Issue 89 - June 21, 2000

ISSN 1488-3163; PC Improvements (c) 2000
==== 1003 Subscribers in 46 Countries ====

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Welcome to the 89th 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 June prize will be Software602's 602Pro Lan Suite Lite, a program that lets you connect several computers to the Internet. Recommend PCIN at http://www.pcin.net/recommend.shtml

OPENING THOUGHTS

Well, it took me 89 weeks, but I finally reached the 1000 subscriber mark. It feels good to finally be at 4 digits.

I may be at 4 digits, but Bill Gates is well beyond that when it comes to his wealth. Forbes just said that once again he is the richest person on the planet. But at least we can all feel good that we've contributed.

There were no suggestions for either of last week's I Need Help questions. It isn't too surprising as both of the questions were kind of obscure.

This is officially the last week that I will be including the Smileys and Acronyms of the Week. If you have any ideas for another little thing to put at the top of the newsletter, email me at mailto:editor@pcin.net with your suggestions. Otherwise, starting next week I will go right into the news.

The NEWS

The Best Seat in the House

From page 17 of the June 5, 2000 InformationWeek Magazine:
"Webclients.net, and incubator of online advertising networks, is taking its marketing campaign to the best seat in the house - the bathroom. The company will "sponsor" pit stops in New York's Roseland Ballroom this week when the venerable dance hall hosts a conference called "Web Attack! 2000: The Internet Goes Broadway."
Attendees will view Webclient slogans when nature's call forces a retreat. Webclients' Heather Doyle says Roseland will feature slogans such as, "Don't let your profits trickle away," and some stall doors will announce, "Relieve yourself of direct-marketing hassles and worries."
Says Mounir Elabridi, found and CEO of Webclients: "This sponsorship will allow Webclients.net to get our message out to a very targeted audience. A very captive audience, too."

AOL Security Problems

"America Online has confirmed that hackers have illegally broken into 200 of its member accounts by targeting key company employees with an email virus.
AOL spokesman Rich D'Amato declined to comment on what kind of information was accessed by the perpetrators, but said AOL has increased security measures designed to prevent such an attack from reoccurring.
He said the perpetrators gained access to the accounts when unsuspecting AOL staff downloaded virus-infected email attachments. As previously reported, the attacks targeted employees authorized to review and edit account data, including credit card information and passwords."

For more info:
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-2108689.html?tag=st.ne.ron.lthd.ni
http://www.infoworld.com/articles/hn/xml/00/06/21/000621hnaolbreach.xml?0621wepm

Interesting Security Statistics

Speaking of security, yesterday I was at a lunch sponsored by MicroAge with Jean Pascal Hebert, the National Account Manager at Symantec Canada. He gave a very good presentation with some interesting statistics:
40% of viruses come via removable media (CDs, floppy disks, Zip disks, etc.)
60% come over the Internet (email, downloaded files, chat worms, etc.)
There are only around 42 viruses on a Mac (is this true?)
74% of security threats come from inside an organization

Instant Messaging Standard

"America Online has submitted a proposal for a protocol that would allow its instant messaging services to interoperate with similar services from other vendors." The proposal was 18 pages long and if followed by all parties, then MSN Messenger, Odigo, AOL, ICQ and other instant messaging programs would be able to access the users on all of the other systems.

For more info:
http://www.infoworld.com/articles/hn/xml/00/06/16/000616hnaol.xml?0616frpm

More Domain Names?

They've been talking about this for years, but it seems as if ICANN is ready to start seriously considering adding more top-level domains (COM, NET, ORG are top-level domains). Proposals will be made up to October, and then by November the new TLDs would be announced and in place by the end of the year. We'll see.

For more info:
http://www.internetnews.com/bus-news/article/0,2171,3_395261,00.html
http://www.infoworld.com/articles/hn/xml/00/06/15/000615hnicann.xml?0616frap

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 questions or results to mailto:freehelp@pcin.net

Previous Question 1
Today when I tried to open my Word Perfect 7.0, I kept getting a message "PerfectFit dlls cannot be loaded". What does this mean and how do I fix it?

Answers to Question 1
No answer given.

Previous Question 2
Yesterday I inserted some more RAM for my computer. But when I restart it, there was an error: "NLTD (or something like that, I can't remember) not found." Then I start my computer with the other disk. And I can not use the command "dir" with drive C. There's a error "invalid media type..." What can I do now?

Answers to Question 2
No answer given.

New Questions
Q1) Is it possible to watch a DVD on my TV from my computer's DVD-ROM?
Q2) I just wanted to ask if you knew of any single program that would protect you from hacking type stuff such as BackOrifice and NetBus?

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

**Get more info **
If you used a PC before Windows 95, you may remember the MSD utility that gave you all kinds of information about your Windows 3.1 or DOS system. Too bad Win95 or 98 doesn't have a similar program, eh?
But it does, it does!
Using Explorer, look in your Windows\MSApps\MSInfo folder for a file called MSInfo32.exe. If it's not there, try looking in Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\MSInfo).
Double-click on it to open it. You'll find MSInfo gives you tons of info about your system and its components, including type of system, total memory, available memory, available space on each of your hard drives, swap file size, system DLLs, font substitutions and much, much more.

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

Free AntiVirus Software

For a while now, McAfee and TrendMicro have had free online antivirus scanning. There are other companies getting into the action now, so here are the URLs and products offered:
McAfee - Mail Watcher and eTrust Content Inspection Personal Edition
http://www.cai.com/
Finjan Software - SurfinGuard
http://www.finjan.com/
Aladdin Knowledge Systems - eSafe
http://www.aks.com/
TrendMicro - HouseCall
http://housecall.antivirus.com/pc_housecall/

Use NetMeeting

I work with a good friend of mine, Chris Empey. I've mentioned him before and he sent out PCIN last summer when I was on vacation. Anyway, this week he was trying to figure out a way that we could remotely administer one of the servers. He started playing around with NetMeeting, and I have to say that it is one of the coolest programs I've seen. When 2 people start a meeting, you can give the other user control of your desktop. That other user then can run programs on your computer just like it was their own computer.
I know there are other programs out there that do similar things; like pcAnywhere, but this has one big advantage... it's free. It comes with Internet Explorer.

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.

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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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