ISSN 1488-3163; PC Improvements (c) 2000
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Welcome to the 114th 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. I was able to get Play, Inc. to donate a Snappy! 4.0 to the newsletter. If you recall, I did a review of it some time ago ( you can see it at http://www.pcin.net/help/software/snappy.shtml ). It is a piece of hardware that will let you use your parallel port to input video into your computer. You can get screen captures of TV shows, videos, etc. It is valued at over $100. Recommend PCIN in December and you will have a chance to win this. Each unique person that you recommend PCIN to will get you one entry into the draw. The more you recommend PCIN the more chance you have to win. Recommend PCIN now at http://www.pcin.net/recommend.shtml
I'm finally done school! I had my last test today and I am officially finished. For those of you who don't know, I have been going to a local College and have finished as a Computer Programmer/Analyst. I didn't learn as much as I had hoped for, but at least now I have that little piece of paper that says I know something.
I've mentioned for a while that I want to do some updates to the PCIN site, do more reviews, etc. Well, I will finally have the time to. I have already got a few pieces of software on the way to review, so look for them in the next couple of weeks.
Lastly, don't forget to recommend PCIN in the month of December and have a change to win a Snappy! 4.0. Recommend PCIN now at http://www.pcin.net/recommend.shtml
Top 50 Web Sites
When you look at the link below that lists the top 50 web sites, it is interesting that the top 10-20 is the same ones that we've been seeing for 2+ years. Are these sites that good, or is there nothing else worth visiting?
For those who don't check out the links, here is the top 10:
Rank / Web Site / Unique Visitors (000)
1 / yahoo.com / 64,127
2 / aol.com / 52,441
3 / msn.com / 46,587
4 / microsoft.com / 39,236
5 / geocities.com / 36,370
6 / passport.com / 35,227
7 / AOLProprietary.aol / 30,688
8 / amazon.com / 26,302
9 / ebay.com / 23,703
10 / lycos.com / 23,084For more info:
http://cyberatlas.internet.com/big_picture/traffic_patterns/article/0,,5931_529631,00.html
Amazon.com Ad Agency Leaves
"The parting of ways comes at a sensitive time for Amazon. The retailer is in the midst of the most important selling season of the year and under intense pressure from Wall Street because of its continued losses.
Some advertising-industry executives speculated that Amazon's current financial situation might be connected to its agency review. Amazon has experienced mounting losses and, while the company has said it has enough cash to carry it to profitability, some Wall Street skeptics have questioned whether that is true."For more info:
http://www.msnbc.com/news/500536.asp
http://www.thestandard.com/article/display/0,1151,20691,00.html
Quotes of the Year
With the end of the year (and the whole Millennium thing starting up a bit again), there are bound to be more lists or compilations like this. "It was a year in which the Internet dot-com bubble well and truly burst, Napster and peer-to-peer networking became household names, and technology lawsuits and viruses kept a-flying." Read these quotes from the previous year and reminisce a bit.
For more info:
http://www.infoworld.com/articles/hn/xml/00/12/13/001213hnquotes.xml
Well, I guess no one is interested in PDAs. I only had 1 response to last weeks contest about Palm Pilot's, Blackberry's, Visor's, Aero's, Cassiopeia's and any other small Personal Digital Assistant. The person who suggested the contest didn't even send in any comments.
Anyway, Jim Bateman won a copy of PowerQuest's Lost and Found
by sending me the following comment:
"I don't need or want them. From now on my motto is 'if
it's more complicated to operate than my TV or phone, I will
pass on it.' Enough technology advancements. Lets work on
user friendly. I'm sick and tired of having to get a degree
in whatever new device comes on the market. They have reached
the point of diminishing benefit vs. cost."
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 113-01)
Sometimes when booting up the system will hang at the startup screen and I'll have to CTRL, Alt, Del to restart into safe mode. Then restart normal from there, then everything starts fine. This after a clean install. It still does it after setting up hardware. No IRQ, I/O, DMA or memory conflicts, registry looks okay too. I Formatted installed Win98SE and it worked just fine so I know it's not a heat, power supply or motherboard problem. Any suggestions?
A 113-01)
John Hills said, "Out of the many reasons I would suggest the common one of your graphics driver failing to initialize. If you check Bootlog.txt in your root directory or sometimes windows directory you should be able to determine which device has failed. You could try changing your display driver to Standard Graphics Adapter and if that cures the problem you either need to reinstall your display driver or get an updated one from the appropriate website."
Q 113-02)
Is it possible to remove the "Network Neighborhood" icon from my desktop? How do I?
A 113-02)
John Hills said, "This icon is there because you have dial up networking. I think to remove it you will need to edit the registry which I do not really recommend to anyone to try as you could do more damage than its worth. What have you got against this poor little icon? What did it do to you? John Hills is a member of the R.S.P.C. I. (Royal Society of the Prevention of Cruelty to Icons)"
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Chris Stoneham said, "You can remove the Network Neighbourhood icon using TweakUI, available at www.microsoft.com/ntworkstation/downloads/PowerToys/Networking/NTTweakUI.asp
Install it, then load it and just uncheck Network Neighbourhood in the Desktop tab. Beware that doing this means you cannot access any UNC paths or mapped network drives!"
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Mike said, "The easy way is to use Xteq X-Setup (I have version 5.7). On the left hand side of the window click your way down thru' Appearance-Desktop-Options to System Desktop Options. The web site is at http://www.xteq.com/
There is a warning: Hiding the Network Neighbourhood can lead to serious problems (for example with UNC names). Deactivate this option ONLY if you are sure that you don't need any network functionality."
New Questions
Q 114-01)
Q 114-02)
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
**Cheatin' Hearts**
If you play Hearts, the game that comes with Windows (called Classic Hearts in Windows Me), this trick will help you win by letting you peek at your opponents' cards.
It requires a clever little Registry tweak and a little knowledge of a certain science fiction classic. (For instructions and precautions for editing Windows' Registry, see www.WE-Compute.com/registry.html.)
In the Registry, make your way to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Current Version\Applets\Hearts. If you do not have a Hearts key, it's because you have never played it on your system and the Registry has not set one up yet. In that case, play the game once and then go back to the Registry to find this key.
Select the Hearts key and right-click in the pane on the right side of the window. Choose New and String Value from the pop-up menus. Rename the new string ZB - which some fans of the SF novel A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy might recognize as short for the character Zaphod Beeblebrox.
Double-click on the new value to bring up its Edit String dialogue box. In the data field, enter the great answer to the question of life, the universe and everything - at least according to A Hitchhiker's Guide.
You don't know? Okay, the answer is the two-digit number 42. Enter that, click OK, close up the Registry and start Hearts.
During the game, press the Ctrl, Alt, Shift and F12 keys all at once and you'll see everyone's cards.
A Driver Site
"We have seen that your web site includes a hyperlink to web pages specializing in drivers. Because of this we would like to invite you to visit our site, which is exclusively dedicated to drivers www.helpdrivers.com
Our web site has a clear structure and an interface, which directs visitors in just a few seconds. Our database is updated daily and we have the largest collection of drivers on the Internet. The site content is available in Spanish, English, French and German, making it even easier for visitors to find the information they seek.
If you like our new site, we would be delighted if you would include a hyperlink to it.
We trust this information will be useful for you.
Yours sincerely,
Javier Ramos
javier@helpdrivers.com
www.helpdrivers.com"Check it out at http://www.helpdrivers.com/
More Windows ME Comments
Steve Black
"I think even worse is the fact they do not supply a CD-ROM with OEM machines. What happens when you HDD crashes? You have to pay for Windows again?"John Tounoussidis
"I read in the latest newsletter the little article about Windows ME, well I have just installed it on my computer and it seems to be running perfectly in has actually proven to be faster than Windows 98SE which I had installed before this. A mate of mine also has Windows ME and he has been running it for a while and he has also said its run ok. He has said that the restore feature has actually saved him from reinstalling windows (he seems to enjoy stuffing around with his PC). I myself have nothing too special on my computer to really put the OS to the test but my mate runs a network on it and has all sorts of other gadgets on it and as I said it runs fine."
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
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
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