Any one else having issues with USPTO searches?

[Helleri]

In the last couple of months on either my home machine or work machine (and one friends laptop) I have been unable to search the visual patents on the US Patent and Trademark Office website. Seems no matter what machine I try it requires that I install apple quicktime player...Which all machines I have tried this on already have (the most up to date version of).

Is it them, are they out of date? Any one else had this issue?

[mikeswrenches]

Why not use google patents? In most instances it is easier, although sometimes their character recognition software could use a little tweaking.

Mike

[rusty]

Because the patent office is giving you TIF files, and quicktime told windows it does TIF, but it doesn't do *that* kinf of tif...sigh

install the one referenced on the PTO web site, it works fine.....
(I think it's called alternatif , or something like that, been a while)

[mvwcnews]

As a previous poster noted, the issue is software compatibility.

I use versions  of  alternatiff ( http://www.alternatiff.com/ ) with both Internet Explorer & Firefox browsers  & Windows XP , Windows VISTA   (no 7 or 8 for me yet)  to view USPTO image files.  Google's CHROME browser does not work for me in that particular venue.

I then copy those tiff images  into a very very old streamlined version of Adobe image editing software to generate the edited versions I  save as jpg &  insert into DATAMP entries for tool patents.