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Issue 95 - August 02, 2000
ISSN 1488-3163; PC Improvements (c) 2000
==== 1079 Subscribers in 46 Countries ====
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Welcome to the 95th 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 August prize will be Microsoft Word 2000. Recommend PCIN
at http://www.pcin.net/recommend.shtml
OPENING THOUGHTS
Congratulations to Elizabeth Hill. She recommended PCIN in
July and won herself a copy of PrintMaster and Adobe ActiveShare.
Recommend PCIN in the month of August and win Microsoft Word
2000.
Not much to say this week. Just enjoy the newsletter.
The NEWS
Napster Still Alive
Everyday I receive several news headline newsletters and
they are always filled with updates on the Napster trial.
Napster was order to close down as of last Friday, and then
another Judge ruled in an appeal that they could continue
to run until other appeals have been heard.
For more info:
http://www.infoworld.com/articles/hn/xml/00/07/28/000728hninjunction.xml?0731mnne
http://www.techweb.com/wire/story/TWB20000731S0001
An Inexpensive Windows Upgrade?
In all seriousness, I had no intention of upgrading to
Windows ME. I have tried it, and wasn't impressed with it.
I certainly wasn't willing to pay $110 or so for it. Well,
Microsoft must have realized that there were a lot of other
people like me out there. They have reduced the price on
upgrades from Windows 98 SE to only $59. I might no actually
install the upgrade right away, but I will almost certainly
buy it now.
For more info:
http://cnnfn.cnn.com/2000/08/01/technology/microsoft_me/
http://www.wininformant.com/display.asp?ID=2853
A Security Problem in a Non-Microsoft Product
All you ever hear is how many security issues there are
with Microsoft products are. Well, there are security problems
in all sorts of products. "Dutch engineers have found
a pair of holes in Lotus Development's Notes and Domino's
password encryption and the security on public versions
of the address list." Although this doesn't affect
nearly as many people as Microsoft products, it is important
for people to be careful no matter what product they are
using.
For more info:
http://www.infoworld.com/articles/hn/xml/00/08/01/000801hndomino.xml?0801tup
New Bar Coding Technology
This is a little old now, but I figured I'd include it
anyway. It comes from the August 2000 issue of PC Magazine
and the Intacta.com web site:
I don't know if you've seen the new type of bar code that
is around. Instead of vertical lines, the same size of label
is filled with patterns of little squares. The pattern stores
the data and a label the same size as a bar code can hold
hundreds of times more information.
A company called Intacta has taken this a step further.
Using their Intacta.Code technology, you can make these
patterns as large as you'd like, and therefore store much
more data. Each centimeter stores approximately 400 bytes
of data. The Yomiuri Shimbun daily newspaper in Japan has
been including one of these recently. You can encode an
MP3, picture, or any other type of file.
You can download the Intacta.Code reader software and read
more about this amazing technology at http://www.intacta.com/
MP3 Player for the GameBoy
Subscriber Leeor Geva sent me this:
I don't know if you have heard of this product yet, but
it's called "Song Boy", an MP3 player for the
Game Boy and it is in beta stages, awaiting release in October
- Christmas. First shipment of Betas are to be released
in 40 days. The Jr. Module holds 16MB of MP3 play and will
be around $50, there should also be a regular Module that
holds more memory. The father of a kid here in this
computer camp where I teach (at UCLA) is the CEO (Ron L.
Jones) and he brought over the beta. Last night when
we tried it out, it said the memory chip is full when we
tried uploading a song, but we didn't have time to check
if there was an actual song on it yet, ill be playing around
with the product more today. You can visit www.songboy.com for more info.
NEW CONTEST
With all of the talk lately regarding Napster, Scour, and
other media trading services, what do you think? When you
download the latest song from Napster, are you really stealing?
If you are, does it bother you? Would you pay for music if
you could pay $1 a song (or a similarly low amount)?
Send in your feelings/comments/opinions to mailto:contest@pcin.net I will make a random
drawing and the winner will receive a copy of Kai's Photo
Soap 2.
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 Questions
Q 94-01)
Any URLs that are sent to me by ICQ will not open, when
I click on them it says cannot launch web browser, and
I noticed that when I click on the URL in ICQ that it
is greyed out. It was working fine last week and I don't
know what has happened.
A 94-01)
John Hills said, "Try preferences in ICQ and under
general, tick launch default web browser. Also make sure
your URL's are pointing in the right direction in Explorer,
View, File types. They will be OK if you can launch
URL's from e.g. Outlook, or any other windows programs
except ICQ."
Q 94-02)
I'd like to reformat my hard drive and reinstall Windows
from scratch. Can someone recommend a site that has step-by-step
instructions on how to do this?
A 94-02)
Thanks to Kenneth Aspinwall, Eileen Dumont, Daniel Najimian,
Joe Wilk, Judy Wilson and John Hills for contributing
to this list of sites that have instructions on how to
do a clean install of Windows:
http://www.netpathway.com/~kramer/reinstall.html
http://www.win98central.com/page.php?1092
http://wusun10.utsi.edu/myBook/InsideWindows98/ch02.htm#Heading11
http://www.pcmech.com/byopc/build.htm?27
http://www.winmag.com/windows/guides/win98/default.htm
New Questions
Q 95-01)
When trying to print a full-page, landscape-oriented
1 page file to my printer, the picture is consistently
scrunched down by what appears to be approximately 50%.
Q 95-02)
When I send an email to a friend it automatically downloads
into his deleted items. He doesn't have any rules set
up, and I'm the only one who this happens to.
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
**Extend your selection skills in Word**
When you want to select text in Microsoft Word, do you sweep
across it with your mouse? And then get mixed up or lose
your place when the selection runs beyond the text showing
in the open window?
Several alternatives make it a whole lot easier to select
text. Here are three of them:
1. Place the cursor at your starting point in the text.
Hold down the Shift key and press the Arrow keys. Text will
be selected in the direction of the Arrow keys.
2. Click on the starting point. Scroll to near the end point,
hold down Shift and click on where you want to end the selection.
3. Click at the starting point. Then double-click on the
greyed-out EXT in the status bar below the window you're
working in. Navigate to your intended end point and click
on it. This is using Word's Extension Mode, which stays
in effect until you double-click on EXT again to turn it
off.
These tricks work in all versions since Word 95 at least.
Solitaire Cheat
If you are playing Solitaire and turning over 3 cards at
once, often the card you want is in the middle and you can
never seem to get at it. Well, you can. Just hold down Shift,
CTRL, and Alt keys at the same time and click on the draw
pile. This will allow you to draw the cards one at a time.
Some Microsoft Word Formatting Tips
In Word, it is very easy to use your mouse and click on
buttons on the task bar to format your documents. As always
though, sometimes it's even easier to use keyboard shortcuts.
You can type * before a word to get bold and _ to italicize
a word.
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.
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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
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