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Issue 111 - November 22, 2000
ISSN 1488-3163; PC Improvements (c) 2000
==== 1235 Subscribers in 47 Countries ====
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Welcome to the 111th 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 November prizes are copies of PowerQuest's Lost &
Found. 10 copies will be given away, so recommend PCIN at
http://www.pcin.net/recommend.shtml
OPENING THOUGHTS
Last week I said that the newsletter would most likely be
coming from the LCWing.com domain. Well, it isn't. I signed
up with a company who seemed to be great. Just when I signed
up their servers were hit with a virus, they were upgrading
their e-commerce servers, and they were having some other
technical problems. Well, I cancelled the sign-up and will
keep looking.
Nothing much new is happening. All of the "experts"
are talking about the Christmas season and whether the online
retailers will be able to keep up with the rush. I need to
figure out a way to get paid to be one of these "experts."
Easy money!
Happy Thanksgiving to all the American subscribers. Have
a nice weekend and try to have at least one day where you
don't here anything about the Florida recount.
Don't forget to recommend PCIN in the month of November.
I will give out 10 copies of PowerQuest's Lost & Found
in November to those who recommend PCIN. You'll have a great
chance of winning, so recommend PCIN now at http://www.pcin.net/recommend.shtml
The NEWS
Amazon.com to Unionize?
"Customer service workers at Amazon.com's Seattle
headquarters have started a drive to form a union.
The workers hope to gather support from a majority of the
400 or so customer service representatives in Seattle. They
hope to obtain union recognition and eventually a collective
bargaining agreement."
For more info:
http://www.thestandard.com/article/display/0,1151,20273,00.html
The Average US Internet User
From the November 28, 2000 Issue of Business 2 Magazine,
pg 274:
6 Sessions per week
6 Unique sites visited
228 Pageviews per week
38 Pageviews per surfing session
3:08:47 Time spent per week
0:31:30 Duration of surfing session
0:00:50 Duration of a pageview
0.31 Average click rate for top banners
Corel to Sell Linux Line?
With all of the changes that have been happening at Corel
lately (the departure of their CEO, the deal with Microsoft,
etc.) it is still quite surprising to hear that as Corel
continues to review its business, they have mentioned that
it is possible that they would sell their Linux line (sell
that part of the company). I'm sure all of the Microsoft
conspiracy theorists will love this.
For more info:
http://www.infoworld.com/articles/hn/xml/00/11/20/001120hncorel.xml
Microsoft Meets with Hacker
"Microsoft last week met with Dimitri, the Dutch hacker
who recently mocked the software giant by hacking into one
of its Web servers twice within one week.
Dimitri, a 19-year-old information technology student, visited
Microsoft's Dutch office near Amsterdam airport. There he
met with the company's public relations manager and three
staffers, Microsoft confirmed.
Earlier this month Dimitri, who is known only by his first
name, hacked into the same Microsoft Web server twice, the
second time after Microsoft had said the security hole was
patched. Dimitri created files on Microsoft's system boasting
of his hack, and alerted the media.
Both Microsoft and Dimitri are very secretive about their
meeting. According to experts it's the first time ever Microsoft
has met with somebody who has hacked into a Microsoft Web
server."
For more info:
http://www.infoworld.com/articles/hn/xml/00/11/21/001121hnsecret.xml
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 110-01)
Does anyone have experience using the new double-sided
sheet printers? When you print graphics do the pages stick
together? Does the ink smear? How do they perform with
wet ink on both sides?
A 110-01)
John Hills said, "I have had no experience of double
sided sheet printers but I do know that the latest ink
technology is such that the ink dries as soon as it touches
the paper."
Graham Wing said, "We have 2 HP 970s at work and
they work wonderfully. No problems with ink or anything.
Of course, and real photos wouldn't be printed double-sided
anyway."
Q 110-02)
My PC just keeps rebooting itself whether I'm playing
a game, on the net or even chucking a letter together.
I've tried updating graphics drivers, Windows updates
and defrag and scan disk but still keeps doing it.
A 110-02)
John Hills said, "This sounds like a hardware problem
and possibly heat related and therefore could be anything.
Check to see if the fan on the processor is spinning freely.
If it is, then you may need to swap out each bit until
you find the offending component. Other causes, and there
are many, could be your memory modules have lost a brain
cell."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Tony Lowell said, "These may sound a bit bizarre
but they are my own true experiences.
Accidentally kicking the power bar reset button sitting
on the floor under my desk has the same effect as described
regardless of the application running. On one of my contracts
a UNIX machine, on the same electrical circuit as a Coke
machine located in the cafeteria, re-booted each time
someone wanted a soda. It is probably something else,
but if you have those self-resetting fuses not circuit
breakers in your home it's worth eliminating power as
a problem. The automatic thermal reset in the power supply
may be acting up if you have added extra cards without
extra cooling."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Simon Duffy said, "Rebooting pc could be a Trojan
Horse when on the net, maybe someone has modified your
PC to annoy you. Something like back orifice could be
to blame."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
JD said, "Is your power supply OK? If the mains fluctuates
from the usual voltage, that can throw the PC, or more
commonly, your internal PSU box, where all the coloured
wires originate, is bad. The cheapest & best way to
check is to get another PSU and swap. BTW, the problem
could be that the PSU is too low in capacity. With a fancy
PC, 200W PSUs can run out of steam, and 230W is better.
Beware of the mains switch on the end of the black lead,
as this is often poorly shielded, and DO connect the earthing
wire there. On AT PCs, the twin motherboard cables are
connected "black next to black" onto the m/board."
New Questions
Q 111-01)
I currently have AOL 5.0. I tried to upgrade to 6.0 by
downloading it from the web. That didn't work. When it
came to making the connection, it failed to do so, and
I got the "error" message that it was unable
to connect to the network. I called customer service,
which proved to be a waste of time. They told me that
my system resources had to be over 85%. I found a store
and picked up the disk (after AOL told me that they "acknowledged"
having had "some" complaints about the web download
not working. I tried to install 6.0 from the disk, but
I had the same problem. Does anyone have any suggestions?
(P11 400, 128MB RAM, W98SE)
Q 111-02)
This is an Internet connection speed question. I have
two computers at home, both are Win 98 (SE), PIII's, and
they are in separate bedrooms. Both use my primary phone
line (plugged in separately in each room), and the same
ISP to connect to the Internet. My primary computer always
connects at 50.667k, but my second computer always connects
at 33.600k. The other day my wife was cleaning and had
accidentally knocked out the phone plug jack from the
wall on my primary computer, and without me knowing this,
I was connecting to the Internet on my second computer
and it connected at 50.667k. WOW!! After that I discovered
that the phone jack had been knocked out of my primary
computer, so I replugged it in and went to reconnect on
my second computer and it was back to 33.600k. So my question
is; what could be causing this? I have duplicated these
exact results several times.
(Primary computer - PIII 800, W98SE, 256MB RAM, Rockwell
v90 DSL 56k Data Fax PCI Modem)
(Secondary computer - PIII 500, W98SE, 256 MB RAM, Rockwell
56k V90 PCI Modem)
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
**Show-and-tell icons**
This trick makes thumbnail pictures of your bitmap files
(those graphic files ending in .BMP) appear in Windows Explorer
- so you can see what the images look like without opening
them first.
This involves editing the Windows Registry, which can be
tricky, so check instructions at www.WE-Compute.com/registry.html
if you are new to this.
This trick may not work immediately on every PC. If you
have your .BMP files assigned to be opened by Corel PhotoPaint
or some other image-editing program, you may have to play
with those settings before the Registry revision takes effect.
In the Registry, open HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT. Scroll way down
to Paint.Picture and double-click on it. Select DefaultIcon.
On the right side of the screen, double-click on Default
and, in the window that pops up, change the value to %l
(that's a percent sign followed by a numeral one with no
spaces) and click on OK. Close the Registry.
Open Explorer and you should see the bitmap files represented
by thumbnail images. You may have to restart the computer
first.
Another Find Shortcut
Last week's "Cheap Trick" was regarding the Find
Files or Folders applet. Subscriber Steve Black wrote in
to say that the easier thing to do is to press the Windows
Key and F. This will immediately bring up the Find Files
or Folder option.
Subscriber Recommendation
Subscriber Judy Wilson read through the PC Maintenance
contest results last week. She noticed by some of the comments
that the people were beginners. She has mentioned this before,
but here it is again:
"Would you recommend that the beginners go to http://www.firetalk.com/
and download their program? If they have a microphone and
want help with computer problems live, we have a forum there
called PC Tech for Beginners and we help people free all
the time."
Another computer help site
Sometimes I visit web sites that seem to have good information,
and then wonder who this person is and if I can trust them.
But then I think the same could be said about me. I guess
that is one of the good things about the Internet. There
are so many people who are just trying to help.
Well, another site that you can check out in your journey
is PC Computer Notes. The site says it "has been designed
as a free introductory level, online computer training course,
providing tutorials on computer hardware, software, operating
systems, and basic troubleshooting." Sounds good to
me. There are a lot of things to check out. See it all at
http://www.pccomputernotes.com/
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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