CompuServe Messages

:::BTW I don't think it was PageMaker's fault that the disk was trashed on shut-down but that of the MAC OS. And I haven't had any Amiga program trash my files on shutdown, unless I shut it down while it was accessing a disk, which I don't do I don't think that there's anything inherent in the Mac OS that makes it easier to trash a file, I think you just "hit a glitch" of the type that can occassionally happen on any system. Files get trashed. That's why you need backups. Thankfully, it's a rare occurrence these days. If you shut the Mac off while in the middle of a program, nothing should be trashed. The problems that _do_ most typically occur from such an "improper" shutdown (i.e. turn off the power while in a program) are a) any changes you made to any open file since the last time you saved will have been lost (same as on an Amiga or any other system); and b) the Mac, "knowing" that it was not properly shut down, will, upon next boot, take an extra long time to boot, as it goes through additional file verification procedures. I know that the Mac concept of a "Shut Down" command is foreign to many people. It is really just a safety. An Amiga hard drive manual I read scared me into realizing what a good feature the Mac's "Shut Down" is. As you said, you should never shut off any system during any disk access. Well, this manual said that it is not enough to simply wait for the drive access light to go out before turning off the Amiga, because sometimes the the light might simply be off temporarily (especially in a multi-tasking system), and there may still be other information pending which needs to be written before you can safely shut down. So they said, to be safe, an Amiga owner should wait for 30 seconds after the last disk access before turning off his computer. That puts the responsibility on the [continued in the reply]