Canada

Canada must be a large country indeed. Not only it's the land of NMR software (Spinworks, ChenoMX, Mexico are the first titles that come to my mind), it's also a place where opposite working styles grow side by side. Few days ago a signed Canadian reader commented on this blog:
"...there are many who prefer to process their own data in the comfort (and quiet) of their own lab or office."
Yesterday I received a personal email from the University of Alberta:
"However much I push" [off-line processing] "at my colleagues, they remain a bunch of stubborn and conservative scientists. Some of them would even rather scan in NMR spectra for their power point presentations (...) than use" [off-line processing]. "Others insist on accessing Varian NMR files by proxy, instead of using Fugu to get the actual files and to process them elsewhere. Working via proxy makes only postscript files, which are also very large. They are too lazy to save time!".
I won't comment. Just to prevent Ryan's question: a friend told me that ACD is not Canadian but 100% Russian.
For the happiness of my readers I have found a Windows laptop. No matter that I feel uncomfortable both with laptops and with Windows, now I can discover the dark side of the NMR software. I have already installed Advasp and SpinWorks. I have also tried to install the freeware version of NPNMR. The installer did not report any alert, so apparently all was OK, yet the program doesn't start ("initialization failure" it says). Advasp had some note-worthy merits, but it's no more available. It's more useful to review SpinWorks. At first sight, it has been written by a spectroscopist, not by a programmer: usually a good sign. I haven't found the commands "undo" and "close". The absence of the latter is probably due to the fact that only a single spectrum at a time can be opened. I'd like to learn and review this program for you, yet I still have to prepare my oral communication. See at:
http://www.gidrm.org/verbania2007_schedule.html.
It's difficult to be a full-time blogger! (and a part-time blogger too).