davel@booboo.SanDiego.NCR.COM (David Lord) (05/04/91)
I just tried out the PowerPoint demo off of cica. I'll make some comments
about the program after I complain about the installation process.
First, this program assumes a pure Microsoft world, and tries to create
it if it doesn't exist. I use Aporia as my Windows shell (finally sent
off my registration today!). I ran 'setup' under Aporia which dutifully
copyed the files to there correct places, make some remarks about
setting up a program manager group and promptly hung up, taking Windows
with it. I rebooted and restarted Windows and to my shock the
gawdawful Program Manager started up. 'Setup' had modified my 'system.ini'
file without even making a backup. After a substancial amount of swearing
and some fantasizing of things I would like to do to the people at
Microsoft, I re-ran 'setup' and got the program working.
I also had tried to install the program unsuccessfully on two other
machines. The first was a 486 under VPIX. I knew this would be reaching.
It installed cleanly (it installs a 'working model' of Windows if you
don't have one) but failed to run because VPIX will only run Windows
in real mode and PP won't run in real mode.
The second machine was a 486 (Micro Channel) running DOS 4.1. 'Setup'
immediately exitted saying a VGA or EGA adapter is required. Funny, I
have VGA. I ran Infoplus to see what it said about my video:
VGA - analog monochrome. Hmm. Remembering that this is from the same
company who's 'emm386.sys' (DOS 4.1) says that a 486 is "The wrong
model of processor" I stick a color VGA monitor on the system and
re-boot to get it to recognize the color. OK, setup likes the video
adapter now and starts copying the files. It gets to 10% and hangs.
Reboot, try again, same thing. Re-copy the files from my other system,
try again same thing. Think wonderful thoughts about Microsoft, give up,
take floppies home to run on my own machine (see above).
Once I finally got the #$%* thing working it ran quite nicely. It seems
like a very good program for making presentations with some nice features
and very easy to use. It seems odd to me that they didn't use the Windows
Help facility to do the Help. This caused me some confusion at first but
it turns out that the Help is a PP presentation. The advantage is that you
get to use the program while you read the Help.
One other warning, I used a mail server to get the program from cica
(why oh why doesn't the INDEX at cica include the size of the files?)
and it turned out to be about 2.5 meg, that's 69 pieces to deal with. Gag.