Odds & Ends
Odds & Ends
Quicken R5: gone again Several readers report (and I can confirm as of this writing) that Quicken 98R5, re-released earlier this week, is now gone for the second time. The page only lists R3. This is annoying enough. What is especially irritating is that Intuit offers no explanation or apology for this. It's as if they believe that if they don't say anything, no one will notice.
Solitaire Till Dawn 3.4.1 fixes a crashing bug "This release fixes a bug which left an invisible temporary file behind after quitting. The file would be visible in the Trash after the next restart. Due to a separate bug in Mac OS 8.1, the temporary file could also cause a crash or other misbehavior at system shutdown. We recommend that all users upgrade."
Vimage Updates The Vimage Corporation announced driver updates for the Vpower PB 1400 G3/233 CPU upgrade for the PowerBook 1400 and the Vpower PF G3/240 CPU upgrade for the Performa and Power Macintosh 54xx/55xx/64xx/65xx. (Thanks, Vimage and Tan Zheng Da.)
Initio drops fee for UW upgrade Initio states that "Miles UW products that have been shipping since Jan 15th 1999 can be upgraded with the boot-enabled firmware (SIM)." Older UW products will need a "BIOS upgrade in order to enable bootablility with new Power Mac G3's." However, changing their policy for these older cards, a board exchange is no longer needed and the $50 fee has been dropped (see previous item). All upgrades are now free. (Thanks, Chris Rom.)
AMO work-around suggested Last time, I described my lack of enthusiasm for the Apple Menu Options control panel. Cody Charette claims that when he downgraded from version 1.1.4 to 1.1.3, his problems with this control panel vanished. That has not been my experience, but I pass the tip on - just in case it works for you.
StylusRIP does not work with G3/BW Macs? Walter Pick writes that Epson's StylusRIP, an Adobe Postscript option for certain Epson printers is not compatible with the new G3/BW Macs. Specifically, the software is not compatible with the new USB port nor will it work with the adapter that Epson sells (USB to Parallel). According to other readers, it will work via Ethernet, if you add that option to the printer. Here's a quote from Epson (thanks, Bob Frasure):
"Epson is now in the process of working on a StylusRIP driver that will operate with a USB connection. A release date is unknown. The current StylusRIP driver does not support USB."
A reminder from UMAX: "We currently only support the Adaptec 2906 and 2930 SCSI PCI cards on the new blue and white G3 with our SCSI scanners." (Thanks, Michel Giroux.)
Power Windows and ATI conflict? David Bergeron found that Power Windows and ATI Graphics Accelerator conflict on his G3/BW. With both enabled, moving windows in the Finder inevitably led to a system freeze. Update: Leo Langheim did not have this problem.
IE a bit "too secure"? Frederik Werdmölder found the Internet Explorer would not allow any downloading if its Security level was set to "high." To fix this, either select a lower level of security. Or select Custom, set the level to high and enable File Downloads.
Starship Titanic for the Mac has finally shipped. (Thanks, Mac Gamers Ledge.)