Terry - Your situation sounds exactly the same as what our firm has
experienced all through our relationship with Premise. We have the
Premise Ohio library installed on our network (we too are still using
DOS). Yes, the system locks up with longer more complicated searches.
Sometimes that problem is solved by adding more memory to a particular
PC, sometimes that problem is not solved except by not doing long,
complicated searches. One alternative that a few of our attorneys have
used is to plan their bathroom or coffee breaks to coincide with their
Premise searches. If all goes well, the search will be completed by the
time they return to their desk! Admittedly, a large problem is that none
of our attorneys have PC's faster than a 286. The library PC is a 486 and
I've had attorneys use that instead of (or in addition to) their own for
Premise searches.
Getting locked out of the program all together may be the result of your
concurrent-user-restriction-software not resetting when someone logs off
incorrectly. For example, we have a 4 concurrent user license. If user #1
doesn't sign off correctly, the system still thinks user #1 is still on,
and will therefore only let three more people on instead of four. If four
people have signed off incorrectly (e.g. control-alt-delete), NO ONE will
be allowed on until the counter is reset. Once we discovered that little
problem, and improved our sign-off skills, things were much better.
Another hitch is that we have installed a stand-alone Windows version of
Premise for Michigan statutes on the library PC. Now we can't use the Ohio
networked Premise library on that PC. It keeps asking us to insert the
Ohio disk when it should already be able to read it since the Ohio
library is all installed in a tower. Go figure! We haven't gotten that
problem fixed yet.
We haven't experienced the printing problem you described, but you must
admit, we've had our share!! It's a blessing that we've been spared at
least one bug.
I hope that a couple of my suggestions help you out some. We've have
Premise now for about 2.5 years, and it's still not really in perfect
working order. Someday we'll have the hardware and software and knowhow
all in the same place at the same time, but until then...
Take care.
Anne
Anne Kirkhope
Law Librarian
Eastman & Smith
Toledo, OH
kiraab@sys1.openohio.com
amk@eastsmith.com
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Wed Nov 28 2007 - 11:07:17 PST