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Issue 185 - May 01, 2002
ISSN 1488-3163; PC Improvements © 2002
==== 2318 Subscribers in 55 Countries ====
Welcome to the 185th issue of the PC Improvement News. PCIN consists mainly
of news and tips. There is something for everyone, and if this is your first
issue, I'm sure there will be something for you. If you give me two or three
issues, I know that you will come back for more!
You can reach me at editor@pcin.net with
any suggestions or comments.
Recommend PCIN at http://PCIN.net/recommend.php
Support PCIN at http://PCIN.net/donate.shtml
CONTENTS
OPENING THOUGHTS
Last week I mentioned what a pleasure it is to deal with good companies. Subscriber
Jack Carlson sent in his comments:
"In today's issue of PCIN (issue 184) you said "I end up corresponding
with a pleasant person who is willing, and sometimes even eager to help."
I, too, have recently had this experience and would like to tell you about the
man and his company. Recently an old hard disk finally gave up the ghost and
took with it a couple of shareware products I use frequently. All but one had
been backed-up and were quickly replaced. But I had just purchased Diskeeper
7.0 from Executive Software International, Inc. and hadn't yet done a back-up
when the drive failed. I checked the website, but couldn't find a way to download
the full version without paying again, so I e-mailed the company to inquire
whether I could re-download a copy or was I going to have to buy another one.
Within a day I received a reply from Neil Johnson,
Customer Service Manager, with a location on their site where I could download
another copy. Alas, the URL didn't work (due to heavy traffic on their servers,
Neil suspected) and I e-mailed Neil again to let him know. Less than an hour
later he replied that he was sending me the CD (at no additional charge!!) and
would have it in the mail that day. This is a large international company that
usually deals with corporations and large business clients. The fact that their
C.S. Manager would take the time to read and respond to three e-mails from an
individual that only bought one copy of their software impresses me even more
than the quality of their product. This is one company I am happy to recommend
and will do business with again in the future. (P.S. The "light" version
of Diskeeper that came with Windows 2000 works well enough, but the full version
is well worth the money.)"
Have you got any positive customer service stories? If so, send them to editor@pcin.net.
We here enough about the negative stories (see the Dell story below), so please
only send positive stories.
Graham editor@pcin.net
and Chris chris@pcin.net
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The NEWS
Agency allowed to revoke e-mail access
"A New York state agency was correct when it took away a union representative's
e-mail privileges because he violated the employee use policy, a state court
has ruled.
A New York State appeals court panel last week endorsed the Department of
Education's decision to revoke Michael Darcy's e-mail access because he used
it for unauthorized union activities."
For more info:
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-894674.html
Piracy on the PCs
"He does not come across as a thief - but Ira Dubinsky once was one.
Chances are, you were, too.
At 16, Dubinsky set up a small computer consulting company, thanks to a solid
business plan, savings - and pirated software.
'When I first started I had all kinds of stuff on my computer,' says the 21-year-old
Montreal native. 'I can't even remember now where all our software came from.
Some of it I found on the Internet. Some of it was given to me by friends.
I remember not really buying any software for a couple of years into the business
and then finally realized we should probably get this stuff legally.'"
For more info:
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar
/Layout/Article_PrintFriendly&c=Article&cid=1020117717212
Online banks: Prime targets for attacks
"Late one recent Sunday night, an executive at a midsized financial
services firm received the kind of call everyone in the industry dreads: a
demand for $1 million, or else the brokerage's network would crash the next
day with a surreptitiously installed program.
The firm's security team spent a frenzied night searching for the pernicious
code but failed to find it, and the system went down for an hour in the morning.
The executive's phone rang once more: The caller threatened to crash the system
again, but this time during peak trading hours. The brokerage, in this case,
paid up."
For more info:
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1106-895079.html
AOL pays a price for merger
"AOL Time Warner lost $54.2 billion in the first quarter of 2002, the
company said Wednesday, due largely to an anticipated accounting charge stemming
from the merger that created the media and Internet powerhouse last year.
The company reported revenue of $9.8 billion, up 4 percent over the same period
last year. Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization
(EBITDA), a common benchmark for the performance of media companies, were
up 3 percent to $2.05 billion."
For more info:
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-891372.html
POLL of the WEEK
Here are the responses from the last poll:
Which Chat Client Do You Use?
AOL 16.44 % (12)
Yahoo Messenger 6.85 % (5)
MSN Messenger 15.07 % (11)
ICQ 10.96 % (8)
Trillian 6.85 % (5)
Other 2.74 % (2)
I don't chat 41.10 % (30)
Total votes: 73
Visit http://pcin.net/polls/ to participate
in the new poll this week:
How often do you upgrade your computer?
FREEHELP FORUM
Visit the new and improved PCIN FreeHelp Forum at http://www.pcin.net/cgi-bin/bb/YaBB.cgi
to post your questions or answer others.
Question
Is there anything out there that will help me access and read my index.dat
file on my computer. Where exactly do these files come from and what kind
of information can be found there. By the way this is my personal PC I am
trying to read this file from, just too illiterate to accomplish it. Any help
would be greatly appreciated.
Answer
The index.dat files are an archive of all the visited url's. Over time these
files increase in size. You can open the files with notepad and delete the
contents yourself in DOS, or you can use an excellent little freeware utility
called Spider available from http://www.fsm.nl/ward/
This program will delete the contents of these files for you when you reboot.
To post a different suggestion, visit http://www.pcin.net/cgi-bin/bb/YaBB.cgi?board=How-To
and click on the "accessing and reading index.dat files in english?"
subject.
Visit http://www.pcin.net/cgi-bin/bb/YaBB.cgi
to post a question of your own.
PCIN.net UPDATE
Check out these new or updated pages on the PCIN.net site:
Updated Registry Tips (now 129)
http://PCIN.net/help/articles/registry_tips.shtml
pdf995 Software Review
http://PCIN.net/help/software/pdf995.php
CuteZIP Software Review
http://PCIN.net/help/software/cutezip2.php
Annotis Mail 1.1 Software Review
http://PCIN.net/help/software/annotismail.shtml
THE TIPS and OTHER STUFF
Creating Lines in Word (Part 2)
Last week I shared a tip regarding creating quick, fancy lines in Word. You
can press any of the following characters 3 times and then press Space or
Enter and a line will be created ( - _ * = ~ # )
Subscriber Wayne Peterson emailed me something to remember:
"You tip on lines creation with 3 characters in a row is great. It looks
good as is simple. You may want to add that what is created is a border. If
you decide to try and move or remove the lines as if they were text or some
character, you will be as frustrated as I was for 30 minutes of futile effort.
Then it dawned on me that they were borders, not characters. I may be slow
on the uptake, but perhaps there are other equally "gifted" people
out there that can avoid the pain."
Value ISP
Subscriber Bill Blackburn sent this in:
"A friend of mine has been with www.express56.com for awhile & loves
it, especially for $7/month via auto-pay monthly, using your credit card.
So, I joined Monday, via their 800-624-5360 number, & was online within
15 minutes. Yeah, it's a bare-bones V.90-only ISP that provides no web page
space, & only 2 email addresses. And, their 800-tech support & customer
service aren't 24/7. But neither of us have ever experienced a busy signal
when dialing up, get the same access speed as our previous ISP (in my case
Earthlink), & enjoy the same level of email service & `net surfing
as before. This NYC-based ISP has local dialup numbers scattered nation-wide,
albeit concentrated in the more populated states (like CA & WA) &
only in the major city of many other states (out west anyway). You might want
to inform your "thrift-minded" subscribers of this alternative to
the big boys who have fixed their prices around $20/mo. for V.90 service."
Mapping Drives for Local Use
This was a tip recently in a Tech Republic newsletter I get.
When setting up computers on a network, it is easy to share printers or files/folders.
But you can share files with yourself as well. For instance, I keep all of
my PCIN.net files on one of my hard drives with all of the other web site
files that I have. I access the PCIN.net files more than any of the others,
but in order to get to the files, I have to go through several levels of folders.
What I've done is share the PCIN.net folder, and then mapped that share to
my P: drive. Now instead of having to navigate through several levels of folders,
I can just go to the P: drive and see all of the PCIN.net files.
Getting to the point... the tip is to use shared folders to map commonly accessed
folders to drive letters so you don't need to waste time digging through folders
to get to the files you want.
DISCLAIMER and OTHER
STUFF
PCIN is brought to you by Graham Wing. The opinions expressed are those of
the Editor, Graham Wing and the Assistant Editor, Chris Empey. Graham Wing and
Chris Empey 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 editor@pcin.net
and I will add it to the subscriber web pages that I have on my site.
- Support PCIN by visiting http://www.pcin.net/donate.shtml
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Graham Wing can be reached at editor@pcin.net
Chris Empey can be reached at chris@pcin.net
Copyright 1998-2002, 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.
Support PCIN by visiting http://www.pcin.net/donate.shtml
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