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Bill Edgley, a ZFREE user, writes bitterly (and copies me): "To whom it may concern...is there anyone who might be concerned? Several weeks ago I sent you a polite e-mail complaining of the hopeless delays...to get a connection to ZFREE from Hamilton. Your response advised that all should be remedied within about 7 days. Well, the problem hasn't been remedied, has it? I've just made 40 attempts (yes, I counted them) to get a ZFREE connection but without success..."

How well I recognise the tone, for it was my own in the early days of the net. I don't know that I want to be used as a stick to beat ZFREE, but on behalf of all 'free' ISP users I was concerned enough to call ZFREE's spokesperson Rochelle Lockley, who says that sudden success has overwhelmed their expansion plans which are being revised as we speak. Extra ports are being installed at frantic speed, and she promises that apart from congestion at peak times (particularly at certain exchanges) things should settle down in the next few days.

* * *

Jim would appreciate some help: "Sometimes when I download a program off the net some of the fonts are unreadable and look like wingdings font. An example of this is Pandora's Box Trial program where most of the on screen instructions are unreadable".

This makes me feel totally stupid, because it happened to me about 5 years back and the fix is quite simple – only I can't remember what it was, and nor can Microsoft's Tom Crozier. Can anyone help?

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Heaps of replies to Peter Scott's request for a CD database. Tony Briar recommends the Music Database on Yippee.net, and Eric Watson (no, not that one) reminds us of a very good template included in the MAC version of FileMaker Pro.

Jack Maddox adds:

1. He may find the MS Manual "Getting Results with MS Office 97" useful ( p626), using the database wizard "Catalogue your Music Collection."

2. I make my own in Excel. 6 columns wide with the headings "#/Title/Artist/Tracks/Minutes/Category." I have six categories - Female Singer/Male Singer/From the Shows/Variety/Instrumental/Jazz - broken down as "FS/MS/FTS/Var/Ins/Jazz." This way I can 'sort' by artist/variety/jazz/number of tracks/time, etc.; plus, should I have to make an insurance claim, I can list every one of them!

There you go, Pete – take your pick.

Links:

Yippee.net


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