Author: Mike Byrne
Date: 10:13:53 03/08/03
Go up one level in this thread
On March 08, 2003 at 12:56:44, Roy Brunjes wrote: >On March 08, 2003 at 12:34:46, Alastair Scott wrote: > >>On March 08, 2003 at 08:38:00, Michael P. Nance Sr. wrote: >> >>>Would someone please clear this up for Me!My version of Fritz 8 is dated Nov >>>2002.When I go to the Playchess site and attemp to up-grade thru the >>>Query-update ,It says that my version is up to date and no newer version is >>>avaiable.Is this correct?If another version exists why won't the server give it >>>to me when I log on.I tried to retype my serial number in the "resister'box but >>>it said not valid one time and nothing happen the other times I tried.Help me >>>out on this.I had the same problem with Fritz 7 tring to up-date on the >>>Playchess server and We won't even talk about the problems I had up-dating Fritz >>>6.What can I do here?Awaiting to hear from You.>>>>Mike >> >>After experimentation I've found that there are 4 conditions before the upgrade >>will 'take'; >> >>i. You must have installed an original (27 November 2002) version of F8 without >>any of the subsequent semi-official upgrades; >> >>ii. You must have logged on to playchess.com with a username and password (not >>Guest); >> >>iii. You must have entered the serial number from the front page of the manual >>after you logged on but before you tried the upgrade; >> >>iv. Personal firewalls should be turned off for the duration of the upgrade. >> >>The answer to 'why' is 'the Fritz 8 upgrade process is a poor piece of work', >>sadly. And such convolutions are becoming more common; I found that PGP 8.0 >>could not be registered online from within my company and I had to take my >>laptop off the network, dial in remotely and try the registration that way >>before it could complete! >> >>Oh for the days of downloading SETUP.EXE and clicking on it ;) >> >>Alastair > >I applaud your efforts in trying to isolate this problem. However, my upgrade >"took" and I violated your first point. I had installed F8 (Nov 27 version) >from CD when I first received it. I had applied many of the GUI updates (the >latest I had was from sometime shortly after Feb 14th -- Feb 23? I cannot >recall exactly). Anyway, I had already registered my copy with the serial >number or whatever they call it on playchess.com. When I connected to >playchess.com a few days ago, I was prompted to upgrade and all went well. > >It is rather frustrating and rather poorly implemented by ChessBase. Their lack >of monitoring of this bulletin board (a fertile hunting ground for customers I >should think) is also hard to fathom. > >If "real" software vendors were THIS bad, they would be out of business after a >few years. ChessBase gets away with it because the market is such a small niche >and there is room enough for their competitors (some of which are not much >better in these matters) and ChessBase both to survive, IMHO. > >Roy I disagree somewhat -- their software is not bad, it's rather good. Customer Support is a little lacking , especially when compared to Lokasoft. The above mentioned upgrade process is poor because it is so ill-defined. First , they should be telling what they are fixing - there should be no hidden agendas, Perhaps what they are fixing is N/A to you - the why should bother with a 30 minute upgrade (56KM modem). Secondly, the upgrade process so be defined in their help manuals. If you never log on to playchess, and you are running windows XP , have more than 512MB of ram and you don't read this forum -- you're screwed because you have only two chances of you receiving a replay that you need to upgrade and those are slim and none. Mamy programs now have in their help menu section - "Check for upgrades" -- but it should be in their main F8 application - not just the Play chess.
This page took 0 seconds to execute
Last modified: Thu, 15 Apr 21 08:11:13 -0700
Current Computer Chess Club Forums at Talkchess. This site by Sean Mintz.