The PC Improvement News
Issue 1-37
June 23, 1999

ISSN 1488-3163
Published electronically by PC Improvements (c) 1999
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Welcome to the 37th edition of the PC Improvement News. In this newsletter,
I have a couple of tips to make your computing life easier as well as
highlights of the past weeks PC Industry News. I am more than willing to
discuss any PC related topics in this newsletter. Just email me at
editor@pcin.net with your suggestions. I would also appreciate it
if you let me know if there is any strange formatting in the newsletter so
that I can fix them.

Give me two or three issues, and I know that you will get something great
out of this!

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SOME OPENING THOUGHTS
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Last week I asked for suggestions for a new name for this newsletter. I
had several people email me with some very good suggestions. My wife and I
couldn't decide which one we liked the best, so I have set up a poll where
you all can go and help me by voting for your favourite name. Please take
the time to visit. It should only take a couple of minutes. The name that
gets the most votes wins the 2-CD Set from HP with full versions of
PrintMaster from Mindscape (basic version) and PhotoDeluxe 2 from Adobe.
Hopefully next week I can announce the new name and the winner. You can
vote at http://www.pcimprovements.com/poll.shtml

Just for your info, the names are:
The PC Journal, PC Mail, Technobytes, PC Notes, PC Helper, PC TechTalk,
The PC News Group, The PC News Loop, The PC News Belt, The Comp Tutor
News, The Politically Correct PC, (or The PC-PC), The PC Observer, The PC
News Net, Press F1, EZPC, PC Life, COMPUTER-ACTIVE, Cyber-track,
Computeracy, Computerese, Computerist, Computist, Wing-Gram, Wing Dings,
PC with Wings.

Again, please visit http://www.pcimprovements.com/poll.shtml to vote.

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THOUGHT OF THE WEEK
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"The millionaire says to a thousand people, "I read this book and it
started me on the road to wealth." Guess how many go out and get the book?
Very few. Isn't that incredible? Why wouldn't everyone get the book?
(It's) a mystery of life."
          - Jim Rohn

Thought courtesy of http://www.HappyPublishing.com/

To subscribe to the FREE "Aspire to Something Higher" Thought-Of The Day,
send a blank email to HappyQuotes-subscribe@listbot.com

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THE NEWS
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Voice over IP
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I spent last Thursday at Cisco University. This is a series of workshops
held by Cisco to explain their products and the industry in general. This
particular day was devoted to sending voice communications over a computer
network. It is quite a neat little thing. I did a lab where a regular
phone was connected right to a router (a piece of hardware that networks
connect to). Using some software that they run you can "dial" another
phone and speak to another person. Your analog voice signal is changed to
a digital signal, sent across the network, and then turned back into an
analog signal so it can be heard properly in the other phone. The quality
was excellent. This isn't really a technology that will be used on the
Internet, but it certainly can be used in offices. This will help lower
the cost of real phone lines in the building.

For more info:
http://www.cisco.com/


Computer Viruses Make You Pay
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Computer virus and "worm" attacks have caused business to lose $7.6 billion
for the first have of 1999. The loss was 5 times larger than the total for
all of last year. There have been several high profile viruses that have
done a lot of damage this year including the Melissa Virus and the
Chernobyl virus. The value given represents lost productivity and repair
costs.

All the more reason to get a good virus checker and keep it updated.


Many Non-Y2K Compliant Apps won't be fixed
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According to Infoliant, the firm behind the Y2K compliance tracking
database, more companies are deciding to not fix non-compliant programs.
The companies would rather stop supporting the software and encourage
users to upgrade. Almost 1/3 of compliance stats changes detected during
April were negative. This means that either more Y2K issues were
discovered, or the company dumped their old program.

You should definitely visit heir site and use their Compliance Tracker
service. You sign up for this notice service and specify which programs
you are interested in. When there is a status change for that product, you
will be notified.

For more info:
http://www.infoliant.com/


The Digital Paper Trail
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According to the June 1999 Issue of Ebzzz Magazine (an e-business
magazine), 45 percent of big companies monitor employee voice-mail, email,
and computer files, up from 35 per cent in 1997. Only 84 per cent of firms
tell staffers about their communications-monitoring policies.


Cyber Trial of the Century
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For information on the Microsoft vs DOJ trial, visit:
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/special/msdojtrial.html


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I NEED HELP
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As many of you know, 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 half of them. Those are things that I do regularly or have
experience with. There are other things that I have never tired or
experienced so I don't have an answer. I hope to post those questions here
and see if any of the readers have any suggestions. I will include all
reasonable suggestions with credit to you. I will not check the validity of
these comments. That is up to you.

Previous Questions
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Q1) Is there a way to use a voice modem without physically wiring them
together inside the machine? I want to use a Rockwell ISA voice fax etc
modem V90 and a SB Live manage to telephone and talk without physically
wiring them together. In other words, is there a configuration procedure I
could use so that the sound card takes over the wave modem bit?
No one gave me an answer to this. I thought that you had to have the cards
wired together, so it doesn't surprise me that no one had an answer.

Q2) Which is the best graphics program to view graphics? I would prefer to
use 1 program for all file types rather than have IE open GIFs,
PhotoEditor open JPGs, etc.
A2) John Hill said, "I do not think you can do much better than either of
the following shareware programs. Thumbs Plus will recognise and thumbnail
just about everything from all pic formats to word docs and video formats.
If u eventually register, it will do even more like scan etc. Visit the
site at http://www.cerious.com/ This prog does a similar but less
slick job but doesn't have the "please register" flash screens. Visit the
site at http://stud1.tuwien.ac.at/~e9227474/
While I'm at it this program is quite useful if you like editing video
sequences. Again shareware. http://www.bigfoot.com/~rapid
Fast Movie Processor (FMP) is a movie converter and processor. FMP makes
it possible to join animation, captured video and still images, apply
different image filters and functions, change color depth, rotate, rescale
and crop movie to a desired output size, and save the result in any of
supported movie and image formats. FMP is not a video editor, but can be
used for many video-editing tasks. Video processing is one of the most
demanding computer applications that puts high requirements on every part
of the computer system. For that reason every function of this software is
highly optimized for speed, and additionally, disk space consumption is
reduced to the minimum without sacrificing the processing performance. (A
nice touch is to convert a sequence of video into frames that you can save
as picture files i.e. jpeg and bitmap.)
I also use Time and Chaos. An excellent PIM and once again shareware. More
info and download at http://www.isbister.com/ - I believe at one time this
was the biggest selling PIM in USofA.
Thanks very much for all the news and help I've had. You are a very useful
American."

Just thought I'd let John and everyone else know that I am in Canada. I am
located in St. Catharines, Ontario that is about 15 minutes west of the
Niagara Falls Canada/US border.

A2) Silvan Kuipers stated, "ACDSee. It's ultrafast and supports many
formats!"
A2) Jumpin' Johnathon says, "Since I deal with graphics on a daily basis,
I also like to quickly find and view my graphic's without having to open
up a full program to do so. There are many "Viewer's" out on the market
today and many are not that expensive. I personally use AcdSee, it allows
me to view a variety of graphic formats easily. If you'd like to
experiment around a little, or "try before you buy", you could go to
http://www.zdnet.com , they have many shareware versions available. Simply
type in their search box, 'graphic viewers'. You'll find over 15 viewer's"
Johnathon also went on to say, "Hi Graham, I did a little research and the
following link has a great Graphic viewer for free. Since
I don't have the Questioning persons email address,
I thought you might be able to send it to her/him. Visit
http://hotfiles.zdnet.com/cgi-bin/texis/swlib/hotfiles/info.html?fcode=000VE5
A2) Vijeprathap Vijendranath says, "If you are simply looking to view
files, you may well try IRFANVIEW32. It is a free program that can
download. You can search for it by simply typing "download irfanview32" in
any search engine. You can also obtain it from many cover-CD's on
computer magazines. This program supports 29 different formats of
graphics: gif, jpg, etc. This is 1 program that will open all 29 different
formats at you choice."
A2) Jon says, "I feel that the best viewer for all types of images is the
thumbs plus program. You can get the evaluation copy at http://www.galttech.com/
If you like it you can buy it after your 30 trial period ends."
A2) Chris Wheatley told me, "I find that Vueprint is about the fastest and
smallest (3 files - self installing from one self-executing file) to be
about the fastest. It has a slide show capability (one key press) and can
also play sound files and movies and views every known graphics file in
common use. It will also display graphics from within encoded files
(*.UUE) You can download a 30 day shareware copy from the web site
at http://www.hamrick.com/upg.html
The fee covers all future versions - I've been using it for three years
now for $40. Well worth it and bloody fast too chaps"


New Questions
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Q1) How do I activate the screensaver with a keyboard shortcut?
Q2) When reading text on my screen there are frequently lines or blocks
across some text. I can click and drag them off but it is very annoying
and time consuming. This happens mostly when I am on the net but does
happen in word etc. What causes this?

If you have any answers to these questions, please email me at
freehelp@pcin.net


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THE TIPS and OTHER STUFF
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Don't trust Your Life with these Devices
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I remember watching some older west shows where they would have a
character that traveled the country selling their strange devices and
crazy concoctions. The Simpsons did a good parody of this with the Simpson
and Son Love Potion. Well, there is a wonderful site that you can visit to
see some of the questionable devices. Appropriately titled Museum of
Questionable Medical Devices, the site has pictures and explanations for
what the devices were supposed to do.

For more info:
http://www.mtn.org/quack/


A Tip from a Subscriber
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I don't know if this will help everyone but it helped me. My computer was
loading slowly and here is what I done to make it load programs better and
faster I am using windows 98 and AMD K6-2 333MHz bios AMI. OK I right
click on my desktop > point to >active desktop - then point and click
customize my desktop> point and click the tap at top labeled (effects)
look at the bottom of the page > and uncheck all the boxes. and click ok.
and test it out. by seeing if your start opens faster and the programs
load up faster. Thanks Quiency.


Directories Can Have Extensions
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Everyone knows that files have a name and an extension. Word documents
have an extension of DOC. You can have your folders have extensions as
well. This will not associate the folder with any particular program, but
it may help you identify the folder. For instance, if you could have
folders like this:
MyStuff.web (keep only web pages here)
MyStuff.doc (keep only word processing files here)
MyStuff.pic (keep only pictures here).

This may help you organize your hard drive better.


Minimizing and Maximizing Dos Windows
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When working in DOS, sometimes it seems that the windows is either not big
enough, or it is full screen. How do you switch between the two? If you
are working in a DOS window, you can press Alt-Enter to switch between a
window and full screen mode.


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Lastly, send in your comments, tips and news and you too can be included in
The PC Improvement News with a reference to your name and web site.
Send email to pcinews@pcimprovements.com
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Well, that's all for this week. Remember that if there is anything that you
want to learn about, let me know and I will try to accommodate you. Also,
feel free to send any comments about the newsletters and the topics covered.
This newsletter is sent to those who subscribed only. We don't believe in
SPAM, so if you have somehow gotten this and you don't want it, please see
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The PC Improvement News 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 (either good or bad) for the results obtained
from trying the tips in this newsletter.
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Editor: Graham Wing can be reached at editor@pcin.net

Copyright 1999, PC Improvements and Graham Wing. All rights reserved.
This publication may be reproduced in whole, or in part, as long as the
editor is notified.

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