ISSN 1488-3163; PC Improvements (c) 2000
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Welcome to the 95th issue of the PC Improvement News. PCIN consists of 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 topic. Email me at mailto:editor@pcin.net with any suggestions. If you give me two or three issues, I know that you will come back for more!
Recommend PCIN to others and be entered in a monthly draw. The August prize will be Microsoft Word 2000. Recommend PCIN at http://www.pcin.net/recommend.shtml
Congratulations to Elizabeth Hill. She recommended PCIN in July and won herself a copy of PrintMaster and Adobe ActiveShare. Recommend PCIN in the month of August and win Microsoft Word 2000.
Not much to say this week. Just enjoy the newsletter.
Napster Still Alive
Everyday I receive several news headline newsletters and they are always filled with updates on the Napster trial. Napster was order to close down as of last Friday, and then another Judge ruled in an appeal that they could continue to run until other appeals have been heard.
For more info:
http://www.infoworld.com/articles/hn/xml/00/07/28/000728hninjunction.xml?0731mnne
http://www.techweb.com/wire/story/TWB20000731S0001
An Inexpensive Windows Upgrade?
In all seriousness, I had no intention of upgrading to Windows ME. I have tried it, and wasn't impressed with it. I certainly wasn't willing to pay $110 or so for it. Well, Microsoft must have realized that there were a lot of other people like me out there. They have reduced the price on upgrades from Windows 98 SE to only $59. I might no actually install the upgrade right away, but I will almost certainly buy it now.
For more info:
http://cnnfn.cnn.com/2000/08/01/technology/microsoft_me/
http://www.wininformant.com/display.asp?ID=2853
A Security Problem in a Non-Microsoft Product
All you ever hear is how many security issues there are with Microsoft products are. Well, there are security problems in all sorts of products. "Dutch engineers have found a pair of holes in Lotus Development's Notes and Domino's password encryption and the security on public versions of the address list." Although this doesn't affect nearly as many people as Microsoft products, it is important for people to be careful no matter what product they are using.
For more info:
http://www.infoworld.com/articles/hn/xml/00/08/01/000801hndomino.xml?0801tup
New Bar Coding Technology
This is a little old now, but I figured I'd include it anyway. It comes from the August 2000 issue of PC Magazine and the Intacta.com web site:
I don't know if you've seen the new type of bar code that is around. Instead of vertical lines, the same size of label is filled with patterns of little squares. The pattern stores the data and a label the same size as a bar code can hold hundreds of times more information.
A company called Intacta has taken this a step further. Using their Intacta.Code technology, you can make these patterns as large as you'd like, and therefore store much more data. Each centimeter stores approximately 400 bytes of data. The Yomiuri Shimbun daily newspaper in Japan has been including one of these recently. You can encode an MP3, picture, or any other type of file.
You can download the Intacta.Code reader software and read more about this amazing technology at http://www.intacta.com/
MP3 Player for the GameBoy
Subscriber Leeor Geva sent me this:
I don't know if you have heard of this product yet, but it's called "Song Boy", an MP3 player for the Game Boy and it is in beta stages, awaiting release in October - Christmas. First shipment of Betas are to be released in 40 days. The Jr. Module holds 16MB of MP3 play and will be around $50, there should also be a regular Module that holds more memory. The father of a kid here in this computer camp where I teach (at UCLA) is the CEO (Ron L. Jones) and he brought over the beta. Last night when we tried it out, it said the memory chip is full when we tried uploading a song, but we didn't have time to check if there was an actual song on it yet, ill be playing around with the product more today. You can visit www.songboy.com for more info.
With all of the talk lately regarding Napster, Scour, and other media trading services, what do you think? When you download the latest song from Napster, are you really stealing? If you are, does it bother you? Would you pay for music if you could pay $1 a song (or a similarly low amount)?
Send in your feelings/comments/opinions to mailto:contest@pcin.net I will make a random drawing and the winner will receive a copy of Kai's Photo Soap 2.
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 most of them, but there are things that I
have never tried or experienced so I don't have an answer.
I 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. If you do try one of these tips, please let me know
how the suggestions worked out. Did they work or not? Please
send in your questions or results to mailto:freehelp@pcin.net
Previous Questions
Q 94-01)
Any URLs that are sent to me by ICQ will not open, when I click on them it says cannot launch web browser, and I noticed that when I click on the URL in ICQ that it is greyed out. It was working fine last week and I don't know what has happened.
A 94-01)
John Hills said, "Try preferences in ICQ and under general, tick launch default web browser. Also make sure your URL's are pointing in the right direction in Explorer, View, File types. They will be OK if you can launch URL's from e.g. Outlook, or any other windows programs except ICQ."
Q 94-02)
I'd like to reformat my hard drive and reinstall Windows from scratch. Can someone recommend a site that has step-by-step instructions on how to do this?
A 94-02)
Thanks to Kenneth Aspinwall, Eileen Dumont, Daniel Najimian, Joe Wilk, Judy Wilson and John Hills for contributing to this list of sites that have instructions on how to do a clean install of Windows:
http://www.netpathway.com/~kramer/reinstall.html
http://www.win98central.com/page.php?1092
http://wusun10.utsi.edu/myBook/InsideWindows98/ch02.htm#Heading11
http://www.pcmech.com/byopc/build.htm?27
http://www.winmag.com/windows/guides/win98/default.htm
New Questions
Q 95-01)
When trying to print a full-page, landscape-oriented 1 page file to my printer, the picture is consistently scrunched down by what appears to be approximately 50%.
Q 95-02)
When I send an email to a friend it automatically downloads into his deleted items. He doesn't have any rules set up, and I'm the only one who this happens to.
If you have an answer to these questions or have a question of your own, please email me at mailto:freehelp@pcin.net
Cheap Trick of the Week
**Extend your selection skills in Word**
When you want to select text in Microsoft Word, do you sweep across it with your mouse? And then get mixed up or lose your place when the selection runs beyond the text showing in the open window?
Several alternatives make it a whole lot easier to select text. Here are three of them:
1. Place the cursor at your starting point in the text. Hold down the Shift key and press the Arrow keys. Text will be selected in the direction of the Arrow keys.
2. Click on the starting point. Scroll to near the end point, hold down Shift and click on where you want to end the selection.
3. Click at the starting point. Then double-click on the greyed-out EXT in the status bar below the window you're working in. Navigate to your intended end point and click on it. This is using Word's Extension Mode, which stays in effect until you double-click on EXT again to turn it off.
These tricks work in all versions since Word 95 at least.
Solitaire Cheat
If you are playing Solitaire and turning over 3 cards at once, often the card you want is in the middle and you can never seem to get at it. Well, you can. Just hold down Shift, CTRL, and Alt keys at the same time and click on the draw pile. This will allow you to draw the cards one at a time.
Some Microsoft Word Formatting Tips
In Word, it is very easy to use your mouse and click on buttons on the task bar to format your documents. As always though, sometimes it's even easier to use keyboard shortcuts. You can type * before a word to get bold and _ to italicize a word.
PCIN 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 for the results obtained from trying the tips in this newsletter.
Graham Wing can be reached at mailto:editor@pcin.net
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