Sender: owner-online-news@marketplace.com
Precedence: bulk
Status: RO
X-Status: A

On Fri, 21 Apr 1995 ddern@world.std.com (Daniel P Dern) said: 
Here! Here! Daniel, I've had exactly the same experience... with nearly
every net package and software on my several Windows systems fitting with
each other... Windows 95, however, should be a solid end to this nightmare
-- or at least part of it. I've had great success using Win95's built-in
TCP/IP and dialer capabilities to access the net... 
 
Rich S. 
 
 
I haven't tried the CI$ software yet, but based on my experiences 
trying various packages over the last few months, I'm hardly surprised. 
 
For example: 
 
SuperTCP couldn't find one of its own files on its CD to install. 
Chameleon generated duplicate icons when I tried to do an upgrade. 
Some other package overwrote my THREED.VBX file, rendering NetCruiser 
  and SLIPknot dead in the water. 
 
Meanwhile, two packages warned me during installation that if I installed
their 
modules (I think the winsock.dll's, possibly their tcpman.exe), they 
might not work with other vendors' software. 
 
One of my buddies reported that an early version of Internet in a Box 
(from Sprye) blew away his mosaic.ini and hotlist file. 
 
Sadly, this sub-industry is a joke in terms of 'user-friendly'
installation. 
None seem to think any user might ever have any other TCP/IP program on our

computer.  Or that we may not appreciate programs that do what they want 
without telling us.   
 
This is hardly limited to Internet Windows software; almost ALL Windows 
installations exhibit the same arrogant user-hostile attitude.  I am hard 
put to believe these are the products of a multi-billion dollar industry 
that's been around for a decade or more in the aggregate. 
 
Quick tips: 
 
a: create a separate directory or so and keep backup copies, carefully
renamed, 
of key files for each Internet app, such as: 
  the WinSock.dll 
  the *.ini 
  any hotlist(s) 
  their tcpman.exe 
   
and the THREED.VBX file version it uses. 
 
This is why I want a separate test machine, when the budget for it 
permits.  Sigh. 
 
We'll be talking about these problems briefly in the Internet session I'm 
doing next Wednesday at ComDex/Spring in Atlanta  ("Exciting Front Ends 
to the Internet" [ not my title] ). 
 
-- 
Richard Santalesa 

From owner-online-news@marketplace.com Fri May  5 13:41:22 1995
Received: from marketplace.com by cnj.digex.net with SMTP id AA19277
  (5.67b8/IDA-1.5 for ); Fri, 5 May 1995 13:41:18 -0400
Received: (from majordom@localhost) by marketplace.com (8.6.12/8.6.12) id IAA04156 for online-news-outgoing; Fri, 5 May 1995 08:08:37 -0600
Received: from relay4.UU.NET (relay4.UU.NET [192.48.96.14]) by marketplace.com (8.6.12/8.6.12) with ESMTP id IAA04150 for ; Fri, 5 May 1995 08:08:34 -0600
Received: from alterdial.UU.NET by relay4.UU.NET with SMTP 
	id QQyokm06354; Fri, 5 May 1995 10:09:20 -0400
Received: from [199.171.143.71] by alterdial.UU.NET with SMTP 
	id QQyokm13807; Fri, 5 May 1995 10:09:15 -0400
X-Sender: mail00486@alterdial.uu.net
Message-Id: 
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
To: online-news@marketplace.com