Re: [libreoffice-users] lost opportunity

marianne-x wrote:
> A minor tale of woe:
>
> I have been trying for years to convince a young lady friend to break
> away from slavish dependence upon Micro$oft, and at least give LO, et.
> al,, a try.
>
> Her Curtains machine, running on Vista, finally got so clogged with
> untraceable trash that a complete system reload seemed the only remedy.
>
> That meant re-authorizing the bundled M$ office suite and Bill,
> apparently continuing his unholy lust for revenue, refused to accept her
> utterly legitimate "product key".
>
> What a chance to gain a convert but, alas, LO queered the deal once again.
>
> I downloaded the software at least 6 times, mostly from the Clarkson U.
> mirror where TDF sends one by default, but from at least one other
> mirror as well.
>
> 4.4.6 three times, 218,736 KB each; 4.4.5 at 219,300 KB; 5.0.3 twice at
> 215,632 KB each. None of these would install, or give any indication of
> why they wouldn't.
>
> Readers may assume that my procedure is at fault, and it may well be,
> but after these failures I had no trouble fetching and successfully
> installing AOO, Abiword, Jarte, HexEdit, Foxit, Firefox, Thunderbird,
> Audacity, &c.
>
> I have a number of LO .msi files, going back to 3.5.4, on my own
> machines (all Curtains 7), and can try transporting them to the target
> via an external drive, in case there is actually something squirrelly
> about today's downloads.
>
> But, after this experience, the would-be client - fearful of change in
> any case - can be excused for looking askance at LO, and may be a lost
> cause.
>
> For my own edification, even if there's no salvaging today's fiasco,
> does anybody have any suggestions as to how such a supposedly foolproof
> process can go so far awry?
>
> trj

I have some recollection of having had problems installing software 
which required Microsoft .NET Framework on a clean system. It was 
several years ago, so not certain of the details, but it may have been 
OpenOffice. Basically, with no version of .NET installed, the installer 
would fail with a rather unhelpful error message (it would be useful to 
know what errors you got, if any). With a version of .NET installed 
(even if not the right version), the installer then gave a message 
saying which version is needed. Bit of a catch-22 I think - the 
installer couldn't run at all without .NET Framework, but having any 
version it could get far enough to work out that it's the wrong version 
and say what it needs.

It may not be the problem, as I thought Windows Vista came with a 
version of .NET preinstalled, but I may be wrong. I'm also not sure 
whether "Curtains" is another name for "Windows" or something else 
entirely? Anyway, it might be worth trying to install the latest .NET 
from <http://www.microsoft.com/net> and see if the installer will then 
run (or at least which version of .NET is needed).

Mark.


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