The PC Improvement News

Issue 53
October 13, 1999

ISSN 1488-3163
Published electronically by PC Improvements (c) 1999
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 53rd 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.

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.

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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I must apologize again for the problem last week. A subscriber was able to
send a message to the whole list. It was just a simple problem of the list
being setup wrong. No one saw anyone else's email address and the problem
has been fixed. Thank you for your patience.

As I stated, I changed the server to be pcin@pcimprovements.com and I have
changed my site around again to have all of the newsletter information in
the http://www.pcimprovements.com/pcin/ directory.  Not a big deal, but it
does save a few characters typing.

I had a phenomenal # of people fill out the survey. Right now I have 100
surveys. That is great. It may take me a couple of weeks to get through them
all, but it is worth it. One thing I have noticed so far is that most of you
like the way the newsletter is and perhaps most surprisingly, most of you
feel that contests aren't that important. I will continue to have them, but
maybe not so frequently.

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THOUGHT OF THE WEEK
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One can never consent to creep when one feels an impulse to soar.
          - John Stuart Mill

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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Are you honest when online?
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A recent survey by Business Week magazine reports that only 9% of survey
respondents were dishonest when providing personal information online. I
find this rather hard to believe. Supposedly 72% of respondents were honest.
It seems that security and privacy are the main concerns of people. Well,
maybe they are so concerned because they give their information out to
everyone.

For more info:
http://www.businessweek.com/cgi-bin/ebiz/ebiz_frame.pl?url=/ebiz/9910/dm1006
.htm


This message will self-destruct
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Disappearing Inc., a private company formed in February in San Francisco has
developed a technology that will allow you to create email messages that
will self-destruct. The technology involves a key that is sent with the
email. The key is designed to be destroyed or deactivated after a certain
period of time (the sender can set this). After that time the key is
destroyed so the message is unreadable.

For more info:
http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/text/1999/oct/07/100700435.html


Watch out where you look
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I have mentioned several times in this newsletter about how companies can
look at what web pages you visit, what your email contains, etc. Just this
week I was corresponding with a new subscriber who wanted to know if his
employer could see that he had been looking for new jobs while at his
current job. Of course they can. There are numerous stories, and the latest
one is from Xerox. It was reported last Thursday that Xerox had fired 40
people because "these people were spending far too much time on
non-Xerox-related sites."  The main types of "non-Xerox" site were porn
sites. Xerox has been monitoring every one of their 92,000 employees.

For more info:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/991007-000006.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. 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 Questions
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Q1) While my computer is connected to the LAN, Microsoft Word very often
works extremely slowly. I uninstalled and installed again Microsoft Office
97, ran the Service Pack and updated NAV and the problem is still the same.
Some other computers in the LAN have the same problem.
A1) John Hills said, "Assuming that your network is functioning correctly
then a possible cause is that some copies of Word have been installed over
the network. In other words, the installation CD is in one PC to install
word to another PC. This may result in the PC with the recently installed
word having to go back to the installation PC for settings, fonts etc."

Q2) My computer has 64MB of SDRAM. We installed an additional 32MB recently,
and it worked fine. It is in slot #2 on my motherboard. I have a total of 3
slots. Up until yesterday, I have had 96MB of working SDRAM. Yesterday, we
added a CD-RW. We installed it on the 2nd IDE controller slot of the
motherboard. It is "master" on its IDE ribbon cable with nothing else on the
cable. When we came back in and restarted the computer, the SDRAM is back to
64MB. We did not touch the SDRAM, and went back to make sure we had not
loosened any of it up. It is all seated fine. Any ideas?
A2) John Hills said, "You need to disengage the CD_RW to see if your memory
comes back again. This will prove or disprove that the CD_RW has anything to
do with it. If the memory is still missing then you need to check out your
new memory on its own, to make sure it is still alive. I have come across
before the following, which may be the cause if indeed the memory comes back
after disengaging the CD-RW. Some mainboards have an incompatibility on the
secondary IDE and to resolve this put the CD-RW on IDE one as a slave. Try
that. Also some SDRAM has computability problems with some mainboards. This
normally shows up by the amount of ram being halved. HIMEM seems quite happy
with this and so no memory faults occur. You just have half the memory. You
should also check to ensure that the original memory is the same MHz as the
new. Older SDRAM is 66mhz and the newer stuff 100mhz. Not a good idea to mix
(any batches of memory) particularly on a mainboard that has jumpers to set
either 66mhz or 100mhz SDRAM. Personally, I am never happy unless I have two
or three of a kind i.e. 2 x 64, 3 x 32, 2 x 128 etc.

New Questions
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Q1) After leaving Windows98 for some time and returning to the computer my
desktop icons frequently, but not always, become illegible due to having
taken on a "bar code" appearance. Why?

Q2) The first time I restart Windows98. I often get the message "Explorer
has performed an illegal operation and will be shut down." None of my task
bar programs are there for me and I need to restart Windows. Usually all is
fine on second attempt. Norton System Works tells me all is fine with my
system!

Q3) A short while ago my Dialup Networking functionality became unstable, I
couldn't access my email with Eudora, and I had to remove and reinstall
Dialup Networking. Ever since there have been bits and pieces not working as
they did before and I suspect that Windows Logon may be the problem, or part
of it. I didn't have a Windows Logon before the reinstallation of dialup
networking. Now there is an option to Log Off in the Start menu, just above
the Shutdown and Suspend options. I've poked around in the Windows
install/remove and in the Control Panel Network function but can't find how
to eliminate the Windows Logon.

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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What are Cookies?
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A few weeks ago there was an "I Need Help" question about cookies. There
were some good answers on how to read the contents of a cookie file. Shortly
after that discussion, John Hills sent me the following:
"We touched on cookies the other week and I was interested in the following
occurrence. I have bought many copies of MS products for clients and myself.
I have never, ever registered any of these programs with Microsoft. My
clients may of course have registered their own software but certainly would
have used their own names.
So how come I received a letter from Microsoft suggesting that I visit their
2000 site for Y2K updates to the software I have purchased. Well the info
did not come from my supplier as all purchases are under a company name and
therefore one would expect the letter to be addressed to my company. It was
addressed to myself personally.
The only conclusion I can come to is my address and name etc was whisked off
my PC by the infamous
COOKIE or biscuit as we say here.
This makes me wonder whether it is possible to log on to say the Inland
Revenue and find a copy of my company accounts being nicked.
I wonder if any one has any additional views or experience on this subject.
I would really like to know the full monty on COOKIES."

I'm sure there are many of you out there who wonder what the "full monty" is
with cookies. Can they get personal information from other files? Do they
track what sites you visit? What do they really do? All of the "experts" say
there is nothing to worry about, but people still do.

I can't explain cookies any better than the following sites:
http://www.zdnet.com/anchordesk/cgi-bin/print_story.cgi?story=story_3957
http://www.cookiecentral.com/
http://www.ciac.org/ciac/bulletins/i-034.shtml

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NEW CONTEST (Cookie Comments)
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What do you feel cookies are for? Do you like them? Do you trust them? Have
you turn off your cookies in your browser? Send me an email to
editor@pcin.net with your ideas about cookies. I know that many
subscribers are interested in this. Share your feelings.

I will make a random draw with the winner receiving a copy of ZipMagic 2000
(you'll receive the actual, physical disk and manual) by Mijenix. ZipMagic
is a full-featured zip archive extraction program, similar to WinZip. I have
been using for a week or so now and have been very impressed. I have done
some reviews for their products and they generously sent me several copies
of each product I reviewed. A special thanks goes out to them.

Again, send me your cookie comments 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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**A Choice of Openings**
In Windows 95 and 98, when you right-click on a file name or icon, a context
menu pops up to give you several choices, including opening the file. If the
file type is already registered, clicking on Open will open the file with a
previously specified program. For instance, a file with the .TXT extension
might be opened by Notepad.
But what if you'd rather open it with a better word processor? Wouldn't you
like to have a choice? As Captain Picard would say, make it so.
Open Windows Explorer and under the Edit menu, click on Options or Folder
Options. In the box that appears, click on the File Types tab. Scroll down
the list of file types to find Text Document, click on it and then on the
Edit button. In the Edit File Types box that appears, click on New.
Now the New Action dialogue box is awaiting your instructions. In its Action
space, enter the command you want to add to the context menu - such as Open
with Word.
In the space for Application, enter the path to the program you want to use
to open text files. You can employ the Browse button to find the exact
location, if you like. For Word, the path might be C:\Programs
Files\Microsoft Office\Office\Winword.exe although it may differ on your
computer.
Click on OK and close up all open boxes.
Now whenever you right-click on a .TXT file, you'll get an option to "Open
with Word".
This is only one example. You can experiment with opening a variety of files
with various applications. In some cases, you may have to add a space and
"%1" (including quotation marks) to the application path in the New Action
dialogue box.
If you're adventurous, you can go further where no one has gone before and
add other commands to context menus, like View or Edit, and designate
applications to perform those functions.

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


Tweak Your Modem Speed
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Many people visit my site and read about the MaxMTU issue with Windows.
There is a registry setting that might make your connection a little faster.
That is what the program TweakDUN (I have been giving it out as a prize) is
for. You can read my article at
http://www.pcimprovements.com/help/articles/maxmtu.shtml
Anyway, there are lots of little things that can be done to make your
Internet connection a little faster. There are to many to mention here, but
take some time to visit the site below and you may be happy with the result.

Learn to tweak your modem speed:
http://www.tweak3d.net/tweak/modem/


Fixing the Microsoft Word default template
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Subscriber John Hills sent this in:
When opening a file in Word and experiencing odd happenings like Visual
Basic opening etc and any other abnormal occurrences, go to find file in the
start menu and search all drives for NORMAL.DOT. Delete every file of this
name. Word will then create a new NORMAL.DOT the next time it is used. This
will also get rid of mild macro viruses that will come back if you open a
file that had previous problems but not a file that has not been opened
after the problem occurred.


Be Safe!
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It seems that every day on the news I here something about knives in a
bottle of Coke, or machine guns in a box of Jell-O. Obviously that is an
exaggeration, but quite often there is some weird thing in a product. It may
also be that the product wasn't tested enough and is unsafe. Whatever the
reason, it may be a good idea to bookmark the SafetyAlerts site.

Keep informed:
http://www.safetyalerts.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. 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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