OUseful Info

The Ultimate Steal?

Having just spent an hour or so doing domestic tech support - the family PC doesn't have Powerpoint on it, though it does have a Powerpoint 2007 Viewer - I very nearly gave in to just going down to PC World and buying a new laptop and a copy of Office...

Here's how the story goes:

"Have we got Powerpoint, because I need to do a presentation...?"

"No - use Google...". Thinking - "Hmm, maybe I should mention Zoho...? No, perhaps best not to...."

"?"

"Log in to your Google account and go to docs.google.com - then open a presentation or whatever it's called..."

Later - "how do I get a presentation in to it?"

"Import a document... here, I'll show you...".

The upload hangs, CTRL-ALT-DEL has no effect and the machine needs a hard restart...

"Okay - we'll put OpenOffice on the machine..."

Thinks... "Actually, I'll put StarOffice on... It's free via Google Pack, I think..."

[Downloads and installs Star Office; my thinking is that the Google Updater will keep it up to date...]

Every time Star Office starts, there's a wizard to help open a file, start a new presentation etc... but I don't want the wizard... HOW DO I MAKE IT GO AWAY?! Cancelling the wizard closes Star Office... Okay, so I tick "Don't show this wizard again" and go through the wizard to create a dummy presentation...

Opening a pre-existing presentation by clicking on it opens it into the Powerpoint viewer, the default for our home PC.

Panic: "I can't open my files..."

"Of course you can..."

[Right click, open with...]

"How did you do that...?"

"Hang on, I'll change it so it always opens Powerpoint files in Star Office..."

"No, don't, please, don't, it won't work when I use it on another machine..."

Sigh..."Yes it will - I'm setting this machine to open files of that type in a particular application... It has nothing to do with the file itself..."

"Can I be sure the presentation will just work when I try to use it on another machine?"

"Yes - of course... just save it as a Powerpoint presentation."

Saving it gives a 'some formatting may be lost' error when saving the doc from Star Office as a Powerpoint file...

"Don't worry - it'll be fine; here - look, you can view it with the Powerpoint Viewer..."

Doesn't work - not compatible... "Hmmm..."

I switch on my Mac, fire up Parallels, open the doc in Powerpoint on Mac Parallels XP...

"Okay - it works fine in Powerpoint. So you could do what you have to in Star Office, then I'll load it into Powerpoint and save it as a proper Powerpoint file..."

Thinks... "Maybe I should just buy a copy of Office...";

Looks - a free 60 day download trial for Office is available...

"Is 60 days use long enough?"

"Why?"

"We could use the 60 day trial..."

Thinks...

"Hmm, but after then, we maybe won't be able to use the old version of Word we've currently got, and we'll probably have to buy Office anyway if you want to carrying on using Word..."

Thinks...

Aloud - "shall we just buy a copy of Office? Because you're a student it's only forty quid from this Ultimate Steal thing. All you need is a dot, A C, U K address."

"I don't..."

"What's your student email address?"

"[xyz123]", or something similar...

"@?"

"What?"

"At??? [xyz123] AT what?"

"Southampton".

"Then what?"

"ac uk."

"Right - a dot A C U K address.."

Thinks... hmm - Office 2007 ultimate, or whatever it is, might struggle on our old Windows XP Home machine..."

Looks - another - old - works laptop has appeared; Windows 98; boots - system disk error...

"Take the floppy out..."

"What?"

"There's a floppy in there - take it out and start the machine again..."

There is - "How did you know that?"

"When you booted, it tried to boot from the floppy?"

"?" - blank look...

"When you start the computer, it has to boot up... boot up? ... Never mind... Tt's, err, I've seen it happen before; and there was a floppy in the drive then; so there could be now. Take it out and restart it, it'll be fine..."

The old, old Windows 98 laptop starts up - faster than our family XP PC...

Powerpoint - success :-)

Whilst trying, "Can I use my USB stick with this...?"

Nothing - no driver...

"We'd have to find a driver..."

The machine has no wireless, is not networked.

"You could use a floppy..." - the home PC has one... "but the computer you have to give the presentation from probably won't; so you'd have to use the floppy to put it back on the PC, then copy it onto the memory stick... Do you want a new laptop?"

"What?"

"Do we need that PC? Do you just want a new laptop? And we'll put Office on it?"

Thinks - I have a new laptop for a robot project... Sighs... "Use this... the account is X and the password is Y" (there's a big label stuck on the machine with those details...

"What? Hang on. I'll write it down..."

"There - it's written there...[arghhh]... "

Starts... starts Powerpoint - something or other version incompatibility...

"There's a 'version incompatibility..."

"What? WHAT?" Click it away... "There, it's fine, what's the problem?.... Now just make sure you only save to and from the memory stick, because I need to keep that account clean..."

Tags: hassle, office

Posted by ajh59 at October 28, 2007 02:02 PM