NB Win availability

["Fred Powledge" fredpowledge@xxxxxxxx]

Listpersons,

I bought the Scholars' Workstation version after asking for a demo
disk and not getting it. The company promised it would go out
"tomorrow." When tomorrow stretched into more than a week, I called
and pitched a fit. Asked them to cancel the whole thing. This was a
problem for them, since (as many of you have discovered) they had
long ago charged my credit cards for it. I was offered a deal:
overnight shipping at their expense. I said yes. Unfortunately, the
"overnight" shipper was Airborne, which has never been able to
discover where I live and doesn't have enough sense to call me and
ask. I pitched a fit with Airborne and got it three days late, about
the time the demo disk arrived in the mail.

The program is nice; installed without a hitch, and the addins (Ibid
and Orbis) look much improved over their Signature-era versions.
It's fast, though dyed-in-the-wool Xywrite users might not
evennotice that. There are absolutely no useful written
instructions; I consider this a crime against good sense, which is
what NB pitches itself as being a paragon of. You're expected to
learn by experimentation and endless dabbling in the Help files. And
computers were supposed to save us time!

I so far have been unable to import Word 8 files (though NB claims
to have a filter for this). There is no filter for Rich Text that I
can find. When I save Word 8 files as Word 6, NB still won't import
them (stack overflow, etc.). Similar when I convert the Word files
to text. This is a major drawback for me, since much of my work is
done for international organizations that have standardized on Word.

There's a money-back guarantee, which I assume NB is prepared to
back up if necessary. I'm still deciding. If you get it, I suggest
you be prepared to pitch fits. I lived in New York City for 25
years, so fit-pitching was easy and somewhat pleasureable for me
after a dozen years in rural Maryland.

Good luck.

--FP.

============================================
Fred Powledge - Writer, Editor, Consultant
Voice: 301-373-5466  -  Fax: 301-373-3788
fredpowledge@xxxxxxxx - fredpowledge@xxxxxxxx
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