Well Written Article about Big Sur Issues

[MartyByrde]

Saw this earlier today on the site tidbits.com:

https://tidbits.com/2020/11/13/big-sur-is-here-but-we-suggest-you-say-no-sir-for-now/

Definitely worth reading and heeding the suggestion to avoid it for now. And the part about cloning software, and specifically SuperDuper!, definitely hits home with me. And notice this statement from the article about CCC:

"However, we can’t recommend upgrading to an operating system that requires a beta release to make bootable duplicates"

I am going to wait to test Big Sur, most likely shortly after V11.1.x or V11.2.x appears. And again that will be for testing only. Will still be using Catalina as my primary, day to day OS. I am anticipating not moving to Big Sur until January, as that is when I expect Tech Tool Pro will have a version that is compatible with Big Sur. Of course, that assumes that my other 4 critical applications will already be compatible with updates.

 

[Lufbrarunner]

I have installed a fresh copy of Big Sur on an external drive and have not encountered any real problems. Despite this I will to be upgrading my iMacs until Super Duper is available for it. I will continue to evaluate it from the external drive.
My Microsoft Office 2016 will not work on Big Sur, but it is no longer maintained by Microsoft and I will be looking to update soon.
One feature i really like is the control centre, quick and easy access to the controls.

 

[MartyByrde]

Thanks for the report, Lufbrarunner. Smart move regarding not upgrading your iMacs until SuperDuper! is compatible. Again, I am going to wait until at least SuperDuper!, Onyx, and tHunderbird are compatible before testing Big Sur. By that time, I anticipate V11.2.x will be out.

Regarding Office 2016, have you ever used LibreOffice? It's an excellent suite. I moved to it about 2 1/2 years ago after having a serious issue with Outlook 2016. LibreOffice does not have an EMail module, but I solved that by switching to Thunderbird. While not a "sexy" looking as other EMail programs, it works, which is all I want. And both of those programs are free.

 

[Lufbrarunner]

I have LibreOffice on my Linux machine and it is OK, I have been using Microsoft Office, excel in particular, for 30 odd years, so I feel very comfortable with it. I may go down the route of Office 365.

 

[MartyByrde]

I have LibreOffice on my Linux machine and it is OK, I have been using Microsoft Office, excel in particular, for 30 odd years, so I feel very comfortable with it. I may go down the route of Office 365.

Understand about comfort levels. I myself do not design "fancy" spreadsheets, but the Calc Spreadsheet module of LibreOffice seems easy enough to use. Plus one has a number of Excel formats they can choose to save such a spreadsheet as.

I suspect you might have done complex spreadsheet functions with Excel. Have you ever tried to do the same with Calc Spreadsheet?