Odds & Ends

Palm MacPac and MS Word conflict? After installing the MacPac software, Richard Bornat reports Finder crashes associated with Microsoft Word 5.1 and Microsoft Word 98 (especially when printing). He found that removing the Instant Palm Desktop extension resolved the problem. He also found a similar report involving Claris Instant Organizer (on which the Palm software is based) and MS Office, posted to a Word 98 bug report page.

JetDirect upgrade: a follow-up Regarding the JetDirect firmware update needed for some older HP printers, reported here last time, Chip Carter states that "to run the A.05.05 firmware updater one also has to install and run HP's Download Manager. Bob Bleau adds that, according to an HP statement, the flash upgrades to the J2552A JetDirect cards can only be performed on firmware version A.03.06 and higher (but Ted Thibodeau disputes this, saying he was able to update an older firmware).

Formac SCSI card comment Andrew McNaughton notes that the Formac PowerRaid Ultra Wide SCSI card, when updated to firmware 1.3.2, worked perfectly and was Open Firmware bootable.

Intuit Quicken 98R5 has been released. Steve Rosen offers this tip: "If after updating, you get a message about 'cannot add string to dictionary' while in the register. Perform a Command-Option-B to rebuild the indexes and internal headers. Fixes the problem and generally a good idea to do with Quicken if you are having any sort of problem." 

Update: The R5 update has been removed from the web page. Only the R3 version is now listed. [Great. Just after I updated my copy. I wonder what surprises are in store for me.] (Thanks, Chad Jones, David Freeland, and others.)

Quicken Quotes not working Cliff Weber claims that the Quicken Quotes feature of Quicken 98 has not been working. He contacted Quicken technical support and they indicated that they are aware of the problem. It has to do with some problem on their server, but they did not know when they would be able to resolve the problem. Update: Eric Goodill says that the Quotes feature works for him.

MacAlly mouse freeze fix Ted Cannon had a system freeze with the MacAlly 2 button mouse. MacAlly tech support told him: "Delete the Point Device, which consists of 2 extensions, 1 control panel, and 1 Preferences file. Reinstall this software, but do not yet restart. Trash the Preferences file once again, then restart." This worked.

Paste-It work-around not a success? In our Mac OS 8.5 report, we posted a suggestion that removing the "PasteIt" extension would work-around a conflict with Quark 3.x versions. Kyle Skrinak found that this did not work for him. He states that Quark's tech support also acknowledge this issue.

Linux info MacCentral has an amusing article on the Linux by Andy Ihnatko - and they have started a Linux Forum.