|
Issue 87 - June 07, 2000
ISSN 1488-3163; PC Improvements (c) 2000
==== 981 Subscribers in 46 Countries ====
Subscribe/Unsubscribe/View Archives at http://www.pcin.net/
Welcome to the 87th issue 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
topic. 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.
The June prize will be Software602's 602Pro Lan Suite Lite,
a program that lets you connect several computers to the Internet.
Recommend PCIN at http://www.pcin.net/recommend.shtml
OPENING THOUGHTS
I stated feeling sick last Thursday, and with 3 days off
on the weekend, I was in bed the whole time with the worst
cold I've had in years. Crazy! It just seemed to be even worse
being in June. I'm feeling much better though. Lisa caught
a bit of it, but she's doing pretty well too.
Congratulations to Sachin Athalye of India who won the random
drawing for a copy of PowerDesk Utilities 4 Pro. The June
prize will be for a copy of Software602's 602Pro Lan Suite
Lite, a program that lets you connect several computers to
the Internet.
This is the 17th week that I've had the smileys and acronyms
below, and I'm finally running out. They will only continue
for a couple weeks more. If you have any ideas for another
little thing to put at the top of the newsletter, email me
at mailto:editor@pcin.net
with your suggestions.
SMILEYS and ACRONYMS of the WEEK
[:-) Listening to Headphones
q:-) Wearing Baseball Hat Backwards
TIA Thanks In Advance
IAE In Any Event
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
The NEWS
Microsoft Ordered to Split in Two
In a decree that was no surprise, Judge Jackson has ruled
that Microsoft should be broken in two. This will be all
over the news for days, as it has been for months already,
so here is just a list of links:
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/trial/default.asp
http://cnnfn.com/2000/06/07/technology/microsoft_ruling/
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/special/msdojendgame.html
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1003-200-2033666.html?tag=st.cn.1.lthdne
http://usvms.gpo.gov/ms-final.html
MP3 Site Fights Back
Lately it seems that either a recording artist or their
studio is suing the well-known MP3 sites. Well, MP3Board,
a site that provides message boards and links for MP3 lovers,
has reversed the roles. They have taken the pro-active step
of asking "a federal judge to find it had not violated
copyright laws merely by posting links to material online."
MP3Board does not host any songs. They have a search engine,
as well as message boards, so they are essentially just
a search engine. They claim that having a web page with
a link on it does not constitute copyright infringement.
For more info:
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-2029114.html?tag=st
Oxygen Fighting for Air
"Privately held Oxygen, an Internet and cable-TV company
with content and programming geared toward women, said today
it is putting two shows, "Pure Oxygen" and "Trackers,"
on hiatus for the summer. Some staff and crew will be laid
off for the summer, spokeswoman Laura Nelson said."
Oxygen is backed by Oprah Winfrey and Paul Allen (among
others) and has only been active for a few months.
For more info:
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-2033779.html?tag=st.ne.1002.bgif.ni
NEW MONTHLY CONTEST
How many computers do you have? Do you really need more than
1? Do you have them networked together, or are they stand-alone?
That is what I'd like to get answered this week.
Once I bought my laptop, I found that setting up a home network
was easy to do, and was the best thing to do in order to exchange
files between them. But does anyone really need more than
1 computer? Are we too hooked on these things? Or is it better
for adults in the house to have their own? What do you think?
I will make a random drawing of all of the replies and that
person will receive a copy of Software602's 602Pro Lan Suite
Lite. This is a program that will allow up to 3 computers
on a home network to access 1 Internet connection. My full
review can be seen at http://www.pcin.net/help/software/602pro
lanlite.shtml
Send in your comments/entries to mailto:contest@pcin.net
I NEED HELP
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 questions or results to mailto:freehelp@pcin.net
Previous Question 1
How do I change the folder icons on my desktop to something
other than folders?
Answers to Question 1
Dave McClement said, "It depends how creative you want
to be. The simple way is to right click on the icon (if it's
a shortcut) and select properties from the menu. Select the
shortcut tab and click the 'Change icon' button. The
default file for icons - C:\Windows\System\Shell.dll - is
displayed from which you can select an alternative by scrolling
and clicking your choice. More icons are available if you
change the file by 'Browse...' and find 'Moricons.dll' or
download icon files from the net and select them here.
Secondly, in 'Paint' you can create your own icon from an
existing one. Choose File/New then Image/attributes...
Select pixels and type in 32 for both dimensions. Click Ok
and minimize Paint. Find the image you want and take a snapshot
by pressing the Print screen (Prt Sc) button. Open Paint and
choose Edit/Paste. Say no when asked to enlarge the
bitmap. Drag the pasted image about till the icon appears
in the window then click a tool to complete paste. Edit the
image to suit, then save as... "icon name.ico" including
the quotes. Select the new icon as described above.
Thirdly there is an excellent program called 'Icon forge'
available from http://www.cursorarts.com/ which allows
you to modify or create icons or animate a cursor. Try it
and select the created icon via the above."
Previous Question 2
Task bar! It has elongated itself, to the left and to the
right. I can view only 1/4 of the start button over on the
left, and the clock is out of view - on the right. Nowhere
in the literature can I find mention of how to rectify this.
I think I should be able to correct it without resorting to
the monitor's controls - which, by the way, do not correct
the problem.
Answers to Question 2
No Answers Given
New Questions
Q1) Since I had Mindspring for a internet service provider
for one month my browser says "Mindspring Internet Explorer"
How can I get rid of the Mindspring header and all of Mindspring
files.
Q2) I only have 1 game port. Is there any way for me to connect
4 controllers to this one port so I can play a 4-player game?
If you have an answer to these questions or have a question
of your own, please email me at mailto:freehelp@pcin.net
THE TIPS and OTHER STUFF
Cheap Trick of the Week
**Stump the panel**
You can create shortcuts to most files and programs in Windows,
as well as to Control Panels. But many Control Panels have
multiple pages, so your shortcut won't link directly to
the page you want.
Or will it? We know how to do this with at least one control
panel.
Suppose you want to make a shortcut to the Screensaver page
of the Display control panel to let you switch screensavers
quickly. Right-click on an empty area of the desktop and
select New and Shortcut. For command line, enter control.exe
desk.cpl,display,1 with a space only between exe and desk.
Click on Next, type in a name for the shortcut and click
on Finish.
You can also make the shortcut go to other pages of the
Display control panel by changing the number at the end
of the command line. For example, changing the 1 to 0 will
call up the Background page and changing it to 2 will bring
up the Appearance page.
You can get the Little Black Book of Cheap Tricks yourself
for only $9.95 Cdn (about $7.00 US) at http://www.pcin.net/help/books/reviewed/cheaptricks.shtml
(Please mention that you heard about it from PCIN)
Check Your Security
Last week I mentioned how to do a reverse IP lookup, or
how to find out from which ISP did a hacker try to get into
your machine. Most programs that try to protect your machine
from attacks will log these IP addresses. If you don't have
any program like ZoneAlarm installed, then visit https://grc.com/x/ne.dll?bh0bkyd2
and run their IP Agent program. It will scan your computer
and try to see if there any "holes" that it can
get in. This is a harmless check, but you might be surprised
when you see how open your computer really is.
Resizing Toolbars
I have 3 toolbars showing on my taskbar, the regular taskbar
and quick launch toolbars, as well as the address bar. On
the taskbar, or in Internet Explorer, when you have multiple
toolbars available on the same line, you can double-click
the separator (the line that you would click on to drag
the toolbar) and this will resize the toolbar to its smallest
possible size. Double-click again and it will become the
maximum size. Double-click again and it will become the
size that fits the toolbar the best. This is kind of hard
to describe, but if you give it a try, you will see what
I mean.
A Homegrown Game Site
A received this email from subscriber Bill R this week:
I just recently started a D&D game and looking
for
many people to make it great. For anyone that wishes
to play ,code, or build the link will be at
http://206.168.137.34:1957 If you cannot
reach me there
try mailto:hawke1999@yahoo.com I will reply
within
24 hrs .If you have exp and wish to code or build
please send a brief description of skills.
I'm not into games, but there are many of you who are,
so you may want to check it out and/or email Bill about
it.
Office 2000 SR1a CD
If you would like to order the Office 2000 SR1a patch CD
(just the patch, not a full version of Office) then you
can visit the site below. The CD is totally free, including
shipping.
http://order4.microsoft.upgrade.com/office2k_sr1/office2k_sr1.asp
DISCLAIMER and OTHER STUFF
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.
- If any of the links are too long to fit on one line,
you may have to cut and paste.
- You can only win one contest every 30 days.
- To subscribe another address or unsubscribe, please visit
http://www.pcin.net/ and follow the appropriate
links.
- Recommend PCIN to others at http://www.pcin.net/recommend.shtml
and be entered in a monthly draw.
- 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.
- 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.
PC Improvement
News Home Page
PC Improvement News
Archive
|
