Jack:

In the March edition of BoardWatch, on page 19, you published an article
titled "File compression Wars Revisited - PKWARE releases version 2.04c of
PKZIP." Everything you wrote about happened to me - and more.

First, my QWK mail reader (OLX 3.01) has an internal zip program and when it
met a message packet using the new 2.04 format it presented me with the
following warning, "This packet does not appear to have a MESSAGE.DAT file.
Either *.QWK is not a valid QWK packet, or you do not have enough free disk
space to unpack the packet." This warning did not direct me to the true
"problem." To really confuse me, I subscribe to a board with 30 nodes running
Novell - some nodes had the new PKZIP and some still had the old PKZIP.
Therefore, some of the message packets I downloaded unpacked just fine and
other packets from other nodes mysteriously "choked." It was only later that
the sysop mentioned to me that some nodes contained the new PKZIP (in all
fairness, the message from the sysop discussing the new PKZIP was probably in
one of the packets I was unable to unzip).

Once I downloaded PK204c.exe and adjusted my OLX for the external compression
protocol, my Norton's NAV falsely detecting the "Malta Amoeba Strain" virus.
Norton would not "permit" me to execute the PKUNZIP program. Yes, I had to
use the 20A10.DEF file to fix this problem.

Yes, all of this "adventure" lead to "mounting confusion" on my part. And to
think I went through all this for a 10% reduction in the size of my *.QWK
files. It seems hardly worth it.

Now that PKZIP version 2.4e has been released, I hope all those problems are
behind us. Presently, I use the new PKUNZIP but the old PKZIP (ver. 1.10) on
my QWK mail reader.

 JOHN VINDEKILDE


 John:

I hate it when that happens.

 Jack Rickard