Monday 11 October 2004

"MOE" upside-down = "WOE"

I should have listened to the people telling me not to let ITD install the Managed Operating Environment (MOE) on this computer, but I foolishly believed that it wouldn't be too bad. I was placated by promises of local administrative rights to my machine.
But I should have bailed upon hearing the first warning bells, when Conrad informed me that...
"ITD likes staff having MOE. It makes it easier to fix problems."
"Oh, how so?" I enquired.
"We blow away your machine and reinstall MOE." <- actual words

Now, just recently I've been trying to convert my paper (written in Word) to PDF. ITD have this "great" new system that lets them cut back on Adobe Acrobat licenses: instead of installing (and licencing) the software on your local machine, they've set up a network printer service that "prints" to a PDF file for you.
Unfortunately it just doesn't work for my paper, and we don't know why. Chriss Lenz was able to print the document to pdf perfectly from her computer, and since she was using Office 2003 she suggested that I try that.

MOE has other ideas. Conrad has just informed me that you simply cannot install Office 2003 with MOE. If MOE detects that you don't have Office XP installed, it will automatically uninstall whatever you do have, and leave you with nothing. It doesn't even have the grace to put Office XP back for you - you have to do that yourself.
Gah.

Now I don't know how I'm going to convert documents to PDF :|

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

"ITD likes staff having MOE. It makes it easier to fix problems."
"Oh, how so?" I enquired.
"We blow away your machine and reinstall MOE." <- actual words

hrmmmm, proof yet again that CQU tech support could indeed be done by a bunch of trained monkies. No troubleshooting experience necessary - just reinstall the MOE *sigh*

I think the MOE is great for the average person at uni who just sits and types in word, saves stuff, prints stuff etc etc. The tech monkies can push down updates and they shouldnt have any problems. That being said - theres no way id voluntarily change over to an MOE machine even with admin access due to the specific nature of the MOE which seems to be rearing its head with your problems trying to get Office 2003 installed.

*sigh* Im glad i use a mac and theres noone at CQU that knows anything about macs - they leave me and my machine alone. ;)

Brett

Nicholas Young said...

At least I have a workaround for the PDF thing now, that works in Office XP. I don't know why, but if I copy and paste the entire content into a new document and print that, it works. The original isn't corrupt though, because Chriss can print it and if I copy the file to another place it still won't print for me.

Oh well.

The PDF printer is good when it works!

Anonymous said...

finish your doucment, then cut and paste into a new one? hrmm. glad i use a mac too - its odd that Microsoft haven't put the same sort of PDF features into Windows as Apple did with OS X....maybe in 2020 when Longhorn (XP SP3) comes out :P (couldn't help myself.....:P )