Well, there were a few more quirks with the 'replace the monolith'
project I am on (which is, FYI, to replace all Microsoft software
except Windows itself, and IE on a few unavoidable occasions).
It's not my network I am doing this on. I personally would never be
converting to or from Outlook Express. I wouldn't so much as tell it
my email address! However, to continue..
..The addressbook used by this copy of Outlook Express turned
out to be managed by the Windows Address Book application
WAB.EXE .. when I clicked on Address Book in OE, WAB opened
and displayed 400+ records. But when I went to the file that
appeared to be the addressbook and opened it, it only contained
200+ records. It turned out this was because there were in fact
two addressbooks on the computer, although WAB.EXE was only
showing me one.
I have to admit, I am a WAB.EXE novice, so I may well have done
this wrong, but in the end I made a new address book - this caused
WAB to expand the addressbook tree to display the one I made,
the one WAB was displaying, *and* the one OE was displaying!
I was then able to drag-and-drop the 400+ contacts in the 'main
identity' contact list to the WAB contact list.
I don't advocate storing your vital contact information in a
proprietary format that you cannot easily manage with other
software, back up, etc. What if the the next Melissa emails itself
to everyone, then deletes your contact list? However, I am yet to
discover a decent alternative to WAB.EXE... suggestions? (I
personally use a text file, which is extremely accessible, but not
very private).
The second issue was with Pegasus Mail. The bug we found is: it
cannot handle folders containing non-alphanumeric symbols such
as an exclamation mark. It will read a folder with those symbols in
it, however the folder is opened, Pegasus Mail 3.12c GPF's. If the
folder is renamed, it opens fine.
There is a third issue with Pegasus Mail not correctly reading
messages that had attachments (when they were in Outlook
Express). However I suspect the use of Eudora 5 as a go-between
caused this problem, as it decoded all the attachments (as
described in previous msg) and inserted some weird line into each
message.
A fourth issue has arisen whereby StarOffice couldn't find the files
it needed to install the Adabas database component. This arrests
us on our path to replacing Mucrosoft Access. Despite a decent
effort at locating it on the Sun site, all that was found was some
text saying 'the link "download Adabas" will let you download the
Adabas components..' .. however there was no such link on the
StarOffice 5.2 download page on www.sun.com. A visit to the
wesbite of the makers of Adabas, Software AG, failed to produce
the 10-15Mb file described both by Sun and by the StarOffice FAQ
(URL to follow). However it did let me download a complete (55Mb)
copy of Adabas. I am yet to see whether this will integrate with
StarOffice. Stay tuned.. :)
I suppose I should mention issue 5, which is that Office 97 requires
the setup CD to uninstall. Office 2000 does not have this flaw.
Although, I seem to recall a quick hack of some SETUP.LST file
somewhere fixed this.. Daren?
Lastly, unrelated to M$, please find attached a very useful program
that provides a view of vendor and device ID's, for each device on
the PCI bus(es) in your PC. This program is really cool when
Windows says 'new hardware detected' but it doesn't say exactly
what it's found. To save taking the computer apart to find out what
sort of soundcard it has (which may not even work, if it's embedded
into the chipset as they are "these days") .... run the attached
prog, then search on the internet 'PCI vendor device list' ... you
may wish to keyword-search the page that you'll find listing every
PCI device ever made. Once you've found your device you can
then scoot off and get appropriate drivers, etc.
Stuart
Attachments:
C:\PROGRAMS\DIAG\Pci22.exe
generated by msg2page 0.06 on Jul 21, 2006 at 19:04:43
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