Issue 137 - May 23, 2001

ISSN 1488-3163; PC Improvements ©2001
==== 1854 Subscribers in 52 Countries ====

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Welcome to the 137th 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 in May and have the most referrals subscribe and you could win a copy of Microsoft Office 2000 Standard. Recommend PCIN now at http://www.pcin.net/recommend.shtml

OPENING THOUGHTS

Lisa and I finally finished one room in our house. We have repainted the ceiling and walls, stripped and refinished the floor, and changed all of the lights and plugs. Looks great. We quickly discovered that owning your own house is tiring, but certainly worth it.

There have been a lot of new subscribers since the last time I mentioned this, so here is a reminder. I have a couple of pages on the PCIN site where I list subscriber web sites and newsletter. If you would like to be listed on either, check out http://www.pcin.net/links/subweb.shtml and http://www.pcin.net/links/sublist.shtml and then let me know.

Don't forget to recommend PCIN in May. You're going to love the Recommend PCIN prize this month. I am giving away a copy of Microsoft Office 2000 Standard. You need to visit http://www.pcin.net/recommend.shtml and recommend PCIN to others. At the end of the month, the person who had the most people subscribe in May will win the software. This is a little different than normal. It is usually a random draw of anyone who recommended PCIN. No we need some action. These must be new subscribers to be eligible.

The NEWS

For(d) the Birds

"Industry analysts see the so-called 'takeover ad' that Yahoo! ran May 4 for the 2002 Ford Explorer as a bellwether for the next generation of highly interactive, highly intrusive advertising on the Web.
The ad, produced by J. Walter Thompson, began with several crows perched on a Ford Outfitters banner under the main Yahoo! logo. The birds then flew across the page to a pile of birdseed. As they ate the seeds, a Ford Explorer '02 banner was revealed. Those who clicked on the banner saw their screen start to shake and heard the sound of an engine ignition. A split-second later, the entire Yahoo! homepage was replaced by an animated Flash ad for the vehicle."

For more info:
http://www.turboads.com/richmedia_news/2001rmn/rmn20010516.shtml

Network Associates gives heave-ho to several products

"As part of an aggressive plan to spur the company to profitability, struggling security vendor Network Associates is cutting the cords to several lagging products in the intrusion-detection and network management space.
George Samenuk, who was installed as company president, chairman, and CEO in January, has taken a hard line toward resuscitating the company with dramatic cost-cutting, improved sales executions, and a refocusing of product development efforts."

For more info:
http://iwsun4.infoworld.com/articles/hn/xml/01/05/18/010518hnnai.xml

E-mail, Web access arrive on rail service

"Passengers aboard the Royal Canadian Pacific cruise train, which kicked off its 2001 operating season Friday, can relax in the same luxurious staterooms that once hosted British royalty and Winston Churchill. Now, they can also access their e-mail and the Internet, which may be a first in passenger rail service.
The Royal Canadian Pacific, which operates summer-only excursion trains through the Canadian Rockies, is the first passenger train 'to offer e-mail and Internet service in North America and possibly the world,' said Steve Barry, editor of Railfan & Railroad magazine, from Cartsens Publications Inc. in Newton, N.J."

For more info:
http://www.cnn.com/2001/TECH/internet/05/23/train.email.idg/index.html

MOBILE COMPUTING NEWS and NOTES

Siemens and Lufthansa have developed a program called m-Barq that allows you to speedily bypass airline check-in counters using your WAP-enabled mobile phone. Frequent flyers can receive a pre-approved check-in ticket on the screen of their phone in the form of a barcode, which is quickly scanned, and gives them a faster departure process.

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 questions, you can email me and I will try my best to answer them. I can answer most of them myself, 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 136-01

My menu bar was deleted from IE from a web site I visited. Now whenever I open IE, I cannot access File, View, Edit, Favorites, etc.
How can I fix this?
(PII 233, 64MB of RAM, 8 GB HD, Win98, IE5.0)

A 136-01

Kenneth Aspinwall said, "Try the repair tool for IE 5. Read directions at http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q194/1/77.ASP"
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John Hills said, "View - Toolbars - then choose any or all of the bars you need unless you have gone into Full screen mode, in which case press F11 key or restore from the right hand top corner."
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Ken Schaefer said, "Press F11 - the site has undoubtedly set the screen to Full Screen View. F11 toggles back and forth."
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** said, "I think what may have happened is the "full screen" option has been enabled (view > full screen), when your in internet explorer either a) press f11, or b) of the 3 buttons at the very top right of the window, click once in the middle one (if you hold the mouse cursor still over it for a few seconds you will see it's called restore)."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Chris Stoneham said, "It sounds like IE has stuck itself in Full Screen mode. Press F11 to turn this off, close and re-open IE, and it should remember this."

Q 136-02

Some of my friends forward email to me and they always come as attachments. It's always the same two friends. I will not open attachments because even though I know they are from friends, I have still gotten viruses from them. And I would like to see their attachments.
Other than the obvious of just deleting them, is there some way I can receive them not as attachments, or is it a function of what they are doing? Is there some kind of setting they have on or off that can be changed?

A 136-02

bdeluke said, "Scan your email before opening attachments."
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Rob said, "Most of the time your friends can forward text as either an attachment or quoted inline, this is a setting in their mail client. Images and so on will be sent as attachments and your mail client decides how to handle these. You can start by educating your friends to let you know when they're sending an attachment -- that way you know it didn't get sent by a virus.
Then keep your virus software up to date and scan before opening. Perhaps waiting a couple weeks to see if you hear about a virus involving that file name. If you read your mail with something other than a MS product then you greatly decrease the threat from the recent crop of VB based bugs since they won't get run automatically."
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Barb said, "The file can be downloaded, then do a right-click to choose scan with (Norton, McAfee or whichever program you have). The option may be the 4th one on the list. It will just take a few seconds, depending on how large the file is. If it's virus free, it's all right to open it. If it's not virus free or questionable - then delete it. (A file does not have to be opened first to do the virus scan.)"
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John Hills said, "If you wish to receive attachments and see attachments then the moment you view the email, you are open to viruses. It is not necessary for an email to have an attachment for you to get a virus. Therefore, a good virus checker is about the easiest solution or failing that, use Linux on dual boot for email only. If I were you, I would go for a good virus checker, Trend PCcillin is not a bad one and cheap - Then you can enjoy the attachments your friends send you. And if they are funny - please send me a copy."
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Adam said, "If you have a good and up to date virus checker there would be very little risk from opening attachments from friends, but still, there is some risk as you have found out!
You could forward the email (and attachment) to a Hotmail account this has a built-in virus checker and will not allow you to open or save it if it is infected."
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Ken Schaefer said, "The friends are sending their email as Rich Text thru Exchanges. The simplest solution is to ask them to always send you plain text. There is a change you can make in Outlook to affect this on a per-contact basis. An explanation can be found at http://www.brooklyn.com/theatre-sound/winmail.html"
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
** said, "You can only request your friends don't send the objects as attachments. If you had received viruses from them though i would say only accept text-only emails and automatically delete all emails from these friends with any attachments until their systems are purged. Otherwise the question is not if but when you become infected again."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Martin Glusberg said, "I routinely look at attachments with Quickview (or Quickview plus), since you are guaranteed to look without risking executing anything nasty..."

New Questions

Q 137-01

I know some really great tips about navigating with the keyboard rather than the mouse (like holding Ctrl to highlight multiple objects, holding Shift to "Rubber band" items, pressing F2 to rename files etc). Is there a help file somewhere or a website that lists all of these little tricks that the keyboard can do (Alt/Tab to name another one)?

Q 137-02

I have been using Zone Alarm free version for quite some time without a problem. Lately I up-graded to the latest version #2.6.88 and it has given me a problem ever since. When I launch IE it by default connects to my head office via Oracle Developer Server. Since I have had this new version it take's upwards of 15 minutes or more to connect. I can disable Zone Alarm and it connects OK.I can then re-load ZA and I can log on & off all day with no problem till the next morning. I can use Sygate Personal firewall and it will not cause this problem. My PC is a Pentium II, Windows 98,2nd edition. I wonder if any one can help with this situation?

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

**The right sort**
When you open a folder, Windows will usually sort the files available alphabetically, but it doesn't have to be this way in Windows 98 and Me.
To change the default way the files are sorted, open Windows Explorer, click View and select Details. Click one of the title bars, either Size, Type or date Modified. The one you select will determine how your list is displayed the next time you open a file. Once you've selected one of the bars, hold down the Ctrl key on your keyboard and click the X button in the top right corner of Windows Explorer to close it.
You may have to restart your computer for this trick to take effect.

Get your own copy of "The Little Black Book of Cheap Tricks: 2001" by visiting http://www.pcin.net/lbbct/

Lost Your Favicon Icons?

When you "bookmark" a web site in Internet Explorer, it looks to see if the site has a favicon file. This is a small icon that makes the Favourite stand out. NBC has an icon that looks like their peacock logo. ZD Net has their ZD logo.
Anyway, subscriber David Kneapler emailed me because he noticed that he would occasionally "lose" his icons. They would revert back to the default IE icon.
Well, if you are like David and have this problem, then you should visit http://www.zdnet.com/downloads/stories/info/0,10615,77423,00.html and download the free utility from PC Magazine called FavOrg. It will scan your favourites and redownload the favicon files that go with them.

The SHIFT Key

You can do a lot more when you hold down the SHIFT key:
Holding down the SHIFT key and:
1) Clicking a link in IE opens a new Window
2) Right-clicking on a file forces the Open With option to appear
3) Clicking the File menu in an Office changes the Close and Save options to Close All and Save All

If you aren't afraid of playing around, then do that. One of the FreeHelp questions above asked about keyboard shortcuts. You will often find them yourself without even trying.

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

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