What happens when vendors post misleading system requirements?
November 10, 2000
by Eric Svetcov
I’ve been struggling with a problem over the past couple months dealing with Adobe PageMaker 6.52 and Windows 2000. But this story isn’t just about Adobe and Windows 2000, this is also about all the other software products that just don’t work as advertised.
I’ve been working at a company that made an early migration to Windows 2000; therefore we have been very careful about implementation of products that are Windows 2000 compatible. When some marketing folks indicated that they needed Adobe PageMaker, I visited the Adobe web site and looked for system requirements.
And when I arrived, they did have system requirements and specifically I was interested in this line:
Microsoft® Windows® 95, Windows 98 or Windows NT® 4.0 or later
Unfortunately, the meaning of “or later” is not terribly clear. Does that mean it works with Windows 2000 (NT 5.0)? I would think so and during an informal survey of other folks I know, they also would think it meant to include Windows 2000. In spite of this overwhelming show of support, I went ahead and called Adobe anyway.
And what did Adobe say? They said that PageMaker 6.5 plus was compatible with Windows 2000.
End of story??? Unfortunately, No!!!
Three different people have called Adobe support, they have opened a number of different trouble tickets and have sent files to Adobe to look at and worked for hours with the folks to there to resolve the problem. They have all repeatedly been told that there is a fix in the works for the problem we have witnessed (PageMaker 6.52 has problems with fonts under Windows 2000)....unfortunately, nobody at Adobe can tell us when the fix will come out or even if anyone has started working on the problem.
So, how big a problem is this little issue? Well, it’s a big problem. Font’s on the page mysteriously print as courier even though on screen they appear fine. This cause tremendous consternation for marketing/design folks (yes, we’ve all dealt with designers, no need to describe how upset they can get).
So, what’s the end of the story? I don’t know yet. Adobe’s policy is to not give refunds; however, after spending a couple hours yesterday escalating the problem through the company I think that a solution is near. They appear to be willing to refund the purchase of PageMaker or upgrade us to InDesign. I’ll keep you posted on the ultimate resolution. In the meantime, if you have a similar problem with a vendor, keep escalating the issue. If you can’t resolve it on your own, drop me an e-mail with some of the details. I’ll see if I can put some pressure on the vendor to act reasonably.
(Note: please don’t send me unreasonable requests, it’s difficult enough getting vendors to do things that are reasonable. Trying to get them to do things that are unreasonable is very difficult indeed.)