OT: Re: A Critique of Word & Co.

["J. R. Fox" jr_fox@xxxxxxxxxx]

Patricia M Godfrey wrote:

> the latest version of the
> free Acrobat Reader requires you to have IE 5.01. Thus, though it claims
> to be compatible with Win 98SE, SE comes with I.E. 5.00, so you cannot
> install Reader 6 unless you have "upgraded" to the latest Redmond
> Rubbish.

Typical. Some other things are now insisting on that as an installation
pre-requisite. I hope that the quite ingenious Innotek port of Acrobat
Reader to OS/2, when it moves on to version 6, will manage to be free of that
nonsense. Quite honestly, I am so disgusted with the way WinCrap has been
taking my multiboot system down recently, it wouldn't take much for me to
chuck them altogether. Just give my a reliable way (*not* a $400. VPC that
MS now controls, which won't be around much longer and can't be updated) to
run a few key Win app.s from my preferred os, and I'm gone.

> (And run the risk of exposing your PC to whatever may lurk on
> the MS site. First time I ever went there, the next time I tried to use
> Netscape, it wouldn't work.

Quick guess here: one of the more "charming" things about app.s run on that
accursed platform is that, on installation, most of them want to grab all the
key default associations (.HTML, .JPG-- whatever may be relevant for that
type of app.), and either cripple or freeze out any competitors. For
example, you can't have access to the breadth of Net media content unless you
have Shockwave / Flash, Apple QuickTime, *and* RealPlayer installed for your
browser. They are all de facto standards. However, unless you are very
careful (Advanced Install, answering "No" to most of the Default Association
questions), and maybe a little lucky, in installing the latter two, they will
clash, the last one installed rendering the other one inoperable.

In order to use the MS site (for direct updates, if that's what you did), you
have to go there with IE. When you use IE, depending on what you are doing,
or maybe some detail that went by too quickly and casually for you to notice,
I think it can "take over" as your only browser. (This is just based on my
own observation, from a few systems I've worked on.) It may be that your
installed Netscape got the heave-ho, in this fashion. There probably is a
way to get it reactivated, but I don't know the procedure.

Jordan