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Microsoft is hard at work trying to finish their Windows 98 Service Release which is due sometime early next year (first quarter) and which should fix a number of bugs in Windows 98.
Speaking of bugs... Symantec has posted a fix for the Remote Explorer virus which attacks Windows NT servers and workstations encrypting and corrupting files. The fix works with Norton AntiVirus and is available via Symantec's LiveUpdate.
In the meantime, if you're Furby curious click here for some technical explanations about this "must have" toy of the 1998 Christmas season (and a link to the extremely interesting Furby Autopsy page).
A bug in Exchange 4.0 running on 2 Windows NT 4.0 servers in the U. S. House of Representatives has caused a massive email backlog in traffic related to the pending impeachment vote of President Clinton. Click here for details.
Iomega has released a 250 megabyte version of their Zip drive. This drive is compatible with older 100 megabyte diskettes. Click here for details.
Think you have Y2K problems? Ha! We came across this article and the title says it all: U.S. and Russia Work to Avert Nuclear War Because of Y2K Bug. Meanwhile, Microsoft rolls out another Y2K strategy and promises more tools in the first quarter of next year. Click here for more.
If you're gearing up for the new Euro you'll want to get the Euro Enabled Fonts for Microsoft Office. You'll have to update Windows or NT to support this new currency and then install the necessary fonts. Click here for details.
For those of you with absolutely no interest in Y2K the Victoria Secrets site has gone online.
Meanwhile, Robert X. Cringely has a fascinating take on the Microsoft vs. DOJ and Microsoft vs. Sun court cases. Seems a small company that you've never heard of might hold the key, er, patent, to Java and the browser wars. Click here to get the scoop.
If you want a sky-is-falling story: apparently the Palm Pilot handheld computer can be used in place of your car alarm IR gizmo. Put the Pilot in learn mode and train a button to emulate your car alarm remote. We've heard stories that you can run a program on the Pilot that will "crack" car codes. Fact or Urban Legend? Hmmm, Excel on the Palm Pilot... the first practical phaser?
You can get a good perspective of the AOL/Netscape deal from Robert X. Cringely.
Windows NT 4 Service Pack 4 (SP4) fails to plug two denial of service attacks. Click here for details.
Microsoft has 21 templates available for PhotoDraw 2000 that can be downloaded from the Microsoft site. These templates (8 megs worth) have a "communication" theme. Click here.
There are also a number of articles on Microsoft Project of the tips and how-to variety available. Click here.
An update on yesterday's notice on Office 2000 Premium Beta 2's expiration date. PhotoDraw 2000 expires on 3/31/99 while the rest of the beta expires 8/1/99. This is because retail PhotoDraw 2000 has been widely available in stores since late October.
PRIME Consulting Group, Inc. has announced its new dealer program for PRIME 97 for Word 97 their popular Word add-on utility package. Click here for details.
Microsoft announced it will discontinue providing its own Java Virtual Machine on the Macintosh and Unix platforms a day after sending out a letter to OEM, developer and Solution Provider customers promising Java support. Click here for details.
Microsoft has posted a couple of Knowledgebase Articles for users having trouble with Office SR-2 and Outlook 98:
OL97: Error Received Installing SR-2 Patch If Using Outlook 8.01 (Q195045)
OL98: How to Install Office 97 SR-2 Without Removing Outlook 98 (Q191952)
The U.S. District Court has ruled that Sun Microsystems is likely to prevail on the merits of its licensing case against Microsoft and has issued an injunction giving Microsoft 90 days to stop selling versions of software with Java technology that have Windows-only extensions to the Java language. This includes Windows 98 and IE 4. Click here for more details.
Click here and choose the Consumer or Corporate Preview Program. But be sure you're up for the hassles involved with beta software including the issue of trying to get the final released version installed over the top of the beta stuff. Beta testers are like early pioneers and are easily recognized by all the arrows sticking out of their backs.
If you're curious about Microsoft PhotoDraw 2000, check out the review by Liesl La Grange Noble in the November 1998 issue of PC/Computing, page 114.
Check out Paul Thurrott's Windows 2000 Supersite at http://www.wugnet.com/wininfo/win2000. Paul has the latest news and inside information on the upcoming Windows NT 5, er, Windows 2000, (W2K?) offering from Redmond. In Paul's latest newsletter he says he'll be including articles about alternative operating systems. Hmmm, maybe he's trying to tell us something.
Microsoft puts Chromeffects, its graphics technology to give Web sites with the same kind of multimedia effects and animations found in gaming environments, on the back-burner. Announced back in July it has been pounded by criticism from the developer community since the release of the software developer kit was released in August.
William Zachmann has written a killer review of Outlook Annoyances for CompuServe Computing Pro. Mr. Zachmann says things about the book like:
If you're a CompuServe member you can read the entire review here.
The November issue of PC/Computing magazine is on newsstands now! In this month's cover story Undocumented Internet Secrets you can find the best tips, tricks, steals, and deals from Lee Hudspeth, T. J. Lee, the PRIME Internet Commandos, and the Editors of PC/C. Click here for more information.
There's quite a buzz building over a new feature in Office 2000 Beta 2 that requires the product be registered. If after 50 uses you don't register, it stops working. Despite the Microsoft line, this "feature" is designed to stop piracy. If you try to register the same copy of Office more than once MS will know it. How do you feel about this? No big deal or is smoke coming out of your ears. Drop us a line at the Update Desk and let us know your thoughts on this. update@primeconsulting.com
Microsoft says that the "Best" platform for Windows NT 5, er, Windows 2000, is a 450-MHz Pentium II with 64MB of RAM, and 10 Gbytes of hard disk. Click here for details.
Already there's a sequel... Halloween II - The Memo! More on what Microsoft says about Linux internally. Click here for details.
Netscape has released TuneUp for IE (see the Oct. 1st Annoyance Update). TuneUp adds some of the features of Communicator and Netcenter's portal site into rival Internet Explorer.
Microsoft's Internet Explorer 5.0 Beta Release is available for daring pioneers to download. Pick up a copy here:
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/ie5/?/windows/ie/ie5/main.htm
In case you missed it... Microsoft has decided to rename Windows NT as Windows 2000, which Annoyance Update predicted back on the 12th.
For those of you who couldn't put down Wendy Goldman Rohm's exposé, The Microsoft File : The Secret Case Against Bill Gates, the source notes have been made available. Click here to get the details.
Meanwhile PC World has picked PRIME Consulting Groups' Office add-in utility, PRIME 97 for Word 97, as one of their TOP TEN Office Add-ins. Click here to read the PC World Top Ten list, or click here to order PRIME 97 for Word 97.
An Overview of Microsoft Office 97 SR-2
The IE bug mentioned on the October 14th Annoyance Update now has a patch. Pick up your copy over on the Microsoft site. You can click here to get more information about this bug on C|Net.
Taking their case to the court of public opinion (no, no, not Clinton) Microsoft has posted a 40+ page document detailing their position in answer to the Department of Justice case against them. Things like Microsoft is not a monopoly, never harmed Netscape, doesn't co-opt or crush any potential competition in its massive steel jaws, believes in the Easter Bunny, etc., etc. Click here to access the Microsoft 40 page document.
DDE, then OLE, now XML the Extensible Markup Language, is being touted by Microsoft at their Professional Developers Conference in Denver, as "glue that binds data and objects". XML, along with Extensible Style Language (XSL), the XML document object model (DOM), and XML Namespaces will all be a part of IE5 and future versions of Windows. As if the computer industry needed more TLAs (three letter acronyms). Click here for more details.
Also at the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference, it was announced that Corel has licensed VBA for its suite of office applications. Look for VBA to appear in WordPerfect in the first quarter of 1999. Click here for details.
Meanwhile, check out the schedule for an Office 2000 Preview event near you on the Click here for details.
Microsoft pledges to support the Web Distributed Authoring and Versioning Protocol (WebDAV) in Office 2000. Click here for details.
Download the patch when it becomes available from this page. Or order the SR-2 Direct Drive version on CD-ROM from this page. It's not clear if the Direct Drive version is the SR-2 Replacement CD (which is a full install of Office with the SR-2 updates) that you can order from Microsoft at (800) 370-9272, or will just be the re-released patch on a CD. Our advice is to call and order the SR-2 Replacement CD.
Meanwhile the next version of Office, Office 2000 or O2K as it's fondly referred to, will come in the following flavors:
Standard Edition (contains Word, Excel, Outlook, and PowerPoint)
Speaking of beta's, Microsoft's FrontPage 2000 will be in beta by January according to an article on C|Net. Click here for details.
Starting mid-October, Microsoft will be beating the Office 2000 drums at User Groups across the USA. No posted schedule as yet but you can check out the Preview Office 2000 page by clicking here.
Netscape will release TuneUp for IE by the end of October. This software adds some of the features of its Communicator browser to users of rival Microsoft's Internet Explorer. TuneUp will be a free download when available. Click here to read about it on PCWeek Online.
In unrelated news it's expected that tomorrow Intel and Netscape will announce that they have taken equity positions (read "invested a pile of money in") in Red Hat Software which markets a version of Linux. Hmmmm. Click here for details.
The buzz is that NT 5.0 will ship sooner than expected, perhaps as early as first quarter 1999. Click here for the scoop from PCWeek Online.
If you hype it, they will come... MS pockets a cool 60 million bucks from four Web search companies by featuring them as the premier search engines on the MSN portal page. Click here for details.
SR-2 can be downloaded (20 Mb+), or you can get it on the SR-2 patch CD, which can be ordered from MS free of charge (although MS is waffling on whether it'll be free outside North America).
OFF97: List of Fixed Problems in Office 97 for Windows, SR-2
Microsoft announces PhotoDraw 2000, a photo-editing and drawing package, due to be released next month. Estimated price tag is $149. There's talk of adding this application to the Office 2000 suite but there is no final word at present.
Al Gordon, a former reporter and editor for Newsday magazine, now appears on the TNPC masthead as a Contributing Editor. Al's penned a great article in the current issue on how to answer the question, "Should I buy a new system, or upgrade my existing computer?"
A while back Microsoft started dropping the "concurrent" provision of its licensing agreements on Office products (Excel, Word, Access, PowerPoint, Outlook). Redmond is now quietly doing the same with BackOffice products. Undoubtedly this will result in higher fees and more revenue for Microsoft. Click here to read an amazing C|Net article on the software giant's licensing sleight of hand.
Symantec gets dinged in court with an injunction under which they must recall its Norton Uninstaller Deluxe product. CyberMedia Inc. claims copyright infringement on the Symantec UnInstaller product. Click here for more information.
Archive Updates
Brought to you absolutely free by the award-winning authors Lee Hudspeth and T. J. Lee...
September 98 — December 98"It includes new versions of Word, Microsoft Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint, Publisher and Microsoft Access. Plus two products making their Office debut: PhotoDraw 2000, the all-in-one illustration and photo-editing program for creating professional-looking business graphics, and FrontPage 2000, the latest version of Microsoft's popular Web-authoring software."
"Leonhard, Hudspeth and Lee tell you all the stuff about Outlook that you need to know but that you are not likely to find in the documentation. They tell you the straight stuff about all the different versions. Best of all, however, they tell you how to get around the glitches and to make it work for you and for your organization. They do not hesitate to criticize Microsoft for Outlooks’ annoyances, but they show how to deal with them and are genuinely enthusiastic about the product."
http://home.netscape.com/smartupdate/su_tuneup.html
ftp://ftp.microsoft.com/bussys/winnt/winnt-public/fixes/usa/nt40/ussp4/nt4sp4i.exe
or order the CD-ROM at
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/downloads/contents/
Updates/NT4SvcPk4/OrderCD.asp.
PowerPoint Custom Settings Lost After Installing SR-2 Patch
SR-2 Patch May Fail to Update Admin Installation
ClipGallery Opens Slowly After Installing Office SR-2 Patch
How to Install ValuPack Components Updated for SR-2
SR-2 Patch Fails Even Though SR-1 Has Been Installed
Contents of the Read_SR2.txt File on the SR-2 Patch CD
Cannot Remove Outlook If Not Updated with Patch
Error Opening Net Folders Invitation After Installing SR-2
SR-2 Patch Can't Update Admin Install Without Bookshelf
Small Business Edition (contains Word, Excel, Outlook, Publisher, and something called "Tools")
Professional Edition (contains Word, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint, Access, Publisher and Tools)
Premium Edition (contains Word, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint, Access, Publisher, Tools, plus PhotoDraw and FrontPage)
Developer Edition (contains everything in the Premium Edition plus something called "Developer Tools")
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