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...feedback indicates that BrainBox is being used...

...by teachers, trainers and students of all ages and all abilities...

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FAQ that have been asked regarding
BrainBox Pro Ver 6.0

Click here for our email address, if you need to mail us...

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...in business: researchers, authors and designers use our software to drive innovation...

...while consultants report using our software to prepare presentations and co-ordinate meetings...

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Situation. Apparently some versions of Windows get over enthusiastic at the end of the main part of the install routine. Just before BrainBox installs the VOICE and PDF components, those versions ask if you want to RESTART Windows. If you said YES, then the install routine will never have made it as far as installing the voice and PDF components. Far better to have said NO. However, if you are reading these words, the preceding comment is probably not helpful...thus...

Question. The voice and PDF printer components do not appear to have been installed. Why is this? What should I do?

Answer. To get around the problem, we are re-writing the installer. Until then, you can access the Wizard which checks on the Text2Speech and PDF components that you will need by going to the folder C:\Program Files\BBpro\FinalSetup and running the program entitled PreFinalisingSetup.exe. Sorry for the hassle, but we have yet to find a way around this unhelpful Windows restart message. (Any suggestions would be gratefully received).

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Situation. Some people re-locate either their DESKTOP and/or their MY DOCUMENTS folders to a network drive.

Question. I do not seem to be able to get BrainBox to recognise my MY DOCUMENTS folder, which is located at "N:". What should I do?

Answer. Until recently, we had not thought that people could or would re-locate their DESKTOP or MY DOCUMENTS folders. Now that we realise that they can and do, we have re-coded BrainBox. The program now has a auto-finder which does its best to seek out your MY DOCUMENTS folder using Windows APIs. If it cannot find a suitable folder, it will ask. And if it does not seem to give you an intelligent location, you can manually over-ride the path to your DESKTOP and to your MY DOCUMENTS folder using the OPTIONS AND SETTINGS tool. (Which in turn is available via the WINDOWS START MENU).

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Situation. A couple of people have asked the following question, after the installation routine failed to work in Windows 98.

Question. "I cannot get BrainBox Pro to install correctly. Every install ends with a message that certain files are out-of-date and need to be replaced. I have followed the instructions and restarted the computer, but the out-of-date files never get replaced, and there is no list of which files are the problem".

Answer. We use a Microsoft Installation Wizard in order to ease installation of our work onto your hard drive. While the wizard works 99.99% of the time, there are some older configurations of Windows 98 which prevent the wizard from working correctly. A comprehensive list of problem-configurations and the relevant fixes are detailed in the following pages of the Microsoft Knowledgebase. Unfortunately, as the issue is between the Microsoft Installation Routine and some configurations of Windows 98, we can only point you towards the fix and are unable to change the installation software that we use.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;174135
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;191096

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Situation. We received an email, via our web feedback system, and we tried to respond to the query, but the address provided bounced our reply: so we hope that whoever sent the mail gets to see this reply.

Question. I use McAfee Anti-Virus software and when I run BrainBox the anti-virus software is turned off: Why?

Answer. BrainBox is not programmed to interact with any anti-vrius software in any way. If our software can accidently switch off your virus protection, just imagine what a motivated and focussed hacker could do. Anti-virus protection should not allow any software to control it, under any circumstances. If it does, it is not doing the job it claims it can do on the box. Check with your McAfee manuals and settings and call their technical support. If BrainBox switches off your protection without even trying, a hacker could potentially launch a purposeful attack and switch off your protection before you have an opportunity to react. We use Norton Anti-Virus Pro, and while it errs on the paranoid side of caution - that is its function. Certainly, no program, of which we know, can stop it functioning.

Postscript. In 2005, after several friends and family members had bad experiences with Norton being turned off by an invading virus, we switched to ZoneAlarm Security Suite. Its much less expensive and (in our opinion) you get better functionality. See the description at zonelabs dot com.

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Question. Why does Orator sometimes not read the last paragraph in a document?

Answer. We now realise that when we tested Orator all the documents we used had blank lines at the end of them. Hence Orator works fine with documents with blank lines at the end, but sometimes gets confused at the end of a document without blank lines. If Orator is finding difficulty understanding the last paragraph in your document, add a couple of blank lines beneath the final text. Everything should then work fine.

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Question. Why do I need to install the PDF printer, PDF-Xchange Lite?

Answer. The short answer to this is that we cannot afford the hundreds of pounds needed to buy a PDF programming component. We therefore have to reply on PDF generators written by others.

After many days of trialling different commercial printers, we found that of the many PDF printers we tested only PDF-Xchange was able to auto sense the size of documents sent to it. All other PDF printers (even the really expensive ones) expected you to change the size of the output manually. Hence, this is why we deploy PDF-Xchange and not another PDF printer, such as the free PDFcreator (for sourceforge.net) or the less expensive PDF995 (from pdf995.com) or the nifty easyPDF (from BTL Technologies) which is the best low cost PDF printer we have tested if you are outputting a Word document that contains lots of embedded web links.

In short, if you always (!) want PDF files of a single specific paper size (such as LETTER or A4), then we would advise that these other three PDF printers might be a better choice. However, if like us, you send all manner of sizes of output, they are not. It is particularly difficult to use MapEdit with other PDF printers. Hence, in our opinion PDF-Xchange Lite is by far superior. And given that the demo is free and the commercial upgrade is only (about) $25, we believe it represents the best choice for you to use. Hence the reason we include it within the BrainBox install pack. And hence the reason we encourage you to install it.

There is space for your question to go here...