AFTER READING THIS FILE, CLICK THE "FILE" MENU (IN THE WINDOWS
PROGRAM) AND CLICK OFF "PSL-NEWS".


=== Words & Graphics

The section of the month for this CD is Words & Graphics. This
includes word processing programs & utilities, clip art in both
PostScript, GIF and PCX format in DOS and in BMP format in Windows,
printer utilities, desktop publishing, drawing programs, and fonts.

Due to CD-ROM space limitations, we had to leave off some
programs which were on the last Words & Graphics CD-ROM (Vol. 3,
Num. 5: March 1995). The bulk of the programs omitted were in
areas which don't appear to have much user interest anymore, such
as DOS word processing.

However, if you see a lot of programs in the database which are
on the March 1995 CD and which you would like to try, you can get
that CD for a special price of $6 plus $4 shipping.

Unfortunately, in the last Words & Graphics CD (March 1995), we
also had to drop some programs from the previous one (November
1995), and that CD is completely sold out now. Until a higher
capacity CD comes along, this pattern will be sure to repeat
itself, so subscribers - hang onto those old CDs!

--- Special Word Processors:

Not everything in the DOS word processing sections was dropped.
We kept some of the more unique apps, such as word processors
which output in sign language (for the deaf) and in Braille.

For the vision impaired, there are editors which put large fonts
on the screen and/or print with large fonts. Of course in
Windows, you can edit in any font size you want, so maybe even
these DOS editors are no longer needed.

The DOS grammar and spelling checkers and translation programs
are really worth a look if you are a diehard DOS user.


=== PC Tech Support is a Total Disaster!

We are in the 16th Year of the PC, but computer hardware and
software manufacturers act like they are still in Year 1.
Products are buggy, frequently incompatible with other hardware
and software (Plug-And-Play notwithstanding) and getting help is
virtually impossible for most products.

Following are experiences I have had with recent purchases. Sadly,
these are not exceptions. In fact, the rare exception is when a product
works as advertised right out of the box and/or tech support is easily
available and helpful.

Now, nothing is perfect, so it is to be expected that a certain
small percentage of people will have problems with some products,
but in the cases below, it appears that a huge number of users
are having trouble. Even worse, however, is the inability of tech
support people to provide even the most basic help.

--- Sound Blaster AWE-32

This is a wonderful sound card when it works. It comes with
Plug-and-Play software for those not using Win95 and this is
supposed to make set-up automatic.

It doesn't.

I got the AWE-32 because I wanted the wave-tabled sounds and
because my old Pro Audio Spectrum card and software could not be
made to play MIDI files (for which I could get no tech support,
of course).

After installing AWE-32, I got beautiful MIDI sounds in Windows,
but WAV files would not play.

I logged onto the Sound Blaster forum on Compuserve, expecting it
to be the easiest and most economical way to get help, and left a
message describing my system and problem in detail.

After getting no response for several days, I read the other
messages and replies on the forum and discovered that dozens and
dozens of messages were being left daily with problems with the
AWE-32. Dozens more messages were complaining about not getting
answers on the forum and the inability to get through to a human
on the tech support phone line.

I left a message a couple more times, addressed to techicians who
had left messages to others. Although I did get responses to my
messages, I never did get any help with my problem.

The only consolation was that I was not the only one suffering.

--- Sierra's Ultimate Pinball

After reading a good review of this CD-ROM based game, I popped
for it, took it home, put it in my CD drive, typed WIN SETUP from
the DOS prompt of the CD drive, and got a message saying that the
SETUP I was using would not work with this program and to run the
SETUP that came on the CD (which I was already doing).

I tried running SETUP from File Manager and from Program Manager
with the same result. Ultimate Pinball could not be installed.

The box had a sticker saying "Optimized for Win95", but it also
said on the box that it was compatible with Win31 (which I was
running). I had also asked the store clerk who assured me it
would run under Win31. Nevertheless, I suspected that it was NOT
compatible with Win31.

I went to the Sierra forum on Compuserve to ask. Again, I never
received a reply. Meanwhile, I have tried it on a Win95 system
and it runs there.

--- 11th Hour

I installed 11th Hour and started it up. When it starts, my
screen blacks out, but I can hear the music. I have to press
Reset to get out of it.

For this, I decided to call "live" tech support (long distance on
my meter, of course). After endless instructions to press 1, 2 or
3 for such-and-such, I finally get in a queue to talk to a real,
live person. However, another recording then tells me that the
queue is full and could be a 20 minute or longer wait.

I have heard horror stories of people waiting an hour or more (at
great long distance cost) and NEVER getting help, so I hung up
and sent a FAX instead.

The next day, a technician actually returned my call and we tried
several things, but none of them helped. He promised to send a
patch, but it has not yet arrived.

--- Adaptec SCSI Controller

Adaptec is supposed to be a high-quality SCSI controller, but of
10 SCSI drives that I have tried on 3 different Adaptec cards,
only ONE will boot from any of them.

I had better luck getting through to Adaptec's tech support, but
no luck in getting help with the problem. Nine out of 10 drives
won't boot from their controller, but they act like they have
never heard of this problem before.

--- Visual Basic 4

After long delays, I finally got an upgrade to VB4. I wrote a
small, but interesting (to me) application, and compiled it.
Thinking that it might be worth sharing, I used the Setup Wizard
to create a setup disk and program for it.

The Setup Wizard's conclusion was that my 20k application needed
over 30 ADDITIONAL ADD-ON FILES TOTALLING OVER FOUR MEGABYTES to
be distributed with it.

Previous versions of VB were bad enough as the run-time module
which people needed to run VB programs grew larger (270k, 350k,
400k) with each release, but VB4 is clearly insane.

Again, a trip to the support forum on Compuserve found dozens of
people complaining about VB4. I left my complaint asking for
someone to tell me that a 20k program didn't really 4+MB of
runtime modules, but Microsoft's response was that that's how it
is and that if I didn't like it, I should return the product (to
a mail-order company who is not about to give me a refund).

--- WebSite Server

Yes, even the software this site uses is not without problems.
The main reason for starting this site was to offer on-line
credit card registration of shareware.

In order to do this, a program had to be written in "CGI" format
which the WebSite server could understand. Using the WebSite
manual's samples as a model, nothing worked the way the manual
said it would.

Calls and email to tech support went unanswered for a long time
and when someone did respond, once again they were not able to
solve the problems.

Slowly and painfully, experimenting endlessly to get each line of
code to work, the order program was finally completed. The
program itself is VERY small and had it not needed to be written
for the WebSite server, it is a program that would not have taken
as much as an hour to write. Instead, it took nearly THREE
MONTHS!

--- Win95

I finally broke down and tried to install Win95 on my personal
machine. It took over 5 hours. First it partially trashed one of
my hard disks (not the one being installed to), causing me to
have to copy off the remaining files and to reformat the drive.

Several programs, old and new, don't run under my Win95 setup,
including Netscape.

--- How Does Shareware Compare

In the old days, people often turned to shareware because
"retail" software was grossly over-priced or simply didn't have
programs to cover all the niches.

Now that retail software is priced competitively with shareware
and is often available for all the same niches, the last big
advantage seems to be that shareware is less buggy and that tech
support is easier to come by.

It is simply inexcusable for software publishers to require
people to hang on a phone long-distance for a half hour or (much)
more. They should not release software if it is that buggy or
incompatible, or if they do release it anyway, they owe it to the
public to make tech support easier to reach and more responsive.

Meanwhile, users should appreciate shareware authors more for the
support and quality they provide.