Review Chairmans Industry Comments (07/01)

Sarasota PC Monitor

Review Chairmans Industry Comments (07/01)

Reviewing Software

by Herb Goldstein, Review Editor

E-mail comments, suggestions, etc. to Herb Goldstein at: revieweditor@spcug.org

XP UPDATE

Microsoft's up and coming new operating system, Windows XP, is taking more shape as we approach its release date now scheduled for October 25. Microsoft will spend a total of nearly $700 million on marketing alone for the Windows XP launching, according to estimates from the company and Merrill Lynch. Office XP could deliver a welcome cash infusion of nearly $3 billion in additional desktop application revenue the first year the new licensing plan is in place, analysts say.

XP's new features include an Internet firewall, an integrated media player with CD-burning and DVD-playback features, remote access tools, moviemaking and photo-editing software, wireless capabilities, broadband networking and Internet messaging. We've reported to you many of the plus and minus factors in previous issues. Here's some of the latest:

A HELP SYSTEM that is vastly improved will be a boon to novices. It will allow a Microsoft tech support person to log on to your computer remotely to solve a problem. But can you just picture what your long distance wait time on "hold" for that one is going to be? You might be able to buy a new computer for the cost of the call.

LUNA- is the name of XP's new graphic interface. Although Microsoft touts it as an improvement, it is likely to be confusing, especially to novices. The good news is that you will have a choice of retaining the traditional Windows interface if you so desire. Among the nuances is a bright-green start button that will bring up an entirely new menu design.

MEDIA PLAYER 8, the newest version of the application, will only be available to consumers who upgrade to Windows XP. The older version of Media Player, version 7.0, will continue to be available as a free, separate download. If you want the latest and greatest you'll have to go for the whole ball of wax. The new version plays DVDs and also rips CD audio into well-compressed WMA files (a proprietary format that combines good sound quality with smaller file sizes than MP3). This digital jukebox links to the CD database (CDDB) to identify the artists and tracks on each CD. The new media player integrates nicely with XP, so when you rip a whole CD, the player names and sorts each track in your My Music folder, either by artist or CD. If the CD also includes a digital version of the album cover, the album thumbnail shows up as the CD art.

WINDOWS EXPLORER has been redesigned to give you more information about each folder you highlight in your left-hand pane.

XP CONTROL PANEL looks radically different and a little baffling at first. (You can easily switch back to the classic view via a link on the right side of the control panel folder that reads "Switch to Classic View.") Instead of the old-style grid of little icons with labels such as Modems and Security, XP groups links into themes, with names such as Appearance And Themes and Performance And Maintenance. Click the link, and you'll be prompted to choose a task. Under Appearance And Themes, the list of tasks includes options to change the computer's theme or desktop background, for instance, or you can simply choose a specific control panel and proceed from there. If you like the old format, you may find the new confusing at first, but you will have the choice of retaining the old if you wish. It appears that a number of new interface features give you a similar choice.

ADVANCED SEARCH features give you a number of simplified options to assist you in finding what you quest.

NETWORKING will be far easier and better with a lot of wizards to make this previously onerous task much easier.

ADVANCED PICTURE HANDLING- Plug in your camera, and XP launches a wizard that guides you through the process of downloading the pictures from your camera to your hard drive. The wizard itself lets you rotate and position photos, download them to your hard drive, upload them to the Internet, or delete them from the camera with a single command. XP's redesigned My Pictures folder lets you choose certain pictures and view them as thumbnails on top of folder icons, so you always know which image you're about to open. Plus, you can order prints from an online photo-printing service via links within the folder. Printing graphics is also easier; a wizard lets you check the pictures you want and print them in a batch.

A SLEW OF NEW UTILITIES IN XP will offer a plethora of utilities that will do jobs currently provided by other software. For example, WinME offers a system restoration function previously confined to GoBack. However, when you get down to the nitty-gritty, GoBack does the job better. Although XP will have its own version of the GoBack, the same is expected to apply. XP will also provide a CD burning model, but you can bet your boots that it will be far less full-featured than Roxio's Easy CD Creator.

MICROSOFT PUBLISHER 2002 is now a standalone product and will no longer be offered as a part of the new Windows. Publisher costs a mere fraction of what the heavy-duty desktop publisher like Pagemaker sell for, but is almost as full-featured and infinitely easier to use. The advance on this new version of Publisher is extremely positive and appears to be well-worth the upgrade. The street price new is around $107. If your are serious about desktop publishing, it's well worth the investment. -STILL UNACCEPTABLE TO MOST USERS will be Microsoft's onerous copy protection scheme which, for the most part, will restrict your installation of XP to one time on one computer. As much as Microsoft is touting this as a solution to software piracy (with concomitant loss of income for them), you can rest assured that the pirates will find a workaround. Malaysia has already been flooded with pirated pre-release copies. The largely law-abiding among us will find only gross inconvenience!

COMPATIBILITY- The jury is not in yet on how well XP will upgrade previous Windows versions. Microsoft itself has indicated that best results will be experienced in new systems with a clean slate. This goes for hardware as well. It remains to be seen how well your peripheral hardware and devices socialize with this new OS. You need to bear in mind that the move upward to XP is going to be considerably more radical than between previous Windows versions. Although we have attempted to provide summaries of what advanced information we could gather, it will be a time after XP is finally released that a finite picture will evolve. Many incompatibilities with both software and hardware have been reported by beta testers. As we previously advised you, hold your horses and stay tuned.

A major concern will be all the utilities, shareware, antivirus, cable modem and phone online applications, tweaks, customizers, and a whole host of other software that you have come to rely on to perform the daily chores you now take for granted. Some of it may be replaced with XP utilities, but I strongly suspect that you may need to install newer versions of an awful lot of things that will have to be re-written to function with XP. You may find yourself breezing through a lot of functions that may not be all that important to you, while you are at a loss as to how to replicate those that are. And it will be some time after XP is introduced for all these things to come to light. To be fair, Microsoft claims XP will have the broadest base yet in compatibility with previous hardware and software. Many beta testers dispute this claim. Then again, they said the same thing about Windows ME before it was introduced. I'm from Missouri!

So who will profit most from the new OS? As Microsoft said-new users on new machines. Windows 95 users are probably working with computers that don't have the guts to run XP which demands at least 128 MB of RAM, but preferably 256. Win98 users are probably satisfied enough with their system and its tweaks to envision no great gain sufficient enough to warrant the expense and uncertainty of upgrading. Windows ME users are probably unhappy enough about their own OS as to not trust Microsoft again in this category. Consequently, XP may just be another mouse trap waiting for the world to build a path to its door. Time will tell.

Sayonara, WINDOWS! Possibly to encourage users to switch to the copy-protected Windows XP, Microsoft has announced that it will cease to support all versions of Windows and DOS up to and including Windows 95 after December 31st of this year. Similarly, support for Windows 98 and NT 4.0 will cease after June 30, 2003. Support for Office 97 was terminated in June. Nothing lasts forever, does it? Linux is getting to look more interesting all the time.

GET YOUR UPDATES! If you have not already done so, you need to update two of our favorite computer protection freeware products. ZoneAlarm 2.6 and Adaware 5 are now available. ZoneAlarm will provide you with a hacker-proof firewall, and Adaware will ferret out spyware files.

COMPATIBILITY INFO. If you want to know whether a particular device will work properly on your computer regardless of what version of Windows you are running, go to http://www.microsoft.com/hcl/default.asp and click on compatibility information.

NET ZERO AND JUNO MERGE. Free Internet service providers NetZero and Juno Online Services agreed to merge, combining the last big independent players still operating in the once-hot free Net access market. The two survivors will become a single company called United Online, which will continue to offer free services under the NetZero brand and move its paid services under the Juno name.

A SUPPORT FAIRY TALE. Mail order computer vendors tout on-site service as a selling point. When the matter comes right down to it, you might relegate this to the same category as Santa Claus and the tooth fairy. Vendors' telephone support technicians will do most anything to avoid dispatching on-site support, considerably costly for them, and you can expect that as their profit margins get ever closer as they have recently, they will be even less prone to do so. Take the recent experience of one of our users for example. The user developed a problem with the sound system on his Gateway computer. Since the Gateway techie indicated that the sound module was integrated into the mother board (such is the case in some computers in contrast to a separate sound card), Gateway offered to replace the motherboard. Now, installing a motherboard can be a considerably formidable task for an experienced user, and much more than likely an impossible one for a novice. When the user protested, Gateway promised to send an instruction sheet along with the motherboard. How generous!

Fortunately, our user's problem was resolved in less than a minute by our own technical expert, Dr. Brian Lewis, who discovered the issue to be a simple software setting, rather than a motherboard replacement that the Gateway techie had determined was necessary. Kudos to Dr. Brian and skunk cabbage to the Gateway techie. Of course, it is entirely possible that if the user's call had been routed to a different Gateway techie, the problem may not have been misdiagnosed in the first place. Well, that's the chance you always take with any techie, phone or in person, but it is surely an argument on the side of those who choose to buy from a reliable dealer locally.

If it appears that I am picking on Gateway, not so! The same situation could and probably has been oft-repeated with any mail-order vendor. So how do you protect yourself when you buy a computer? Unfortunately, there is no magical formula. You can get a clunker locally as easily as mail order. The only difference is being able to look someone in the eye, for whatever good or satisfaction that may provide. What it boils down to is to choose the most reputable machine from the most reputable vendor possible. Secondly, be certain you have a fully spelled-out warranty that indicates where, when and how your machine will be serviced when necessary. Most if not all of the appliance and stationery stores that sell computers provide no local facilities for repair. Support after the sale is extremely nebulous. Service and support should be your numero uno factor in selecting a computer and vendor!

FOR BETTER DOWNLOADING. According to ZDNet's Bruce Stewart, If you need help managing your downloads, don't look any further-Go!Zilla is a monster of a downloader. This powerful and feature-rich shareware program will handle and automate all aspects of downloading files, as well as keep tabs on programs you want to check for new releases. Go!Zilla can also smoothly resume broken downloads, continuing the file transfer from where it got cut off-a real timesaver for anyone who has downloaded files off the Internet.

Go!Zilla performs all the functions you could possibly want from a download manager. You can drag and drop specific URLs, or use Go!Zilla's Link Leecher to grab all links on a given page. Downloads can be scheduled and categorized, since Go!Zilla is aware of all major software repositories and automatically gets your files from the most responsive site.

Go!Zilla can easily mirror FTP directories, offers content channels, integrates seamlessly with Internet Explorer or Netscape and allows you to throttle the speed of your downloads with a neat graphical interface. The MonsterUpdate Monitor keeps you alerted to new versions, news, and Web site changes for all your favorite files.

Go!Zilla also comes with ZipZilla, an integrated Zip utility that unzips files automatically and then installs the files with a single click. You can find both of them at zdnet.com downloads, or your favorite shareware site.

IS THE LATEST THE GREATEST? It ain't necessarily so. Although computers have been getting ever faster and fancier, there are relatively few of us that may profit from either the increased speed or sophistication. There has been a slowdown in PC sales that goes beyond the current economic downturn. Upgrade cycles are stretching out because, for many of us, there's no compelling reason to buy a new PC. Why pay for a 1GHz system running Windows or Office XP when that 300MHz machine running Windows 98 and Office 97 will do just as well for browsing, word processing, e-mailing, and spreadsheet work? For what most of us do with our computers, there is little compelling need or advantage to be gained by upgrading.

HELP PREVENT CRASHES. Zdnet offers three shareware programs designed to keep you running more efficiently and help to prevent crashes. It's worth your taking a look at them:

BigFix handles bugs and other nasty beasts before they bother you. It detects configuration problems, conflicts, or bugs, and then lets you fix them with an automated solution. (Shareware/Win95-98-NT)

System Mechanic gives you 15 utilities that will keep your system in top order in many different ways: clean and optimize your system registry, find and remove invalid uninstaller information, duplicate files and drivers, manage your startup items, and a whole lot more. (Shareware/Win95-98-NT)

3. MemWatcher tracks your computer's CPU and memory use, and warns you when your free physical RAM falls below a certain level. It will also automatically free up memory no longer needed by Windows to help your system run better. (Shareware/Win95-98-NT) ENCARTA is not only the leading and most popular encyclopedia in town, it also maintains a Web site that is solid gold! You need not own the encyclopedia to go to encarta.com. There you will find a treasure trove of the most diverse informational and educational value imaginable. Want to learn a language? There are opportunities here. Are you a student looking for some help with your homework? This is the place! Reference an encyclopedia, dictionary or atlas. Ask your tough math questions, or get info on a college. A thoroughly enjoyable site to exercise your mind and improve your knowledge.

HELP FOR THE ABSENT-MINDED. Forgot where you put that file? There's help for you in Adnet's downloads in the form of three neat shareware files:

Agent Ransack gives you countless ways to find your files-you can search by size, subfolder, date, file type, by keywords and phrases, and countless other ways. And it includes a text viewer so you can look inside the files you find. (Shareware/Win95-98-NT)

WanyWord is an app that lets you search in many different ways for files-and, as a big plus, it lets you use "and" and "or" operators. (Shareware/Win95-98-NT)

3, TextFind adds a twist to the usual searching: It not only finds files that contain the search string you've entered, but also locates files that have words with similar meanings. (Shareware/Win95-98-NT)

LCD MONITORS, those beautiful ultra-thin flat panels have come down very significantly in price recently. I predicted a year ago that they would. Selling prices of about $1,000 a few months back are now in the $600 range. It also bears mentioning that 17 and 19 inch flat-screen CRT monitors of very high quality have also come down to half of what they sold for not too long ago. In a 19", you may want to take a look at the Cornerstone c910 that sells for about $360. In a 17", the Philips 107T selling for around $260 is another excellent choice.

If you are considering an LCD monitor, be aware that many of them come with a fixed, non-adjustable resolution. On such monitors you will need to be sure that the picture resolution you see is the one that you want.

SECURITY CONSCIOUS? Get all the latest on computer security, viruses, and related security topics at securityfocus.com.

FOR VOICE ACTIVATION SOFTWARE ENTHUSIASTS who may have missed it, Dragon Naturally Speaking, the leading software of the kind, went belly-up at the end of April. A great loss to users everywhere!

ROXIO'S EASY CD CREATOR is still the undisputed champ in burning your own CD's, but if you are looking for something more modest with fewer bells and whistles but still quite effective, there are some good shareware CD burners out there. You can find some of them at ZDNet.com/downloads:

NERO is a must-have for anyone with a CD burner. Not only will it create music or data CDs, but you can also use it to create a bootable CD-ROM. (Shareware/Win95-98-NT)

CDRWIN makes it a breeze to burn CDs. It's easy to create music CDs, use CDs as backup disks, create a bootable CD-ROM drive and more. (Shareware/Win95-98-NT)

CD RECORDING STUDIO is another winner. You'll be able to easily make music and data CDs, create hybrid data/audio CDs, and erase and reuse CD-RWs; it even includes a built-in screensaver disabler that prevents your screensaver from kicking in during the recording process and ruining your new CD. (Shareware/Win95-98-NT)

180 to 400 GIGABYTES!!! Momma mia! Seagate has introduced a high performance 7,200 RPM drive with the highest capacity in the world! The Barracuda 180 advances real densities to more than 15 Gbytes and sustained data rates as high as 47 Mbytes per second.

The Barracuda 180 is the latest addition to the award winning Barracuda 7,200 RPM disc drive family. The Barracuda 180, the seventh-generation of the Barracuda family, offers value, performance and flexibility for bulk-storage applications. It is interesting to note, however, that although hard drive capacities have been increasing astronomically, hard drive speed increases have not kept pace with newer computer processing speeds. The hard drive still remains the bottleneck that prevents the newer computers from flying away.

Not to be outdone, IBM, using its own new technology, has trumped the gigabyte stampede by coming up with a 400 GB hard drive which will hit the streets in the near future. You may not need or want such voluminous drives, but it will be interesting to see what happens to prices on current models once these monsters are available.

OUTLOOK EXPRESS ADDRESS BOOK BACKUP. Outlok Express is the most widely used email client in existence. Many users worry about the loss of data in their address book in the event of disaster. Here's a method to back up that vital info. Getting the data out of your address book for safekeeping is relatively easy. From the menu select File | Export | Address Book and select the comma separated text file as your output format. Then select the fields you want to export. To make sure you know where the backup is going, give a full path name. Most people's address books can easily fit on a floppy disk, so you could save it directly to a file such as A:\ADDRESS.TXT if you wanted. To restore the address book or to get your addresses onto a new system, the process is not quite symmetrical.

Select File | Import | Other address book and select the text file option again. You'll be given a list of fields to import. Since you're importing a file that was created by Outlook Express, you usually don't need to make any changes here. After that, click your way on through the wizard and you'll get your address book back.

IMAGING-RESOURCE.COM is the place you want to be if you are looking for all kinds of information, reviews and the latest skinny on digital cameras and related equipment.

INTO PALM COMPUTERS? Go to pda.tucows.com for a great selection of shareware you can use on your hand-held toys.

ATTENTION, BARGAIN HUNTERS! Let the moths out of your wallet and go to clickthebutton.com to seek out the lowest price on whatever it is you are looking for. It takes a prominent place alongside and possibly over some older favorites like mysimon.com, evenbetter.com, mygeek.com, bizrate.com, and dash.com. Now there's some tips that could well save you a lot more than your cost of SPCUG membership!

TRACE THAT HACK! If your favorite firewall is logging attempted hacks into your system, you can trace the offender with NeoTrace Pro. It's shareware you can find at ZDNet.com/downloads.

SOME OF THE BEST DOWNLOADS of shareware and freeware are available at pcworld.com/fileworld. Try Motherboard Monitor to track your motherboard temperature and fan collected by your BIOS. It will alert you to trouble. Try Memory Cleaner to free memory tied up by closed applications, yielding more memory for your computer to run efficiently.

YOUR IP ADDRESS can be found by going to Start- Run- and type in winipcfg.

SUSPECT A VIRUS? If your computer is operating funky and you can't put your finger on the problem, you may be dealing with a virus. If your were running your PC-Cillin in the background as we have often suggested, the chances are that you would have detected and eliminated a virus infection. If you are not running an antivirus program in spite of our admonitions, go to housecall.antivirus.com, PC-Cillin's free Web-based service that detects and removes viruses. It will look over your system and find the culprit if a virus is present. Thanks to the good folks at Trend Micro, the makers of PC-Cillin, we have featured a copy of PC-Cillin monthly on our Special Drawing. You need it!

NEED A DIAGNOSIS? If a computer problem has you baffled, go to pcpitstop.com. It will examine your system and give you a comprehensive diagnosis. It may find a variety of problems you never knew you had. It's a winner, and it's free!

ULTIMATE BOOT DISK from Startdisk can be found at startdisk.com. It's a free alternative to Windows standard boot disk, and has built-in trouble shooting features to help you recover from hardware disasters.

ARE YOU UP-TODATE? When was the last time you visited Microsoft's Windows update site? The Windows Update button that will bring you there can be found on your Start button's menu. Microsoft will examine your hard drive and determine which updates you need, then will download and install them for you free of charge. Keeping Windows up-to-date is a vital part of keeping your computer running properly.

LOW ON SPACE? Your hard drive should never go below 200 MB of free space. Today's hard drives are cheap enough that drive space need never be your problem. If you get too low, your computer will start doing strange and unpleasant things.

DRIVER PROBLEMS? You can always find the latest drivers for your devices at the individual manufacturer's Web site. Another place to start is at windrivers.com.

TROUBLESHOOTING WINDOWS PROBLEMS can be made easier at fixwindows.com which offers flowchart style diagrams and answers questions from visitors.

THE FIRST STEP in getting a sudden Windows mishap or problem fixed is to reboot. This simple procedure can cure an awful lot of unexpected quirks. In case of a lockup, it is likely that your only recourse will be a shutdown and reboot.

PASSWORD GRIEF is most commonly caused by trying to enter your password while your Caps Lock key is activated. Check to be sure.

CABLE MODEM PROBLEMS can often be solved by unplugging your modem's power cord for a minute, then replugging. A good site for help on any type of modem can be found at modemhelp.org. Free diagnostic tests for any high speed modem are available at dslreports.com. More tips and info for cable modem users are at cablemodemhelp.com.

UPCOMING SOFTWARE RELEASES:

MS Encarta 2002 Reference Suite- August

McAfee Virus Scan 6- August

MS Money 2002- August-September

TurboTax 2001- December

TaxCut 2001- December

Lotus SmartSuite 9.7- Last quarter

Windows XP- around the holidays

SEE YOU IN AUGUST. I will miss you all at the July meeting. I look forward to seeing you again in August, and our regular monthly column will appear in the August Monitor. :

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Copyright 2001. This article is from the July 2001 issue of the Sarasota PC Monitor, the official monthly publication of the Sarasota Personal Computer Users Group, Inc., P.O. Box 15889, Sarasota, FL 34277-1889. Permission to reprint is granted only to other non-profit computer user groups, provided proper credit is given to the author and our publication. We would appreciate receiving a copy of the publication the reprint appears in, please send to above address, Attn: Editor. For further information about our group, email: admin@spcug.org/ Web: http://www.spcug.org/

The Sarasota Personal Computer Users Group, Inc. has 1,300+ members and was established in 1982. We are members of the Assoc. of PC User Groups (APCUG), the Florida Assoc. of PC Users Groups, Inc., and we are members of the America Online Ambassador Program.

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