The PC Improvement News
Issue 1-36
June 16 1999

ISSN 1488-3163
Published electronically by PC Improvements (c) 1999
To subscribe or unsubscribe, please visit
http://www.pcin.net/

Note 1: If any of the links are too long, please cut and paste.
Note 2: You can only win one contest every 30 days.

Welcome to the 36th edition of the PC Improvement News. In this newsletter,
I have a couple of tips to make your computing life easier as well as
highlights of the past weeks PC Industry News. I am more than willing to
discuss any PC related topics in this newsletter. Just email me at
editor@pcin.net with your suggestions. I would also appreciate it
if you let me know if there is any strange formatting in the newsletter so
that I can fix them.

Give me two or three issues, and I know that you will get something great
out of this!


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SOME OPENING THOUGHTS
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This week The PC Improvement News passed the 300-subscriber mark. For a
lot of people, that isn't a lot, but I am quite happy with it. It has been
a lot of fun helping people, and the more that subscribe, the more I can
help. Let's try to get to 400 faster than any other marker.

I also think that hitting a milestone is an excuse for change. I'd like to
change the name of the newsletter. I was talking to a colleague and he
told me that the name was too long and why didn't I just make it The PC
News. I have always thought it was kind of long, but couldn't think of
another name.

I'd like to make this a contest. I have a 2-CD Set from HP with full
versions of PrintMaster from Mindscape (basic version) and PhotoDeluxe 2
from Adobe. The subscriber who can give me the best name (short,
meaningful, not in use by another large newsletter, etc.) wins the CDs,
mention in the newsletter, and my gratitude. Please send your entries to
editor@pcin.net


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THOUGHT OF THE WEEK
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None

Thought courtesy of http://www.HappyPublishing.com/

To subscribe to the FREE "Aspire to Something Higher" Thought-Of The Day,
send a blank email to HappyQuotes-subscribe@listbot.com


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THE NEWS
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Telephone Service in UK
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I had 2 subscribers explain to me the phone situation in the UK. I
appreciate their comments. Thanks to Darren and to a subscriber's friend
(who didn't want her name mentioned) for helping. Here are their responses:

Darren said:
"Graham, for a long time I resisted use of the Internet privately because
of the cost. Firstly there was a registration fee to the ISP, then a
monthly fee for them (at the time only a handful existed) and also payable
to them was a charge per minute over any free time period offered. On top
of all this, good old BT (British Telecom) had their two penneth, charging
you for using the phone line. Things began to improve when , registration
fees were waived, then along came Freeserve. An enlightened ISP who had no
monthly fee or call charges and who would connect you to the web for the
price of a local rate call (The catch with Freeserve was their tech
support lines charged 1.00/minute). This was done due to small loop hole
in BT's line pricing which allowed businesses to have a special phone
number which was charged at local rate no matter where in the country it
was dialed from. These numbers where not meant to be used for long calls
however, so as Freeserve is now the biggest ISP in the UK, BT are a little
miffed that so many people are using these lines for hours on end. They
are trying to close this particular hole, but there isn't much they can do
about it at the moment. Hopefully one day BT will see the light and
provide us all with totally free local calls, then we can access the 'net
without any penalty at all, but until that day we have to pay standard
local call rates for our access, except at weekends when we are charged 1p
(£0.01) per minute. I hope this has perhaps explained some of what goes on
over the pond."

A subscribers friend said:
"My ISP (server) fee is around £10 a month - that is about 16 dollars US.
There are now many free servers in UK - which is why AOL are having a hard
time selling their service here I think- but they tend to be slowed down
by advertising slogans. The best known, and the first , free server is
Dixon group who netted around a million users in a few months. Many others
have now joined this trend including Supermarkets, Bookstores etc. I pay
because I like a fast, secure and reliable service. Also, if I need to
contact my server for help it costs me only local rate call. Free Servers
charge around 50p or £1 a minute for their help lines. Until a few years
ago, our sole telephone company was the Nationalized (government owned)
British Telecom. When this company was floated on the share market it
became a private company with, of course, millions of shareholders.
British Telecom was still a monopoly company until fairly recently when
other telephone companies started to move in. The cost of making calls was
very high until this happened - but competition had driven the cost down.
British Telecom say (or I think it is what they say) is they can not give
free local service because they are spending billions on improving their
services, they have to keep their shareholders happy and because they feel
free local calls will jam the telephone network. Of course, they still
have an almost monopoly on providing lines so even though I also have an
account with Cable & Wireless, I pay extra rental because they use the BT
lines to provide their service. The line rental for each number to a
private household is about £27 a quarter (inclusive of Value Added Tax). I
have BT's Home Highway which gives me 2 ISDN lines and 2 Analogue lines
and pay £120 a quarter. I then get £45 per quarter deducted from my phone
bill. So, for £75 a quarter I get a good enough deal. The cost of calls to
the Internet (Local Calls) has three different rates as follows:
Daytime 3.95 pence per minute
Evening 1.49 pence per minute
Weekend 1.00 pence per minute
They also have a Free scheme which allows the user to choose one "Best
Friend" UK number and gain a deduction for calls to that number of 20%.
And the Free scheme "Family and Friends allows a user to choose ten UK
numbers and up to 5 overseas numbers with a deduction of 10% for each. I
also pay extra for "Premier Line" which gives me a further 15% off all
calls. So, with my Best Friend number being my Internet connection and
with Premier Line also, I manage to save around a third of the cost of my
internet calls. There are many different schemes with BT and the other
companies are also offering various savings so, as I said, the cost of
calling is going down. Maybe we will have free Local calling some day but
I can't see it happening too quickly.
There are 100 pence in £1 (one Pound Sterling). And the present exchange
rate is somewhere around £1 sterling being equal to $1.6 dollars US.


New Viruses!
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In the area where I live, there is a computer newspaper called "We
Compute!" Every issue there is a contest and last issue the contest was to
come up with the funniest viruses. Here are some of the funny ones:
Bill Gates Virus: Takes all of your cache.
Oprah Winfrey Virus: Your 200MB hard drive suddenly shrinks to 80MB and
then slowly expands back to 200MB
O.J. Virus: Claims it did not delete most of your files and vows to find
the virus that did it.
Viagra Virus: Expands your 1.44 floppy into an awesome6.5 GB hard drive.
NATO virus: Only works remotely, destroys equipment at random, pops up to
says it's sorry and then does it again next week.


Windows 98 SE Released
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The long awaited (by some) Windows 98 SE was finally released last
Thursday without much fanfare. For the user who just wanted all of the
patches, they would have found that the Windows Update site didn't' have
any new ones. The patches had been available for weeks or months. This SE
is a brand CD that contains IE5 built in (instead of IE4) and some new
features such as Internet Sharing. SE is available for purchase at the
Microsoft site. I don't' know if it is available at local computer stores
or not. If you plan on buying this, or if there is no chance that you will
give Microsoft any more money, let me know.

For more info:
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,2273050,00.html


EPAC Technology better than MP3
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There has been so much press about MP3 lately. The record companies are
afraid that they are losing revenue because of illegal MP3s. Users say it
is their right to download MP3s. Well, it all may be a useless debate as
there are several other music formats that are under development that are
more compressed, sound better, and include security features. The bets one
right now appears to be EPAC from Lucent. Enhanced Perceptual Audio Coder
compresses audio at a rate of 11:1.

For more info:
http://www.zdnet.com/pcmag/news/trends/t990510a.html
http://www.lucent.com/ldr/pacproduct.html


Cyber Trial of the Century
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For information on the Microsoft vs DOJ trial, visit:
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/special/msdojtrial.html


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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. I will not check the validity of
these comments. That is up to you.

Previous Questions
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Q1) What is the best OCR program that you have used to scan documents?
A1) Silvan Kuipers says, "That's OmniPage + WordScan, by Caere
(http://www.caere.com/). OmniPage is the scanning program, WordScan
converts it to text (the actual OCR process)."
A1) Graham Wing (yes, that's me) says, "I use PagisPro by ScanSoft (a
Xerox) company that comes packaged with TextBridge Pro. This is a great
program that scans pages, changes them to text, and saves the page layout
(image position versus text position)."

Q2) Can you get switch boxes for a monitor, a mouse, and a keyboard so
that you can use them on 2 different machines?
A2) Rodney told me that, "I use a CPU switch to do this. Check Altex
Computers and Electronics at http://www.altex.com/ for these.
I use a "monitor-keyboard" switch. I have to use separate mice with this
setup. You could also use the CPU switch listed and just reverse the
connections (connect the keyboard to the output side and the computers
to the inputs)."
A2) Sharky says, "Well of course you can. Its very easy to get a switch
box that will allow a user to use a monitor, mouse and a keyboard on two
different machines... Their called switch boxes. Go to any computer store
and ask a competent sales person. He/She should be able to get you pricing
and order one for you... However, some computers that utilize a PS/2 mouse
port may have problems when you switch them... To determine if your PS/2
port can be switched, when the computer is on simply unplug the PS/2
mouse. Wait a few seconds, then plug it back in.... If your mouse works
after this then you can use a PS/2 mouse.... However, most switch boxes I
have seen and used come with the serial version of the plugs on the switch
box. In this case just get a serial to PS/2 adapter. Make sure the gender
of each end of the adapter will accommodate the switch box or the mouse...
A2) Mike Kratz from Niagara Falls says, "You can certainly get switch
boxes for monitor, keyboard and mice at any well equipped computer store.
For an AT keyboard and serial mouse you can pickup a switch box that has
four connections for around $20.00. This will allow up to four computers
to use the same keyboard, monitor and mouse. You can also go the other way
having different workstations using the same computer. The most expensive
thing about it is buying the male to male extension cables, at around
$10.00 each and $20.00 for the monitor cable. For PS/2 keyboards and mice
you need a special switch box which will keep the signal to the computer
even when it is being switched. These are expensive (around $100.00) but
necessary because it is not a good idea to unplug a PS/2 mouse or keyboard
while a P2 system is on. This can result in a blown PS/2 port on your
motherboard.


New Questions
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Q1) Is there a way to use a voice modem without physically wiring them
together inside the machine? I want to use a Rockwell ISA voice fax etc
modem V90 and a SB Live manage to telephone and talk without physically
wiring them together. In other words, is there a configuration procedure I
could use so that the sound card takes over the wave modem bit?

Q2) Which is the best graphics program to view graphics? I would prefer to
use 1 program for all file types rather than have IE open GIFs,
PhotoEditor open JPGs, etc.

If you have any answers to these questions, please email me at
freehelp@pcin.net


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THE TIPS and OTHER STUFF
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Change Recycle Bin Properties
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I know a lot of people who never empty the recycle bin. They are afraid to
so they leave it and it can collect hundreds of megabytes of data in it.
It is hard to convince them to erase them, but one way to help them is to
change the Recycle Bin properties. The Recycle Bin by default is set to
use a maximum of 10% of your hard drive. If you want to cut back on how
much space it uses, you can make it as low as 1%. Just right-click on your
Recycled Bin and choose properties. The great thing about this is when the
Recycle Bin is full, you will be given a message telling you there is no
room. This can be like a warning to tell you to empty the recycle bin. If
your Recycle Bin gets to be 200 MB until you get the message then there
will be too many files for you to bother looking through.


Keyboard Shortcuts
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To refresh a Folder, the desktop, or an IE window, press F5
If you have an old keyboard without some of new Windows keys, you can
press Shift-F10 to display the right-click context menu.
To view the properties of a highlighted item, press Alt-Enter.


Fax for Free
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If you visit http://www.zipfax.com/ and make your way halfway down the
page (there are a lot of banners to get through) you will see a form you
can fill out. You put in a fax number and a message and the fax will be
sent for free. The fax is sent with ads on it, but the message is still
clearly visible to the recipient. Might be handy if you need to reach
someone right away who doesn't have email, but has a fax machine.


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Lastly, send in your comments, tips and news and you too can be included in
The PC Improvement News with a reference to your name and web site.
Send email to pcinews@pcimprovements.com
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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 and I will try to accommodate you. Also,
feel free to send any comments about the newsletters and the topics covered.
This newsletter is sent to those who subscribed only. We don't believe in
SPAM, so if you have somehow gotten this and you don't want it, please see
the subscribe/unsubscribe options at the start of the newsletter.

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
editor is notified.

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