Issue 75 - March 15, 2000

ISSN 1488-3163; PC Improvements (c) 1999
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Welcome to the 75th 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 (March draw is for StarOffice 5.1) at http://www.pcin.net/recommend.shtml

OPENING THOUGHTS

Last week, the whether was beautiful; 20 degrees Celsius for several days in a row. Then Saturday night, we got 17cm of snow (around 6 inches). Now it is almost all gone and the temperature is back up to around 10 degrees Celsius. Go figure.

As some of you know, I am currently attending a local college enrolled in the Computer Programmer/Analyst program. This year the school is participating in one of Microsoft's site licenses. I don't know exactly how it works, but the school pays a fee and then can put software on any machine on campus. They then also can sell copies to the students at a very reduced price. I was able to buy a full version of Office 2000 Pro for $35 Cdn (usually around $500) and a full version of Visual Studio 6 for $70 (usually around $1000). Not Bad!

I have been cleaning up my office area and I have several hardware devices that I want to get rid of. I have made a page at http://www.pcin.net/forsale.shtml that has a very brief description of the items and their price (either $5 or $10, depending on the weight). Everything works; I just want to get rid of them so the price is basically just to cover the mailing cost. The price you see is what you would pay. Check it out, and if you are interested, let me know.

I only had one person enter last week's contest (thanks John), and since there is a lack of interest for this portion of PCIN, I will do the contests monthly. The first Wednesday of every month will have an opportunity for people to win prizes. This way I won't be pestering you every Saturday, and it makes a little easier on me as well (less to do).

SMILEYS and ACRONYMS of the WEEK

:-o    Uh oh!
:-@    Screaming
AFAIK  As Far as I Know
DTRT   Do the Right Thing

Get the WWW. Smileys & Acronyms book for the PCIN special price of $7.00 Cdn (around $5.00 US). You can only get this price by visiting http://www.pcin.net/help/books/reviewed/smileys.shtml

The NEWS

Can't Copy Apple

In a fight that surely is just beginning, Apple recently got injunctions against eMachines and other companies for making PCs that look like their iMacs. eMachines makes a machine called the eOne that looks almost exactly the same. eMachines has already said they will modify the design slightly, but still have an all-in-one design.

For more info:
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,34821,00.html
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/newsbursts/0,7407,2458465,00.html

Windows 2000 and Germany

This is just a rumour, but it seems so unreal I figured I'd include it. This comes from Rumor Central of PC Week magazine, February 28, 2000 issue:
"[There are] whisperings of a possible boycott of Windows 2000 in Germany. Because Microsoft is a big bad monopoly? No. The conspiracy theorists are yammering about the Windows 2000 disk defragmenter utility supported by Executive Software, whose CEO is a member of the Church of Scientology. The German government and the Scientologists have been sparring for years, and ...some Germans are worried the software will secretly report personal information back to the church."

Microsoft Unveils X-Box

Even though rumours had been going around for months, Microsoft finally has confirmed and unveiled their X-Box gaming device. Similar to the other consoles (Playstation, Dreamcast, etc.), supposedly it will be twice as fast as current models. It won't be released until the fall of 2001, so who knows how fast Playstation or the new Nintendo systems will be by then.

For more info:
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,2458712,00.html?
chkpt=hud0004200

Death of the Floppy

"Experts" have been talking about this for years, but it never seems to happen. The Dallas Morning News recently ran a funny article about this. The article is almost like a eulogy. You can see it at http://www.dallasnews.com/technology/45232_flopdead_09per.html

CONTEST RESULTS

Last week's contest was asking about software piracy. Well, J.T. was the only person to enter last week's contest. As a result, he wins all 5 prizes:

Super Text Search
FontLook
Directory Print
Directory Compare
TweakDUN

Here is his answer:
I personally do a bit of both. I have some copied games/programs/etc and I have a lot of stuff I have bought. I believe that if you are gonna use a program all the time than you should buy it. For instance I have my original copy of Win95 and Win98 and Office 97 and other programs that I use all the time. But for programs that I may use once in a while to do something I might install the program off a friend or download it and other ways like that. Generally though prefer to buy the software because I then can ring the company for support if I have trouble and the program works better and it's all there. As for mp3s I am a confessed download addict I can't afford to buy a whole album for just one or two songs I like. But if I do like the bands/artist songs then I do go you and buy the album.

I NEED HELP

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 results to mailto:freehelp@pcin.net

Previous Question 1
I have a Pentium 32.OMB RAM computer and I can't get any sound from the outputs in the back of it. When I plug my speakers into the CD-ROM drive I can listen to a music CD but I get no sound from the back.

Answers to Question 1
John Tounoussidis said, "What I think has happened is the CD-ROM drive is not connected to the soundcard properly. Read the manuals for your CD-ROM drive and Sound card to find out how to do this."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Simon Duffy says, "Are you sure you have a lead going from CD-ROM to the soundcard??? If so check the little speaker on the taskbar by double-clicking on it to see if you have muted any outputs by accident. If that doesn't work it may be broken."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
John Hills said, "First of all, the music from the CD is entirely unrelated to sound from your sound card as has nothing to do with it at all. Assuming your soundcard is OK the drivers for your sound card are not loaded or are in conflict with another device. Have a look in device manager and see what is going on. Or the sound card is working fine but you have the sound muted in your software."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Ademola Omoni said, "Your sound card may not be installed properly. Click on the Start button, go to Settings, and then go to Control Panel. Find the system icon, usually towards the bottom of the window and double-click on it. Click on the Device Manager tab and check for any yellow dots with exclamation marks in them and see if you have any associated with your sound card. You may need help installing drivers for your sound card.
Otherwise, you may have a loose cable in your system. If you can, open up your system and check for a cable going from your CD-ROM drive to the sound card. Reseat the cable, plug your speakers to the output socket on the card and play your audio CD."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
William Chatham said, "First, try adjusting the volume levels in your system properties. (My Computer\Control Panel\Multimedia\Volume OR Click the little speaker icon in the start menu tray). If that doesn't work, you may have a misconfigured (or even defective) sound card. If you feel confident enough, you can try to open your computer and make sure the sound card is plugged in well. Also, try to open Device Manager (Right click My Computer and select Properties) and see if it is conflicting with another device."

Previous Question 2
I would like to copy a big file or some files in a directory (from hard drive), which is bigger than 3 floppy disks into some floppy disks.
The problem is that Windows and DOS do not copy continuously into the next disk but again from beginning of the files, so you never get the whole file. How to I copy big files to a floppy disk?

Answers to Question 2
Everyone who sent in a suggestion, suggest either a Zip program, or a file splitter program. Here is a summary of programs suggested. You can visit your favourite search engine or download site to find these programs:
Splitting solution:
Oliver - The File Splitter
Bill - SplitIt
Jock - F-Cutter
Herb, Roger - Spandisk

Zip Solution:
Robert - any Zip program
Charlie, Simon - WinZip 7 does disk spanning
John - try PKZip
John Tounoussidis - WinRAR or WinZip
And J suggested using a backup utility

New Questions
Q1) Every time we empty out the trash bin we get the following error message: "Can not delete M_QDMRV5: Cannot find the specified file. Make sure you specify the correct path and filename." What's this?
Q2) How do you turn off the warning message that Windows 98 gives you every time you enter the windows directory and windows\system directory?

If you have an answer to these questions or have a question of your own, please email me at mailto:freehelp@pcin.net

THE TIPS and OTHER STUFF

Cheap Trick of the Week

**Window to the past**
If you're old enough to fondly remember Windows 3.1 - or if you'd just like a peak at what computing was like pre-1995 - you may be interested to know the Windows 3.1 File Manager (forerunner of Windows 95/98's Explorer) is still available on your current system.
And you can use it while running 95 or 98.
The most direct way to bring it up is to click on your Start button and on Run, type winfile and click on OK. The File Manager will pop up.
If you like it enough to want it instantly available at all times, you can make a shortcut to it on your desktop. To do this, right-click in an open space on the desktop. In the context menu that pops up, select New and Shortcut. A dialogue box appears and you should type C:\Windows\Winfile.exe into the Command Line field (assuming Windows is the folder where Windows 95 or 98 is installed on your system). Click on Next and then name the new icon something like The Ol' File Manager and hit Finish.
Now whenever you want to relive the Windows 3.1 days, you can just click on the The Ol' File Manager icon.

You can get the Little Black Book of Cheap Tricks yourself for only $9.95 Cdn (about $7.00 US)
http://www.pcin.net/help/books/reviewed/cheaptricks.shtml
(Please mention that you heard about it from PCIN)

Note about Last Week's Cheap Trick

Last week's cheap trick can be seen at:
http://www.pcin.net/archive/2000/20000308.shtml
Subscriber Herby sent this in:
To open a document in from the DOS Prompt with START you also can use the long names from windows incl. spaces.
EXAMPLE Start "My Longname Document.doc"
As you see I put the name between "" If there are no spaces you can type the name without ""
EXAMPLE Start MyLongnameDocument.doc

Compare Files and Directories

"FileImg.exe is an unsupported utility that takes snapshots of the entire contents of any directory on your machine. It displays important information about all files and subdirectories such as version, size, date, and attributes. It also lets you compare two images to determine how the files in a target directory have changed."
http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q243/4/24.asp

Freeware Sites

I know there are all sorts of Freeware sites, but I just noticed that I had a few bookmarked, so I thought I'd mention them:
http://www.completelyfreesoftware.com/
http://www.freewarefiles.com/
http://thunder.prohosting.com/~ladi/index.html
http://www.users.uswest.net/~sharman1/index.htm

DISCLAIMER and OTHER STUFF

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.

  1. If any of the links are too long to fit on one line, you may have to cut and paste.
  2. You can only win one contest every 30 days.
  3. To subscribe another address or unsubscribe, please visit http://www.pcin.net/ and follow the appropriate links.
  4. Recommend PCIN to others at http://www.pcin.net/recommend.shtml and be entered in a monthly draw.
  5. 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.
  6. If you have a web site or run your own newsletter, please email me at mailto:editor@pcin.net and I will add it to the subscriber web pages that I have on my site.

Graham Wing can be reached at mailto:editor@pcin.net
Copyright 1998-2000, PC Improvements and Graham Wing. All rights reserved. This publication may be reproduced in hole, or in part, as long as the author is notified and the newsletter is presented as is.

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