Winds of Change

written by Charles DeVore

from Mouse Tracks May 2000

Microsoft will take its case to the highest court possible. That's just all there is to it. This will take years and millions of dollars to complete the appeals process. Being a good American I'm supposed to think this is a good use of my money. I don't and you should not. What really should happen here is that a time limit should be set and the case finished in one year. I hate it when I see lawyers getting rich for no good reason at all. Maybe Apple should loan them a Mac so they can get their research finished up. Just think of how many companies MS can buy in five to ten years while this is going on. Chances are pretty good that MS could buy the White House by then. In fact rumor has it they want George W. Bush in office because they think he'll appoint judges that favor them.

Sometimes it's not just the computer stores where you have to look for good deals. Office Depot is where I bought my latest monitor. That's right Office Depot. I can't even remember what we had gone in for when I saw it on sale. A ViewSonic 19 inch model A90 for $400.00; right next to it was the $50.00 rebate coupon from ViewSonic which would bring the price down to $350.00. Just remember you need to have enough video RAM to drive a 19 inch monitor. However just to show you how fast things change at those stores, as I was picking up my monitor an employee was changing the price to $429.00 taking back most of the rebate for later buyers. This tactic reminds me of Safeway's buyers card: raise the prices then put the items on sale for what you would have paid for it to begin with.

The System 9.0 Updater is out now. Apple was starting to look like Castlewood, the makers of the Orb drive and its software. It's always going to be out "next week". At any rate 9.0.4 has hit Apple's web site. The rush to download it should have slowed by the time you read this. If not maybe you should just give up and wait for the 9.1 updater which is due out in July. After loading the 9.0.4 update on to my B&W G3, my Wacom tablet's mouse will not recognize all of my screen. Other wonderful things like my flash card reader isn't recognized at all. So much for a smooth update. Also because my B&W has a hardware DVD card, I can't use the new DVD drivers that Apple just released. That would not bother me if my DVD player didn't lose sync between the picture and the sound under System 9.0.4. So it's back to 8.6 for me.

Speaking of Castlewood and the Orb drive; they have released a ROM updater for Orbs made after January 1, 2000. Only they didn't point out to most folks that you were not suppose to use the updater on drives made before that time. This has caused some users to render their older Orb drives useless by trying to update them. Note there is no updater for the older Orbs and Castlewood has issued a statement that there will not be one coming out. That leaves those people who flashed their drive having to send them in to Castlewood for repairs or exchange. The question I have is how in the world does the average user know when his drive was made? After all, Castlewood is using Apple's naming plan; you know the one where all PowerBooks are PowerBooks and all G3s are G3s. Whatever happen to using name changes to show the product has changed?

Virus software isn't worth a hoot if you don't update it monthly. That's right, every month new virus definitions come out. And without those your Mac is only protected against the viruses that were known when your virus program was last updated. Yes I'm talking to you new virus software owners. When your software was created and put in a box, it was the last time it was updated. So if you really want to be safe, update your virus software monthly. You can find that update file on the PMUG BBS (Electric Sheep) or on the Web.

For Toast Pro 4.0 owners there's a new updater for your software. This updates your version of Toast to 4.0.2. Your best bet for installing this software is to remove your current Toast software. Be sure and remove any preferences and extensions. Do a fresh install of Toast 4.0 and apply the update. Then, and only then, start the program and put in the serial number. This prevents problems with the install and update. For those who don't know, Toast is one of the highest rated software products for writing CD ROMs on CD ROM burners.

Apple announced on 4/5/00 that they would invest 15 million dollars into Kanisa. This is supposed to help user support. To quote the Apple press release "Apple and Kanisa will work together to create a customized implementation of Kanisa ESP, an automated, online customer service solution that emulates an experienced customer service representative, to guide customers through Apple's comprehensive service and support website at www.apple.com. Apple's adoption of Kanisa's e-Service solution will allow customers with diverse levels of computer experience to easily and accurately access information designed to answer their individual questions." I'm not sure I like this, the average customer really wants to talk to a human, not type hundreds of words into a computer to get a problem solved. What happens when you can't get on the Internet to ask that question? I can hear the recording now "I'm sorry all our operators are busy right now; please stay on the line for the next service representative, estimated wait, 5 hours."

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