a thousand furnished rooms

I paid for and installed the Beta sometime in June as I recall. I remember noting that it would expire in or around November, but I assumed there would be some orderly transition to the full product. I also assumed, apparently incorrectly, that I would be informed of the need to upgrade or uninstall the Beta in advance of its expiration. Perhaps an email would arrive, or some sort of pop-up would appear informing me of my options.

Sadly, no. Instead, Monday morning comes, I turn on Outlook, and I get a message informing me that I need to upgrade the Beta, or remove it. The pop-up, as I recall, offered no other information. There was a link in the Help area to the Beta web site. Silly me, I figured it would have information about how to purchase the upgrade.

Sadly, no again. Not a word (pun intended).

I then went to the main site for Microsoft Office. Still nothing.

I then went to the main site for Microsoft support. Still nothing.

Now, I will admit that I was not my normally patient self. I had work to get done, and my "productivity" software was dead in its tracks. So I put away my credit card, and went with option B: uninstalling the software.

It was simple enough to uninstall, and it was clear that my (earlier) Office 2000 was still on the computer—at least according to the Control Panel function.

But, guess what? With the Beta uninstalled, Office 2000 no longer worked. Dead in the water. Up the creek without a paddle. (Had enough water analogies yet?)

So I had to reinstall Office 2000. For me, this means reinstalling Office 97 (full version) and then installing the Office 2000 upgrade (both bought and paid for, still in their original jewel case, etc. and never installed anywhere else but on my own machine).

I then faced a small series of problems that you get when you do this kind of thing. First I couldn't properly synchronize my Treo with Outlook. I had to settle for a synchronization that puked some redundant records into both my Outlook and my Treo. Then I had to get email to actually work in Outlook again—a controlling .dat file had been corrupted in the process. This last problem I solved myself through the knowledge base on the Microsoft support site. By the end of the day, I was back to normal, sort of, but a full day behind on my work.

Isn't software wonderful?

I was comparing this to other bad days I have had. For instance, the subzero February morning when, recovering from the flu, I discover one of my tires is flat. I try to change it myself, but between the cold and my weakened condition, I almost snap in half trying to loosen the first lug nut. I retire to my warm kitchen, call AAA, and wait 40 minutes until they show up with a big honking jack and a power tool to remove and replace the tire. Next thing I know, I am motoring off to work.

Cars were very hard to maintain when they were first introduced. I understand that early owners of automobiles had to be just as skilled at fixing their machines as they were at driving them. The prognosis at the time was that automobiles would never thrive with such a burden. Eventually, cars became nearly automatic. As have refrigerators, TVs, microwave ovens, and virtually every other device and appliance. Isn't it time we expected that of basic computers and productivity tools?

At they very least, couldn't Microsoft have made it easier for me to give them my credit card number?

(For the record, I am now two days into using my older version of Office, and I only miss a couple of things—a nice auto-fill feature in the Outlook "To" window, and the way that Word allows you better control over formatting when you cut and paste between different documents and applications. I am going to live without them for now. Microsoft is free to call, though, if they have an easy way for me to upgrade.)

Bill Trippe
btrippe@nmpub.com