 The magazine of the Melbourne PC User Group The Perfectionist Ray Beatty raybea@melbpc.org.au |
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Catastrophe comes, like the end of the world, not with a bang but with a whimper. So it was on Saturday night when I switched on my computer. It clunked and clicked but instead of triumphantly beeping, it just settled into a sick whimper and whine. After eleven years on computers and thinking I was immortal, disaster had finally struck: my hard disk had crashed. I couldn't believe it, but it was dead, and the 250 MB of programs and files were sunk without trace.
Fortunately this particular machine does not hold a great deal of valuable business data, so there was no great loss of information or money. The computer was less than a year old so the manufacturer replaced the hard disk without cost. But do you know how long it takes to reinstall 250 MB of programs? It's not just sitting there for hours feeding in disks and typing install. It's trying to remember what particular little setup tricks and idiosyncrasies you had worked out over the years. Those are the things you never think to backup: all those little config files and setups and phone directories and screen colours. Oh my I've had some busy nights trying to get up to speed.
Share the pain
But diasters are nothing if not democratic. They share themselves around as I discovered the other day while chatting to Mark Goile, Victorian Manger of WordPerfect Pacific. We were talking about the visit to the May meeting by his boss, Bruce Lakin, and the problems they're having, waiting for the new WordPerfect for Windows 6.0a upgrade to come through. He was so relieved that it was due by the end of the month and he'd be able to pacify all those who had been snapping at his heels, Melb PC and WordPerfect User Group included.
As he talked he was paging through his E-mail messages when suddenly down the phone came a pause followed by a groan: "Oh dammit!" It was a message from Utah. There had been some problem with the networking aspects of the upgrade and they were warning all their people world-wide that they didn't know how long it would take to fix.
Having seen what the WPUG did to him during his visit the month before, I could understand his agony. "Now I'll have to tell everyone that they won't be getting the upgrade after all. They'll eat me alive!".
I made sympathetic noises and left him composing his excuses.
If trouble comes in threes, then this cycle was completed by Andrew Phillips of Hayes Communications. I called him to see what progress there was with supplying the new V-Fast 28,800 bps modems at club prices, that our members have been so eagerly awaiting (not to mention Ash, gnawing his desktop as he waits for his promised Internet modems while fending off a barrage of disgruntled networkers).
"They've supposed to have been on their way for weeks now and last week we had Dennis Hayes over here again," he confessed, "I asked him where they were and he's trying to chase them up in the States but there is some production problem and we just can't get hold of them". He was so obviously anguished and apologetic that I found myself smoothing him down, telling him not to get so concerned and that I'm sure our members will survive a little longer and not blame him for the problems.
I suppose that's what comes of playing at the leading edge of new technology - it all happens so fast that we grow to expect instant gratification and then get frustrated with delays which a few years ago would have been regarded as minor.
A Word of Redemption
Privately and in print I've been critical of WP6 for Windows, and quite rightly because it has flaws that need to be fixed, and soon. But on the other hand, the things that it can do are quite remarkable. So to be fair I'll pick out a couple of features which are quite brilliant.
For a start, its save as/format command is worthy of a $100 program in its own right. You can save in 13 different word processing formats - a total of 37 versions, and of course retrieve from them as well. Already at my work this has taken over as the de-facto file conversion application so whenever someone sends us a disk in MS Word or Ami Pro we just retrieve it into WPW6 and then save it in whatever format is needed. (Figure 1).
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Templates
The templates are great fun - as well as being practical. You have some 70 professionally designed templates to choose from, everything from invoice forms and fax headers to newsletters
and letterheads. The viewer allows you to choose which one looks right; then when you select it, up pops a please-fill-in questionnaire where you put your particular details. Bingo! a personalised document is created which you can then save for future use.
Watermarks
Take a look at the pet shop letterhead. (Figure 2). That was one of the letterhead templates; I selected a more appropriate typeface for the banner, then picked out a graphic for a watermark, printed faintly in the background.
Reprinted from the July 1994 issue of PC Update, the magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia
