The PC Improvement News
Issue 1-11
December 16, 1998

ISSN 1488-3163
Published electronically by PC Improvements (c) 1999
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Welcome to the 11th edition of the PC Improvement News. In this newsletter I try to have a couple of tips to make your computing life easier as well as highlights of the past weeks PC Industry News. As always, I am more than willing to discuss any PC related topics in this newsletter. Just email me at editor@pcin.net with your suggestions. Also, if there is any strange formatting in the newsletter you receive please use the same email address to let me know so I can fix any incompatibilities. With your help and suggestions, it will get better.

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THE NEWS
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How low can you go?
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That seems to be the question that the consumer is asking all of the PC anufacturers. It used to be that a computer wouldn't be any cheaper than $2000. Then it dropped to $1500. Then it dropped to below $1000 this year and a lot of people wondered if it could get any lower. Well, a company called Emachines has built a computer for $399 and a monitor to go with it only costs $499. That's under $500! From what I have read, it is not just cheap; it is quite a respectable system.

More about Betas Part III
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Last week I talked about being approved for the Office 2000 Beta program. Well, I got the CDs this week and I will install it later today or tomorrow. The complete kit comes with 7 CDs and includes programs like Word, Excel, Access, PowerPoint, Outlook, PhotoDraw, FrontPage, Publisher, IE5 and more, all with the "2000" versions. I'm most excited about using FrontPage and PhotoDraw. Next week I'll have an extensive review of what I have found so far...

Infoseek says no to XXX ads
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Since Infoseek is now partly owned by Disney, it wasn't too surprising when Infoseek announced that they would no longer be advertising sites that were "adult" in nature.

Read about it at:
http://www.internetnews.com/IAR/article/0,1087,12_15091,00.html

Oh, the weather outside is frightful...
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Well, here near Toronto, Ontario, Canada, the weather sure isn't frightful, and it certainly isn't beginning to look a lot like Christmas. It is coming soon though, so here are a list of sites that you can check out. The ones with titles are very good articles or sites, and the others are just ones that you could check out if you had time.

USPS Santa Letters
http://www.usps.com/letters/volume2/santa-main.html

http://www.santasworkshop.com/
http://www.christmastrees.on.ca/
http://www.christmas.com/
http://www.butterball.com/
http://www.presentpicker.com/
http://www.toysrus.com/
http://www.icemall.com/
http://www.drtoy.com/
http://outpost.infospace.com/

What's up with Microsoft?
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Every week, I will provide several links to articles about the Microsoft case with the DOJ. I will provide no editorial comments, other than this. I think that Microsoft should give every company a chance to compete, but I don't think that they should be under such intense scrutiny as they are right now. People complain about the Starr report costing so much money. Well, this DOJ case won't be cheap for either side, and I don't really think that anything will come from this. A waste of time!

Links:
DOJ points to Microsoft dictionary (about a different topic than the story above)
http://www.news.com/News/Item/Textonly/0,25,29712,00.html
Microsoft's broken windows
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,2174815,00.html

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THE TIPS
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Have you figured out the Windows 98 Easter Egg yet?
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My apologies to the Windows 95 users, but I will make one more comment about the Easter Egg in Windows 98. There is another way to find it. If you go to the c:\windows\application data\microsoft\welcome directory (or whatever your windows directory is), you'll see a program called weldata.exe. Right click on that file, and choose the option create shortcut. Then right click on the shortcut and choose properties. In the target box, right after the closing ", type the following "You_are_a_real_rascal" (without the quotes). On my computer, the target box reads
"C:\WINDOWS\Application Data\Microsoft\WELCOME\WELDATA.EXE" You_are_a_real_rascal

If you double-click on that shortcut now, the Easter Egg should appear.
For those of you who still can't get the Easter Egg to work, I have managed to save the temporary file that is created when the Easter Egg is running. It is in a zip file at http://www.pcin.net/help/download/win98egg.zip and all you have to do is unzip it and then double click on it. It is an html file and should run from anywhere.

Clean up your hard drive
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At http://www.pcin.net/help/articles/throwaway.shtml you'll find an article which explains some of the junk files you can throw away which are on your computer. I highly recommend that you read it and clean up your computer. One thing that I didn't mention in the article, was that depending on what your installation choices were, you might have a bunch of videos on your computer that are just taking up space. The videos show how to perform some simple functions. I think almost anyone knows how to do these things, so the files are just taking up space. To erase them, look for any ".avi" files on your hard drive. The avi files I'm talking about will be in your windows directory and sub-directories, but there might be some other ones from different programs on your computer. If you don't need a visual demonstration, then you could erase them. The Windows ones can be safely erased. If you do decide to erase the ones form other programs, make sure that you read the manuals first to see if those files are absolutely required or not.

By erasing the ones in the windows directory, you'll save yourself about 7 megabytes.

***NOTE 1*** Next week I'm only going to have 1 tip and it will be about the Temporary Internet Files directory which Internet Explorer uses. I have discovered something interesting that happens when you choose to delete those files.

***NOTE 2*** I have begun to realize that I offer a lot of tips for Microsoft products. I just want to make it clear that I only can give tips and advice on the programs that I use. I am by no means a Microsoft lover, but I do like a lot of their products. I regularly use Office 97 Professional, GIF Animator, and Internet Explorer. I also use a lot of Symantec products, Allaire Homesite, and WS_FTP among others. If you need help with any of these programs, feel free to visit http://www.pcin.net/help/questions/index.shtml and fill out the form. If I get enough people asking for help with a specific program, I'll add some tips in this newsletter.

 

Well, that's all for this week. Remember that if there is anything that you want to learn about, let me know and I will try to accommodate you.

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The PC Improvement News is brought to you by PC Improvements. The Opinions expressed are those of the editor, Graham Wing.

Editor: Graham Wing editor@pcin.net

Copyright 1998, PC Improvements and Graham Wing. All rights reserved. This publication may be reproduced in whole, or in part, as long as the author is notified and the newsletter is presented as is.

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