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Issue 114 - December 13, 2000
ISSN 1488-3163; PC Improvements (c) 2000
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Welcome to the 114th 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.
I was able to get Play, Inc. to donate a Snappy! 4.0 to the
newsletter. If you recall, I did a review of it some time
ago ( you can see it at http://www.pcin.net/help/software/snappy.shtml
). It is a piece of hardware that will let you use your parallel
port to input video into your computer. You can get screen
captures of TV shows, videos, etc. It is valued at over $100.
Recommend PCIN in December and you will have a chance to win
this. Each unique person that you recommend PCIN to will get
you one entry into the draw. The more you recommend PCIN the
more chance you have to win. Recommend PCIN now at http://www.pcin.net/recommend.shtml
OPENING THOUGHT
I'm finally done school! I had my last test today and I am
officially finished. For those of you who don't know, I have
been going to a local College and have finished as a Computer
Programmer/Analyst. I didn't learn as much as I had hoped
for, but at least now I have that little piece of paper that
says I know something.
I've mentioned for a while that I want to do some updates
to the PCIN site, do more reviews, etc. Well, I will finally
have the time to. I have already got a few pieces of software
on the way to review, so look for them in the next couple
of weeks.
Lastly, don't forget to recommend PCIN in the month of December
and have a change to win a Snappy! 4.0. Recommend PCIN now
at http://www.pcin.net/recommend.shtml
The NEWS
Top 50 Web Sites
When you look at the link below that lists the top 50 web
sites, it is interesting that the top 10-20 is the same
ones that we've been seeing for 2+ years. Are these sites
that good, or is there nothing else worth visiting?
For those who don't check out the links, here is the top
10:
Rank / Web Site / Unique Visitors (000)
1 / yahoo.com / 64,127
2 / aol.com / 52,441
3 / msn.com / 46,587
4 / microsoft.com / 39,236
5 / geocities.com / 36,370
6 / passport.com / 35,227
7 / AOLProprietary.aol / 30,688
8 / amazon.com / 26,302
9 / ebay.com / 23,703
10 / lycos.com / 23,084
For more info:
http://cyberatlas.internet.com/big_picture/traffic_patterns/article/0,,5931_529631,00.html
Amazon.com Ad Agency Leaves
"The parting of ways comes at a sensitive time for
Amazon. The retailer is in the midst of the most important
selling season of the year and under intense pressure from
Wall Street because of its continued losses.
Some advertising-industry executives speculated that Amazon's
current financial situation might be connected to its agency
review. Amazon has experienced mounting losses and, while
the company has said it has enough cash to carry it to profitability,
some Wall Street skeptics have questioned whether that is
true."
For more info:
http://www.msnbc.com/news/500536.asp
http://www.thestandard.com/article/display/0,1151,20691,00.html
Quotes of the Year
With the end of the year (and the whole Millennium thing
starting up a bit again), there are bound to be more lists
or compilations like this. "It was a year in which
the Internet dot-com bubble well and truly burst, Napster
and peer-to-peer networking became household names, and
technology lawsuits and viruses kept a-flying." Read
these quotes from the previous year and reminisce a bit.
For more info:
http://www.infoworld.com/articles/hn/xml/00/12/13/001213hnquotes.xml
MONTHLY CONTEST/QUESTION RESULTS
Well, I guess no one is interested in PDAs. I only had 1
response to last weeks contest about Palm Pilot's, Blackberry's,
Visor's, Aero's, Cassiopeia's and any other small Personal
Digital Assistant. The person who suggested the contest didn't
even send in any comments.
Anyway, Jim Bateman won a copy of PowerQuest's Lost and Found
by sending me the following comment:
"I don't need or want them. From now on my motto is 'if
it's more complicated to operate than my TV or phone, I will
pass on it.' Enough technology advancements. Lets work on
user friendly. I'm sick and tired of having to get a degree
in whatever new device comes on the market. They have reached
the point of diminishing benefit vs. cost."
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 113-01)
Sometimes when booting up the system will hang at the
startup screen and I'll have to CTRL, Alt, Del to restart
into safe mode. Then restart normal from there, then everything
starts fine. This after a clean install. It still does
it after setting up hardware. No IRQ, I/O, DMA or memory
conflicts, registry looks okay too. I Formatted installed
Win98SE and it worked just fine so I know it's not a heat,
power supply or motherboard problem. Any suggestions?
A 113-01)
John Hills said, "Out of the many reasons I would
suggest the common one of your graphics driver failing
to initialize. If you check Bootlog.txt in your root directory
or sometimes windows directory you should be able to determine
which device has failed. You could try changing your display
driver to Standard Graphics Adapter and if that cures
the problem you either need to reinstall your display
driver or get an updated one from the appropriate website."
Q 113-02)
Is it possible to remove the "Network Neighborhood"
icon from my desktop? How do I?
A 113-02)
John Hills said, "This icon is there because you
have dial up networking. I think to remove it you will
need to edit the registry which I do not really recommend
to anyone to try as you could do more damage than its
worth. What have you got against this poor little icon?
What did it do to you? John Hills is a member of the R.S.P.C.
I. (Royal Society of the Prevention of Cruelty to Icons)"
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Chris Stoneham said, "You can remove the Network
Neighbourhood icon using TweakUI, available at www.microsoft.com/ntworkstation/downloads/PowerToys/Networking/NTTweakUI.asp
Install it, then load it and just uncheck Network Neighbourhood
in the Desktop tab. Beware that doing this means you cannot
access any UNC paths or mapped network drives!"
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Mike said, "The easy way is to use Xteq X-Setup (I
have version 5.7). On the left hand side of the window
click your way down thru' Appearance-Desktop-Options to
System Desktop Options. The web site is at http://www.xteq.com/
There is a warning: Hiding the Network Neighbourhood can
lead to serious problems (for example with UNC names).
Deactivate this option ONLY if you are sure that you don't
need any network functionality."
New Questions
Q 114-01)
Q 114-02)
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
**Cheatin' Hearts**
If you play Hearts, the game that comes with Windows (called
Classic Hearts in Windows Me), this trick will help you
win by letting you peek at your opponents' cards.
It requires a clever little Registry tweak and a little
knowledge of a certain science fiction classic. (For instructions
and precautions for editing Windows' Registry, see www.WE-Compute.com/registry.html.)
In the Registry, make your way to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Current
Version\Applets\Hearts. If you do not have a Hearts key,
it's because you have never played it on your system and
the Registry has not set one up yet. In that case, play
the game once and then go back to the Registry to find this
key.
Select the Hearts key and right-click in the pane on the
right side of the window. Choose New and String Value from
the pop-up menus. Rename the new string ZB - which some
fans of the SF novel A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
might recognize as short for the character Zaphod Beeblebrox.
Double-click on the new value to bring up its Edit String
dialogue box. In the data field, enter the great answer
to the question of life, the universe and everything - at
least according to A Hitchhiker's Guide.
You don't know? Okay, the answer is the two-digit number
42. Enter that, click OK, close up the Registry and start
Hearts.
During the game, press the Ctrl, Alt, Shift and F12 keys
all at once and you'll see everyone's cards.
A Driver Site
"We have seen that your web site includes a hyperlink
to web pages specializing in drivers. Because of this we
would like to invite you to visit our site, which is exclusively
dedicated to drivers www.helpdrivers.com
Our web site has a clear structure and an interface, which
directs visitors in just a few seconds. Our database is
updated daily and we have the largest collection of drivers
on the Internet. The site content is available in Spanish,
English, French and German, making it even easier for visitors
to find the information they seek.
If you like our new site, we would be delighted if you would
include a hyperlink to it.
We trust this information will be useful for you.
Yours sincerely,
Javier Ramos
javier@helpdrivers.com
www.helpdrivers.com"
Check it out at http://www.helpdrivers.com/
More Windows ME Comments
Steve Black
"I think even worse is the fact they do not supply
a CD-ROM with OEM machines. What happens when you HDD crashes?
You have to pay for Windows again?"
John Tounoussidis
"I read in the latest newsletter the little article
about Windows ME, well I have just installed it on my computer
and it seems to be running perfectly in has actually proven
to be faster than Windows 98SE which I had installed before
this. A mate of mine also has Windows ME and he has been
running it for a while and he has also said its run ok.
He has said that the restore feature has actually saved
him from reinstalling windows (he seems to enjoy stuffing
around with his PC). I myself have nothing too special on
my computer to really put the OS to the test but my mate
runs a network on it and has all sorts of other gadgets
on it and as I said it runs fine."
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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