The PC Improvement News

Issue 71 - February 16, 2000
ISSN 1488-3163; PC Improvements (c) 1999

==== 803 Subscribers in 43 Countries ====

Subscribe/Unsubscribe/View Archives at http://www.pcin.net/

Welcome to the 71st edition 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 topics in this newsletter. Email me at
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 (February draw is
for PowerDesk Utilities 98) at http://www.pcin.net/recommend.shtml

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OPENING THOUGHTS
----------------------------------------------------------------
This is the first issue I have sent out that is RTF format. For those of you
who aren't familiar with the term, you can send email in basically 3
formats, plain text, RTF, and HTML. Plain text is plain text. RTF is rich
text format which lets you add some colour and formatting features like a
word processor. HTML is a web page format. I thought RTF would allow me to
format the document better, and I'm hoping that most of the subscribers will
approve. Please send me your feedback, not about the actual formatting (that
will be changing over the next few weeks as I settle on what looks best),
but on whether or not your email client displays everything properly. I
especially want to hear from those with troubles. If too many people don't
like this, then I will go back to the plain text format.

As I said last week, on Wednesday I went to the InternetWorld/ISPCon show in
Toronto. What a disappointment! It was all the same thing with companies
claiming that they have an entire "solution" for your e-business needs. Very
boring.

Lastly, subscriber Leeor Geva will be attending a Windows 2000 launch party
and will report on it next week.

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SMILEYS and ACRONYMS of the WEEK
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:<|         A snob (the stuck up nose)
:-{         Man with a moustache
F2F       Face to face
GBH     Great big hug

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

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The NEWS
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Controlling the Use of Cookies
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"U.S. Sen. Robert Torricelli (D-N.J.) said Thursday he would introduce a
bill to regulate the use of personal information and Web cookies on the
Internet. At the same time, a privacy watchdog group filed a complaint with
the Federal Trade Commission against Internet data collector DoubleClick,
saying the company threatens consumer privacy on the Web. Torricelli said
that while he preferred self-regulation of Internet issues, he was concerned
about consumers' privacy rights."

For more info:
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,2436112,00.html


More Microsoft Problems
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While Microsoft is still in the midst of the US DoJ problems, word has come
out that the EU (European Union) is planning on investigating Microsoft and
their new Windows 2000 operating system. The feeling is that Microsoft will
be able to increase its dominance in the server operating system market.

For more info:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/business/newsid_636000/636676.stm


Windows 2000 has 63,000 Defects
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Although many people are claiming that Windows 200 is Microsoft's best
operating system yet, it has also been revealed that there are around 63,000
problems with the operating system. Some range from no big deal to serious.
Microsoft programmers are still working hard to fix these problems for a
service release. Microsoft defends itself by saying that bugs are inherent
in programming, and with an operating system with as much code as Windows
2000, there is bound to be problems.

For more info:
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,2436920,00.html


eBay Helps the Feds
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From the Tuesday, February 15, 2000 issue of the Toronto Star (page D2):
eBay Inc, the largest Internet auction site will assist the US Federal Trade
Commission and other law-enforcement agencies combating the fastest-growing
type of fraud by turning over complaints from its customers.
The FTC said it received some 10,700 complaints about Internet auctions in
1999 - a hundred times more than it got 2 years ago.

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CONTEST RESULTS
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There was no contest last week, but there is one next week. See below. You
can view the results from previous contests by visiting
http://www.pcin.net/contests/index.shtml

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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 freehelp@pcin.net

Previous Question 1
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I was wondering if there is a way to make a copy of my bios and send it to
somebody with the same board who screwed theirs up? Answers to Question 1
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Bill said, "Yes there is a way to copy the bios files, but all systems will
boot the same with the progs installed .You will find it in system files
under bios. I use find in the start section, which is easier. Whatever you
do, do not copy it straight to a disk as it has a tendency to remove parts
of itself from your system. The best way is right click it then copy and
paste it to a disk. If you bought your system new then you should have
received a disk to set the flash bios system. Most p/c shops will be happy
to make you a disk for this and might charge a $1.00 for it."
~~~~~
Paul Doty said, "There is a page that lists links to BIOS flasher utilities
at the W bios site. Go to http://www.bootdisk.com/ and in other is a link to
the BIOS site. The fist thing these do is prompt you to make a backup copy
of the present BIOS. You can then exit the program. Another way uses the
fact that most BIOS programs are shadowed into memory at startup. Using
debug you can read the memory information. Be careful with debug, you can
write to BIOS of modems, video cards and hard drives corrupting them. If
your friend's computer is giving the check sum error it may be possible to
escape and boot to a floppy and flash the BIOS. If not some BIOS have a
recovery option. This is a small code in ROM that checks the floppy drive
for a recovery disk. There may not be video support. Phoenix 4.0 had
recovery disc. If the floppy grinds first thing before the POST this would
be the system checking for the recovery disk. I found a link to some of
these at the microfirmware site."
~~~~~
Leeor Geva said, "The BIOS does not act like a hard drive, so you would have
to use special software made in assembly language to fetch anything that's
in there, for one thing. Instructions may be found in the BIOS
manufacturer's web site, and he may be able to get it from them for free
with proof of purchase of the mother board :-}"
~~~~~
Simon Duffy said, "Not unless you have a gigabyte 2000 which has a dual bios
and I'm not even sure if it can be removed but it may be possible. All I can
say is that if you have NT4 you could increase your paging file/virtual
memory size by 64. It would also help a little in windows. I only notice
that in music making programs when you apply an effect on a wav file for
example it is much faster when you have say a 128 DIMM."
~~~~~
Silvan Kuipers said, "You can, actually. But I do not know for sure if there
is a tool that actually does that. In principle, BIOS can be read and
written like memory, yet in a different manner. Norton Rescue Disk can make
a copy of your BIOS. Uploading to a Flash BIOS is pretty easy (there are
specific tools for it) but non-Flash BIOSes can usually only be written to
by a special EPROM programming tool.
Moreover, uploading your BIOS into another computer may not be wise! An even
slightly different motherboard may crash forever if you upload a wrong
BIOS."

Previous Question 2
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I've increased my memory from 64 to 128. What can I do to maximize my new
memory? I guess I haven't seen a real major change it speed.

Answers to Question 2
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Leeor Geva said, "You're probably not running applications that require
frequent and large use of RAM. I saw a huge difference from 16MB to 80MB,
Microsoft Word would take ~15 seconds before, where after the upgrade it
took 2. (And now it takes ~6 because of the great way Windows takes care of
resources build up) You can get programs that tweak the soft side of RAM,
where the Operating System arranges memory, but it is not recommended in
your case. Those programs were popular when we had 4MB and such limit to
RAM. The truth is you won't see a huge difference going from 64MB to 128MB
since, if I'm right, you aren't requesting much from your computer. Try
playing the newest game on the market :) Or running a graphic program such
as Bryce 3D, the rendering would be much faster, I promise you. Also
consider Windows 2000 Pro (or business) I hear it uses memory better."
~~~~~
Bill said, "Ram does not show as a real speed demon on any system. Where the
extra ram comes into effect is when you are running memory hog progs, or run
multiple windows at the same time. Your new ram will show on boot up as like
64k or 128k the extra numbers after that are what your video card and cache
so you will see like 68512k or whatever you have for ram. I run Windows 98
SE, and office. I went from 64 to 128 and was still a little slow, I
increased it to 256MB ram and now things run smooth with no crashes or
having to reboot 12 times while playing in power point which uses major
memory to make slide shows. Your new memory will load automatically with no
need for you to configure anything."
~~~~~
Silvan Kuipers said, "Depending on the speed of your computer and the
Windows version you use, expanding memory not always brings performance
increase. Expanding to 128 MB is useless if you have Windows 95, as it does
not really it. Windows 98 has better memory management, yet 128 MB is really
useful if you have Windows NT or Windows 2000.
Furthermore, if your CPU is slow, expanding from 64 MB to 128 MB won't help.
So you have to find the bottleneck in the performance, and upgrade
specifically that part."

New Questions
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Q1) I have a modem ... but I didn't know WHAT its driver is because my
friend gave it to me.... could you please help me to find where can I get
its driver?
Q2) When I enlarge my screen by clicking in the right hand corner, the
scroll bar is out of the screen. Can't seem to get it back where I can
operate it properly. Not too sharp on the computer. I can't size it or drag
it when it is enlarged. 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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Since we've been talking about optimizing your computer's performance, and
ultimately getting your memory to work the way you want, this week's contest
winner will receive a copy of FreeMem Pro. I have 2 copies to give out.
The contest is this... What is the most erroneous technology forecast you
have heard? For instance, a long time ago, Bill Gates said no one would ever
need more than 640k of memory. Now his own operating systems need many MB of
memory. Dead wrong? What other horrible predictions have you heard? What
ever happened to NCs (network computers)? Send your comments/entries to
contest@pcin.net Also don't forget to recommend PCIN at
http://www.pcin.net/recommend.shtml and be eligible at the end of February
to win a copy of PowerDesk Utilities 98.

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THE TIPS and OTHER STUFF
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Cheap Trick of the Week
----------------------------------------------------------------
**You're entitled to a better Web search**
Here's a tip to make your online experience better.
Suppose your pet aardvark is sick and you want to know how to help it get
better. So you type aardvark into a search engine on the Web...and you get
659,157 matches, including 1,450 cooking sites.
You need to narrow your search to sites that are serious about aardvarks.
Enter title followed by a colon and then your search term. For example, try
title:aardvark and you'll get sites with the animal in their title - not
necessarily in their URL, but in their official title, like "The Aardvark
Page" or "The Care of Pet Aardvarks".
Using the title prefix increases the likelihood that the sites found by a
search engine really have to do with the subject.
This trick works for several search engines like Yahoo, HotBot, AltaVista
and InfoSeek, though with Yahoo you can also just use the letter t with a
colon, as in t:aardvark.

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)


Recommended Browser Tool
----------------------------------------------------------------
Roger Thompson and Alec Thompson have both recommended the following:
This is the best idea since spellchecker. It is from the same 4 guys that
made ICQ in Israel. Right-click any word on the net and get EVERYTHING about
that word. No need for any programs on your computer. Dictionary, thesaurus,
or encyclopedia. Also FREE. GuruNet! It lets you point at any word, in any
Windows program, and, if you're online, it brings you instant info about
that word. Check it out at http://www.gurunet.com/


Recommended Tech Site
----------------------------------------------------------------
Alejandro Tanaka sent me this:
Ok, I got a link recommendation for your newsletter that most people will
use.... It's:
http://www.motherboards.org/
It features all the motherboards information from all boards manufacturers
including IBM, GATEWAY, NEC (non standard motherboards) It's great....


More Memory Talk
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Over the last several weeks, we have been discussing a lot of memory issues.
How do you avoid Out of Memory errors? How do you optimize your memory usage
with 16MB, 32MB, or even 128MB of RAM? Windows does a fairly decent job on
its own (compared to DOS and Windows 3.x), but there are still things you
can do. One of the best things is to use a program like FreeMem Pro, by
Meikel.
One of the problems that comes with programming, is the way that variables
use memory. It is quite complicated, but you can end up with memory being
used even though the program doesn't need it. This is often referred to a
memory leak. When you run FreeMem Pro, it loads at startup and monitors the
memory used. It tries to free memory if it isn't allocated properly.
I have been using this on my laptop for about a month, and I honestly
haven't had a single Out of Memory or Low Resources message. During this
same time, my desktop (without FreeMem Pro installed) runs into one of the
mentioned problems. I know there are many things to consider, but I do
attribute some of the stability of my laptop to having FreeMem Pro
installed.
There is a standard version of FreeMem, which is free, and the full version
of FreeMem Pro. You can visit the Meikel site at http://www.meikel.com/ and
you can read my full review at
http://www.pcin.net/help/software/freemempro.shtml


Great Help for Email Newsletter Publishers
----------------------------------------------------------------
I finished this book a long time ago, and the full review is available
online, but I couldn't find where I mentioned it in PCIN, so here it is:
A while ago I did a review of Poor Richard's Web Site by Peter Kent. Well,
the second book in the series is Poor Richard's Email Publishing written by
Chris Pirillo. I know many of you subscribe to Chris's newsletter
LockerGnome. Chris has had phenomenal success with LockerGnome, with a
subscriber base of over 150,000. In the book he goes over the basics of
email publishing, and shares examples of what he has done. This certainly
sparked my creative juices (although I haven't acted on them much yet). If
you publish an email newsletter, you would certainly benefit from reading
this book. I am expecting a couple copies of this book to give away as
prizes, so look for a contest in the future.

You can visit the LockerGnome site at http://www.lockergnome.com/
You can visit the Poor Richard site at http://www.poorrichard.com/email/
You can read my full review at
http://www.pcin.net/help/books/reviewed/prep.shtml


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. Some General Notes and Rules
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
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 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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