The PC Improvement News
Issue 58
November 17, 1999
ISSN 1488-3163; PC Improvements (c) 1999
There are only 2 ways to get on the subscriber list. You have
either been
subscribed by filling out a subscription form on any of the
pages on my
site, or you have requested FreeHelp from me in the past.
To subscribe or unsubscribe, please visit
http://www.pcin.net/
Note 1: If any of the links are too long to fit on one line,
you may have to
cut and paste.
Note 2: You can only win one contest every 30 days.
Welcome to the 58th edition of the PC Improvement News. In
this newsletter,
I combine news, tips, thoughts, and contests. There is something
for
everyone, and if this is your first issue, I'm sure there
will be something
for you. I am willing to discuss any computer topics in this
newsletter.
Email me at editor@pcin.net
with your suggestions.
If you give me two or three issues, I know that you will come
back for more!
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SOME OPENING THOUGHTS
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I am not a winter person. Sure the coming holiday season is
great, but I
wish there were some way for me to have a white Christmas
in a warm place!
I think this week's contest is pretty good. It is a
scavenger hunt to find
out information about Software602, a company that makes a
Microsoft Office
alternative. I have a review online at
http://www.pcin.net/help/software/602propcsuite.shtml
and there is a small
review in this week's newsletter below. The 2 winners
of the contest get a
copy of the program.
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THOUGHT OF THE WEEK
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In every triumph there's a lot of try.
- Frank
Tyger
Thought courtesy of http://www.HappyPublishing.com/
To subscribe to the FREE "Aspire to Something Higher"
Thought-Of-The-Day
list, send a blank email to HappyQuotes-subscribe@listbot.com
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THE NEWS
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GO Network Must Stop
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The story begins a while ago when there was a web site called
GoTo and a web
site called Infoseek. The GoTo people made a logo that
looked like a green
traffic light. Infoseek had their own. Then Disney
came along and bought
Infoseek and decided to push their portal, the GO Network.
They made a logo
that looks like a green traffic light. GoTo took GO
to court, and a judge
ruled that for now GO cannot use their logo. It actually
looks quite
strange going to the GO web site and not seeing their normal
logo.
For more info:
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,2393971,00.html
http://www.go.com/
http://www.goto.com/
A Quiet PC
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I don't know if this is news, but it isn't a tip, so I include
it here:
>From the latest Magazine ads for the iMac, "Silence
is golden. Unlike PCs,
iMac doesn't need a fan inside. It's ingeniously engineered
to be the world'
s quietest desktop computer." I don't know about
you, but I wish my PC were
quiet. It isn't super loud, but it certainly isn't quiet.
One other note about the new G4 Mac (not the iMac). Many owners
are claiming
that every once in a while there is a plastic smell coming
from their
computer when it is turned on. Doesn't sound right to
me and I can't see
how that is normal.
RealNetworks Tracking Users - Part II
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Last week I reported that RealNetworks was gathering information
on what
users were listening to and recording. Well, surprise, surprise,
three
separate lawsuits have popped up accusing RealNetworks of
violating users
privacy.
For more info:
http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/tech/review/crg603.htm
BubbleBoy Nothing to Worry About
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One of the big news items of the last week was BubbleBoy,
a new email virus
that can affect your machine without even opening the email
message. Just
being previewed in Outlook or Outlook Express will start the
virus. The
potential for a virus like this to do damage is great, but
BubbleBoy just
sent out a message to everyone in your address book, and then
it is done.
No more.
Thanks to John Hills and Dennis Smith for sending me info
on this.
For more info:
http://www.wired.com/news/reuters/0,1349,32434,00.html
http://www.msnbc.com/news/333265.asp
http://www.microsoft.com/security/Bulletins/ms99-032.asp
http://www.mcafee.com/viruses/bubbleboy/
Seeing a Movie in a Theatre is Not Enough
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The new James Bond movie, The World is Not Enough, doesn't
even make it to
the theatres until this Friday, November 19, 1999 but there
is already a
pirated copy of it floating around the Internet. I have seen
bits of Star
Wars Episode I and the South Park movie on a computer, and
they are really
unimpressive. The movies are about 1GB large, so even
with a high speed
Internet connection it can still take many hours to download
1 movie. And
then who wants to sit there in front of their computer watching
a movie that
is meant for the big screen?
For more info:
http://www.cnnfn.com/news/technology/newsbytes/139120.html
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CONTEST RESULTS
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Last week I asked all of the subscribers who had web sites
to send in the
URL so I could put them on a page. Well, 18 people sent
in theirs, and the
winners were Paul Downie, Paul McIntosh, Robert Hill, and
Bill R. They each
won a copy of Poor Richard's Web Site: Geek-Free, Commonsense
Advice on
Building a Low-Cost Web Site. Bill is the first person to
win a second prize
in the contests. Congratulations Bill!
All of the web sites can be seen at
http://www.pcimprovements.com/pcin/contests/19991117.shtml
Some of the
links that were sent in don't work. If you are the owner
of one of these
sites, please email the correct URL to me at editor@pcin.net
There are some personal web pages, fan web sites, music web
sites and
business web sites. Check them out, and if there is a guestbook,
let them
know you saw their page because of PCIN.
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I NEED HELP
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As many of you know, I offer a free help service via email.
If you have a
question, you can email me and I will try my best to answer
them. I can
answer about half of them. Those are things that I do regularly
or have
experience with. There are other things that I have never
tired or
experienced so I don't have an answer. I hope to post those
questions here
and see if any of the readers have any suggestions. I will
include all
reasonable suggestions with credit to you. These are NOT my
own questions
and they are NOT my answers. I will NOT check the validity
of these
comments. That is up to you.
Previous Question 1
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I would like to know how to remove the little arrows in an
icon on the
desktop.
Answers to Question 1
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Lonnie Whelan said, "Install TweakUI, one of the Power
Toys from Microsoft
(A free download from Microsoft). It will let you make the
arrows smaller,
or do away with them completely."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Leeor Geva said, "Although I find the little arrows helpful
in knowing what
is a real file and what is just a shortcut, here is how to
change it, and/or
take it out: this is the link to download Microsoft's Power
Toys. They
recommend you not to use it on certain versions of windows,
including
windows 98, but I remember using this to take it out on Windows
95."
http://www.microsoft.com/windows95/downloads/contents/wutoys/w95pwrtoysset/d
efault.asp?RLD=13
Previous Question 2
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
My CD player will not play audio CDs anymore...I think that
it is a Real
Audio bug though...It will read other CDs, but it will not
play audio's...
Answers to Question 2
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
No Answers Given.
New Questions
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Q1) My PC started acting weird, and now it will not even boot
up. I have
been running it normally and haven't made any recent upgrades
or changes.
When I turn it on, the screen is blank, and the computer doesn't
even go
through the POST or test memory. The only thing that happens
is it gives a
series of beeps: one long beep, 8 short beeps and 2 more short
beeps. Can
you help?
Q2) Is it possible to dualboot Windows 95 and Windows 98?
If you have an answer to these questions or have a question
of your own,
please email me at freehelp@pcin.net
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NEW CONTEST
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I don't know in what order you read this newsletter, but if
you haven't made
it to the Tips and Other Stuff section, then go their and
read the review
for a program called 602Pro PC Suite. It is a Microsoft
Office alternative.
The owner of the company donated 2 copies of this program
(valued at $49.95
US each) to me to give away as prizes for this weeks contest.
The contest is
a scavenger hunt.
Look around the Software602 web site at http://www.software602.com/
and tell
me the web page that the answer to these questions are found
on (each
questions is answered on a different page):
1) What applications are included in 602Pro PC SUITE?
2) How did Software602 get its name?
3) How many users can use 602Pro LAN SUITE-Internet sharing,
e-mail and fax,
all-in-one application for your entire network software?
4) What is the price for competitive upgrade of 602Pro LAN
SUITE?
5) What is the name of the network messaging product from
Software602?
I will randomly choose 2 prize winners out of all of the correct
entries and
they will get a copy of 602Pro PC Suite. Send in your entries
to
editor@pcin.net
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THE TIPS and OTHER STUFF
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Cheap Trick of the Week
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**Desktop à la Carte**
Your Windows 95 or 98 desktop is covered with open folders
but you want to
get to a desktop shortcut without minimizing the folders.
How? Simply click
on the Start button and on Run, then type a period in the
space and click on
OK. A small window will open, containing just your desktop
folders and
shortcuts. (If the window covers your whole screen, click
on the second icon
in from the top right corner of the window to tile it, and
next time it'll
open smaller.)
This is especially handy in Win95, since this older operating
system does
not have a desktop icon on the taskbar at the bottom of the
screen as Win 98
does. However, this trick can be useful in Win 98 too, because
clicking on
that desktop icon minimizes all your open folders and returns
you to the
full desktop - and sometimes you don't want the hassle of
later having to
re-open all your folders in the same order they were in before
you went to
the desktop.
Buy the Little Black Book of Cheap Tricks for only $9.95 Cdn
(about $6.00
US)
http://www.pcimprovements.com/help/books/cheaptricks.shtml
Turn Your PC into a Mac
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This is one of the neatest uses of the newest web technologies
that I have
seen. I don't know if this is a Flash thing or a DHTML thing,
but if you
visit this site, it appears as if the web site is deleting
your contents and
installing MacOS on your machine. The screen then changes
to look like a
Mac. Don't worry though, nothing is happening. It is all just
a web page.
To close it you just need to press the Start button so you
can see the task
bar and then right-click on the item in the task bar and choose
close. You
should check it out at http://www.yaromat.com/index.shtml
and choose the
MacOS button.
A Microsoft Office Alternative
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It seems that of all of the Office Suite alternatives, Sun's
StarOffice gets
all of the publicity. Well, there are other alternatives out
there, and an
excellent one is 602Pro PC Suite by Software602. The
program comes with a
word processor, a spreadsheet, a photo editor, and a file
manager, which
makes it a good replacement for the standard version of MS
Office. It is
just lacking a presentation program, but the average home
user doesn't need
this. 602Pro's interface is very familiar looking, and
is compatible with
Office (You can make a document in Word and open fine in 602Pro,
and vice
versa). I opened up a spreadsheet from the Microsoft Y2K CD,
and 602Pro read
it fine. Of course there are some fancy features in
Office that 602Pro
doesn't have, but again, the average home user doesn't need
drop-down lists
in their spreadsheet, etc. Best of all, the program
is only $49.95 US. If
you don't have Office or are using someone else's copy (shame
on you), then
602Pro PC Suite is a very good alternative.
The 602Pro PC Suite home page:
http://www.602pro.com/index.html
My full review of the suite:
http://www.pcin.net/help/software/602propcsuite.shtml
To learn more about Software602 and their programs, take part
in this week's
Internet Scavenger Hunt mentioned in an earlier section in
this week's
newsletter.
Do it ALL in Word and Excel
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A lot of programs have an option on the File menu to Save
All or Close All.
The default Word File menu doesn't appear to. Actually, it
does, it is just
hidden. When you want to close all of your open files
in Excel or Word,
hold down the shift key when you click on the File menu. The
usual Close and
Save will be replaced with Close All and Save All.
How Many People Are There On This Planet?
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If you are interested in large numbers, then you may want
to check out the
US Census Bureau web site. They have several different
applets that show
current and future predictions for the population of the world.
At the time
I wrote this there were 6,025,415,589 people. Visit
http://www.census.gov/main/www/popclock.html
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Well, that's all for this week. Remember that if there is
anything that you
want to learn about, let me know. You can also send in your
comments and
suggestions.
This newsletter is sent to those who subscribed only. If 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. PC Improvements
and Graham
Wing accept no responsibility (either good or bad) for the
results obtained
from trying the tips in this newsletter.
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Editor: Graham Wing can be reached at editor@pcin.net
Copyright 1999, 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.