Accordance experience on a Windows PC / tablet?

[TCanji]

As we all know money matters and so does a responsible stewardship of funds. In short - as an old time Mac user, I'm considering another platform as well namely Windows. My budget is tight and PC hardware is so much easier to acquire + there's wait for it ... Accordance for Windows! I might be hard pressed to buy a Windows PC or a tablet however I'm taking it into consideration and would greatly appreciate your feedback - ideally from those who are already running Accordance on both platforms and thus able to give a more substantial comparison between the two. Having said that - any feedback is a good feedback and a very welcomed one no matter which OS is your personal preference!
 

Also, what would be the bare hardware requirements for smooth running of Accordance on a Windows computer or a tablet - since I'm considering both options? Is Windows 10 any good?
 

I suppose the downside is not being able to sync Accordance notes, highlights etc. between Mac and Windows. If so, not being able to sync may become my main obstacle and for that reason alone I just might buy a second hand iPad and stay put within my Mac environment.

 

What are your thoughts?
 

Thanks in advance!

[ukfraser]

"I just might buy a second hand iPad and stay put within my Mac environment."

 

Tomi, up to about a year ago i was running accordance on my 16gig ipad2 which i have had for many years and was very happy with it until it pretended to die, so i would certainly consider a second hand ipad as an option. Ios 9 is very good.

Edited April 24, 2017 by ukfraser

[Michel Gilbert]

Hi Tomi,

 

Since Acc runs on my lowliest of W10 tablets, I can confidently say that Acc will run on any W10 tablet. I have an Acer Iconia W510 with an Atom Z2760 chip, and 2 GB RAM. It isn't even supposed to run W10, but somehow I got it running, even the latest Creator's Update. Anything you get will be better than mine.

 

Minimum requirements - I have 2 GB, but I'd recommend 4 GB RAM as a minimum. I had a 4 GB Windows laptop, and looking back I don't see any difference between running Acc in it and my 8 GB laptop I used to run Acc on, or my 8 GB Mac mini running Acc now. The tablet will have an SSD so 4 GB should be plenty. And, practically every W10 tablet has a micro ssd slot to add storage space.

 

Is W10 any good? I used Windows exclusively for 25 years, since 3.0, and transitioned to Mac over the past two years. W10 is probably their best OS, and I'm impressed with W10 tablet mode. I switched to Mac for a few reasons, mostly for Mellel and its handling of long Hebrew files.

 

You can do more on the desktop version of Acc than the iOS one. But, at least on my lowly tablet, the touch screen doesn't always respond as quickly as a mouse, e.g., triple click is better with a mouse. So, if you get a W10 tablet, I'd recommend tablet mode with a wireless mouse for Acc. I remember Rick saying that some features of Acc require a mouse anyways.

 

I don't know about syncing. But I thought you could sync via Dropbox on both platforms. Someone else will know for sure. But if you get a Windows tablet, your next step might be an Android phone. Acc is working on an Android version.

Regards,

Michel

 

 

Edit: A mouse will also come in handy if you have a monitor lying around. I almost decided on a higher end W10 tablet to use with a monitor, and have the added convenience of unhooking it and continuing my work in another part of the house. If I wasn't doing the kind of work I'm doing, I would have chosen that route.

Edited April 24, 2017 by Michel Gilbert

[TCanji]

Thank you!

 

@ ukfraser - for encouraging me to stay with Mac

 

@ Michael - for the good word regarding W10 ... I already use an Android phone (hush, hush) ... waiting for Accordance version  

 

Can anybody please confirm that indeed syncing via Dropbox is possible between different platforms?

 

Are there some other hiccups besides inadequate triple click response on a tablet? How serious it that issue? If I go for W10 tablet as a mobile device (there are some really affordable tablets nowadays) I really don't want to carry a mouse around just in order to triple click when needed? For that reason alone, I'd rather stick to my current version of "mobile" - my "bulky" 13" MB Air!

 

Anyone having a really pleasant experience of running Accordance on a W10 tablet?

 

Would comparing Accordance experience on an iPad vs. W10 tablet be an unfair comparison?

 

Appreciate you feedback.

[Λύχνις Δαν]

Hi Tomi,

 

  I use both Mac and Windows versions, Mac on a desktop, Windows on a laptop.

  You can sync through Dropbox between the two. I don't use it much myself but that's because of how I use Accordance as much as anything. I just don't have much need for syncing. I sometimes manually transfer the odd item I need on both but again it's rare. I would possibly use it more if workspaces could be replicated but they cannot. Well, strictly the current session can be but that's the only one.

 

  I have never used it on a tablet (Windows or Mac) but the primary difference apart from tablet-ness of the env would be that Windows tablets run the desktop Accordance product rather than the mobile one. There are a few reports in the forums on peoples experiences with Windows tablets.

 

  In respect of your initial questions, my Windows laptop is windows 10, i5 processor with 8 GB of RAM, 1TB SSD and an external monitor. Personally my laptop requirements are a bit higher spec. than required for Acc (I run a bunch of software apart from Acc for other tasks) but it runs comfortably with what I have. Windows tends to be my main platform for bible reading on a daily basis but I do a lot of searches and such on Mac. The main functional difference is that Mac and Windows controls on panes are on opposite sides, and the way you change keyboard mappings and what control keys you use. But you get use to it. As to which version of Windows is the best, there could be long discussions of this. I stayed with win 7 for a long time and occasionally wish I still used it. Win 10 though has some very nice features, like the ability to set up apps split screen side by side, the fact that with multiple monitors the toolbar appears on both and such like. However, Win 10 introduced a bunch of default features of an undesirable nature, such as sharing network information with your contacts and so on. These can, and probably should in many cases, simply be turned off at install, which is what I do. They complicated the setting of default apps adding more key clicks to do this simple task and so on. But Win 10 is workable and quite nice when you get use to it, and has the significant advantage of being the supported version of the OS. Win 10 also has an experimental bash env and installing that permits use of Linux style directory paths. As my preferred env is really Linux I find that very nice.

 

  I don't know what the bare specs for Acc would be. As I said I would shoot for a higher spec. laptop. Personally I would like to get i5 or i7, 16GB of RAM with the option of going as far as 32, 1TB SDD and the ability to support 2-3 external monitors. But I do software development, CAD, and have a tendency to keep browser tabs open for ages. The spec needed for Acc is way lower than this. The Acc website does not specify but it will run on much lower spec machines like i3 with 4GB of RAM. One of the problems with buying the minimal hardware is that software requirements continue to grow, and over the lifetime of the machine you will find yourself needing more resource. This is why expandability is important. If Acc is all that you will run then a lower spec will be fine. I suspect this is highly unlikely and that you will run a wordprocessor or research tool beside it, and email and a browser at the very least. Now SSDs are nice but spinning disks work fine and are cheaper. I would try to get 8GB in a laptop for general use these days and try to make sure more could be added later. This is a thing I like about PCs over Macs, they are generally more configurable and expandable after the fact. You don't need an i7 processor and AMD is worth checking out for sure. I have no experience with AMD based hardware so I cannot comment on specific CPUs. There are some comments on AMD systems in the forums but not many I confess.

 

  I'd suggest you look at your hardware spec on the Mac laptop you have and pick the same CPU, RAM and SSD as a starting point and see what the prices look like. That will give you an idea of what to expect. The Mac product range is small compared to the huge variety of competing models in the PC space but those three items are basic and control the price to a large degree. The next things that will add to the price will be screen size and touch features and expandability.

 

  If this has only made your choice more difficult I'm sorry, but ping back with any questions and I'll try to clarify.

 

Thx

D

[Michel Gilbert]

Hi Tomi,

I agree with everything Daniel said. But I focused on minimum requirements. I have to say, I also turned off everything I could on my 2 GB tablet, indexing, etc., to make it run faster.

You don't need to triple click on a W10 tablet. You can long press (one second) and click the menu items. For example, to look up a word in your preferred lexicon, you long press > Look Up > Dictionary. I do this when triple click doesn't work.

(As an aside, I also have trouble triple clicking on my new Mac mini - it often crashes, and I'm going to send a bug report and crash logs sometime. So even on my Mac, I have to use the the right click menus sometimes).

Otherwise, on my tablet, Instant Details pops up with a single touch vs hovering the mouse, you can select text for whatever purpose, etc. Everything works with one exception. The one thing I can't do is drag Hebrew or Greek construct search tabs into the columns. I need a mouse for that. (Maybe dragging works on newer tablets). But I don't do complex searches on my tablet anyways. I just write down my query and do it later on the desktop. I can do simpler searches using the Search menu with the tablet.

There are limits to the iPad. If I load my Purchases, it says "not for iOS" for OT in the NT Parallels, Synoptic Gospels Parallels, Q (Sayings) Parallels, Gospel Harmony Parallel, Gospel Synopses Parallel, and Epistles Parallels. And I think there are other Modules that don't run in iOS. Fraser would know more about this than I do. Also, there is no construct search in iOS. I use it basically as a reader.

It would help if you told us what you would like to do on a tablet. Then Fraser and I could share our experiences on an iPad and W10 tablet, and Daniel on a W10 laptop.

Regards,

Michel

[William B]

Just to add a little bit more content, I have a windows low end tablet (a linx 10...the very first one), an atom processor, 2gb ram, and Accordance runs great on it.  No issues and actually its generally as fast as my i5 dell laptop.  I dont know if thats because my dell uses a hard drive and the linx flash memory.