LAST year Microsoft launched Office 2000 with a noisy party. Feedback quickly
found that the software failed to install smoothly on PCs fitted with the
best-selling US Robotics/3Com modem. There is now a 鈥淪ervice
Release鈥濃�擬icrosoft-speak for a bug-fixed second version.
Now Microsoft has launched Windows 2000 as its follow-up to Windows NT, again
with parties round the world but no briefing sessions giving the hard facts.
The new system is aimed at businesses of all sizes, including individuals,
and鈥攄espite the system鈥檚 specialised requirements鈥攕tores are
offering cut-price deals for students, teachers and parents. But, as the stores
should well know, Windows 2000 is radically different from Windows 95 and 98 and
there is a good chance that existing hardware and software will not run it. So
what technical help will Microsoft offer?
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Microsoft鈥檚 Director of Emerging Markets assured us that all Microsoft
software comes with free help on two 鈥渋ncidents鈥�. After that you pay. How much?
He did not know but thought it would be around 拢15 a time. We pushed for
clarification. A spokesman now confirms: 鈥淎fter two free support incidents
Microsoft charges for Windows 2000 at 拢185 plus VAT per incident or
拢675 plus VAT for five incidents.鈥�
Students and teachers who grab the special offer of low-cost Windows 2000
software could quickly regret it if they hit technical problems. Far better to
let someone else find the bugs and wait until Microsoft has fixed them in a
second version.
DESPITE our anguished pleas for a halt, readers keep sending in examples of
nominative determinism, the tendency of people to choose areas of work that fit
their surnames. There is nothing we can do to stop the flood, so we鈥檒l probably
cave in quite soon and publish yet another selection of those we have
received.
Meanwhile, congratulations to a molecular biologist who has steadfastly
resisted the temptation to work in the area of information technology and has
instead stuck to the profession he loves鈥攊n fact, he recently publishing a
paper in the Biophysical Journal on molecular dynamics in living cells.
His name is W. W. Webb.
IT IS a good thing that Alistair Stewart and his colleagues knew what their
employer was talking about when they received what would otherwise have been a
disconcerting e-mail from their company last month.
鈥淭he planned upgrade to Time referred to in the company briefing will not now
take place until Thursday 16 March,鈥� the e-mail informed them. 鈥淭ime will not be
available while the work is being carried out. We apologise in advance for any
inconvenience this causes.鈥�
Before philosophers and physicists get too excited about this apparent
ability to meddle with one of the dimensions of the Universe, we should explain
that the 鈥淭ime鈥� referred to here is the name of a work management recording
system.
IT SEEMS that this column鈥檚 blind-them-with-science prize, awarded to
D鈥橝ddario on 18 March, might have been premature. But how intriguing that the
challenger, like D鈥橝ddario, is a musical instrument string maker.
Here is some of what the packet of Dean Markley Blue Steel Cryogenic
Activated strings tells us: 鈥淏lue Steel鈥檚 proprietary Cryo-Tech processing
realigns and reorganises the strings鈥� molecules into a tighter more reactive
configuration. This tighter molecular configuration gives you an electric string
which is super brilliant, has a full tight bottom end and extended life. Blue
Steel鈥檚 special Cryo-Tech Cryogenic processing carefully reduces the strings鈥�
temperature to minus 320掳 Fahrenheit鈥or an exact period of time . . . then
gently and slowly [returns them] to their original temperature . . .鈥�
We think we just about understand most of this and it all sounds very
impressive, but we can鈥檛 help wondering what a 鈥渇ull tight bottom end鈥� is.
COULD it be the influence of so many laboratories that makes chemistry
operate in an unusual way in the city of Cambridge? Reader Arthur Chance tells
us he has just received this year鈥檚 council tax demand from Cambridge City
Council. In one of the accompanying documents there is a section encouraging use
of the town鈥檚 park-and-ride scheme, under which visitors park their cars and
travel into town by bus to cut down on city-centre congestion. It asks: 鈥淒id you
know that over 70 per cent of the nitrogen polluting the atmosphere in Cambridge
is produced by the motor vehicles we use when driving in the city?鈥�
HERE is a praiseworthy attempt to please those who think in metric
measurements and imperial measurements simultaneously. Rolls of fax paper
produced by Wordtech carry a label giving their size: 鈥�216mm x 30m x 1/2鈥�.鈥�
FINALLY, reader Rob White found himself without a comb when he was out one
evening recently, so he bought one in a 24-hour supermarket.
Reading the package, he was relieved to be one of the lucky ones to actually
receive a comb. It said: 鈥淎verage contents 1.鈥�