There are still many of you out there at smaller newspapers that have yet to make the leap. For years, you have known you need to eventually upgrade your layout software and migrate to a modern operating system. But you are still getting the paper out on the old stuff, right?

That is, until lack of support for your antique equipment and production flow drives you to the edge of the cliff. My advice: Go ahead and jump.  

“It’s just too expensive,” says Gustine, Calif., publisher Susan Mattos. “We are still running Quark(XPress) 4 on OS 9 and lower.”

Mattos says her publications, The West Side Index, Gustine Press-Standard and Tuesday Review, will likely leap soon because she will have to, but it won’t be easy.

“We have machines that will have to be replaced and we will probably shift to (Adobe) InDesign so that requires us to learn new programs.”

In contrast to Mattos, Randy Sunderland, general manager of the Delta County (Colo.) Independent, made the leap.

More stable

 “We have 15 workstations with Macs, ranging from three 233 megahertz G3 desktops to more recent G4s and laptops. We decided to convert to (Macintosh) 10.2 initially and have since migrated to 10.3, which is much improved and more stable,” Sunderland says. As part of the upgrade, the Independent also moved to InDesign, dropping QuarkXPress in the process.

Although migrating didn’t cause Sunderland any major headaches, he said those poised to make the leap should make sure their new machines have enough RAM to run the OS and apps such as InDesign.

For the Independent, that meant Macs with 512 megabytes of RAM, an increase termed “an easy fix and relatively inexpensive,” Sunderland says.

“We also replaced every mouse with scrolling, three-button mice because OS X and InDesign use the right click for a lot of shortcuts,” he said.

Few bumps

There were a few bumps. The 233 MHz G3s needed freeware app XPostFacto in order to run 10.3. The computers also required new hard drives. The machines’ existing 4GB drives were insufficient, but upgrading to 40GB drives proved to be an inexpensive ($60 each) solution, Sunderland says.

Sunderland says he had to partition the drives because older machines only recognize the startup if installed in the first 8GB of a drive. The upside is the upgraded drives were all 7200 rpm and made a noticeable difference in performance.

“We kept OS 9 on the machines so we could run in classic mode with Quark, but urged everyone to learn InDesign as quickly as possible,” he says. “Classic (mode) is not as stable with our older Quark, and we had several freezes that went away as soon as everyone shifted to InDesign.”

Sunderland also ran into another Quark-related hitch when upgrading.

 “Under OS X 10.2/classic, Ethernet network works fine with Quark. But under 10.3/classic, you cannot see the files listed on networked servers unless you create an alias of the folders you want and keep them on your desktop,” he says.

Finding the answer

“That took me about three weeks of research to find out (the answer). However, it was quite a motivator to learn InDesign when you could not easily open files under Quark.”

InDesign had its own challenges. While installation was straightforward, “We had to do a lot of work with our fonts” to weed out older fonts that interfered with setting up templates, he says.

The learning curve associated with moving from Quark 3.2 to InDesign was steep as well.

“You have to pay close attention to the cursor to tell exactly what mode it is working in,” Sunderland says.

“We also found out InDesign is a desktop hog - Our older 15-inch monitors are barely adequate.”

Stagger deployment

The Independent staggered its InDesign migration to make the move less stressful. “InDesign libraries are a great feature, but we found it necessary to make changes nearly daily to our libraries as we developed templates for stories, photo cutlines, boxed photos and stories, etc. Then we discovered character and paragraph styles - which is the wrong order,” Sunderland says.

Instead, he advises that new users map out their style sheets first, and then move to story boxes.

“We developed a full-page template and locked that in. Then we built libraries for each reporter, with boxes with headlines, bylines, etc., already grouped.”

Sunderland said it took about three weeks for the Independent’s designers to become comfortable with InDesign with another month before they were confident.

Still learning

Now, six months after the conversion, “I’m still learning new things about the program,” Sunderland says. “There is no doubt our decision to convert was the right one. Because the app converts our older Quark files without major problems, we were also able to save a lot of our older ads and the libraries are great time-savers for everyone.”

Is it possible to leap just a little bit? Perhaps. You can buy a five-license copy of OS X 10.3 for about $200. Even if you don’t upgrade your current page layout program, you can still run it in classic mode. It is not ideal. You will encounter problems. But if you take that approach, you should be able to identify and prioritize some of the problem areas. In addition, you begin the process of learning OS X, and you’ll quickly find which apps you own will work with the new OS and which ones won’t.

Obviously, making a leap requires a commitment in faith. Just remember what St. Augustine said 1,600 years ago: “Faith is to believe what you do not yet see; the reward of faith is to see what you believe.”

If it worked for St. Augustine, it can work for you.