I have obtained permission to make the following announcement for the benefit of blind persons wishing to download Microsoft Internet Explorer version 5, as released last Thursday. My ISP, Vector Internet Services, is making the whole package available for download at the following address: ftp://ftp.visi.com/disk3/msie5/msie5.zip WARNING: This is the whole package, all 69 megabytes of it! I estimate download time at four hours at 56K (really 53K), six hours at 33.6 K, and seven hours at 28.8 KBPS. If you are only making one installation, you only need part of the package, or you have a slow Internet connection, you might want to consider waiting for the Microsoft servers to become less overloaded. However, for people with fast connections and certainly people who need to install IE5 on more than one machine, this is a nice alternative. Note that other ISPs are offering this service as well; you may find there is a closer source than this. Vector Internet Services is located in Minneapolis, Minnesota. IE5 is expected to stay at the above address for about two weeks, after which there are no guarantees. I, and the staff at Vector, would appreciate if this site be used only by Vector customers and other blind people or people installing the package for use by blind people. Vector has no intention of becoming a secondary Microsoft distribution point. <g> To use the file provided by Vector, you must download it and then unzip it with Winzip or an equivalent utility. I used the old DOS PKUNZIP 2.04G, which worked but gave error messages about being unable to create directories (which is odd, since it went right on ahead and created them). If your version of Unzip does not automatically create directories while unzipping, tell it to do so, because there are subdirectories in the file. The syntax with PKUNZIP is as follows: pkunzip -d msie5 All files actually unpack into their own subdirectory, so you can run your Unzipper from the root of a drive without fear of clutter. Once you unpack the file, run the resulting SETUP.EXE program from the directory in which it landed. The whole installation will proceed from there, and your machine will not need to contact any Microsoft server in the process. I hope this is helpful to some. Thanks to Vector Internet Services for making the file available and for giving me permission to share its availability for a while. I consider Vector to be a top-notch local ISP for a variety of reasons, this being just one--but I'll save the advertising. <g> -- Doug Lee, Computer Instructor BLIND, Inc. (Blindness: Learning In New Dimensions) - Visit the jfw ml web page: http://jfw.cjb.net
