Digital vs physical media which do you prefer?

[Zardnaar]

Depends on format.

I prefer physical books but don't mind PDFs if they're cheap enough.

Gaming more or less switched to digital. Space is becoming an issue.

 

[Ryujin]

I believe the word processing program in question was Microsoft Works.

I wonder if WPSConvert might not do the trick?

‎WPSConvert - for MS Works

‎WPSConvert is a fast and easy way to batch convert Microsoft® Works documents into Microsoft Office documents, PDF and RTF formats. If you receive Microsoft Works documents as email attachments or you switched from Windows to Mac and wants to open and read Works documents? The easiest way to...

apps.apple.com

 

[Bedrockgames]

Digital media can be more convenient, but I prefer physical media. I have run into too many issues watching digital media, or with having platforms replace good scans with cheap ones. And things come down from digital, never to return, if you have physical media, it is yours until it's dust. That said, I do like having the option of digital. I have hundreds of wuxia movies on DVD and bluray. And I recently moved and had to transfer them all to a DVD binder because there simply wasn't space for all the cases in my new place. So lately I have been leaning more on digital simply to save space (however I keep running into horrible transfers on platforms like prime).

 

[trappedslider]

I believe the word processing program in question was Microsoft Works.

Oh, I remember that from elementary and middle school and more importantly the jokes

 

[GreyLord]

I believe the word processing program in question was Microsoft Works.

I'd make a copy of that file and use the copy to do this.

Use Libreoffice, than double click the file and define it as a to be opened by Libreoffice as a .wps file.

Supposedly that works to open the old Microsoft works spreadsheets. The Office 365 since 2020 is also supposedly supposed to be able to open those documents.

I don't have any experience with either one to validate it in regards to Microsoft works documents or spreadsheets, but do have experience with Libreoffice with some older files that it opens (seems more versatile than MS office overall...that's just MY bias though).

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Thanks for the ideas, y’all!

 

[Lanefan]

Physical all the way for me. If I've got something digitally I assume I've only got it temporarily.

I just can't be arsed to do the work required to back stuff up to the extent some of you seem to.

For us, letting go of the need to possess physical things just to get at the media content has been a huge quality of life improvement. It also saves us a fortune.

To the bolded: how?

I'd rather pay $35 once for a physical copy of a movie and have it forever than pay $15 every month for a streaming service that may or may not allow me access to that movie when I happen to want to watch it.

And the physical copy NEVER has ads in it!

 

[Clint_L]

Physical all the way for me. If I've got something digitally I assume I've only got it temporarily.

I just can't be arsed to do the work required to back stuff up to the extent some of you seem to.

To the bolded: how?

I'd rather pay $35 once for a physical copy of a movie and have it forever than pay $15 every month for a streaming service that may or may not allow me access to that movie when I happen to want to watch it.

And the physical copy NEVER has ads in it!

There are very few movies that I watch over and over, and the few that I do watch again on occasion are easily accessible online. If I needed to, I could own a copy - nothing's stopping me - but I don't need to. $35 is months worth of streaming many movies and shows. On top of that, my space is worth money to me, and a huge amount was freed up when we got rid of shelves of books, CDs, and DVDs.

Streaming music gives me an all but unlimited library. I previously had well over a thousand CDs in my collection, which means I spent upwards of 20k on music. Streaming is, what, a couple hundred bucks a year, for my entire family? So that 20k would have bought us basically all the music in the world for a hundred years. Available anywhere, and I can download whatever I want (I currently have about 6k songs on my phone). It can't wear out or get lost, and my money isn't tied up in piles of plastic that will sit in the environment for a thousand years, slowly breaking into micro-particles and poisoning wildlife (I can't get too self-righteous about this, though, because my miniatures collection...). I can access it anywhere, any time. But, again, if I want there's nothing stopping me from buying physical media. I just have no use for it - my quality of life is way better without it.

Or books. I typically pay half price or less for ebooks, just have to remember to bring one light reader when I travel, it lights up when I need it to, I'm not killing trees, I can purchase a new book from my patio when I want...there's just no comparison in terms of value. Occasionally I do want a physical book (typically for illustrations), and then I buy one. It's not an either/or proposition. No one's making me go digital. It's just way better for me. YVMV.

But there's no question that digital media is vastly cheaper than physical media. I've lived both. All you have to do is go on Amazon right now and compare the cost of ebooks to paper books (hell, there are tens of thousands of free books you can download to your reader any time you like).

And if you do assume you have something temporarily...for most things, that's a feature, not a flaw! My kid doesn't need to deal with a houseful of my crap when I kick it. I've found that paying way less money to have something when you need it, rather than way more money to have it when you don't need it, is liberating! I have more money, more space, more content (vastly), and less stuff!

I think humans mostly cling to tangible things for psychological reasons, even when it doesn't make much sense.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Eh. Once you've got it set up, doing backups is no worse than shelving physical items so you can find them.

 

[S'mon]

Computer games - digital, although I worry about losing access due to Sony-style shenanigans.
Music - happy to stream not own.

Text - This varies a lot. Novels, definitely physical. For RPG stuff it depends hugely. An adventure PDF is very handy to have e-copies of the maps & art. But I'm still printing it out to run it. For a monster bestiary a print copy is far more useful, plus for D&D a Roll20 copy of the monsters if I'm using it there. PDFs can be cheaper even with printing; I now have all of Arden Vul printed out for much less than it'd cost to buy in print, after buying the PDFs on sale.