NOTE: The author is a member of AOL. He has no affiliation with Lotus Development Corporation or any of its subsidiaries. The following article is solely his personal opinion.
Many of you have already found the Ami Pro 3.01 upgrade I posted last week. Since some of you asked, I found it on CompuServe, in the LotusWP library. I downloaded it and posted it here for my fellow AmiPro users.
The upgrade consists of the 3 upgrade disks, each just about 1.44 MB in size, which at 2400 baud is an awful long time to download. Even at 9600 (which I used to take the files off CompuServe -- and which will soon be available on AOL), it's an hour and a half. There is also a 100K doc file that is tangentially related to the upgrade. More on these later.
Right now, AOL rates are $6.50 an hour after your prepaid 5 hours. On July 1, AOL rates go to $3.50 an hour after your prepaid 5 hours. Which means that right now downloading the upgrade will cost you a MAXIMUM of roughly $38.00 (less if some of your prepaid 5 hours go to the download); on July 1st, downloading the upgrade will cost a maximum of roughly $22.00.
Because of this, cost-conscious users may wish to order the upgrade directly from Lotus. It will be shipped in mid-July, and costs $10 for shipping/handling.
I judged the extra expense was worth it for me, since I'm in the industry, but most users may wish to wait -- particularly since this is only a maintenance upgrade.
By "maintenance upgrade," I mean to say it is a bunch of minor bug fixes concerning memory conflicts and resource allocation and all the other stuff that goes on "under the hood." It also adds some new fucntionality for connectivity (using two programs together) with other Lotus products.
IT ADDS NO NEW TOOLS. Except for a change in the AP3 start-up screen, I can't even tell that I upgraded.
So, if you are running AP3 smoothly, you can take your time about getting the upgrade; you may even want to save that $10 altogether, towards the eventual release of version 4.0!
If you have a recurring problem that you have talked to Lotus about, however, the upgrade may fix it. Since Lotus did not release any upgrade doc, you'll have to ask them directly.
HOWEVER. Included in the upgrade are several "connectivity" macros, which allow AP3 to shell out to the engines of other Lotus products. In other words, AP3 could use Lotus 1-2-3's main program files to calculate a mortgage, without actually starting Lotus 1-2-3; or it could grab your Organizer data and dump it into the AP3 calendar style sheet. If you are a SmartSuite owner, or have more than one Lotus product, the upgrade may be worth your while.
Lotus packaged the docs on the macros separately, in the file DOC301.EXE. Download this (it's about 100K) self-extracting executable to find out if these macros are something you can use.
Unfortunately, Lotus did not package the macros separately, since some require v. 3.01 to use. They are divided across all three disks, so you will have to download the whole upgrade to use them.
