This content is 19 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.
Whilst I was on holiday last week, a professional photographer friend of ours sent me a list of gear that he is selling now that he has switched from Nikon to Canon (come on Nikon, can we have a full-frame image sensor in a digital SLR please…). Unfortunately, he is a Macintosh user and the attachment arrived in Microsoft Outlook as a a .DAT file. Not having a clue what application he had created this list in, I opened it with Notepad and found the words Microsoft Excel Worksheet contained within all of the binary garbage. I opened the file again (this time in Excel) and hey presto – a list of equipment for sale!