BT Office Communicator advertising banner

[coastaldell]

I have just downloaded and installed BT Office Communicator. I was immediately drawn to the constantly changing advertising banner at the base of the control panel. Although the manual says this can be removed by unticking 'show advertisment' from the view dropdown, this option is not present. 'Dialpad' 'meet me' 'find a number' and 'history' are all suppressable but no 'advertisment. Installed version is 3.3.2 build 48116 . Any help on removing this annoying feature!? would be appreciated.  

[gemma]

Sorry for the frustration but unfortunately the advertising banner can no longer be hidden. The user manual will be updated to correctly reflect this.

[coastaldell]

Gemma,

I think this is a big mistake !

It seems that the useability of the product has been totally sacrificed in a cheap attempt to boost revenue.

The option to suppress the banner was already in there ! Why waste time and effort to remove it ? 

I can only assume the change was made because just about everybody found it annoying and turned it off !

BTs reaction to this appears to be - 'OK , We'll force it down their throats then' !

This vividly illustrates the power that the 'Sales and Marketing' dept exerts over other depts within the organisation.

Even though the banner should either not be present or removable, it beggars belief that somebody within BT thought a constantly changing large graphic within a working control panel would be anything but extremely distracting !

My faith in BT has just taken a nosedive again !

[Kirok]

Try this assuming XP, go to

C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc there try to open the file 'hosts' that will bring up an Open With window, select Notepad and click the OK

The file should look something like this

#      102.54.94.97     rhino.acme.com          # source server
#       38.25.63.10     x.acme.com              # x client host

127.0.0.1       localhost

If you know the address of the advertising server put an entry in the file and save it so:

127.0.0.1       google.com - would block that particular google domain

Or if you have a router/server that can block certain websites enter the address there. I've tried to download BT Office Communicator so I could get the advertising address, but unfortunately I can't.

If your not sure what it is restart your computer, just open up BT Office Communicator and login, then when the advertising banner starts changing Click Start, point to All Programs, point to Accessories, and click Command Prompt.

At the command prompt type netstat and hit enter. Make a note this information and post it here and I should be able to tell you.

[coastaldell]

Hi Kirok

I believe the advertising banner logic is integrated into the BT Office Communicator program. It displays one of three fixed graphics every seven seconds. If a graphic is selected the URL link to the appropriate BT website is followed. I've checked net activity using Sophos client firewall monitor while banner is changing and nothing becomes active.

I hope that BT has taken note that now two people are wasting their time trying to simulate a perfectly operating option that was removed for no good reason !