Sarasota PC Monitor

Review Chairmans Industry Comments (10/03)

The Computer Buffet

by Herb Goldstein, Review Editor

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

AWELL-DESERVED WORD OF THANKS to members Ken Rohr and Britta Svensson! Ken is my "life saver" that helps me clean up and secure the entire special drawing and bargain table areas at our monthly meeting. He started doing it many months ago, on his own and without my asking, when he saw my "one-arm paperhanger" act. Thanks and much appreciation, Kenny! You get to see Britta Svensson only part time. She spends her summers in her native Sweden. As the regional representative for world-famous Tauk Tours, she is sometimes out of town at other times as well. But when she's here, she is my faithful Special Drawing Table manager, a job she performs to perfection. You are the best, Britta!

HAVE YOU BEEN WORMED? If you were a victim of the recent spate of worm attacks it's your own fault. Any one of the free firewalls readily available would have intercepted the e-mail containing the worm, or better yet, prevented it from finding your computer in the first place. To even start up a computer these days without a current antivirus and a good firewall is a computer game of Russian Roulette!

That's not all there is to the story. More than a month before the worm surfaced, Microsoft released a patch that would have prevented it in the first place. Had you gone to Microsoft's Windows Update site (available in the Start>Programs section in every computer) once a week the way you should to download and install the latest critical updates for your computer, you would have been automatically protected. Make sure that Windows Update is on your weekly must-do list!

THE EBAY QUESTION QUESTION. One of the most frequent questions we receive concerns Ebay auction purchases. I can't understand how anyone could be so na?ve as to consider buying a product they have not seen from someone they don't know who wants to get rid of it and whose delivery is completely unguaranteed. If that describes you, please see me at the meeting. I have a red-hot deal for you on the deed for a bridge in Brooklyn that can be all yours at an unbeatable price. Rest in peace Mr. Barnum!

HOW MUCH IS IT WORTH? Most people are familiar with the Kelley Blue Book. It tells you how much cars are worth. Wouldn't it be nice if there were a Kelley Blue Book for computers, toys, watches and just about anything else you buy? Kim Komando (Komando.com) says that now there is! Enter the name of a product and find the "fair market price." This number is based on millions of online transactions. You can search by product or browse by category. You'll find it at www.strongnumbers.com/ SOMETHING FOR EVERYONE is what you will find at http://freewarearena.org/PHPNuke/index.php In addition to a huge, ever-changing collection of freeware, you will find an assortment of useful utilities, drivers, and loads more. Don't fail to browse this site!

SHOP AT UNCLE SAM'S! Here's a site for sore eyes. It's the US Government direct sales to you of surplus, seized, new, used, auction and a plethora of other merchandise, information, T Bills, bonds, taxes and you-name-it. It's the US government's super site with links to everywhere and everything from or to Uncle Sam. Don't miss it! http://firstgov.gov/shopping/shopping.shtml

ADD MOVIES offers movie reviews an ratings (1-5 stars) in 20 words or less. Avoid the bombs by going to www.addmovies.com/ Save the price of admission to clunkers or video rental bombs.

CDCHECK. Make sure the CD you burned is readable! CD Check is a free utility for prevention, detection and recovery of damaged files with emphasis on error detection. It can check each of your CDs and DVDs and indicate which files are corrupted. CDCheck reporting features tell you exactly where the problems are. CDs can get damaged in a number of ways, so the program helps you determine whether your data is safe before it's too late. The program also provides a comparison option that lets you select a reference directory on your hard drive (or some other device). CDCheck ensures that the contents on a disc match those in the directory, and effectively alerts you of differences. Besides that CDCheck supports creation of CRC files which provide extra safety insuring that files on your CDs are still exactly the same as they were. In addition to CD-ROMs, the program can be used with all other local or removable media (disk drives, floppy disks, ZIP drives...) visible by the operating system (Windows Explorer). www.elpros.si/CDCheck/helplink.php?helpfn=overview KEYNOTE KEYNOTE. Keynote is a multi-featured tabbed notebook accessible with a single key press. It has many text formatting functions to organize numerous separate notes within a single file. Download free at http://www.mywebattack.com/ gnomeapp.php?id=106440 .

ONELOOK.COM is a compilation of hundreds of dictionaries in which you can look up or translate words to or from most any language. It offers both strict translation as well as common usage.

IE PRIVACY KEEPER automatically cleans up all traces of your Internet activity when the last window of Internet Explorer is closed. You can select to clean the URL history, typed URLs, Temporary Internet Files, Cookies, Recent Documents, Auto-complete history, Windows temporary files and the Recycle Bin. IE Privacy Keeper can perform the cleanup automatically, or manually from the Tools menu in Internet Explorer. Get it free at: www.mywebattack.com/gnomeapp.php?id=106847

THE NEW GOOGLE TOOLBAR increases your ability to find information from anywhere on the Web, and it takes only seconds to install. When the Google Toolbar is installed, it automatically appears along with the Internet Explorer toolbar. This means you can quickly and easily use Google to search from any Web site location, without returning to the Google home page to begin another search. Google Toolbar features include the familiar Google Search, plus other features such as Search Site, which allows users to search only the pages of the site they're visiting; PageRank, which shows users Google's ranking of the current page; Page Info, which allows users to access more information about a page, including similar pages, pages that link back to that page, as well as a cached snapshot; and Highlight, which highlights your search terms as they appear on the page. New features in Version 2.0 includes a pop-up blocker, autofill, the ability to create a Web log post pointing to the page you are visiting, and restrict your search to pages located in a specific country. http://download.com.com/3000-2378-10056938.html

YOUR VOICE BE HEARD HEARD! http://yahoo.capwiz.com/ y/dbq/officials/ is a site that will take you right to your local, state and federal elected officials and allow you to send e-mail to your selected group of them simultaneously.

FROM SUBLIME TO RIDICULOUS RIDICULOUS. A new HP Deskjet 3520 inkjet printer costs only $40, ink included. A replacement set of ink cartridges also costs $40. Here's some good advice: When you run out of ink, throw the printer away and buy a new one.

FOR HEALTH AND DISEASE INFO INFO, go to www. healthatoz.com/ This site includes areas for Women's Health, Men's Health, Kid's Health, and Seniors' Health. In its channels, you will find age/gender specific articles, general health tips, fitness tips, nutritional information, suggested checkups, relevant news items and more. There is also in-depth content on virtually any medical condition that concerns you. You also can research specialized Centers of Excellence that take on topics such as Cancer or Heart Disease in enormous detail.

This is also where to look for information on tests and procedures.

LOOKING FOR DEVICE DRIVERS? You will find new, older, and updated drivers for most devices at http://www.driverguide.com/ You will often find them here much more easily than at the vendor's website.

FILE RECOVERY. If you are looking for a free file recovery program, you might want to give PC Inspector a try. It comes well recommended by users. You can find it at http:// www.pcinspector.de/file_recovery/uk/welcome.htm OLDER OFTEN BETTER BETTER. Sometimes upgrading to a newer version can be a good thing. Other times, your computer may not be compatible with the new version, the new version is bloated, or all the good options are no longer available.

If you are looking for an old version of any program, OldVersion.com should be your first stop.

LONGHORN IN 2005 2005. The next update to the Windows operating system will take place in 2005 with the release of Microsoft's new OS, code-named "Longhorn." If you are curious about it, take a trip to http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/longhorn_preview_2003.asp for a current rundown. The info is not for novices.

FREERAM XP XP. As you use your computer, open applications, surf the Internet, and navigate Windows, your system's memory usually decreases. FreeRAM XP Pro frees up this memory, thereby increasing system response time, stability, speed, and efficiency. When you run the program, FreeRAM displays how much RAM is currently available. To start the optimization process, just click the Go button. FreeRAM XP Pro also automatically monitors your memory in the background and optimizes as needed. Download FreeRAM XP now at: www.pcworld.com/downloads/file_description/0,fid,22441,tk,hsx,00.asp

YOUR ENVIRONMENT'S RATING. Type in your Zip Code and find out your neighborhood's environmental health. The site also helps you change the conditions. There is information if you want to fax the companies responsible for the pollution or e-mail governmental officials. www.scorecard.org

FREE SWISS ARMY KNIFE UTILITY UTILITY. Most utilities fall into a category, but WireKeys does so many different things that it's really in a class by itself. It's a Windows tray minimizer, a screen grabber, a clipboard utility, a desktop switcher, a fast shutdown utility, a volume control and about a dozen more things as well. All of the functions work well though some not quite as slickly as the best specialized utilities. However the fact that you can replace many utilities with one is the real attraction here: www.wiredplane.com/wirekeys/info.shtml HOSPITALS RATED RATED. www.usnews.com/usnews/nycu/ health/hosptl/tophosp.htm Here's a rating of more than 200of the nation's best hospitals, including the top centers for each of the various medical specialties. As you might expect, Johns Hopkins and Mayo Clinic lead the list. Sarasota didn't make it, but I can tell you from personal experience you couldn't ask for a finer community hospital.

MICROSOFT OFFICE TEMPLATES TEMPLATES. You can save yourself a tremendous amount of work by using pre-formed templates for stuff you have to use repeatedly. Microsoft provides templates for just about any occasion at http://officeupdate.microsoft.com/templategallery/

CONVERTING MS OFFICE FILES FILES. Microsoft offers a site where you can find the viewers and converters to share your Microsoft Office files with people who have versions of Office programs different from your own, or even with people who don't have Office at all: www.microsoft.com/ office/000/viewers.asp

MORE PROPERTIES helps you to change a variety of desktop options, including randomizing your wallpaper, adjusting the size of icons, editing your Add/Remove Programs list, and removing the "Shortcut to" prefix on new shortcuts. Download More Properties free at www.imaginary.co.za/archive.htm .

MICROSOFT SECURITY PROBLEMS PROBLEMS. According to Kim Komando, Microsoft recently reported five serious security problems. Patches should be downloaded and installed.

Here are the flaws, along with links to more information and patches:

USB VS. FIREWIRE FIREWIRE. Here's some more advice from Kim who compares USB to Firewire in connecting external hard drives. The same holds true for connecting cameras and other peripherals as well. USB and Firewire are connection standards. USB stands for Universal Serial Bus. USB 2.0 is the second iteration of this standard, and is rated to move data at 480 megabits per second. Firewire is the common name for IEEE 1394, and is rated to move data at 400 Mb per second. So, on paper, USB 2.0 is faster. However, Maxtor, which makes large, external hard drives, has tested both systems extensively. And it found that Firewire is generally much faster, despite its lower rating. In its tests, Maxtor has found that Firewire delivers a sustained speed of 328 megabits (41 megabytes) per second. That number was consistent, whether a plug-in card was used or if Firewire was built into the motherboard. That's slower than the rated speed, but it's close. On the other hand, Maxtor found that a plug-in card for USB 2.0 moved data at 128-144 Mbps (or 16-18 megabytes per second). That is much, much slower than Firewire, and nowhere near the 480 Mbps rating. However, recent Intel motherboard installations are much faster. They ran at 272 Mbps (34 Megabytes per second) in Maxtor tests. So Intel's USB 2.0 installations are beginning to close on Firewire. Video files are usually huge, which is why transfer speed is very important with video. Clearly, Firewire is the way to go, if an external drive is used. A hub is not necessary when using Firewire. Most Firewire peripherals, including Maxtor's hard drives, have Firewire ports on them. So they can be daisychained.

Maxtor says the daisy chain does not reduce Firewire's speed. Finally, how does external and internal hard drives compare on throughput speeds? Internal is about 10 percent faster than external Firewire drives, Maxtor said. Internal usually blows away USB. EDMUNDS.COM is the only thing you have to remember to get the lowdown on new or used cars. That includes prices, dealer's costs, specs, test results, and most anything else you might possibly want to know. That includes a message board where owners give you their experiences with different makes and models.

DISLAYMATE is a free utility that will help you adjust the color, focus, contrast, and loads of other parameters on your monitor. Get it at find.pcworld.com/37407

THE DVD DILEMMA DILEMMA. As Dr. Brian Lewis pointed out in his September column, the jury's not in yet as far as a recognized standard among the several currently available types of DVD formats and players. Our advice is to hold your water.

Just as was the case with early CD burners, faster speed players are continuously being released. You may pay top dollar today for a 4x DVD burner, only to find an 8x advertised tomorrow.

In addition, there has been a lag in available DVD disks, especially in the newer higher speed categories. There's a lot of sorting out that will take place during the coming year.

ACEMONEY LITE is a freeware personal finance manager. It has all the features of its big brother except multiple accounts management. As AceMoney, AceMoney Lite helps people organize and manage their personal finances quickly and easily. It supports all the features required for home or even small-business accounting needs including tracking your spending habits and seeing where the money goes, creating and managing budgets, online banking, financial math analysis in multiple currencies, password protection for every file, scheduled backups, and many other features without having any experience in accounting. http://www.mechcad.net/Windows XP; Home Vs. Pro Editions Thinking about getting a new computer or upgrading the one you have? Then you have a number of decisions to make. And, assuming you're getting Windows XP, you'll have to decide on getting Home or Professional. Unlike earlier iterations of Windows, XP comes in two versions. The cost difference isn't trifling. Home goes for about $200, while Professional is $100 more. The Professional edition is a superset of Home. Every feature in Windows XP Home is included in Windows XP Professional. Many of Professional's features are things that only a network administrator could love. But some offer benefits to the home user or small business. Suppose you are at home and you want to do some work on your office computer. If your office computer had Windows XP Professional, you could use the Remote Desktop. It allows full use of the office computer. Check e-mail, work on files, and swap files with others just as if you're there, except you're not. All of this is done over the Internet. It works best with broadband- cable or DSL. It will also work well with a dial-up account, because only data from the mouse, keyboard and monitor are being transmitted. You can do all this from a computer running Windows XP Home. The computer you're using to access the remote machine is called the "client." Home comes with the client software installed. You can use any computer as the client, as long as it is running Windows 95 or any later Windows version. You simply have to install the client software from an XP Professional disk. But the remote computer-the one you're accessing must have XP Professional.

Another advantage of XP Professional is encryption. Do you carry a laptop on your travels? Many laptops are stolen or lost. With Windows XP Professional, you can encrypt files and folders. When you add files or subfolders, they will automatically be encrypted.

Encryption can even be used on removable media, such as a CD or floppy. Are you running a small business? You may need Windows XP Professional. Certainly, you can network computers using Windows XP Home. It offers workgroup networking, in which every computer is on the same level. Access can be restricted on an individual basis. In other words, Bill can give Joe access to his files, and deny access to Sally. Virtually everything is done on the individual computer level.

This works well with a few computers. If you have more than 10 computers, you might be happier setting up a domain.

That allows you to manage permissions and other access issues from a server. Keeping track of passwords is much easier as computers are added.

So, if you're a home user or have a small business, Windows XP Home will be sufficient. But will you need to access that home computer from elsewhere? Or is data encryption important to you? Then you should get Windows XP Professional. If you already have Windows XP Home or later find you need the additional tools available only in Windows XP Professional, you can upgrade. Don't expect a big price break. The upgrade lists for $199.

PRIVACY RESTORED - Window Washer 5.0

Any session on your PC, regardless of how innocent, leaves muddy footprints behind. A trip to the Internet is even more telling. Unbeknown to you, most programs log your activities and loads of temporary files are created daily and remain behind when no longer needed to only occupy valuable hard drive space. Additionally, they announce to the world where you have been and what you've been doing. Albeit perfectly mundane, your activities are nobody else's business.

There are many programs that will protect your privacy on the Internet. Others will guard you elsewhere. But, if you want the all-inclusive privacy protector that does the whole job and does it to perfection, go to webroot.com and grab a trial copy of Window Washer, the venerable, effective and time proven application for taking out the garbage. If you already have this superb utility, be sure to avail yourself of the latest update, Version 5.0. You will find lots of goodies there, including a new feature that permits you to overwrite what you are eliminating a selected number of times to insure that your files are beyond recovery.

To peek at the cleaning that will take place:

1. Browser Cleaning:

Internet cache, cookies, history, mail trash, drop-down address bar, auto-complete forms, downloaded program files, and more.

2. PC Cleaning:

Recycle bin, registry streams, Windows run and find history, scan disk files, recently viewed pictures, locked index.dat files, recently opened documents list, Windows temp files, folders and additional.

You will have complete control over what Window Washer will do. Plug-ins can be downloaded to work with a very wide range of different individual software applications. The interface is simple, straightforward, and a complete cleaning can be done as a single-click operation.

Convince yourself with a visit to webroot.com to download a trial copy. I did years ago and haven't been without it since.

EXECUTIVE SOFTWARE'S DISKEEPER 8.

Neatness really does count! Especially so if you want to keep your computer running efficiently, or perhaps running at all. Everything you do with your computer involves accessing and moving the bits and bytes of programs and data to and from your hard drive. It's not a neat and organized process like putting words in a book, or music on a recording. Much of what's on your hard drive moves frequently here and there as it's used, added, deleted, installed, uninstalled and referenced in whatever activity takes place in the use of your computer.

It would be nice if all those bits and bytes went continuously to where they belonged, where they came from, and right next to their brothers and sisters where they belonged. That would make too much rational sense, and we all know that computers frequently don't. The bits and bytes, just to make you miserable, park themselves where it's most convenient to do so at any moment in time and in the nearest empty cluster on your hard drive. The consequence is that your files become fragmented into loose pieces that the "seek" heads on your hard drive need to go skipping after them hither and yon, a very inefficient and time consuming procedure.

So, the more you use your computer, the more fragmented your files become and the slower your computer works and the more time it takes for every procedure including boot up and shutdown. Worse yet, excessive fragmentation results in lost clusters and cross-linked files that crashes your machine under a stubborn screen of blue. Consequently, it's an absolute must that you regularly and frequently put the fragments back together again (defragment), and you place the kindred files together in the programs they came from in their most efficient position on your hard drive (optimize).

Utilities that will optimize and defrag your hard drive are commonplace. Windows itself offers one such. None of them, however, offer all the advanced features you will find in Executive Software's popular Diskeeper," now in its new Version 8. It's a standalone defrag utility that's in a class by itself.

  1. Diskeeper is available in several editions; Home, Professional, Administrator, and a few different Server versions as well. Each of these is tailor made to your Windows version and needs. A visit to executivesoftware.com will explain which is best for you.
  2. Compared to other defrag utilities, Diskeeper is a speed demon. It defragged my Windows XP drive in a third of the time it normally took XP's defragger to do the same job.
  3. Diskeeper provides a "set it and forget it" feature that gives you abundant choices in selecting times and days to defrag automatically all by itself.
  4. Diskeeper can defrag silently in the background while you carry on with the rest of your work.
  5. Diskeeper can defrag any size hard drive commonly available. 6. The Administrator Edition will defrag across a network and even monitor servers for low disk free space and corruption problems. 7. You can visualize the condition of your hard drive graphically and in color with Diskeeper 's "analyze" function.

And determine if and to what extent it is fragmented. You can use the graphical display to visualize the defrag process.

8. A power management feature is present for laptop computers. 9. The entire feature selection and operation of the software is simple, completely intuitive and under full user control.

Defragging frequency depends largely on how much you use your computer. I defrag daily, and with the easy time and background choices featured in Diskeeper and the improvement in a computer's performance, you may well want to do the same.

You can readily and painlessly convince yourself of the value of this software without any risk, expense or obligation by downloading a 30 day trial copy at executivesoftware.com where further information is available. The purchase price of less than $30 is great value!

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Copyright 2003. This article is from the October 2003 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 1,100+ 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.

See http://www.spcug.org for all reviews from the Sarasota PC Monitor, go to the Newsletter Section.