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MG Midget and Sprite Technical - PC help

Can anyone send me a copy of Winzip? Anumber of people are sending me stuff that is MIME format and I believe I need Winzip to decompress these files?
Robert (Bob) Midget Turbo

Winzip is free as a download. You can find it here,
http://www.winzip.com/downwz.htm

Bill Young

This is not a free download Bill if you follow the site through you need to buy something else to obtain Winzip. Or so it has done when I have tried to download it.
Robert (Bob) Midget Turbo

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_media_type
Trevor Jessie

http://www.7-zip.org/
Trevor Jessie

Trevor tried 7 zip, downloaded OK but will not open/decompress MIME file? Says Archive?
Robert (Bob) Midget Turbo

Robert,
What operating system are you using. Most now will unzip a file anyway, without the need to download Winzip or any other utility. I presume that you have tried just double clicking on the file?

Guy
Guy Weller

Thanks Guy, yes I am using windows vista and as you say most compressed files are automatically sorted. However when I get compressed files from MAC users they seem to come in these MIME files. Searching the web these are described as Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions and I can not do a thing with em. I was lead to believe by the web that these could be decompressed by WinZip. But that will cost me 20 quid I think?
Robert (Bob) Midget Turbo

I suspect the problem is that your operting system does not have the file type assigned to an application. If you know what type of file it is (.html, .zip, .aiff, .mov, etc) then you can right click the file and specify which program to use.

So lets start by determining what they file type is. Is it a document, movie, sound, picture, html email?

Then we can decide what program may successfully open it.
Trevor Jessie

Yes as I said Trevor the file type is mim which is a MIME file or Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions. Have you never seen these? am I alone in having friends who chuffing use a MAC. Naturaaly my PC does not recognise this so I am trying to find software that does, ie Winzip I think?
Robert (Bob) Midget Turbo

You said it. The computer says... here is a MIME I do not recognise. So YOU must tell it which program to use to open the file. This is a common issue because Mac's used a different system for associating files with programs.

Most likely your computer already has the program it needs to open the file but YOU must manually tell it which program to use.
Trevor Jessie

Do you think I can use something other than winzip Trevor?
I think Macs should be banned. :-)
Robert (Bob) Midget Turbo

Robert,

You might find a bit more information about what you've got if you can find the view message source item in the email client you're using, it allows you to see the readable text that comprises the email and describes the content. I use Thunderbird and Linux so the email source is trivial to find, like View->Message Source and you get a dialogue with the email text source, but under Windows it varied between different versions of Outlook and Outlook express, MS seemed to like moving it and the last time I looked at Outlook under XP SP 3 I couldn't find it at all.
David Billington

Bob, I still do not understand why you think it is a compressed (zipped) file? Is that what the person sending it to you said it was?

Trevor Jessie

Trevor,
MIME is not really "compressed", but WinZip does a lot more than just zip files and other compressed formats.

Bob,
I think the mistake you are making on WinZip's site is to click the link that says "Get WinZip Free". You really want to click the link that says "Download WinZip Now" to get the eval version which can be converted to the full version if you choose to purchase it at the end of your evaluation.
David "Zippity doo dah" Lieb
David Lieb

MIME is not a file type at all. It is a class of file types. Until Bob gives more information about the file he is trying to open I'm hesitant to try and prpose a solution.

It could be a scenario where someone is sending an email with MIME BASE64 encoding and his email client can only decode ascii 8-bit. In this case the simplest solution is to check the settings to allow the base 64 encoding or upgrade to a newer mail client.

Do you see what I'm getting at?
Trevor Jessie

Trevor,
I think Bob's earlier solution (avoiding friends with Macs) might just be the best one for him ;-)
David "OTOH, he could demote them to phone contact only..." Lieb
David Lieb

What is the file type? if it's a Word file, change the extension to .doc, or whatever. Sounds like the file extension is confusing Windows (easily confused). Knowing what you're trying to open is important. As a tech specialist for 13 years who's made his living with Windows and Macs, there's 8 Macs in my house (one of which runs Windows too). If not for Macs, I'd have to shoot myself. There's two kinds of computer users, those who love Macs and those who haven't used one yet. Oh, yeah, Spridgets......Sprites or midgets....wanna fight?
J Van Dyke

What he said...

Robert - it sounds like windoz has missed the three letter extension of a file, either rename it with what you expect it to be (.doc, .jpg, .gif etc) and the open it.


As a mac user of some years I have never run into this issue with mac to pc (or pc to mac!). If you want to email me the file I will see if I can sort it out for you ;-)
Toby Anscombe

""There's two kinds of computer users, those who love Macs and those who haven't used one yet"" LOL :-)

Not sure that is true JVD I have used a MAC and know others who have, unfortunately neither I nor those I know that are using MS could see any advantage in a MAC.

Anyway not too bothered about that I simply need to learn how to open files that come to my PCs as (mim) files?

Thanks all so far still no joy.


Toby thanks for the kind offer but it would be unfair at the moment for me to send this information to a 3rd party without the permission of the people who have mailed it to me. However that may be my last hope so in the meantime I will contact them to ensure they are happy to do that.

For now however I am surely not the only person to use PCs yet receive email attachments from MAC users, am I?

MIME files are well documented on the net someone must have experience of dealing with them, what am I missing? and I can not change the extensions. In the properties panel the file type is listed as ""MIM File (.mim)""
Robert (Bob) Midget Turbo

Not my field atall, but some observations.
Vista appears to suck even worse than other MS stuff. A lot of people I know including serious computer professionals hate it and are frequently mystified.
Outlook/Express etc are about that bad, and ridden with social diseases in the bargain.
I use Win XP Pro because it came that way, Thunderbird & Firefox & free AVG, everything works, I don't know why. All that stuff is free, save the Win XPp.
I couldn't figure out 7Zip either. I think that it is just a matter of the instructions being written in an especially obscure form of computer gobbledygook, or it is assumed that we plebes know stuff that "they" know. "Archive" for one - I know what the word means, but I certainly do not know what they mean when they use it.
My daughter and some close friends use Macs and they send me all sorts of attachments and I've never had any problem with opening anything automatically - some of them say MIME on them.
When in doubt I tell it to use Firefox to open stuff - generally works. Seems that FF figures it out and runs off to fetch whatever is required.

FRM
FR Millmore

Bob did you read this?
"Bob,
I think the mistake you are making on WinZip's site is to click the link that says "Get WinZip Free". You really want to click the link that says "Download WinZip Now" to get the eval version which can be converted to the full version if you choose to purchase it at the end of your evaluation.
David "Zippity doo dah" Lieb"

and then, did you try it?
and if you did, what happened?

and if you didn't do any of the above, read this:-
http://www.piglette.com/howtoopenmimfiles.html
David (davidDOTsmithAT stonesDOTcom)

David I did read that but must have got sidetracked and forgot about it. Will try it again today. Thanks
Robert (Bob) Midget Turbo

Bob, ask the sender "what application created the file". Is this a word processing document or what? That's really all you need to know, then you can decide which application you have is appropriate to open it, change the file extension accordingly and provided that application is capable of opening that file, you're all set. Hopefully you have an app that handle it.
BTW MAC stands for Media Access Control
Mac is short for Macintosh.
And I'm being trite about choice of platform, now choice of motor oil I'm willing to fight over......not really.
J Van Dyke

Sucess at last..

Thanks to David Lieb.

Yes David I needed to choose the download winzip now.

Once I did that I was able o get a copy of winzip to "evaluate"

When I first installed it I had given the installation program to much freedom and it took over my machine. However a quick restore to an earlier time sorted that.
Now I was able to launch winzip in classical mode and could then see all the files. Then click on the file and tell it o open using say word or wordpad and hey presto as easy as that.

Think I will have to buy it now.

JVD even when I tried to tell my machine to open the files using a specific application it was struggling got text and a load of gobbledy goop mixed in, now with winzip i is crystal clear.

I suspect that my machine does not understand the compression used by the sender/Mac

I knew Mac stood for Mackintosh I used one for a couple of years many years ago, I was pleased to get rid of it but wouldn't do for us to be all the same would it?

Thanks David and everyone else for their patience
Robert (Bob) Midget Turbo

Mackintosh.... didn't he design superb pieces of furniture or wonderful pieces of ironworks.

Macintosh a wonderful alternative to Bill Gates land

or an anorak, depending on your point of view.

Personally I first used a Mac in 1988 and have stuck with them ever since.

A.
Andrew McGee

This thread was discussed between 11/12/2009 and 14/12/2009

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