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Issue 101 - September 13, 2000
ISSN 1488-3163; PC Improvements (c) 2000
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Welcome to the 101st 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 September prize will be a copy of Caldera OpenLinux, and
Corel Linux OS (original CDs from each company, not copies).
Recommend PCIN at http://www.pcin.net/recommend.shtml
OPENING THOUGHTS
It's amazing how fast the time goes by. Life is good though
so at least when the time flies by and its all good.
Congratulations to Mark Shimmin who won the random draw.
He sent in his comments about digital cameras and won a copy
of the book HTML Goodies.
With Windows ME arriving, I'd be glad to include any comments
that you have on it. Why you will get it, why you won't get
it, etc. You can email me at mailto:editor@pcin.net
Don't forget to recommend PCIN in September and win a copy
of Caldera OpenLinux, and Corel Linux OS (original CDs from
each company, not copies). You can recommend PCIN at http://www.pcin.net/recommend.shtml
The NEWS
Amazon.com Pricing Problems
"Amazon.com acknowledged that it's been presenting
different prices to different customers in its DVD store,
but denied that it does so on the basis of any past purchasing
behavior at Amazon.
"We want to measure what impact price has on a customer's
purchasing patterns. It's a limited test," Amazon spokeswoman
Patty Smith said. "Different customers will see different
prices."
She said those prices are doled out at random."
Amazon.com has since said they will reimburse people who
paid more.
For more info:
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,38758,00.html
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/SeattleTimes.woa/wa/gotoArticle?document_id=
134231773&zsection_id=268448455&text_only=0
Linux Popularity
Since the September prize for recommending PCIN is a couple
of versions of Linux, I thought including this was appropriate.
The August 28, 2000 issue of Sm@rt Partner Magazine surveyed
its readers as to which version of Linux was their favourite:
41% Caldera
18% Red Hat
14% SuSE
6% Corel
5% Debian
1% TurboLinux
15% Something Else
Windows ME is Here
I'm sending this out later at night on the 13th so by the
time most of you get this, it will be the 14th and Windows
ME will be here. There are plenty of reviews out there that
you can study:
http://www.zdnet.com/special/filters/reports/0,11414,6016192,00.html
http://www.cnet.com/software/0-2111110-7-2154338.html?tag=st.sw.3709.txt.2111110-7-2154338
http://www.winplanet.com/winplanet/previews/2023/1/
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsme/
A couple of weeks ago I mentioned that I didn't understand
how you could do a full upgrade if you don't have Windows
installed. I was thinking of upgrade purely in the sense
that it is installed and you are upgrading it. Carlos Roman
and Vernon Wolf both emailed me to remind me that as part
of the installation process you are prompted for the original
CD from Windows 95, 98, or whatever it may be. Thanks Carlos
and Vernon for setting me straight!
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 100-01)
I have a "Rockwell soft 56k Data Fax Speakerphone
PCI" modem. Basically I am suffering auto disconnect
all the time. My server advises no problems on their end,
but for a month now I can't even get the home page from
my server loaded before I'm cut off. The dial up sequence
seems ok if a little slow and after some attempts I get
the message "Could not detect modem. It may be turned
off in use or not installed properly".
(PII-233, 32MB RAM, Win98, IE 4 or 5)
A 100-01)
Skeeter Lewis said, "My PC had one of those in it
when I bought it. It did the same and when I took it in,
the tech checked it out... it was fried."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
John Hills said, "The problem is caused by a corrupt
DUN. They need to go to add and remove, communications,
Dial up Networking. Then reboot and back again to
reinstall DUN. Try this first and then actually
delete the Dial up Network icon pertaining to the ISP
in question and create a new one with a DIFFERENT name
using the same settings."
Will Chatham said, "It sounds like you are making
a connection and the modem is working if your home page
is at least loading half way. If that is the case,
then it may be the same problem I had a couple of years
ago. I learned that I was at the end of the phone
line. This meant my signal was weak, and only on
a light traffic day could I stay connected for longer
than 15 seconds. A lot of noise was on the line,
which would cause the modem to disconnect. I was
very susceptible to power surges in the phone line as
well, and fried a modem this way. I had to move
into the city in order to solve the problem. You
may need to have the phone company come test your line.
Good luck."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Roger Michaud said, "Go to: Start>Setting>Control
Panel>Internet>Connection modem dial up >Setting
there should be this line:
X Disconnect a call if idle for more than ___ minutes
Enter the highest # you can, either 59 or 255 that should
stop your modem from disconnecting."
Q 100-02)
I recently tried to compress my hard drive, and it stopped
about half way with a msg. "not enough memory to
complete". Now it won't boot up at all. I tried using
my backup off my zip drive, but it says "not enough
memory to complete". So, I thought I should format
my hard drive in order to free some space to load my backup.
Unfortunately, DOS doesn't respond to all commands. When
format c is typed in it says, "Access denied".
Do you have any suggestions?
A 100-02)
John Hills said, "This looks like a Master Boot
record issue probably caused because DriveSpace or DoubleSpace
has been activated when trying to compress the drive.
Best thing to do here from the point he is at is to repartition
the hard drive and then format it. If he\she doesn't
want to partition the hard drive then they need to use
FORMAT /MBR followed by the normal FORMAT C: /s."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Roger Michaud said, "You should have a boot disk,
check if you have these files on disk: Command.com, fdisk.exe,
format.com
Boot for the boot disk, at A:> enter this command:
format C: /u /s
If you try this and it doesn't work, enter your Setup
(BIOS) and go to HDD Detection. There is a low format
in that section, it take a good 4 hours for a 2.5GB HDD.
Don't rush anything."
New Questions
Q 101-01)
I am looking for free voice to text converter programs
that 'listens' as you speak into microphone and converts
it into typed text. Are there any out there?
Q 101-02)
I use only Netscape - how do I forward a web page forwarding
only the URL location underlined so that the recipient
can download upon receipt of email. Up until now, I being
right clicking on the article and clicking on Send Page
- which in the case of a long article can mean time at
my end and recipients.
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
**New gateway to your files**
If you have Internet Explorer 4 or better installed on your
Windows 95/98 system, you can have a quick gateway to your
folders and their files. Here's how to set it up.
On your desktop, left-click on the My Computer icon and
drag it all the way to the left of the screen. Release the
mouse button and the contents in that folder will cascade,
as a menu, down the left side of your desktop. Now left-click
on the C: drive icon in that menu, and drag it up to the
middle of your screen, all the way up to the screen edge.
Release the mouse button.
Now you have a cascading menu across the top of your desktop,
listing all the folders and files in your C: drive.
But you likely have too much content for that little menu,
in which case you'll see two tiny right-pointing arrows
at the far right of that menu bar. Click on those to get
the cascade to continue down the right side of your desktop.
And if you hover your mouse over any of those folders cascading
down the right, another menu will explode out, showing you
the folder's contents.
While this trick does cut down on your desktop space, you
can now efficiently get to any of your files, right from
your desktop.
And if you don't like this arrangement, just right-click
on an empty spot of each menu and choose Close.
Open New IE Window
The whole point of Windows is to have Windows. Huh? There
are a lot of people who only like to have one window open
at a time, but they are missing out. It's great to be able
view several windows at once. When using Internet Explorer,
to open a link in a new window, you can right-click on the
link and choose the "Open Link in New Window"
option. A quicker way is to hold the shift key down while
you left-click on the link. This will automatically open
a new window. This works in all versions of Internet Explorer.
I don't know if this works in Netscape, or what an equivalent
keystroke combination to do this would be.
Use the CTRL key in documents
It's amazing what you can learn by accident. When you hold
the CTRL key down and press the arrow keys, you can move
around quicker than by using the arrow keys on their own.
When you press the CTRL key and the right or left arrow
key, you will move the cursor to the next/previous word.
If you hold the CTRL key down and press the up or down key,
you can move to the next/previous paragraph (or the location
where the closest hard return is). Try both of these and
you'll see what I mean. Both of these tips work to different
degrees in different programs.
Non-English Commercials
Since Hollywood is on the same Continent I'm on, I usually
think of people like Arnold Schwarzenegger or Sean Connery
as being North American stars, but of course this isn't
true. They are famous everywhere. They are in commercials
all over the world. If you visit http://www.zeroonedesign.com/gogo/main.html
you can see commercials from Meg Ryan, Sean Connery, and
Leonardo DiCaprio (to name a few) that are from Japan.
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.
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