The PC Improvement News

Issue 68 - January 26, 2000
ISSN 1488-3163; PC Improvements (c) 2000

==== 759 Subscribers in 43 Countries ====

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

Welcome to the 68th 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
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 (January is for
ZipMagic 2000) at http://www.pcin.net/recommend.shtml

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SOME OPENING THOUGHTS
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I've decided that I am going to make a lot more advice web pages from the
answers I get to some of the FreeHelp questions. If it is a question that
many people may have, then I will compile the suggestions into a page. This
will allow everyone to see the answers, and it helps me come up with more
content. If you object to me including your comments, then let me know (but
if you don't want me to include them, why are you participating?). I would
be glad to link your name to your email address or a business web site. I'm
going to try to stay away from personal web sites as the content changes too
often.

My 2 cents on last weeks contest; Is the Internet a big mall?
Only if you want it to be. There are all sorts of good things, just like
every other communication medium. You just have to use it properly. I saved
about $150 buying this semester's textbooks online as opposed to buying them
at the College bookstore. If that Internet is just a big mall, but I can
save money like that, then that's okay by me.

When you email me, please use your name. Sometimes all I see is your email
username. I prefer real names.

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THOUGHT OF THE WEEK
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Do little things now; so shall big things come to thee by and by asking to
be done.
          - Persian Proverb

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 aspire-request@happypublishing.com with
SUBSCRIBE in the subject line.

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THE NEWS
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White Supremacist Group Runs MartinLutherKing.org
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"MartinLutherKing.org appears to be a benign site dedicated to the life and
writings of the man who gave the famous "I Have a Dream" speech during the
1963 March on Washington. It's actually hosted by Stormfront.org, one of the
oldest and largest white supremacist sites on the Internet."
I visited the site, and the main page appears to be a very nice tribute site
to the man. But when you click on the links, there are racist articles. It
is pretty rotten that this group has done this. Many people will visit the
site thinking it is a good site, but they will be surprised.

For more info:
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,2427505,00.html?chkpt=zdnntop


More Windows Changes
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I can't even think of a comparison of they way Microsoft is always changing
their plans for their Windows-based operating systems. On Tuesday they
announced that this year we will get Millenium, that Neptune is no more, and
that Whistler will be the first consumer NT-based Windows. I can't follow it
all, but you may be able to. The article explains it quite well.

For more info:
http://www.msnbc.com/news/361801.asp


Looking for ET
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I don't know if you've seen the movie Contact with Jodie Foster, but she is
a scientist who works on the SETI project, the Search for Extra Terrestrial
Intelligence.  She makes contact with another civilization and goes off into
space.
Have you wanted that to happen to you? Well, I don't know if it could, but
you can help search the skies. I'm sure many of you know that SETI is a real
project going on at Berkeley.  They have software that you can download that
runs as a screensaver and it analyses little pieces of data.
This is news because they just released a new version of their software. The
SETI group claims to have 1.5 million users, with about 1/3 of that active
at any given time.

For more info:
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,33506,00.html
http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/


Gateway Announces DSL Service
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I don't have any links, but subscriber Bill R sent me this:
"Just a quick little note for all the AOL users out there. Gateway just
announced DSL service for its customers to start soon."

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CONTEST RESULTS
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Thanks to the 17 people who sent in their comments on whether the Internet
is just a big shopping mall. Most of the entries were as expected. People
felt that even though there was a lot of commercial activity, there is also
a lot of good information available if you can find it. The communications
aspect was also mentioned.

Congratulations to Rena and Patricia who were random winners of PrintMaster.

All of the entries can be found http://www.pcin.net/contests/20000126.shtml

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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 tried 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. 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
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
After booting up my computer the add new hardware wizard came up on my
screen. I didn't add any new hardware so I just canceled through it. I got
to my desktop and noticed that I was no longer connected to our network. The
server's drive was no longer coming up and I had no Internet connection. So
I went to windows help and went through some of their tips for reconnecting
and when I went to reboot the computer the screen was blank on the monitor.
So now I can't do anything.
~~~~~
John Hills said, "I would hazard a guess that Windows has shuffled your IRQs
about resulting in losing your network card and possibly some other devices.
I have had recently some success by literally removing every single device
in device manger, ignoring the reboot message and then when all devices have
been deleted and by this time you may have to resort to keyboard only, then
reboot and windows has to find every single device again in one reboot. The
beauty of this but tedious idea is that in effect, windows is as good as
installing the first time and gives windows a chance to replace the devices
in a more useful IRQ and address. I know this doesn't fix the monitor
problem, but the method above may be useful to know in the future."

Previous Question 2
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I have an old 486 100Mhz, 4 Meg RAM, computer sitting in my closet. I know
it is basically obsolete, but it is fully functional, except I don't have a
hard drive installed right now. Is there anything useful/interesting use for
this computer? Specifically, could I use it by connecting it to my new
computer in some fashion? I'm not afraid of "tinkering" with the machine,
I'm just curious if there is some option other than throwing the box away or
selling it for $10.
~~~~~
There were many very good answers and they have been compiled into a new
page at http://www.pcin.net/help/articles/sparecomp.shtml


New Questions
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Q1) How do you uninstall a program after you run the uninstall program and
you get a "File Missing" error and the uninstall won't continue?

Q2) I'm just learning how to make CDs and I have ruined a few already. Are
there any good places on the net where I can learn what do to?

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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NO NEW CONTEST
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No new contest this week, but don't forget to recommend PCIN at
http://www.pcin.net/recommend.shtml to be entered into the monthly draw. You
can recommend as many people as you want, and that will be the number of
entries you get in the draw. I log everything though, so don't bother trying
to send recommendations to fake email addresses.

Recommend PCIN at http://www.pcin.net/recommend.shtml and win a copy of
ZipMagic 2000.

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THE TIPS and OTHER STUFF
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Cheap Trick of the Week
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**Return to sender**
That was a neat trick last week to add new items to the Send To submenu,
wasn't it? But it was so long and laborious. So this week's trick makes it
easier to add destinations to the Send To list. You just have to know how to
add "Send To" to Send To. It's not as crazy as it sounds.
In Windows Explorer, find the Send To folder under Windows just as you did
last week. Click once on it, so it opens in the right pane. Still in the
left pane of Explorer, right-click on the Send To folder and drag it into a
blank area in the right pane and let go. In the small menu that pops up,
select Create Shortcut(s) Here. This places an item called Shortcut to Send
To right in the Send To folder. You can rename it something like Add to the
Send To Menu. Now whenever you want to add another destination to the Send
To submenu, you can just right-click on the file and select Send To and then
Add to the Send To Menu.
One minor hitch. This tends to move the entire file into the Send To folder.
If you want to leave the original file where it is, first right-click on it
and select Create Shortcut. Then right-click on the shortcut to send this to
Add to the Send To Menu.

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

Note: I actually got my own copy of this book last week, and it is a lot
smaller than I expected it, but it is still well worth the money. It is
about 100 pages and is full of good tricks. You may be able to find all of
the information in other places, but this handy little book puts them all in
one place. It is still a very good buy.


Storage Space on the Net **Really Good**
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I got an email recently from Gina Keenan, an Account Manager at X:drive (an
online storage facility) asking if they could advertise in PCIN. I replied
saying that I didn't accept advertising, but I would be happy to look at
their service and if it were good, I'd mention it. Well, it is truly
amazing.
There are many different sites that offer free online storage space. You can
use it to store critical files, your favourites, share files with friends,
and much more. I have tried a couple of them, and X:drive is very nice to
use. It comes with an application that makes it look just like a normal
drive letter. When you access it, you connect to the Internet and can move
things to or from it just like a regular hard drive folder. This really is
one of the coolest things I've seen lately. It is a very effective way to
merge the Internet and your desktop. This is especially useful if you have a
high-speed connection to the Internet.
I don't have any affiliation with them, but when I received the info Gina
sent, she also sent this URL to include. I don't get anything with this. I
guess it is just a way to track how many people from PCIN sign up. You
should really check it out though. It is very cool.
Get your X:drive at http://www.xdrive.com/promo/pcinX


A Good Email Program/Tool
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Subscriber Bill R sent this in:
I get a few newsletters in my email and one day this new program popped up.
I read the description of it and it sounded like a hoax, so as the many we
all get now and then. I took a chance and tried it, I made sure to read the
help files and all and put it to the test. The previous day a co-worker was
being a real Homer all day and it got on my nerves so I sent him a flame
mail as we do to someone now and again. After sleeping very horrible that
night I decided to retract this letter so I did just that. This little gem
is called 1on1 lite and I received it from a newsgroup from ZD Net. I really
didn't think about it before but how many times have you sent a flame and
wished you could just remove it.1 on 1 has many options to use, the one I
like most is the self-destruct mode it has .How many times have you showed
someone else a letter you received, well guess what if you make it
self-destruct it can be opened and read 1 time when it gets opened it
activates the self-destruct mode. Once closed bang gone this could save you
a few embarrassing moments. Before anyone asks I am not a salesman for this
product I just find it extremely useful and wish to share it with all the
fine readers of pcin.net.


Free online courses, tutorials, and activities
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The Internet is full of places where you can get free information. Some of
it is reliable, a lot of it isn't.  A good place to start for reliable
information is Free-Ed.net, a place to go for, as they call it, "Free
Education on the Internet." I have briefly looked around their site, and
using links to online education sites at Microsoft, InformIT (which requires
free registration) and others, you can learn about a wide variety of
computer topics. There are also online tutorials in Sciences, Humanities,
Business and many more. It is certainly a good place to bookmark if you
would like more information on a wide variety of topics.

Microsoft Education
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Incidentally, after looking at the Free-Ed.net site, I noticed that they are
always linking to a specific are of the Microsoft site. You can visit
http://www.microsoft.com/education/tutorial/default.asp for tutorials on all
of the major Microsoft products.

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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.
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Some General Notes and Rules
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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
editor@pcin.net and I will add it to the subscriber web pages that I have on
my site.
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Graham Wing can be reached at editor@pcin.net
Copyright 1998-2000, 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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