New Zealand Operations Level 3
123 Carlton Gore Road
Newmarket
Auckland, NZ
Phone: +64 (9) 523-0700

Merry Christmas!

It's that time of year when most people are preparing for the holidays and many businesses slow down. Here in the southern part of the globe we enjoy the onset of summer and sunny days, while in the north the arrival of winter and crisp snow. During this holiday period Pharos Technical Support will continue to provide product support to our customers and resellers, however there are some changes to our hours of operation, as shown below.

Christmas Holiday Hours of Operation

     Monday 24th December – 8:00 AM EST – 5:00 PM EST
     Tuesday 25th December – Closed
     Wednesday 26th December – 8:00 AM EST – 12:00 PM EST
     Thursday 27th December – 8:00 AM EST – 12:00 PM EST
     Friday 28th December – 8:00 AM EST – 12:00 PM EST
     Monday 31st December – 8:00 AM EST – 5:00 PM EST
     Tuesday 1st January – Closed
     Wednesday 2nd January – normal operating hours resume

Where ever you are in the world from all the staff at Pharos Systems we wish you a very Merry Christmas!

MAC OS X 10.5.1 - Leopard Support

Since its release, Pharos clients have asked when Pharos will be updating our product to support the new Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard operating system.

Pharos recently released Pharos Mac Popup support for this platform which can be downloaded using the following hyperlink:

Macintosh Components Download

Note: Pharos Mac Notify does not need updating and will function as expected on Mac OS X 10.5.

We are pleased to announce our continued support for this growing platform and apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused our customers due to the delay in our release.

New Technical Support Staff - Jeff Geller

Pharos Technical Support would like to welcome Jeff Geller to the team. Jeff is the latest of many staff members to join Pharos Systems International.

Jeff has been in the IT Technical Support industry for 3+ years and working with hardware and software break/fix support for 5+ years. Jeff has worked in 2 major local Service Desk Call Centers for 3 years and is an experienced IT professional.

Jeff has numerous certifications including:

• MCDST - Microsoft Certified Desktop Support Technician
• MCP – Microsoft Certified professional
• Network + Certified
• A+ Certified

Jeff has already received a number of fantastic customer comments and is a welcome addition to the team.

Customer Satisfaction Survey - iPod Winner

We would like to thank everyone that completed the Technical Support Customer Satisfaction Survey. We certainly appreciate the honest feedback which will be used to improve the services we provide to our customers.

And, the winner of the iPod was:

Carol Shannon
Montana State University

Congratulations Carol and thanks again for your feedback.

Pharos SignUp Client: Hot Fix #14
This Hot Fix applies to the Pharos SignUp Client, and should be applied to all SignUp Client PCs.

This Hot Fix addresses the following issues:

• Under certain conditions, the SignUp Client would fail to identify a user's Home Drive and Path when the user was logging on. This would cause the SignUp Client to reboot, resulting in the user's session being ended. The application of this Hot Fix ensures that the correct defaults are used when the Home Drive and Path cannot be found.
• If a SignUp Client PC loses power or is switched off during a session, the session should resume once power is restored; however, in some cases this was not happening. The application of this Hot Fix ensures that sessions resume correctly when power is cycled during a SignUp session.
• After performing an Administrator Logon at the SignUp Client, hovering the mouse pointer over the SignUp clock icon in the system tray would cause the PC to reboot. The application of this Hot Fix ensures that this problem no longer occurs.

EDI Server - Omega ini_schema: Hot Fix #15
This Hot Fix addresses the following issues:

• Attempting to update the ini_schema file for an Omega terminal could result in the error "Internal Error: The ini_section:network could not be found in the configuration data". The application of this Hot Fix prevents such errors.
• Under certain conditions, the EDI service and/or IIS could fail, reporting an "overflow or underflow in GC Memory Pressure" error. The application of this Hot Fix prevents such errors.
• The application of this Hot Fix ensures that the £ symbol displays correctly at PS20 terminals.

Pharos Database Service: Hot Fix #16
This Hot Fix addresses the following issues:

• The application of this Hot Fix prevents the Database Server from crashing when network connectivity is lost.
• Scripting errors at the database level (e.g. badly formed SQL queries) could cause the Database Server to crash. The application of this Hot Fix ensures that the Database Server continues to run when such errors occur.

Pharos Print Server: Hot Fix #19
This Hot Fix addresses the following issues:

• The application of this Hot Fix prevents possible crashes or errors that could occur when performing a Change Control while the Print Server was under load or in the process of restarting or shutting down.
• The application of this Hot Fix prevents the Print Server from crashing when an invalid Script causes an access violation error.
• PrintJobArrive scripts attached to the Print Server could fail with a Job_Info_2 error when the printer driver produced 2 spool files (the first a temporary zero size file). The application of this Hot Fix means that zero size file is now ignored and the failure does not occur.
• Discount Rates were not applied when Standard Charging was used. The application of this Hot Fix ensures that Discount Rate Schedules are now applied to Standard Charging.
• When Users are not identified in the Pharos database (such as when using cash cards or gateways) an Alert was raised for each print job submitted to a Spooled Queue. The application of this Hot Fix ensures that Alerts are no longer raised in this scenario.
• When Users are not identified in the Pharos database, they were unable to print color jobs as their permissions could not be verified. The application of this Hot Fix ensures that Users who are not identified in the Pharos database are assumed to be members of the 'Public' User Group and are assigned the permissions of this User Group.
• If all Regular Expressions were deleted from the Pharos database, usernames would be returned as empty strings. This meant that users were unable to print, with an error message: 'Unable to retrieve funds for your Logon ID'. The application of this Hot Fix ensures that usernames are returned correctly and users can print when no Regular Expressions are present.
• An Encrypt function has been added to the String class of the Pharos Scripting Language. This means that a separate stored procedure is no longer necessary if encryption is desired. The function is used as follows:

import "String";
new sampletext = "abc";
String.Encrypt(sampletext);

Omega PS 150 Firmware
Release (October 2007) 2.1.1 revision 6605. The Installation and Configuration manual is also available for download.

Omega PS 100 Firmware
Release (August 2007) Queens Cliff U 5: 1.5.5 revision 6399. The Installation and Configuration manual is included in the download.

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