And the work keeps pouring in...

It's nice when the phone keeps ringing and people want to make use of your services.

But it really is depressing to then waste scads of time trying to get a "high-end" product to work, especially when it keeps turning out that the documentation is out of date.

Sure, one might expect some small nits to be noted in the README file that comes with a program. I would imagine, however, that if the "nits" were serious enough to impact one's ability to use the program, you'd try to arrange it so the user has to read the file.

In my case, by following the instructions in the documentation, I get a result different from what is supposed to happen. Unfortunately, the documentation does not have a troubleshooting section, so there is no recourse there. Hitting the company's web site reveals a FAQ, a knowledge base you could probably fit on a floppy disk (for all the hits I got looking for information about my problem, phrased about 10 different ways), and real, live support was something reserved for paying customers.

The issue had to do with a missing Word template, which I could not find either on my hard drive after installing the program, or on the installation CD. I did manage to get a copy of the file from the publisher's web site (dated August 2000), but installing it doesn't help.

And no wonder: elsewhere on the same FAQ page, the company explains that the name of the template file has changed. It has actually been sitting where it's supposed to be.

Duh?

The program still doesn't work. Grrrrr.

Cheers...

Je ne suis pas un "camper" heureux...

My first day with Trados has not been a good one.

First, it would appear that I've violated the license agreement by printing out some of the documentation. (I actually read the agreement the third time I installed the software, after having installed and uninstalled it twice, which should give you a pretty good idea of my progress today.) The agreement explicitly states - and early on, too - that you cannot print any of their documentation or online stuff. Whoo-eee!

To limit a purchaser to having to use Adobe Acrobat's interface while trying to grok this package is a little much. I suspect such a requirement may violate the Geneva Convention on the treatment of software customers.

Anyway, installing Trados Frelance 5.5 on a system equipped with Windows Me and Office 97 gets me nothing but the string "-{}-" when I try to use the Trados toolbar.

Installing the software a fourth time on a system loaded with Windows Me and Word 2000 gets me the same thing: "-{}-"

Obviously, eight hours is not enough time to get the software up and running. (And despite my experience, I have to assume that it runs on the systems of other people, right?)

But I am definitely not a happy camper right now.

Cheers...