Issue 128 - March 21, 2001
ISSN 1488-3163; PC Improvements ©2001
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Welcome to the 128th 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. Recommend
PCIN in March and win a Snappy! 4.0. The more you recommend PCIN, the
more chances you have to win. Recommend PCIN now at http://www.pcin.net/recommend.shtml
OPENING THOUGHTS
Today Lisa and I have been married for 4 years. Some people speak negatively
about marriage, but I think it's great. These 4 years have flown by, and
have been full of fun and love.
Some people have been emailing me about the Niagara Falls desktop wallpaper.
Well, it is finally back again at http://www.gawing.com/wallpaper/ There
are 3 series of pictures (Niagara Falls Autumn, Niagara Falls Winter,
and Country Winter) for a total of 60 pictures.
Don't forget to recommend PCIN in March. The prize is a Snappy! 4.0.
This is a device that will let you capture video on your computer. If
you don't have a graphics card that has TV or other video in, then this
is a great device to have. Recommend PCIN now at http://www.pcin.net/recommend.shtml
The NEWS
Bush Signs Off From The Internet
"President Bush has been forced to withdraw from cyberspace after
lawyers warned him that any future emails could be made public.
In a mournful farewell computer message to 42 'dear friends' and relatives,
Mr. Bush said: 'My lawyers tell me all correspondence by email is subject
to open record requests. Since I do not want my private conversations
looked at by those out to embarrass, the only course of action is not
to correspond in cyberspace. This saddens me. I have enjoyed conversing
with each of you.'"
For more info:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/et?ac=000140326706927&rtmo=
LxSKGNNd&atmo=rrrrrrrq&pg=/et/01/3/19/wemai19.html
Spam Blocker Wipes Out E-Mail
"Up to two weeks' worth of e-mail from customers of EarthLink
Inc. have been accidentally deleted by America Online Inc. trying to
block junk e-mail.
'The problem first came to our attention about a week ago,' said Arley
Baker, EarthLink's director of corporate communications. 'We were getting
some e-mail from customers saying, 'Hey, I'm trying to e-mail someone
at AOL and they never got my message.''
Filters used to block junk e-mail, known as spam, from AOL accounts
were set to delete any e-mail coming from an EarthLink address."
For more info:
http://www.thestar.com/cgi-bin/gx.cgi/AppLogic+FT
ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/
Article_PrintFriendly&c=Article&cid=985115570768
Looking For Scrap Copper
Subscriber Scott McIntosh sent me this:
"Subscribers to Rogers at Home high-speed Internet service experienced
a major outage Thursday night, when someone cut a fibre-optic cable
near St. Catharines, Ont.
The problems reached across much of Ontario and caused about $70,000
in damage.
Police say thieves were after copper wire which runs parallel to a CN
railway track near St. Catharines."
I live in St. Catharines and noticed the outage that night. I was wondering
what was wrong. The funny thing is, these people were looking for copper,
but it was all fibre.
For more info:
http://ottawa.cbc.ca/cgi-bin/templates/view.cgi?/news/2001/03/11/ott_rogers010309
MOBILE COMPUTING NEWS and NOTES
Kyocera, the guys who bought Qualcomm's phone-building business, have
improved upon the design of the pdQ phone, which is a Palm Pilot and phone
mixed together. The new phone, called the QCP 6035, can surf the web wirelessly
by using HTML. It also supports WAP...but, why bother? You can read more
about it at http://www.kyocera-wireless.com/kysmart/kysmart_series.htm
Brought to you by Shawn Bremner and The Wireless Web ezine. Sign up by
sending a blank email to mailto:wirelessweb-subscribe@topica.com
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 Questions
Q 127-01
I use Internet Explorer. How do you get all of the text on a single
page when printing Internet material? I often have text truncated
along the right hand margin. I've tried adjusting the page settings
to like 0 margins but still can't get it all on the page. Is there
an Internet setting that says "fit all to page" or something?
A 127-01
Ademola Omoni Jr. said, "I always fix this problem with the
following steps:
From the File menu select Print
By the printer name, click on the 'Properties' button
In Page Setup, go to 'Orientation' and select 'Landscape'
This should deselect 'Portrait'
Click on OK. This takes you back to the Print options.
You can then enter the number of pages you want to print and click
on OK."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
John Hills said, "I would try checking text size first in options
and make sure it is medium, check the print preview screen to see
if page is coming off the end in that. If it is not, then check your
printer driver is the correct one for your printer and your page is
set up for UK A4 or Letter USA in your printer options. Failing that,
buy some big paper."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Chris Stoneham said, "Unfortunately, there is no 'Fit to page'
option when printing from IE. - What may be causing a problem is if
the site has a navigation bar on the left of the page. Try selecting
the text you want to print, and then clicking the 'Selection' option
on the print dialog, as this will only print the part(s) of the page
you want. Another option may be to save the page, and try opening
it in an HTML editor, as this may have better printing options. Also,
you may want to experiment with IE 5.5, as this has a print preview
option, so at least you can see if it won't print correctly."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Dan Najimian said, "This isn't necessarily the simplest solution,
but it works: copy the document from the Internet to your clipboard,
and paste it into your Windows word processor. From there you will
be able to edit the page, including margins and text size. This is
helpful for printing out e-mail, especially when you want to print
just the text of the message and eliminate lines in the header at
the top of the page."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
** said, "If you've played around with the IE settings then either
the page is simply too wide and IE wont resize it, your printer cant
print that wide a page or IE is ignoring your settings (don't laugh,
it can happen :). Try print preview before you print to see whether
or no IE is trying to print correctly. Also START > SETTINGS >
PRINTERS will let you set the default settings for each printer. Right-click
on the appropriate printer and play :). The 'paper' tab in the printer
settings here may help."
Q 127-02
When viewing a folder in Windows Explorer as a Web Page, I used
to be able to view previews/thumbnails of BMP, GIF, and JPG files.
Now JPG files don't show at all. Is there any way to get this back
to the way it was?
A 127-02
Chris Stoneham said, "This is a known problem with a quick and
easy fix. Click Start then Run and type the following, depending on
which version of IE you have.
For IE4 type - regsvr32.exe /i shdocvw.dll
For IE5 type - regsvr32.exe /i shdoc401.dll"
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
John Hills said, "You need to go into Explorer, View and Customize
folders and choose the preview option."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
** said, "There is more than one way to do this, but the most
common is to click on 'view' in the menu at the top of the folder,
then select 'as a web page' to see a preview on the right hand side
of the window. If this is how you would like all folders to look then,
view > folder options (at bottom) > view (tab at window top)
> press button 'like current folder'."
New Questions
Q 128-01
Occasionally when online, my computer suddenly comes up with the
closing screen "it is now safe to turn your computer off".
This is a new machine and has been checked by the supplier.
(AMD 800, 128MB RAM, 20GB HD, Windows 98 SE, IE5)
Q 128-02
When I launch JPG files in MSPAINT.EXE, it gives a Dr. Watson error.
Is there any way to rectify this?
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
**Blacker than black**
Here's a tip for desktop publishers or for anyone who produces work
with graphics to be printed in a four-colour process, such as with commercial
printers.
Not all blacks are equal. Professionals have long known that some blacks
are more solid, seemingly blacker than others.
You can get denser blacks if you don't colour objects with just 100-percent
black. Add in the other process colours - cyan, magenta and yellow -
up to 20 percent each if you like, although usually five percent is
enough.
The additional colours won't be noticeable to the naked eye because
the black will cover them, but they'll help fill in the minute gaps
in the black ink, so the eye will get an overall impression of greater
solidity.
A standard trick is to add a little magenta or red (magenta plus yellow)
to get a warmer, richer black.
Adding cyan will create a crisper, cooler black.
A while ago I reviewed the original Cheap Tricks book. Well, I recently
received a copy of the 2001 copy and finished the review of it. You
can see it at http://pcin.net/help/books/reviewed/lbbct2001.shtml
There isn't much to say about it other than the fact that if you like
to tweak your system, then get the book. It is only about $10 CDN (approximately
$7 US) and contains all sorts of great tips. I've learned a few things
myself and I'm sure you will too.
Get your own copy of "The Little Black Book of Cheap Tricks: 2001"
by visiting http://www.pcin.net/lbbct
New Search Engine
Subscriber Judy Wilson and her husband have started an ambitious project,
a new search engine called FunGranny.com:
"FunGranny.com was founded February 1, 2001. We were considering
this project for several months when we learned of Linksmanager.com
through an email message. One look at what Linksmanager.com offers and
we knew it was what we needed to complete FunGranny.com. We had a co-branded
search engine with Mamma.com but we lacked a directory. Linksmanager.com
provided an easy to use and very affordable solution. We especially
like the email auto-responders. Our customers appreciate the immediate
re-enforcement after they add their links.
Believe it or not our signups agree that our $1.00 fee per listing helps
keep spamming to a minimum. Our Top Sites directory listings are a plus
factor. Linksmanager's rotation of listings makes our site outstanding.
We are very happy with Linksmanager.com and find more features to use
every day.
FunGranny.com is concerned with offering businesses an opportunity to
be seen. We view reciprocal links as a plus for us so we offer a site
review for an active link. We have purposely kept our fees low to get
more listings, which go to our cost of doing business. We at FunGranny.com
are an excited group who know that quality service will win the day."
More on the Last Update JavaScript Tip
Last week's Cheap Trick mentioned that you could type javascript:alert(document.lastModified)
in the address bar and this would give you the date that the web page
was last modified.
Subscriber Ruth Wilkowski and I had the same idea. Once you've typed
it in once and pressed enter, click on the icon next to the URL on the
address bar and drag it onto your Links toolbar. Now you can just click
on that link anytime without having to type it out.
Ruth continued, "Incidentally, I only recently started using my
Links toolbar, but now that I have, I find it incredibly useful. Especially
since I deleted all the pre-set links and used the whole bar for my
OWN choices."
Registry Tweaks Page Updated
I have added several new registry tweaks to the "Some Useful Registry
Tips" article on the PCIN site at http://www.pcin.net/help/articles/registry.shtml
There are now 19 different tweaks.
Refreshing the Driver Information Database
I've shared similar information before, but this is right to the point.
If you are having problems installing drivers, try refreshing the Driver
Information Database (the files that know what drivers are installed
on your system). Do a search for the drvidx.bin and drvdata.bin files.
Erase them and restart your computer and the next time you go to install
a driver, the Driver Information Database will be recreated.
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.
- If any of the links are too long to fit on one line, you may have
to cut and paste.
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- To subscribe another address or unsubscribe, please visit http://www.pcin.net/
and follow the appropriate links.
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and be entered in a monthly draw.
- 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.
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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 whole, or in part, as long as the
author is notified and the newsletter is presented as is.
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