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Issue 123 - February 14, 2001
ISSN 1488-3163; PC Improvements ©2001
==== 1460 Subscribers in 49 Countries ====
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Welcome to the 123rd 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.
Recommend PCIN in February and win a copy of Serif 3Dplus
and PrintMaster 7.2. The more you recommend PCIN the more
chances you have to win. Recommend PCIN now at http://www.pcin.net/recommend.shtml
OPENING THOUGHTS
First off, I hope you all had a happy Valentines Day. Lisa
and I didn't do much (seeing as we just bought a house), but
we did go out for lunch together.
Tomorrow I will be going to a Microsoft event called "Licensed
to Sell" near Toronto. It is mainly for resellers, but
anyone could register. It's the first official Microsoft event
I will have been to, so it will be interesting to see what
it is like.
Don't forget about the tentative PCIN summer. If you live
close enough and are interested, then please email me to let
me know that you are interested. I'd also like to hear what
you'd be interested in doing/discussing/seeing while here.
Email me at mailto:editor@pcin.net
Lastly, don't forget to recommend PCIN in February and win
a copy of Serif 3Dplus and PrintMaster 7.2. Recommend PCIN
now at http://www.pcin.net/recommend.shtml
The NEWS
A Profitable DotCom
Las Thursday Chris Empey (friend, co-worker, and subscriber)
and I went to InternetWorld in Toronto. We traveled about
1.5 hours to get there, and spent about 30 minutes at the
show. It must have been 1/5 the size it was last year. I
guess all of these DotCom failures have affected the trade
shows.
There is at least one company however who is bucking the
trend. "Register.com (RCOM), the No. 2 reseller of
Internet domain names, on Thursday posted fourth quarter
net income of 6 cents per share as the company reached profitability,
sending its shares soaring over 25 percent in after-hour
dealings."
For more info:
http://news.excite.com/news/r/010208/18/net-registerdotcom-earns-dc
An Unprofitable DotCom
For almost the two and a half years I've been writing PCIN
I've been complaining about Amazon.com and how I don't understand
why they are still in business and expanding when they are
losing money.
Well, they've finally listened to me :-)
"In June, just seven months ago, Amazon.com CEO Jeff
Bezos confidently addressed a full auditorium at PC Expo,
the annual computer hardware trade show. 'Our goal is to
provide our 20 million users with 20 million different stores,'
he said, showing off his company's latest innovation in
personalization technology. 'Our primary motive is to provide
universal selection and be the one place where people can
find anything they want to buy.'
But Bezos was crooning a different tune in a companywide
e-mail sent Feb. 1. Titled 'Get the Crap Out,' the memo
lacked the stale rhetoric of growth-before-profits he has
spouted for the past five years. Rather, it spelled out
a plan to 'ferociously manage the products we carry' by
eliminating unprofitable ones and slashing distribution
costs.
A day earlier, Amazon eliminated 1,300 jobs -- 15% of its
workforce -- in the retail giant's biggest layoff ever and
closed a two-year-old distribution center in Georgia and
a 400-person customer-service center in its home-base city
of Seattle. The company's original distribution center,
also in Seattle, will be one of seven remaining physical
facilities but will operate only during peak holiday seasons."
For more info:
http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/feb2001/nf2001027_279.htm
At Tampa's Turnstiles, Crowd Wasn't Faceless
"Super Bowl fans never knew it, but police video cameras
focused on their faces, one by one, as they streamed through
the turnstiles in Tampa on Sunday. Cables instantly carried
the images to computers, which spent less than a second
comparing them with thousands of digital portraits of known
criminals and suspected terrorists.
In a control booth deep inside the stadium, police watched
and waited for a match.
The extraordinary test of technology during the highest-profile
US sporting event of the year yielded one hit, a ticket
scalper who vanished into the crowd, reported an official
at the company that installed the cameras.
But the decision to scan the unwitting crowd at the Super
Bowl and countless visitors to the popular entertainment
district of Ybor City for days before the big game inspired
support and opposition Wednesday over the nature of the
technology and its intended uses."
For more info:
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/161343.html
The Napster Case
I'm sure you've all heard about this and what the decision
of the Appellate Court was, but if not, here are some articles
about it:
LIFE AFTER NAPSTER
http://www.nypost.com/technology/23749.htm
Napster Ruling Irks Students
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2001/02/13/BU39375.DTL
Music swapping won't end with ruling
http://www.freep.com/money/tech/newman13_20010213.htm
Victory or defeat?
http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2001/02/12/napster_reactions/index.html
Bertelsmann Sees Free Online Music Services Dying
http://news.excite.com/news/r/010213/09/net-napster-bertelsmann-dc
TIME TO TELL 'EM WHICH SIDE YOU'RE ON
http://www.nypost.com/technology/23744.htm
Napster May Pay Dearly for This
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,41757,00.html
Musicians Play a Hopeful Tune
http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,41770,00.html
Congress Sits Back and Listens
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,41766,00.html
Napster ruling angers fans, pleases artists
http://www.usatoday.com/usatonline/20010213/3062376s.htm
Napster rivals see opportunity in court ruling
http://www.infoworld.com/articles/hn/xml/01/02/13/010213hnnapriv.xml
MOBILE COMPUTING NEWS AND NOTES
Some concept phones that support 3G connections and have
larger screens are able to play full color Internet games
like Quake. Audio and video clips can also be downloaded wirelessly
on concept phones, but can be done on PocketPCs already. http://www.pvairguide.com/
is one place where you can try it out.
Brought to you by The Wireless Web ezine. Sign up by sending
a blank email to mailto:wirelessweb-subscribe@topica.com
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 122-01
Is there any way to use a USB mouse in DOS?
A 122-01
John Hills said, "To my knowledge no. Even windows
cannot pick up the mouse until the USB drivers are loaded."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
** said, "I don't see why not, you can use a USB
keyboard under DOS (a setting in the BIOS). But in order
to use it you _will_ have to get drivers for it. I suggest
you go to the home site of the company who made your mouse
(if you don't know this site go to a search page and search
for the companies name). You may also have to enable USB
keyboard in the BIOS to use the mouse. But the companies
site will tell you whether or not use can do this and
if so how."
Q 122-02
I am told I have bad sectors in my hard disk at the end
of one partition. What should I do to stop them increasing
or affecting my data?
A 122-02)
John Hills said, "Repartition your hard drive and
make your drive D partition big enough to hold the bad
sector area and then avoid using that drive. That may
hold them for some time. However, bad sectors are normally
an early sign of hard drive failure so I would back up
your data just in case. Certainly you can expect more
bad sectors to appear over time. I strongly recommend
you go for a new one while you can."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
George Kevorkian said, "Probably won't help in keeping
he bad sectors increasing, but making a backup of the
disk & reformatting will block out existing bad sectors.
Then, restore the data to the disk.
I believe that a disk defragmenter also marks off bad
sectors to make them unavailable for use, but check that
out."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
** said, "Bad sectors developing, especially in old
hard drives, can indicate impending hard drive failure.
I suggest you exit from windows by doing the shutdown
procedure, but at the end instead of choosing to shutdown
choose 'restart in MS-DOS mode'. Once the computer has
done its thing you should see a 'c:\' with a flashing
cursor next to it. Here type 'scandisk c:' if c is the
faulty drive, otherwise replace the c as appropriate.
This is the most reliable way to scan your hard drive,
and all bad sectors will be marked, stopping your computer
from using them, automatically!
The more you use your computer the more you should do
this to protect your self, i would say at least once a
month till you're sure they are not increasing.
Unfortunately you cannot stop them from increasing, only
minimize their impact on your data. Make sure _any_ data
you cant replace is backed up!"
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Simon Duffy said, "Replace your disk before you lose
all your data. Make sure first by fdisking and reformatting.
If while formatting "looking for lost allocation
units appears" it is bad if it formats okay the run
scandisk to see your bad sectors. If there are none there,
okay, no problem. If there are, then bad news new disk."
New Questions
Q 123-01
I recently got myself a DVD drive for my computer. I
have read\seen about such devices that covert the signal
from a video card and connect to your TV. That's what
I'm interested in. Any recommendations?
Q 123-02
This may not be enough information, but here goes. I
run Windows 98 on a custom built computer. The computer
has an Athlon 500 chip, a Voodoo3 video card, Internet
Explorer through Mindspring, 128K RAM. The system regularly
freezes, especially when I am on the Internet. I expect
it to freeze periodically, but this computer freezes too
much. Any advice?
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
**Site lines**
Windows 98 and Windows Me let you keep a folder of Favorite
sites on the Start menu, but even without this you can place
a quick link to your favourite Web site by itself on your
Start menu.
Go to Settings on your Start menu and open Taskbar (also
called Taskbar & Start Menu). Click on the StartMenu
tab and on the Add button. Then type in the Internet address,
such as www.we-compute.com.
Hit Next and then choose where you want it located - for
instance, highlight Start Menu if you want it there. Hit
Next again and now give it a name. Click on Finish and on
OK.
Now, whenever you click on the name you gave the site on
your Start menu, it will open your Web browser and prepare
to go to the site.
Get your own copy of "The Little Black Book of Cheap
Tricks: 2001" by visiting http://www.pcin.net/lbbct
The Broadband Experts Handbook
The February issue of Maximum PC had a lengthy section
called the "Broadband Experts Handbook." It explained
the difference between DSL and Cable services, the cost
of these services, the top ISPs, and some good suggestions
for what you can do with all of that broadband.
They also had a list of links for sites that have resources
for broadband users. The MaximumPC.com site does not have
their issues available online, so here are those links:
DSL Reports
http://www.dslreports.com/
The Cable Modem Information Network
http://www.cable-modem.net/
SpeedGuide.net - PC Performance Resources
http://www.speedguide.net/
Covad
http://www.covad.com/
How Things Work - articles about broadband connections
http://www.howthingswork.com/cable-modem.htm
http://www.howthingswork.com/dsl.htm
Cheap Trick Newsletter
The Cheap Trick of the Week above is sent to me from WE
Compute! Magazine. They also have a free newsletter called
WEMail sent out every week that has:
FREEBIE OF THE WEEK
CHEAP TRICK OF THE WEEK (different than the one I use each
week)
TWEAK OF THE WEEK
NEWS YOU CAN USE
You can subscriber by going to http://www.we-compute.com/newsletter.html
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 whole, or in part,
as long as the author is notified and the newsletter is presented
as is.
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