My wife and I moved to China recently and purchased a new computer (shipping costs for the old one vs. new one in China). We have a legitimate Windows XP program in Chinese. The only English versions are pirated, so we avoided those.
Our problem is that some of our English software (Adobe Premier elements, McAfee virus protection) are not running or installing correctly with the Chinese Windows. I am thinking about installing a free OS such as Ubuntu. What I can’t see listed anywhere is if any of our software we brought from the States will run on Ubuntu or any other free (English) OS. This would include games and the previously mentioned Premier elements. Also, my wife is a huge digital scrapbook freak and is emotionally tied to Adobe Pagemaker. I don’t think I could get her to switch to a similar open-ware program.
Have you tried using your Chinese XP license key with an English XP CD? Do you have an install disc back home, maybe?
BTW, are you ever going to be reading Chinese on the computer?
In my experience, XP doesn’t play well with Chinese webpages, documents, and programs (or any non-European language, for that matter) unless you run the Chinese version of the OS itself. Vista is MUCH better at this – if that’s even an issue for you.
There are a handful of programs for which versions exist for both Windows and Linux, and a fingerful of those have both versions on the same install CD. I think some Blizzard games are released this way, and back in the day, Bungie released all of their games as triple-platform disks (Windows, Mac, and Linux).
But for the most part, you’re sadly correct. Even when versions exist for multiple platforms, you usually have to buy them separately.
I have not personally tried it, but everytime somebody brings up that you’ll need Windows to play most games, somebody invariable brings up WINE. You can read up and download this program at http://www.winehq.org/. Also, they have a database where users have reported how well WINE works for different programs on different flavors of Linux at http://appdb.winehq.org/
Though I would have most likely gone the illegal route, I do admire your morals when it comes to pirated software.
Somebody did mention Wine, a few posts before yours. But I would caution against taking Wine enthusuiasts at their word. It says here, for example, that the popular application Digiguide works well under Wine. But it doesn’t, at least not compared to how it runs under Windows. Scrolling through TV listings, a pretty fundamental aspect of that particular application, is horribly slow under Wine.
That’s just one example, from a niche application. But there are thousands of little apps like that, and no doubt the Wine database claims that many of them “run well”.
Thanks for your help. After talking to my wife, we decided to buy an English Windows system (nudge, nudge, ) after taking the effort to buy a legitimate Chinese OS.
Simplico - I tried it but nothing happened afterwards
404 Clue Not Found - I’m still learning Chinese so having random messages pop up becomes more like a game of chance. “Will this message get rid of my error or will it crash the computer?” Needless to say, for at least a couple of more years, I need an English OS since I will not be doing as much reading of Chinese web pages.
