Ah yes, Microsoft Office 2000, the most powerful, most user-friendly yet… So there I am, re-installing Frontpage 2000, and it wants a qualifying upgrade product. Fair enough, and it probably won’t settle for selecting itself, like Office 97 did.
So I reach for my old FP98 CD, and bung it in the other CD drive. Now, which one is that… F: or G:? No hints from the dropdown box, so I try G:. Bzzzt – wrong! And what does this marvellous program do then, give me another try? No way! Cryptic error message, and installation bombs out. How nice.
And when it works, it installs Internet Explorer 5 – even though it was already on the machine – with all the fiddly bits you wouldn’t normally expect a Web editing program to need, like Outlook Express.
Maybe it’s part of a new Microsoft strategy: To make sure you don’t install any other company’s applications by filling your hard drive with theirs.
