Monday August 30 1999, Frits Spieker writes to Christer Jacobsson:

 FS> And then Christer Jacobsson mumbled something about 'Netscape
 FS> Communicator'.

 FS> Well, taking into consideration that it took you 3 tries to post the
 FS> message I am responding to now, I won't rule out user induced error at
the
 FS> start, but here goes:


 CJ>> Pray, show me *how* I should fill in the critical fields, i.e. name,
 CJ>> userID, phone, email adress and so on to gain access to the download
 CJ>> aera! And no, I have Cookies enabled for ALL sites, blowing your
 CJ>> theory to kingdom come!

 FS> It was not a theory, just a question. Maybe there is a "rude moron"
filter
 FS> in use at IBM?

It's very hard to be rude when filling out a form consisting of your name,
adress, e-mail adress, company name, phone/fax number and so on, especially
when there are *no* comment fields where one could put rude utterances. What I 
did was entering my bona fide name, adress, company name, ZIP, phone/fax
number, country and e-mail adress.


 CJ>> Explain that!

 FS> Maybe it doesn't like you yelling at it?

If putting my country name and home city name in capital letters is
considering "yelling", then IBM is extremely sensitive. The guidelines laid
down by SPS (=Swedish Postal Service) for writing postal adresses suggests
*very* strongly that you write your city name and country name in CAPITAL
letters and that you prepend your Swedish zip code with the characters 'S-'
signalling this is a Swedish zip code.

But the thing that I think is very curious is this: After submitting a
correctly filled out form, I'm transported to a web page stating that I can't
download the 4.61 previes. BUT, after 7-10 days, an email from IBM appears in
my mailbox, and in that email I'm presented with a login URL which I am to use 
with my registered UserID & password, so I can go to that page and download
4.61 preview and updated plugin pack. All well and good - but when I submitted 
my registration form, nowhere was I informed that I would be provided with a
login URL in an email that would appear about a week later. So I have now
downloaded 4.61 and it's accompanying plugin pack update well and good.

OK if IBM can't grant access to the download site for us non-US users
immediately, but they could at least inform us that we *will* be provided a
login URL about a week later if our submitted reg form is accepted - such a
message would be a boon for our peace of mind.




 CJ>> international telephone number that will be accepted by IBM? I've
 CJ>> tried both +46-60-500xxx and 46-60-500xxxx but no one of these were
 CJ>> accepted as

 FS> If you entered the country correctly, you only have to fill in your area
 FS> code and subscriber number. In your case that would probably be something
 FS> like 0600-500xxx. If you do insist on filling in the whole thing, try
 FS> (+46)-60500xxx. (That worked for me: (+31)-1024xxxxxx.

 CJ>> I'm completely stymied - if this is a piece of IMB:s so-called
 CJ>> custom-friendly policy, I can only hope that M$ will crush IBM
 CJ>> utterly.

 FS> Well, if that is your desire, why then don't you do what could be better
 FS> for your health; wipe OS/2 of your HD, install Windows 98 and start
 FS> whining in the Windows support areas that your registry got corrupted
 FS> again and that you have to re-install Win98 yet again?

I have *never* have W*n 95/98 installed on my system: but I *have* PC DOS 7
and my old trusty Win 3.1 installed on a primary partition and NT4 on a NTFS
partition, just so I can run things that requires straight DOS, Win 3.1 or NT. 
And I will NOT give up OS/2 and install the 95/98 junk here as I like OS/2 too 
much to give it up. But I don't like that Communicator/2 seems to be much more 
sluggish than it's 16-bit (for win3.1 and Win-OS/2) counterpart: as a veteran
OS/2 user, I think it should be the other way around.

Admittedly, OS/2 is a vastly superior OS compared to W*n 95/98, much more
stable and trustworthy, but *why* can't Communicator/2 4.04 or 4.61 be as
smooth and responsive as their win3.1 counterparts? I've compared Communicator 
4.06 (16-bit) running under Win-OS/2 to Communicator/2 4.04 and Communicator/2 
4.61 preview 2, and the 16-bit (win31) version under win-OS/2 don't freeze up
for 10-15 seconds every 1-2 minutes as it's OS/2 counterpart does, despite
that the cache settings are the same for the OS/2 and win31 versions of my
installed communicator software.



/GAIA (Insulin User - 3rd Anniversary & 18th Wedding Anniversary :-) )
       Team OS/2      E-mail: cribo.jacobsson@gaea.se

--- GoldED/2 2.50+ 16SW2