• About PowerTalk, which provides an overview of PowerTalk
• About the PowerTalk Extras Folder, which which tells you what's in the folder
• About Digital Digital Signatures, which explains limitations related to earlier versions
• Removing PowerTalk software, which tells how to remove PowerTalk installations
• Additional PowerTalk Resources, which lists other sources of information about PowerTalk
What's new in this release
This release of System 7.5 includes several PowerTalk gateways licensed from StarNine. Using these gateways, you can use PowerTalk to receive email sent to your QuickMail, Internet, or Microsoft Mail accounts. These and other personal gateways are in the PowerTalk Connectivity folder (inside PowerTalk Extras).
About PowerTalk
PowerTalk system software provides a set of common collaboration services that allows users to send electronic mail and faxes, share files, and even digitally sign and verify documents. Because PowerTalk functions are implemented in the operating system, these collaboration services can be accessed not only from the desktop, but also directly from all your applications.
When combined with personal gateways, PowerTalk enables you to use drag-and-drop to send information and documents. You can use the PowerTalk Catalog to store information about the people you communicate with, including their electronic addresses. You can use group information cards to make it easier to communicate with groups of people, regardless of their method of communicating.
PowerTalk Universal Mailbox provides a desktop repository for all your electronic correspondence, including electronic mail, Internet mail, faxes, and voice messages.
About the PowerTalk Extras folder
• PowerTalk Connectivity - Contains all of the personal gateways that provide your Macintosh with access to services such as fax, the Internet, CompuServe, and other email systems. See this folder for the new personal gateways.
• Goodies - Contains the PowerTalk Guided Tour to help you set up PowerTalk.
• PowerTalk User's Guide - the online PowerTalk User's Guide.
• PT/PS Products Guide - online information about over 50 third-party applications which take advantage of the collaboration services of PowerTalk and PowerShare.
About Digital Signatures
Some files which were signed on Power Macintosh systems running PowerTalk 1.1.2 and 1.1.5 fail verification on systems running other versions of PowerTalk. The chart below summarizes the signing/verification compatibilities between different versions.
Signing
| | | |
| | PowerMac with | |
| | PowerTalk | PowerTalk 1.1.6 |
| 7.5 | 1.1.2 or 1.1.5 | or later |
| | | |
V __________|_______|____________________|__________________|
e | | | |
r 7.5 | OK | FAIL | OK |
i | | | |
f __________|_______|____________________|__________________|
i | | | |
c PowerMac | | | |
a with | FAIL | OK | FAIL |
t 1.1.2 or | | | |
i 1.1.5 | | | |
o __________|_______|____________________|__________________|
† May take longer to verify or fail verification due to
“double-pass” through resource fork.
Note that the version included with PowerTalk 1.1.6 and later can verify any valid signature. Therefore, Apple recommends that PowerMac users of PowerTalk 1.1.2 or 1.1.5 who use Digital Signatures upgrade all systems to a newer version of PowerTalk.
Removing PowerTalk Software
To remove PowerTalk software from your computer, follow these steps:
1. Clean out your mailboxes:
- Save any important messages as text to your hard disk.
- Check your out box to make sure that all mail has been sent.
2. Restart your computer with all extensions off by holding down the Shift key during startup.
3. When the computer is ready, open the System Folder and drag the PowerTalk Data folder to the Trash.
4. Open the Apple Menu Items folder (inside the System Folder) and drag the Mail and Catalogs folder to the Trash.
5. Open the Control Panels folder (inside the System Folder) and drag PowerTalk Setup to the Trash.
6. Open the Extensions folder (inside the System Folder) and drag the following items to the Trash:
- AppleTalk Service (the PowerTalk extension)
- Catalogs Extension (system extension)
- Mailbox Extension (system extension)
- PowerTalk Extension (system extension)
- PowerTalk Guide (Apple Guide document)
- PowerTalk Manager (system extension)
7. Open the Preferences folder (inside the System Folder) and drag the following items to the Trash:
The PowerTalk mail list (aoce-list) is the best place to go for detailed information on PowerTalk. The mail list is basically a bulletin board for users of PowerTalk and PowerShare. You can post questions, that will be answered by a slew of experienced users or simply listen and learn as others share information.
To become part of the list send a message with the word “subscribe” as the subject to: Aoce-List-Request@umich.edu
If you simply want to post a question the address is: aoce-list@umich.edu
Users Group
The International PowerTalk and PowerShare Users Group can be a valuable source of information to PowerTalk users. The group recently announced a CD which includes all publically available PowerTalk/PowerShare software, third-party applications, archives of Apple’s PowerTalk and PowerShare documentation, an archive of the internet mail list, and more.
Apple and the Apple logo are trademarks of Apple Computer, Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries. AppleMail, AppleTalk, Power Macintosh, PowerShare, and PowerTalk are registered trademarks of Apple Computer.