The PC Improvement News

Issue 58
November 17, 1999

ISSN 1488-3163; PC Improvements (c) 1999

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.

To subscribe or unsubscribe, please visit
http://www.pcin.net/

Note 1: If any of the links are too long to fit on one line, you may have to
cut and paste.
Note 2: You can only win one contest every 30 days.

Welcome to the 58th edition of the PC Improvement News. In this newsletter,
I combine 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 topics in this newsletter.
Email me at editor@pcin.net with your suggestions.

If you give me two or three issues, I know that you will come back for more!

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SOME OPENING THOUGHTS
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I am not a winter person. Sure the coming holiday season is great, but I
wish there were some way for me to have a white Christmas in a warm place!

I think this week's contest is pretty good.  It is a scavenger hunt to find
out information about Software602, a company that makes a Microsoft Office
alternative. I have a review online at
http://www.pcin.net/help/software/602propcsuite.shtml and there is a small
review in this week's newsletter below.  The 2 winners of the contest get a
copy of the program.

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THOUGHT OF THE WEEK
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In every triumph there's a lot of try.
          - Frank Tyger

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

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

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THE NEWS
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GO Network Must Stop
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The story begins a while ago when there was a web site called GoTo and a web
site called Infoseek.  The GoTo people made a logo that looked like a green
traffic light.  Infoseek had their own.  Then Disney came along and bought
Infoseek and decided to push their portal, the GO Network. They made a logo
that looks like a green traffic light.  GoTo took GO to court, and a judge
ruled that for now GO cannot use their logo.  It actually looks quite
strange going to the GO web site and not seeing their normal logo.

For more info:
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,2393971,00.html
http://www.go.com/
http://www.goto.com/


A Quiet PC
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I don't know if this is news, but it isn't a tip, so I include it here:
>From the latest Magazine ads for the iMac, "Silence is golden. Unlike PCs,
iMac doesn't need a fan inside. It's ingeniously engineered to be the world'
s quietest desktop computer."  I don't know about you, but I wish my PC were
quiet. It isn't super loud, but it certainly isn't quiet.
One other note about the new G4 Mac (not the iMac). Many owners are claiming
that every once in a while there is a plastic smell coming from their
computer when it is turned on.  Doesn't sound right to me and I can't see
how that is normal.


RealNetworks Tracking Users - Part II
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Last week I reported that RealNetworks was gathering information on what
users were listening to and recording. Well, surprise, surprise, three
separate lawsuits have popped up accusing RealNetworks of violating users
privacy.

For more info:
http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/tech/review/crg603.htm


BubbleBoy Nothing to Worry About
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One of the big news items of the last week was BubbleBoy, a new email virus
that can affect your machine without even opening the email message.  Just
being previewed in Outlook or Outlook Express will start the virus.  The
potential for a virus like this to do damage is great, but BubbleBoy just
sent out a message to everyone in your address book, and then it is done.
No more.
Thanks to John Hills and Dennis Smith for sending me info on this.

For more info:
http://www.wired.com/news/reuters/0,1349,32434,00.html
http://www.msnbc.com/news/333265.asp
http://www.microsoft.com/security/Bulletins/ms99-032.asp
http://www.mcafee.com/viruses/bubbleboy/


Seeing a Movie in a Theatre is Not Enough
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The new James Bond movie, The World is Not Enough, doesn't even make it to
the theatres until this Friday, November 19, 1999 but there is already a
pirated copy of it floating around the Internet. I have seen bits of Star
Wars Episode I and the South Park movie on a computer, and they are really
unimpressive.  The movies are about 1GB large, so even with a high speed
Internet connection it can still take many hours to download 1 movie. And
then who wants to sit there in front of their computer watching a movie that
is meant for the big screen?

For more info:
http://www.cnnfn.com/news/technology/newsbytes/139120.html


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CONTEST RESULTS
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Last week I asked all of the subscribers who had web sites to send in the
URL so I could put them on a page.  Well, 18 people sent in theirs, and the
winners were Paul Downie, Paul McIntosh, Robert Hill, and Bill R. They each
won a copy of Poor Richard's Web Site: Geek-Free, Commonsense Advice on
Building a Low-Cost Web Site. Bill is the first person to win a second prize
in the contests. Congratulations Bill!

All of the web sites can be seen at
http://www.pcimprovements.com/pcin/contests/19991117.shtml  Some of the
links that were sent in don't work.  If you are the owner of one of these
sites, please email the correct URL to me at editor@pcin.net

There are some personal web pages, fan web sites, music web sites and
business web sites. Check them out, and if there is a guestbook, let them
know you saw their page because of PCIN.


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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. 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.

Previous Question 1
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I would like to know how to remove the little arrows in an icon on the
desktop.

Answers to Question 1
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Lonnie Whelan said, "Install TweakUI, one of the Power Toys from Microsoft
(A free download from Microsoft). It will let you make the arrows smaller,
or do away with them completely."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Leeor Geva said, "Although I find the little arrows helpful in knowing what
is a real file and what is just a shortcut, here is how to change it, and/or
take it out: this is the link to download Microsoft's Power Toys. They
recommend you not to use it on certain versions of windows, including
windows 98, but I remember using this to take it out on Windows 95."
http://www.microsoft.com/windows95/downloads/contents/wutoys/w95pwrtoysset/d
efault.asp?RLD=13



Previous Question 2
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
My CD player will not play audio CDs anymore...I think that it is a Real
Audio bug though...It will read other CDs, but it will not play audio's...

Answers to Question 2
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
No Answers Given.


New Questions
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Q1) My PC started acting weird, and now it will not even boot up. I have
been running it normally and haven't made any recent upgrades or changes.
When I turn it on, the screen is blank, and the computer doesn't even go
through the POST or test memory. The only thing that happens is it gives a
series of beeps: one long beep, 8 short beeps and 2 more short beeps. Can
you help?

Q2) Is it possible to dualboot Windows 95 and Windows 98?

If you have an answer to these questions or have a question of your own,
please email me at freehelp@pcin.net


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NEW CONTEST
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I don't know in what order you read this newsletter, but if you haven't made
it to the Tips and Other Stuff section, then go their and read the review
for a program called 602Pro PC Suite.  It is a Microsoft Office alternative.
The owner of the company donated 2 copies of this program (valued at $49.95
US each) to me to give away as prizes for this weeks contest. The contest is
a scavenger hunt.

Look around the Software602 web site at http://www.software602.com/ and tell
me the web page that the answer to these questions are found on (each
questions is answered on a different page):

1) What applications are included in 602Pro PC SUITE?
2) How did Software602 get its name?
3) How many users can use 602Pro LAN SUITE-Internet sharing, e-mail and fax,
all-in-one application for your entire network software?
4) What is the price for competitive upgrade of 602Pro LAN SUITE?
5) What is the name of the network messaging product from Software602?

I will randomly choose 2 prize winners out of all of the correct entries and
they will get a copy of 602Pro PC Suite. Send in your entries to
editor@pcin.net


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THE TIPS and OTHER STUFF
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Cheap Trick of the Week
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**Desktop à la Carte**
Your Windows 95 or 98 desktop is covered with open folders but you want to
get to a desktop shortcut without minimizing the folders. How? Simply click
on the Start button and on Run, then type a period in the space and click on
OK. A small window will open, containing just your desktop folders and
shortcuts. (If the window covers your whole screen, click on the second icon
in from the top right corner of the window to tile it, and next time it'll
open smaller.)
This is especially handy in Win95, since this older operating system does
not have a desktop icon on the taskbar at the bottom of the screen as Win 98
does. However, this trick can be useful in Win 98 too, because clicking on
that desktop icon minimizes all your open folders and returns you to the
full desktop - and sometimes you don't want the hassle of later having to
re-open all your folders in the same order they were in before you went to
the desktop.

Buy the Little Black Book of Cheap Tricks for only $9.95 Cdn (about $6.00
US)
http://www.pcimprovements.com/help/books/cheaptricks.shtml


Turn Your PC into a Mac
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This is one of the neatest uses of the newest web technologies that I have
seen. I don't know if this is a Flash thing or a DHTML thing, but if you
visit this site, it appears as if the web site is deleting your contents and
installing MacOS on your machine. The screen then changes to look like a
Mac. Don't worry though, nothing is happening. It is all just a web page.
To close it you just need to press the Start button so you can see the task
bar and then right-click on the item in the task bar and choose close.  You
should check it out at http://www.yaromat.com/index.shtml and choose the
MacOS button.


A Microsoft Office Alternative
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It seems that of all of the Office Suite alternatives, Sun's StarOffice gets
all of the publicity. Well, there are other alternatives out there, and an
excellent one is 602Pro PC Suite by Software602.  The program comes with a
word processor, a spreadsheet, a photo editor, and a file manager, which
makes it a good replacement for the standard version of MS Office. It is
just lacking a presentation program, but the average home user doesn't need
this.  602Pro's interface is very familiar looking, and is compatible with
Office (You can make a document in Word and open fine in 602Pro, and vice
versa). I opened up a spreadsheet from the Microsoft Y2K CD, and 602Pro read
it fine.  Of course there are some fancy features in Office that 602Pro
doesn't have, but again, the average home user doesn't need drop-down lists
in their spreadsheet, etc.  Best of all, the program is only $49.95 US. If
you don't have Office or are using someone else's copy (shame on you), then
602Pro PC Suite is a very good alternative.

The 602Pro PC Suite home page:
http://www.602pro.com/index.html
My full review of the suite:
http://www.pcin.net/help/software/602propcsuite.shtml

To learn more about Software602 and their programs, take part in this week's
Internet Scavenger Hunt mentioned in an earlier section in this week's
newsletter.


Do it ALL in Word and Excel
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A lot of programs have an option on the File menu to Save All or Close All.
The default Word File menu doesn't appear to. Actually, it does, it is just
hidden.  When you want to close all of your open files in Excel or Word,
hold down the shift key when you click on the File menu. The usual Close and
Save will be replaced with Close All and Save All.


How Many People Are There On This Planet?
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If you are interested in large numbers, then you may want to check out the
US Census Bureau web site.  They have several different applets that show
current and future predictions for the population of the world. At the time
I wrote this there were 6,025,415,589 people. Visit
http://www.census.gov/main/www/popclock.html

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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. You can also send in your comments and
suggestions.
This newsletter is sent to those who subscribed only. If you have somehow
gotten this and you don't want it, please see the subscribe/unsubscribe
options at the start of the newsletter.
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 author is
notified and the newsletter is presented as is.

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