[brlug-general] Getting blood from a stone (a sad tale)

[Edmund Cramp]

A quick interim follow-up on this - after intermittently talking to IBM, Lenovo and Microsoft and getting the run around for the last few months I tried again a couple of days ago and the IBM support folks gave me a number for Lenovo which I called, spoke to a very cheerful chappy who looked at my account details (via the machine serial number) and said that they'd ship a replacement disk out and I should have it within two weeks... this sounds too good to be true but we'll see.

I have tried copying files from another Office 2003 SBE disk but since it was a retail copy and not an OEM copy it worked for a couple of days and then stopped again - go figure.  Meanwhile I'm just using another laptop when I need Excel.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: general-bounces at brlug.net 
> [mailto:general-bounces at brlug.net] On Behalf Of Edmund Cramp
> Sent: Tuesday, June 19, 2007 8:43 PM
> To: 'general at brlug.net'
> Subject: [brlug-general] Getting blood from a stone (a sad tale)
> 
> I realize that this is really not the place to post this - 
> and I'll readily admit that it's my fault for running a MS 
> product in the first place but I've been drawing a blank on 
> this for several days now.  Does anyone have any useful 
> comments on this problem?
> 
> I have a copy of Office Small Business Edition 2003 installed 
> on my PC and Excel doesn't work - it tells me that it needs 
> SKU1CA.CAB to install ... and it used to work - I'm guessing 
> that some recent "security update" has screwed it.  This 
> would be a simple fix IF I still had the original 
> installation CD ... but I don't.
> 
> I've been calling IBM (it's a ThinkPad) who tell me that 
> Lenovo handle this, and Lenovo tell me that they don't issue 
> replacement CDs - I have to talk to Microsoft - and Microsoft 
> say that since it's an OEM CD it's not their responsibility 
> and that I should call the computer manufacturer who say ... 
> well, you get the picture.
> 
> Is anyone out there unfortunate enough to own a copy of 
> Office SBE 2003 that I can borrow to get Excel running again? 
>  Yes, I know the Office SBE is an even bigger heap of 
> crappola than Office 2003 but it looked like a good idea at 
> the time (it's never even heard of IMAP) ... I'm damned if 
> I'm going to buy another copy of Orifice 2003 just to get this going.
> 
> And before anyone double dunks me for running Orifice in the 
> first place - we need Word for one damn help documentation 
> option and we use Outlook throughout the company ... and 
> Outlook is (in my experience) most horribly unstable if the 
> rest of Orifice is not installed - bits of it gets lonely or 
> something.
> 
> I suppose I could always uninstall Excel and run the Open 
> Office spreadsheet... it's looking like a better option all 
> the time ... now if only there was an Open Office equivalent 
> of Outlook.
> 
> OK, fire at will...
> 
> Edmund Cramp
> --
> Fairy Tales start "Once upon a time."  Army/Sea stories start 
> "This is no shit."  Software proposals start "1.0."
> 
> 
> 
> 
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