The PC Improvement News

Issue 72 - February 23, 2000
ISSN 1488-3163; PC Improvements (c) 1999
==== 813 Subscribers in 43 Countries ====

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

Welcome to the 72nd edition 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 topics in this newsletter. 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 (February draw is
for PowerDesk Utilities 98) at http://www.pcin.net/recommend.shtml

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OPENING THOUGHTS
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Last week's venture into RTF didn't work out to well. Several people didn't
receive well. Many people had the >> along the side like it had been
forwarded. And perhaps most importantly I didn't like the way it looked.
What I plan on doing is keeping this as a text newsletter. It will be
smaller in size (kb) than RTF. I know some people like colours and other
formatting, so I will attempt to make the online version a little flashier.
I will probably start next week, the first issue in March.

As I mentioned in the contest reminder, Lisa is in the hospital right now.
She is having some surgery done on her jaw. For those who are interested,
here are the technical terms:
LeForte 1 Osteotomy (upper jaw)
Sagittal Split Ramus Osteotomy (lower jaw)
Genioplasty (chin)

For the reasons of the surgery, this issue is a little shorter than normal
and probably isn't very good. I am sitting here and all I can do is think
about how she is. It is 11:30 a.m. now, and hopefully by 2 p.m. I will be
able to see her.

Oh, and by the way, enjoy February 29th.

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SMILEYS and ACRONYMS of the WEEK
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:-/     Skeptical
|-O   Yawning
GBH     Last week it meant Great big hug. John Hills tells me that in
England it is commonly understood to be Grievous Bodily Harm
FYA     For Your Amusement

Get the WWW. Smileys & Acronyms book for the PCIN special price of $7.00 Cdn
(around $5.00 US). You can only get this price by visiting
http://www.pcin.net/help/books/reviewed/smileys.shtml

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The NEWS
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Corel and Inprise to Merge
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This news is a couple of weeks old, but I thought it was worth mentioning.
Corel Corp. is buying Inprise/Borland Corp. In the beginning, there was
WordPerfect Corporation. Then came Novell who bought WordPerfect. Currently
Corel owns WordPerfect. But also in the beginning there was WordPerfect, but
nothing else. Then came Borland, who sold QuattroPro (spreadsheet) and
Paradox (database) to Corel and now the 3 are together in WordPerfect Suite.
Borland also makes several application development tools including the
CBuilder and Jbuilder. Now all these are will be part of the Corel family.
Both companies are claiming that they are doing this to be able to build
Linux applications, but there still is a bit of competition with Microsoft
involved. Corel acquired the other office programs to compete with Microsoft
Office. Not they have competing products to Microsoft's Visual Studio.

For more info:
http://www.borland.com/about/press/2000/inprise_corel.html
http://www.plesman.com/cc/news.html?CONTENT=news/cc260401a


No Use for the Internet
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According to a study by CyberDialogue, 27.7 million US adults tried the
Internet and decided they have no use for it. 1/3 of all US adults have no
intention of getting online ever. This was report in the March issue of
Small Business Computing Magazine. You can visit the CyberDialogue site at
http://www.cyberdialogue.com/ though I couldn't find any reference to this
survey on the site.


MS Trial Restarts
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The Microsoft antitrust trial has started again, and Microsoft is trying to
defend itself against a breakup or the release of their code. You can keep
up to date on these stories at the following sites:
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/special/msdojendgame.html
http://www.msnbc.com/news/COMJUSTICEVSMS_Front.asp

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CONTEST RESULTS
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Last week's contest was on Crazy Predictions. I only had 8 people send in
entries, and with 2 prizes, they had a 25% chance of winning. Not bad. Well,
Herman Steeman and Martin Taulu were the winners. Martin talked about Y2K
and Herman mentioned something about Windows 2000. Their entries along with
the others are available at http://www.pcin.net/contests/20000223.shtml

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I NEED HELP
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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 results to freehelp@pcin.net

Previous Question 1
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Q1) I have a modem... but I didn't know WHAT its driver is because my friend
gave it to me... could you please help me to find where can I get its
driver?

Answers to Question 1
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Marty said, "There should be a FCC # on the modem board somewhere. Make note
of it and go to a site like www.driverzone.com or www.windrivers.com and do
a search for it under the advanced sections. This should tell you who made
it. Another idea is to look at the chips on the modem. A lot of them have a
mfg name on the chipset. You might have to dig a little, but this should be
enough to get you going.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Paul Doty suggested going to http://www.56k.com/ and seeing if there is
information there that would help. He also wrote up a very nice and easy to
follow article on how to setup unknown modems. This is too long for this
section, but can be found at
http://www.pcin.net/help/articles/unknownmodem.shtml


Previous Question 2
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Q2) When I enlarge my screen by clicking in the right hand corner, the
scroll bar is out of the screen.  Can't seem to get it back where I can
operate it properly.  Not too sharp on the computer. I can't size it or drag
it when it is enlarged.

Answers to Question 2
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
You can hit "Alt" and "Space" at the same time.  Then hit the down and right
arrow key until you see the top of the window.  Then you should be able to
move it around and resize it.  Also, you can right click the application on
the taskbar, and choose "Size", then use your arrow keys to bring it up or
down.  Good Luck...

New Questions
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Q1) Whenever I try to install a program, it tells me there is a problem with
_setup.dll. What is the problem? I know my download is good. It installs
fine on other computers.
Q2) My mouse is hesitating, the music and games are skipping or studdering.
It is very difficult to point the mouse. What could be causing this?

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

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NEW CONTEST
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Last week I included a review of Poor Richard's Email Publishing and you can
see the full review at http://www.pcin.net/help/books/reviewed/prep.shtml
The kind people at Top Floor Publishing have donated 2 copies of the book
for me to give away as prizes. So, here goes:
What makes a good newsletter? Is it the personal touch? Is it the fact it
comes from a big name (Dummies, ZDNet, etc)? Is content really King? Or is
it something else? I don't necessarily need to know what your favourite
newsletter is, but rather what makes a specific newsletter appealing to you.
2 random entrants will receive a copy of the Email Publishing book. Send
your comments/entries to mailto:contest@pcin.net

Also don't forget to recommend PCIN at http://www.pcin.net/recommend.shtml
and be eligible at the end of February to win a copy of PowerDesk Utilities
98. You only have 6 days left.

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THE TIPS and OTHER STUFF
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Cheap Trick of the Week
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**Windows of opportunity**
This is one of those little tricks that are not all that spectacular but,
once you get used to them, you find yourself using them all the time.
You're typing away and you realize you want to make the window you're
working in larger or smaller.
Naturally you reach for the mouse and drag the bottom-right corner of the
window to a new position to stretch the box.
But you could resize the window without taking your fingers off the
keyboard.
Hold down the Alt key and the Spacebar and press the S key. A four-pointed
cursor appears on screen. Press any two arrow keys (cursor keys) and the
window will expand in those directions.
Press the opposite arrow keys and the window will shrink.
Press Enter when you've reached the size you want, or Esc to cancel the
resizing.

You can get the Little Black Book of Cheap Tricks yourself for only $9.95
Cdn (about $7.00 US)
http://www.pcin.net/help/books/reviewed/cheaptricks.shtml
(Please mention that you heard about it from PCIN)


Stop Your Cat from Typing
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I don't know where this commercial can be seen, but there is a commercial on
TV for Purolator (the shipping company) that says there software is so easy
to use. It has a cat clicking mouse buttons and then a dozen Purolator
people show up.
Well, if you have a cat that likes to wander, you have probably noticed that
the keyboard is a good place for them to start. My cat Misty always jumps up
on my desk and wants me to scratch her. Where are my hands? On the keyboard,
and that is where she ends up. You can end up with all sorts of crazy
character combinations on your keyboard.
A company called BitBoost has created a program PawSense that looks for the
pattern of characters being entered and the speed at which they are being
entered, and if it isn't "normal" will stop the entry from taking place. I
haven't tried it myself, but from what I hear, it does a very good job.
http://www.bitboost.com/pawsense/index.html


Poor Richard's Internet Marketing and Promotions
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Another book in the Poor Richard series of books, this book covers the basic
of promoting your business on and offline. Obviously most of the book
focuses on things like search engine registration, online directories, and
other ways to promote your business online. There is a nice section though
on how to promote your business offline. I know that there are many sites on
the Internet where you can get a lot of this sort of information for free,
but this was a good book to grab when I had a few minutes and read it
wherever I want (you don't need a power supply to read a book). As with all
Poor Richard books, they also offer a 365 money back guarantee. If the book
doesn't help you, they will give you your money back.
You can read my full review at
http://www.pcin.net/help/books/reviewed/prim.shtml or you can visit the Top
Floor site directly at http://www.topfloor.com/pr/promo/

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DISCLAIMER and OTHER STUFF
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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.
1: If any of the links are too long to fit on one line, you may have to cut
and paste.
2: You can only win one contest every 30 days.
3: To subscribe another address or unsubscribe, please visit
http://www.pcin.net/ and follow the appropriate links.
4: Recommend PCIN to others at http://www.pcin.net/recommend.shtml and be
entered in a monthly draw.
5: 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.
6: If you have a web site or run your own newsletter, please email me at
mailto:editor@pcin.net and I will add it to the subscriber web pages that I
have on my site.
Graham Wing can be reached at mailto:editor@pcin.net
Copyright 1998-2000, PC Improvements and Graham Wing. All rights reserved.
This publication may be reproduced in hole, or in part, as long as the
author is notified and the newsletter is presented as is.

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