MS Powerpointillistas expunge Astound!

In all my classes, I use the presentation program Astound. Microsoft's Power Point is vastly inferior to Astound, which is easy to learn, and allows precise timing of everything in the program.

Astound 8.1 is the latest version of the program, and it came out in 1999 and ran perfectly on Windows 2000. I got Windows XP, and discovered that Astound would not run on it, even if configured as emulating Windows 2000. Open a file, and bingo, Astound disappears. I got the intuition that Microsoft put something into Windows XP to kill off Astound.

Astound was bought out by Genesys. So I put into Google.com the search for “Astound Microsoft” and sure enough, they are in bed together. Genesys will not upgrade Astound for Windows XP. They are simply killing this program, I am sure in cahoots with Microsoft.

I am so terribly angry about Microsoft's ways of doing things. I love Astound, and Microsoft is killing it.

Best wishes, Will
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Hi Mike,
I found your HD warranty story interesting. Warranties on computer parts in India may not be such a hard and fast enforceable thing. Most of the computers in India are sold in the so called "Grey Market". Which basically means people who buy parts and integrate them into plain vanilla beige boxes, as opposed to banded computers from the big names.

Now the reason the Grey Market is popular is price. They are cheaper and price is king in India for most people. Coming back to warranties. Most of these Grey Market guys are like a small scale industry. You may not even find some of them in business after 3 years. (In fact this happened to me when I bought my computer in college)

Also a number of them will try and convince you not to get a formal bill for the purchase since then you'd have to pay tax on it and increase your price (Yes this is illegal but hey that's India). And if you don't have a formal bill then how do you enforce warranty. Not that I am saying they don't or all of them are bad. Basically the guy will shift it higher up in the chain. He will get the warranty from his higher up distributor and so on till it reaches the mfr. But in the case of the Seagate Hard Disks the mfr isn't playing ball so you don't know quite sure what will really happen when you try to enforce the warranty.

It would be quite normal for some of these vendors to just take a chance assuming nothing bad will happen and deal with it when it does. This would be quite normal in India. So a warranty like the one you talk about has quite a different meaning in India as compared to say like in the US. And let's not even talk about taking things to court in worst case in India. Consumer courts do exist in India and they do good work at times. But the average person in India would rather not get into such hassles.

It may very well be that a top distributor who is well respected and very much intends to honour his warranties may be doing this. But unless you get to know who and get a direct confirmation from them all bets are off. BTW Seagate used to be some time ago one of the most favoured HD brand in India (not sure if it still is). Of late Samsung is becoming more popular I guess and with its 3 year warranty might be doing some serious encroaching into Seagate's market share.

Samsung has very good brand equity in India due to its consumer products as you yourself pointed out. Unlike in the US Samsung wouldn't be perceived by the buyer as a 2nd tier computer part mfr. So there you are, you have to understand all this to realise what the ground reality is like in India. Who knows who is funding this extra warranty in India? It may very well be Seagate by proxy as you yourself point out since in the end it wouldn't be a very costly thing to carry out due to ground realities.

Thanks,

Shiv
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