Fellow netters,
I finally have the time to compose the promised HIT. As we seem to work through
some of our tech problems, others are appearing. It has been a frustrating
change-over to all MACs. Your suggestions and support have been most helpful
in keeping our sanity through the process.
Below are listed the responses I received. I hope that Sagebrush will address
some of these items concerning the MACs and OS X. In the meantime, their tech
support has been wonderful.
Thank you all for your help.
Mary Buckley, SLMS
Mt. Blue HS
Farmington, ME
mbuckley@mbms.msad9.k12.me.us
„h Our district has five schools, all running Spectrum, four of them with Mac
servers, one with PC. Those running the Mac servers have constant recurring
problems. I am the one on the PC, and in 12 years, I have had one major
problem, and that was finally traced back to a hardware issue. I consider
Spectrum for Mac a trouble-ridden program, while Spectrum for PC seems to be
one of the most reliable out there. It has finally gotten to where the other
schools are considering moving to a PC server, and keeping their Mac clients.
(Incidentally, I run a mixed bag of clients, some PC, some Mac, and the clients
run beautifully either way. It is only the server that seems to have problems
running on a MAC.) Good luck!
„h You probably have, but just in case you didn't - did anyone contact Tech
Support to see if there was something that should be done to convert Spectrum
form the PC environment to the Mac environment?
I know when I first called about upgrading they were very careful to be sure
they knew what platform I was using.
„h What browser are you using? If you are using Safari that could be your
problem. As much as I LOVE Safari, particularly for its ability for blocking
pop-up windows, it does not work with some things. Try using IE on those eMACs
and see if it works. There is a patch that can be downloaded from Version
Tracker that can make Safari emulate IE, but unfortunately it doesn't 'lock'
into that, you have to select it every time, making it a real pain to use with
students.
At least I am assuming this is a browser-based program...I'm a Follett customer
myself and know nothing about Sagebrush's products.
„h We have circ/cat and upgraded from OS9 to OSX (which I think comes on eMACs.
In the research we have done Spectrum is mainly a windows program. While it
does run in classic 9 it does not run well in OS X. We are looking whether to
upgrade to Spectrum in Windows or pick another automation system. Would like to
hear of any other problems you have?
„h I'm not sure if this is your problem, but WebMARC Enabler must be installed
on each of your client stations. There is a different version for the Mac, as
you are probably aware. Good luck. Hope it is as simple as this!
„h Which version of Spectrum? Which Mac OS? We are on Spectrum version 5.3 and
Mac 8x or 9x and most things work OK. There are some differences with reports,
things that can't be done on Macs but can be on PC. We have also found that
Spectrum doesn't work right on Mac OS 10x. We currently have a mixed district
about half Mac and half PC (140 schools).
„h I think tech managers should check out programs' capability to run on
platforms before they make blanket decisions. But, that said, I am afraid that
you will find there are certain functions that the Macs will not be able to do
or do as well as they did on the PC. Most of those involve reports and label
creation as I remember. I don't work directly with Macs most of the time. But I
do know that in this district, we have tried to include at least one PC at each
Mac school to compensate for those things that crop up that Macs can't do on
certain cross platform programs. With spectrum, there are no work arounds for
at least some of the issues.
„h I don't have any solutions for you, but I would be extremely happy if our
district went with an all Mac environment. We're are getting rid of the Macs
in our district and I'm disappointed with the decision.
„h My unofficial job this year is to hound Spectrum about developing an
all-native OSX Winnebago system. We are an all Mac district and while
Winnebago runs in Classic, it has its glitches. We don't have WebMARC so I
don't have any answer for your glitches. I can only say to hound Spectrum so
they develop the software the correct way.
„h We as a district have been on Spectrum for several years now, and I haven't
heard of any similar problems. Sagebrush technical support is very good, both
phone and email.
Try them first! I know our servers are all PC, and most of the elementary
schools are Mac based.
„h Please pass on what you learn! We are running Spectrum on an old system 9 MAC
server and it is fine going to the administrative/circ PCs, It is my
understanding that Spectrum will not run on MAC system X. Therefore the
library catalog is only available on our old system 9 Macs or if you start up
"classic" system on the new system X machines.
I am faced with the quandary that my PCs are ancient and I can buy the MACs, but
if the program won't run on them, I don't know what to do. We are also making
all student and teacher computers MAC. It is one of my goals to sort this out
this year.
„h Our district was 100% Mac for many years, and I constantly experienced
problems, including the need to rebuild after frequent crashes and inconsistent
advice from Sagebrush tech support. Last spring, we converted to a PC server,
PC circ station, and Mac patron stations (catalog only). I have not experienced
any problems since then. Spectrum (like all the other library catalog systems)
are written for PC's, then modified for the Mac (only a limited few even offer
a Mac version of their catalog). As you probably know, there is no "true" Mac
OSX Spectrum version even yet...it runs on Mac OSX machines by booting up in
Classic 9. I'm not sure why your district decided to go to Macs, but my
experience with Spectrum, as well as MANY other application programs used by
our elementary students, is that they work seamlessly on PC's. I wish I had a
fix to offer you, but I'm truly hesitant to be optimistic about getting top
quality service using Macs
with this program(:
Quoting Mary Buckley <mbuckley@MBMS.MSAD9.K12.ME.US>:
> Fellow netters,
>
> Our district has been moving from PCs to MACs. As this has occurred in each
> building, the librarians have noticed increased problems, especially with how
> MACs "behave" with the Sagebrush Spectrum program. We are all running the
> latest version of Spectrum Suite.
>
> At the high school, we subscribe to WebMARC and have been very pleased with
> the
> product. This fall, all the student PCs in the library were replaced with
> eMACs. Now, none of the WebMARC sites come up when doing a search, but still
> appear on the librarian's PC.
>
> Has anyone experienced glitches with their MACs and the Spectrum program? I
> should tell you that we are each using a PC server. These problems only seem
> to appear on the MAC clients. Any words of wisdom?
>
> TIA,
>
> Mary Buckley
> Librarian
> Mt. Blue HS
> Farmington, ME 04938
> mbuckley@mbms.msad9.k12.me.us
>
>
> --
>
>
>
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