Review Chairmans Industry Comments (12/03)
The Computer Buffet
by Herb Goldstein, Review Editor
E-mail comments, suggestions, etc. to Herb Goldstein at: revieweditor@spcug.org
DON'T BE A SUCKER! Numerous fraudulent e-mails have been circulating of late that purport to be coming from banks, cable networks, or other companies with whom you may do business. They ask for such private information as your credit card numbers or passwords. Be aware that NO legitimate entity will ask for such information by e-mail! These thieves usually provide a web address hyperlink to take you to a site where you can provide and they will steal your information. Be on your guard!
*RECYCLE BIN BACKS YOU UP. Kim Komando says, "One of my earliest negative experiences with computers came years ago when I deleted a file I needed. I managed to get it back, but I had to use a file recovery utility. Today, you don't have to worry about losing files you delete. They just go into Recycle Bin, which is the garbage can in Windows. If you need a deleted file, just open Recycle Bin. Click the deleted file and click File>Restore. The file will be returned to its original folder.
To open Recycle Bin, double-click its desktop icon. Recycle Bin takes deleted files from your hard drive only. If you delete files from a floppy or any other drive, you're on your own. Recycle Bin is a great invention. But it does have one aggravation-a confirmation message. When it is enabled, the message asks, "Are you sure you want to send (name of file) to the Recycle Bin." Because Recycle Bin stores deleted files in case you need them, you probably don't need this warning. To stop it, right-click the Recycle Bin icon and click Properties. On the Global tab, click to remove the check in "Display delete confirmation dialog."
Over time, Recycle Bin will collect a mountain of trash. So you should clean it out occasionally. When you are certain you have not deleted anything you need, open Recycle Bin. Click File>Empty Recycle Bin. I don't recommend it, but you can bypass Recycle Bin when you delete files. On an individual basis, hold down Shift and press Del. If you always want to delete files in this manner, right-click Recycle Bin and click Properties. On the Global tab, select "Do not move files to the Recycle Bin." DESKTOP CLEANUP CLEANUP. Windows XP automatically moves icons from your desktop every 60 days when you don't often use them. If this is annoying, right-click on your desktop, choose Properties, click on Desktop Tab, select Customize Desktop, and uncheck the option for "Desktop Cleanup Wizard every 60 days." Click "OK" as necessary and you're then back in control of your desktop.
NEW MICROSOFT OFFICE SYSTEM SYSTEM. According to Greg Keizer of Cnet reviews, Office System isn't a must-have upgrade for the average home user. The bulk of its new features the integration of XML throughout, rights-management tools, and tie-ins with the SharePoint Server-will benefit only large enterprises. That said, anyone looking to buy a new version of Office for the home should consider the affordable Student and Teacher Edition, a $149 collection of Word, Excel, Outlook, and PowerPoint that you can install on three PCs, while small businesses should check out the $499 Small Business Edition, which also includes the often-overlooked Publisher.
The good: Outlook 2003 filters spam and better organizes e-mail; Word 2003 offers side-by-side document viewing; Student and Teacher Edition can be installed on as many as three PCs.
The bad: Few changes for at-home and small-business users; very cool OneNote app not bundled within Office; requires Windows 2000 or XP. For details, see: http://reviews.cnet.com/4520-3513_7-5092597.html
LONGHORN TO REPLACE WINDOWS . In another 3 years, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates predicts that Windows will be replaced by his new operating system, currently codenamed "longhorn." At a recent Professional Developers Conference, Gates demonstrated some new features in the company's next OS. Longhorn is built around three major advances-a new graphics and presentation engine known as Avalon, a new communications architecture known as Indigo and a new file system known as WinFS that borrows from Microsoft's relational database technology.
Advances in hardware will make the features of Longhorn both possible and necessary, Gates said, predicting that PCs by 2006 will have a processor of between 4GHz and 6GHz, more than 2GB of memory, a terabyte or more of storage, and graphics chips three times as powerful as today's.
DETAILED WEATHER INFO, forecasts and lots of other good information are yours for going to wxusa.com/index.htm PHONE NUMBERS, mailing addresses, white pages, yellow pages, reverse lookups, location maps and more for here or any other part of the country are yours www.switchboard.com/ This is such a handy site, I have added it to my list of favorites and from there I clicked on "send to." It is now on my desktop as an icon. One click and this information is right at my fingertips. This is a super-handy site!
GIVE YOUR EYES A BREAK! Here's an excellent tip from Kim Komando:
Q. I have a new flat-panel monitor. The type on this monitor does not appear clear. However, the store insists that it is normal. Is this normally a problem with flat-panels?
A. Some people do have a problem when they view type on a flat-panel monitor. A process called anti-aliasing is used to smooth the edges of type. It doesn't work as well on flatpanels as on old-style CRT monitors. Microsoft recognizes the problem, and includes in Windows XP a feature called ClearType. It can make the type on your flat-panel much more readable. The improvement may also be worthwhile on a CRT. To access ClearType, press the Windows key and the letter "d" to go to the desktop. Right-click anywhere on an empty area of the desktop and click Properties. Select the Appearance tab and click Effects. Check the box marked "Use the following method to smooth edges of screen fonts." In the dropdown box, choose ClearType.
Next, ClearType has to be fine-tuned. You can do that on Microsoft's Web site: microsoft.com/typography/cleartype/ tuner/1.htm The site gives examples of type from which you must choose. Displays vary slightly among monitors, and selecting the type that looks best is an easy way to match ClearType to your monitor. To select the type, click the one that looks best to you.
People using Windows 98 and ME should be sure they have enabled the font-smoothing feature. To use it, right-click on the desktop and from the pop-up menu, select Properties. Click the Effects tab. Check the box next to "Smooth edges of screen fonts." CHEAPEST PHONE RATES for any location can be found by the comparisons between phone service providers at phonedog.com. This is strictly a consumer service and not an advertising medium.
WHAT?? If that's one of your most frequently used words, perhaps your hearing has degraded with the passage of time. It's something that happens to most people over the years. A visit to freehearingtest.com may help you check your own hearing, or determine whether a visit to a professional audiologist my be advisable.
A MUST-HAVE! Belarc Advisor shows all the hardware and software installed on your PC right in your Web browser. You will see personalized advice on how well software and hardware products will work with your computer, along with a detailed description of your computer profile. All of your profile information is kept in privacy on your PC and is not sent to a Web server. This version has been optimized to report more detailed information about your PC. The new version enhances discovery of more system types, including your software serial numbers. This version adds discovery and verification of Microsoft HotFixes. www.belarc.com Install Belarc and make a printout of the profile it discovers for your computer. Guaranteed that sooner or later and on more than one occasion you will need the information it provides! SMART ALEC OR DENNY DUMBO? Find out which category describes you by taking the online IQ test at www.emode.com/tests/uiq/ C,mon, don't be chicken. Learn the awful truth!
FREE PERSONAL FINANCE SOFTWARE SOFTWARE.
AceMoney Lite is a free personal-finance manager. It helps to organize and manage personal finances quickly and easily. AceMoney Lite supports all 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, doing online banking, doing financial math analysis in multiple currencies, protecting passwords, scheduling backups, monitoring 401(k)s and stocks, and performing many other functions without the user needing any experience in accounting. www.mechcad.net *WANT TO SEE WHAT YOUR PC IS RUNNING? They're called processes. These are the programs that are running in your computer. One of them could be using up the system's CPU cycles and causing a system slowdown. Finding the one isn't that difficult. You just need to know where to look.
In Windows XP and Windows 2000, press Ctrl+Alt+Del. On the Windows Security window, click Task Manager. Select the Processes tab. This will show you which processes are running. Under CPU, you'll find the percentage of microprocessor time each process is taking. It should be easy to identify the hog. Make a note of its name, then click the name to highlight it. Click End Process. Then put the process name in a search engine and hunt for information about it on the Web. Windows 98 and ME do not include process details. But you can get that information with Process Explorer 7.0, available free at: http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/freeware/procexp.shtml *SEARCH INSIDE THE BOOK BOOK, not just by author & title Amazon.com launched a pretty cool thing this week. It's called "Search Inside the Book." Now, you can find books at Amazon based on every word inside more than 120,000 books-more than 33 million pages of searchable text. You can also preview the inside text of these books, too. Search Inside the Book is integrated into Amazon.com's standard search and includes books from all genres.
SAVING PICTURES AND E-MAILING THEM. One of the really great things about the Web is its ability to transfer photos. Think about it: Until a few years ago, getting photos to out- of-town relatives took days. They had to be printed, then mailed. That is reduced to minutes, now, if you have a digital camera. Photos are easily downloaded directly into the computer from a digital camera.
They can then be attached to an e-mail and sent on their way. When pictures are downloaded from a camera, they should be saved at 72 dpi (dots per inch), assuming they will be viewed on a monitor. If a picture is to be printed, reduce its size and save it at about 150 dpi. You can do that with nearly any photo-editing program, including many that come with cameras and scanners.
If you already have printed pictures, you can scan them into your computer. Again, save them at 72 or 150 dpi, depending on how they will be viewed. Do not save pictures at a higher resolution than necessary. That makes the files large, so the recipients will have more trouble downloading them. Sending them with e-mail is simplicity itself. After addressing and writing your message, click the Attach button (it usually has a paperclip on it). You can also post your pictures on the Internet.
There isn't space here to delve deeply into the editing, cleaning up and handling of photos. However, in Kim Komando's new book, The 50 Greatest Secrets of Digital Photography, covers the subject thoroughly. There's a free sample chapter online here: http://www.komando.com/ kk_estore_40/details.asp?ProdID=47 HERE'S A FREE WINNER! WordWeb is a free dictionary and thesaurus that can be used with other programs or as a stand-alone program. Highlight the word you want to look up and click on the WordWeb icon or Ctrl-Alt-W. WordWeb will appear with the parts of speech, pronunciation guide, definition and synonyms. http://wordweb.info/free/ FREE POST-IT NOTES NOTES. NotesHolder Lite lets you quickly type in any piece of information so that you can easily find it when you need, read it or print it out for your convenience. This is the most effective way to store all your notes without cluttering up your desk with PostIt and sticky notes. Unlike the other similar applications, NotesHolder is very thrifty with your screen space. You can even turn off NotesHolder icon in the system tray, but if you move your mouse cursor to the edge of the screen, the list of the notes sorted by the time of creation will pop up. Click once to create a new note or to edit an existing one, click once more to print the note. aklabs.com MANAGE YOUR STARTUP PROGRAMS. Starter is yet another startup manager, that allows you to view and manage all the programs that are starting automatically whenever Windows boots. This is a great, free utility that everyone should have! It allows you to control all the items that automatically start up when you boot your computer and gives you the opportunity to eliminate those that you don't need to be taking up valuable memory space. It lists all the hidden registry entries, as well as the common Startup Folder items as well. You can choose to safely disable selected entries, edit them or delete them altogether (if you know what you re doing). Expert users can even add their own entries.
Very nice interface, easy to use, no documentation though (but hardly needed).
Get it free at webattack.com/get/starter.html
THE "BOTTOM LINE." So you thought you've seen it all? This may prove you wrong. Join the toilet paper sweepstake at wintoiletpaper.com/ Yes, it's for real and your opportunity to win enough of this precious commodity to keep your hemorrhoids happy for many months to come.
WINDOWS XP SERVICE PACK 2 is due sometime in the first half of next year. Among many other features it will include a pop-up blocker added to Windows explorer.
* Excerpted from Kim Komando. See Kim on the net at komando.com
LOGITECH CORDLESS COMFORT DUO
In our November issue we looked closely at Logitech's unique flagship cordless mouse and keyboard combination, their MX Cordless Duo featuring their Elite keyboard along with the MX700 mouse. This month we examine another interesting combo that will appear on the January special drawing, their Cordless Comfort Duo.
This innovative package provides a comfortable ergonomic split keyboard along with a powerful optical "MouseMan" mouse, both cordless, of course. We have already covered the virtues of cordless input devices so we won't repeat them. Firstly, let's take a look at the qualities of the design of the Comfort Keyboard. The most obvious features is the unusual layout of its keys, divided and tilted separately in right and left halves in a manner that lets each hand rest in a more natural position on the board.
If you are a hunt and peck typist this is not the keyboard for you, but the majority of touch typists will probably find this a very pleasant and productive virtue. Because of the more ergonomic manner in which your wrists lie on the keyboard, you may be less prone to carpal-tunnel syndrome. You need to be aware though, an ergonomic design, even for touch typists, is not for everyone. It's the kind of feature that you will probably either decidedly like or dislike very much, almost instantly. Numerous such keyboards are commonly displayed in the office supply stores. You might want to play with one first if you have not tried it previously. An added virtue is its collection of "hot" keys on which a single-click can produce a variety of useful, common e-mail, internet, multimedia and application functions. Five of the keys are customizable via the keyboard software to perform your choice of a large variety of other common functions. Add all this to the increase in typing speed from the layout and you can see a very positive effect on both comfort and productivity. The feel of the keys on all Logitech boards is superb and this one is no exception. There is no slop to the touch, and they are firm, relatively quiet and positive.
There are only two minor negative features to the board. Firstly, it has no caps-lock light or beep indication for those of you who commonly forget to disengage that key. This deficiency is minimized by caps lock, num-lock and scroll-lock lights on the receiver unit. Secondly, the prop-up keyboard tilt feet occasionally collapse if you lean hard on one side or the other of the board. You may very well never experience any of these annoyances yourself. Esthetically the keyboard and mouse are both beautiful in their new Logitech black with silver accents design. Both keyboard and mouse are each powered by two AA size batteries. Communication to and from your computer is via a small corded receiver that plugs into a USB or PS/2 port. CD's are provided which contain the drivers and very complete and helpful advice on the use and setup each of both keyboard and mouse.
The cordless Mouseman mouse that accompanies the keyboard in the Duo package is one of Logitech's newer optical mice. It has an ergonomic shape that fits comfortably in your right hand. With some dexterity, lefties can use the mouse as well. It sports a new optical engine which is considerably faster and more accurate than others of the breed. It glides easily on most surfaces with five small feet attached to its base and provides 3 buttons which you can customize to your most desirable functions. Its scroll wheel makes for smooth, comfortable scrolling. The accompanying Logitech mouse software offers a wide range of functionality and choices to your mouse and pointer movements and monitors the condition of your batteries. Although the mouse will function immediately on your Windows generic mouse drivers, it is best that you use the Logitech software and drivers for most versatility.
You will find the Comfort Duo at street prices that vary mostly between $60-80. Like other Logitech products it carries a rock-solid five year warranty, a Logitech product feature that not many manufacturers in the industry can match and that they all can learn from. Kudos to Logitech for the rare and exemplary way they stand behind their customers!
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Copyright 2003. This article is from the December 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/
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