Electronic parts catalog & Mac computers

[66andBlue]

This is a question for the Mac users.
Has anyone successfully used the EPC that is offered by Mercedes on-line on a Mac? See: http://epc.startekinfo.com/epc/start.jsp
On the web site's Q&A the following appears: We have performed limited testing and found that a newer Mac running OS 10.2 and Internet Explorer allowed EPCnet to open and run under internet Explorer, with some minor errors, however no guarantees of performance or stability are given.

So before I spend my non-refundable $12 for a subscription I would like to know how good or bad it works for you.
Thanks!

[waqas]

I can confirm that it does NOT work in a browser running under Mac OSX (10.4.11). I was told that sometime after 10.2, they stopped maintaining compatibility. However, if you have one of the Intel Macs, it should work if you run Windows (with Bootcamp or Parallels, etc).

All my Macs are still running under PowerPC, so I don't have the luxury of using parallels. But, I have a P.O.S. PC lying around for just these purposes.

[66andBlue]

Thanks Waqas.
I have an Intel Mac running under 10.4.11 and had Parallels installed to run a PC program. But it was too cumbersome for my taste.
You are right, perhaps I should invest in an used portable Windows Pc. :?:

[scoot]

It works most of the time with firefox/linux.

[66andBlue]

".. most of the time .."
Huh, what does that mean? Only during full moon, or at sunset?
which Linux?
Can you be a bit more specific please?

[scoot]

quote:Originally posted by 66andBlue

".. most of the time .."
Huh, what does that mean? Only during full moon, or at sunset?
which Linux?
Can you be a bit more specific please?

It's Redhat Linux and I'm not sure of the version.  I think you can tell the browser to tell the website to appear as internet explorer or netscape or whatever even though it isn't.  

"most of the time" means that EPCnet has been flakey for us lately on both my Windows PC and my partner's Linux workstation.  All of my shopping lists disappeared and I needed to reinstall Java, then two days later the shopping lists all came back.   So I think it's them, not us.

I'll find out the exact configuration if you want, send me email.  It's at home and I'm not at home.

[66andBlue]

Scoot,
thanks for the info. I may give it a try anyway.

[scoot]

Here's what my partner said about running EPC on Linux:

"Here's the problems I have with EPC on Linux.  When I launch EPC I
always get the message "Unable to launch the application".  If I click
either the "Ok" or "Details" button javaws immediately exits.  If I
ignore the message EPC sometimes comes up and works fine.  It will come
up for days at a time and then stop working for several days, only to
start working again.  Recently it has stopped working for a particularly
long time.

I've tried dumping the javaws cache, logging out and logging back in as
well as rebooting but that doesn't seem to have an affect on EPC.
Running as root (similar to administrator on Windows) doesn't work
either.  If I try bypassing the browser entirely by running javaws
directly from the command line (javaws ewa-net.jnlp) I get the same results.

I'm running Linux Fedora 8, using Firefox 2.0.0.16.  I've tried Firefox
3 as well as Opera (another browser) without success.  Since I'm using a
fairly current version of Java (1.6.0_06) I tried an earlier version
(1.4.2_17) without success.

I'm running Windows 2000 on another box and EPC works using Firefox
about as well as Internet Explorer (Version 6.0 SP 1)"