.