Oxymoron In The Tropics

The work I do involves sending documents of various formats and extensions (.doc, .xls, .ppt, .pps, .txt, just to name a few).  Within upgrades of the same software, there may also be multiple formats not compatible with each other.  Sometimes I waste a whole morning just saving documents in different formats to be sent a second or a third time.  Naturally, I searched for a solution.  And it was a no-brainer.  PDF was the answer to my problem.  With documents in PDF, everyone would be able to view them. For those less in the know, PDF stands for Portable Document Format.  However, the ubiquitous (and free!) Adobe Acrobat Reader only reads docs.  I needed to be able to create them. At first I used a pirate version of Adobe Acrobat but through multiple upgrades and through the hassle of dealing with cancelling requests for connections to the Adobe website, I gave up on it.  Besides, I was busy teaching others about the evils of piracy....

Last year, I began having problems with my old notebook (Dell 700m Inspiron).  The old Faithful has served me for about six years and is STILL serving me but it just won't display pictures anymore.  I blame this on the gazillion-MB pictures produced by the new cameras.  HOWEVER, as I was expected to deal with pictures in the course of my work, this posed a huge problem for me.  At first, it was only the screen that refused to show me the pictures (they would print out fine).  But after a while, the pictures wouldn't even print out.  So I decided to walk through the shiny electronics-awash halls of Karamunsing Complex Third Floor.  The specs of notebooks and desktops flabbergasted me.  320GB hard disks, 4GB RAM etc etc.  I checked old Faithful's specs... 60GB hard disk memory... 256MB RAM... ohhh, no wonder the poor thing couldn't cope.  I upgraded the RAM to 1GB.  Pictures still refused to show themselves.  So I bit the bullet and bought myself an Acer. At first, I ...