Issue 128 - March 21, 2001

ISSN 1488-3163; PC Improvements ©2001
==== 1526 Subscribers in 50 Countries ====

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

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.

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