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We're off to France at the beginning of September and it would be useful to have the ASCI campsite guide with us. Currently this is loaded on an old laptop of John's.
Having recently bought myself a new Macbook I'd hoped to run the ASCI software on that, using Bootcamp, but it looks like I'd not only have to get myself an external hard drive (good idea anyway and already ordered from Amazon) but also buy a version of Windows. I'm not sure though if I'll want to use any other Windows stuff so it seems rather expensive to use one campsite guide.
The options seem to me to be:
buy Windows and be able to use the ASCI guide on my Macbook at great expense;
take a heavy old laptop away with us, as well as two Macbooks (John's and mine);
use some other source of campsite information (if it exists) that will run on a Mac;
print out what we think we need before we go;
rely on guidebooks.
Does anyone have any information or advice, please"
Unfortunately, ACSI, in common with quite a lot of IT stuff emanating from Holland, is Windoze-centric. The Dutch seem not to have embraced the Mac. So the only option to run it would be Bootcamp (better still, either Parallels or VMware Fusion, then you don't have to re-boot) and a copy of Windoze - not a Dell version. Then you would need to add anti-virus software (Intego?) as the Windoze portal would open a vulnerability in the Mac.
If you have a Garmin SatNav, there is an ACSI database that you can buy from the website (see below). That way you could bypass the Mac.
Regarding alternatives, what about Camping Car Infos? I bought the DVD last year (now available on USB stick) and copied all the necessary data files to the hard-drive on my Mac. As it is an html application, it only needs a browser to run it. Simply copy the files into a directory, then create a shortcut on your desktop to the index.htm file in your local CCInfos directory. It runs much faster from the hard drive than from the CD/DVD drive.
As a matter of interest, why did you have to buy an external optical drive, my MacBook Pro has one and I thought all MacBooks did too. Or have you got the MacBook Air?
I have a MBPro and have bootcamp on it, the copy of windows I use is XP from another laptop I own, on the windows sticker on the underside it says 1-2 CPU... so you can install it on the mac as well as have in on a PC [or a friends?]
You can get the basic windows from Amazon for about £50 if you buy the OEM version. You are unlikely to need the pro or premium versions.
The only downside is that you do not get an support.
However even I did not have a problem.
Thanks everyone, it's all useful information. We're still thinking about it. Now though the old laptop won't accept the 'control, alt, delete' start up procedure, which is part of its security protection, so that's one of the options possibly excluded.
Re the need for external hard drive, Bootcamp procedure says you have to back up all files before starting the process of loading Windows.
Don't have any Satnav as yet but might have to overcome our resistance to this at some point.
Had a look at Camping Car Infos, is it mainly about Aires?
Had a look at Camping Car Infos, is it mainly about Aires?
Chris
Yes it is, but as well as normal aires (shown by a blue icon), it shows Aires de Services sur Camping; i.e. on or next to a campsite (shown by a green icon). Many of these are Camping Municipale which I am sure you know offer excellent value.
Regarding backup before configuring Bootcamp and loading Windows, you could do this to another computer, assuming they are networked. I regularly backup my MacBook Pro to my Windows XP desktop PC, which has 3 hard disks in it (over 1/2 terraByte of space). My daughter also did a complete backup of her MacBook Pro by simply copying her files to the WinPC before upgrading her OSX from Tiger to Leopard. It all worked fine.
You need to backup because the disk is partitioned into a Mac part and a PC part.
It is also a good idea to have an external drive because you can then have automatic back up through "time machine".
On my mac I have been taking screen shots of all the campsites in northern France, I shall continue to do this until I have covered all the campsites on the database. All you need to do is select the areas you hope to visit and take a screen shot of those campsites, you can also save them all to PDF format which makes the file size bigger but might be slightly quicker. Either way you can have a copy of all the sites in the area you want to visit
It will be much cheaper and isn't that much of a problem to do on a mac. Go into Applications and find "GRAB" and drag it onto the Bar
just take the book with you, i had the book with me as i bought the dvd and found that it would not work on my mac, to be honest i don't think the acsi thing is a lot of use, because of the dates you can use it are no good. dennis
On my mac I have been taking screen shots of all the campsites in northern France, I shall continue to do this until I have covered all the campsites on the database. All you need to do is select the areas you hope to visit and take a screen shot of those campsites, you can also save them all to PDF format which makes the file size bigger but might be slightly quicker. Either way you can have a copy of all the sites in the area you want to visit
It will be much cheaper and isn't that much of a problem to do on a mac. Go into Applications and find "GRAB" and drag it onto the Bar
All the best Biglol
Easier way is to open the web page you want, then right click and choose "save as web archive". That will create an html file of about 1 or 2 Mb that you can store in a folder - perhaps a folder for each departement?
Philip
p.s. I don't see the point of saving as pdf because Grab saves a tiff by default and both tiffs and pdfs open with Preview. It might be worth converting tiffs to Jpegs as these should be smaller. If you want to use pdf, do you choose "compress pdf" in the print window? That should make them smaller.
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