WordPerfect Presentation was just “Perfect”
If you missed the January meeting, you sure missed a great demonstration on the new WordPerfect 9 that comes with WordPerfect Office 2000. Sheri Freel ‘wined and dined’ us on the major features and enhancements of WordPerfect9. Having already completed my review last month, I was interested to see what I had missed. And boy, did I miss a lot. My daughter is a junior in high school, and since we do nearly all her reports and projects in WordPerfect, she came with me. It was easy to see when Sheri hit on something new that Karen thought might spruce up a project, or make something easier that we had done the ‘hard way’ in the past! Even with the shortened time period that Sheri had, she was able to cover a lot of ground!

Her handout was excellent, and a fine example of some of the things you can do with WordPerfect9. If you are thinking of upgrading, I have seen more than enough enhancements to make it worth the effort! Wow, I’m really impressed with all that has been done in this upgrade. So often, upgrades just have a little piece here or there that you like, but I’ve seen so many that I would go out and buy the program even if I wasn’t already a devout WordPerfect fan!

I was very happy with Sheri’s presentation, and I envy those who are able to go to the Word Processing SIG meetings. She has an extreme amount of knowledge and is willing to share it with anybody who has the time to show up to the St. Joseph’s Regional Medical Center in South Bend at 6:30 on the 1st Tuesday of each month. Because of the demand of her job, Sheri is not only an expert in WordPerfect, she also has an in-depth amount of knowledge on Word. Ask her about any feature, and she can tell you which program has it, and which one does it better. Several times during the night, Sheri made reference to Word and how it does or does not do this or the other thing better or differently. So, just because they started out as a WordPerfect User Group, doesn’t mean that Word users are not welcome to their group now that they are the Word Processing SIG, check them out they have a lot of help available to them.

More WordPerfect To Come
Unfortunately the packet from Corel did not arrive in time for the meeting, so you might want to change your plans if you were not planning to attend the February meeting. We will be drawing for a full copy of WordPerfect Office 2000. There are also some handouts and a few WordPerfect mousepads, but that copy of WPO2000 sure would be a nice catch!

Q & A Time - New SIGs?
There were a lot of really good questions during the Q&A time, which cut into some of Sheri’s presentation time. We should apologize to her, but a lot of good information was being handed out, and discussed, so we hope she understood.

A couple of issues being discussed, in case anybody is interested that could not attend the meeting: There has been some interest in forming both a C+ SIG and a Visual Basic SIG. An MSCE or A+ certification SIG has been suggested, also. If you are interested in any of these, please email Vice-President Jim Pressler for the name of the person to contact.

Second Email List
A second email list is being started. It is an “Announcements Only” list. There will be no discussions on this list. Only 4 people will even be able to post to it (the president, the vice-president, the secretary, and the list manager). Only official group notices will be posted. So, if you are hoping to keep up with the latest virus warnings, and read suggestions on how to correct the latest problem with a program or hardware conflict, don’t plan on getting it off this AO list. Gee, should we call it our AOL??? Announcements Only List? Hmmmm... maybe not. How about the epcugml-AO? That’s epcug mail list-announcements only. Works for me!

Anyway, if you have not subscribed to the regular email list because you do not have time to read the discussions or for whatever other reason, please consider sending in to be subscribed to the epcugml-AO. Announcements will include “Once a month meeting reminder with the meeting subject”, probably posted the week before the meeting. Occasional issues such as the last minute compilation of the shareware CD, or a cancellation/change of a meeting, either general or SIG would also be posted here. So that means, you could sometimes get two emails a month, each of which would be an information notice, with no discussions. Any discussions will be held on the regular list. If you are already on the regular email list, you will automatically receive the epcugml-AO; if you are not subbed to it, a simple email to myself, with epcugml-AO in the SUBJECT will get you on it. And, again, if you want on the general email list or the Announcements Only email list and have any questions, please feel free to call me and ask them. I can give you help getting on them, or give you an idea of how much mail you can expect, or whatever.

Shareware CD a Success
We sold 28 copies of our shareware CD at the January meeting. That’s not too bad considering it was only announced ahead of time on the email list. While I will not take up room to list all the programs here in the newsletter, I will be happy to send you a copy of the file list. Just send me an email and ask for it. I can tell you that there is a great variety of programs both shareware and freeware. There are also patches and fixes, both regular and Y2K related. The disk is $10 and is a real nice deal. We did not include near as much as we could, the primary thing we were looking for were the BIG downloads that you just have a hard time getting without access to a T-1 line or something similar. Also, I have instructions for those who are new and just not sure what to do with the disk, and you are always welcome to give me a call.

Bylaws and Constitution Changes
Notice was given at the meeting that we have finalized all the changes that the Board could find necessary in the Bylaws and Constitution. You will remember that last year we made a few changes to just the Bylaws. Well, some of them caused repercussion changes elsewhere, and while we were at it, there were a couple minor things that needed changed. (One as simple as the same statement in two places, but one said 3/4 and the other place said 2/3.) Other changes that were made are more significant, but still within the same issues of adding officers.

If you would like to see the changes proposed, point your browser to http://www.epcug.org/changes.htm download and print the .pdf file where the changes are all highlighted. The link to the old version is there also. Do not try to print the old version unless you know how to set specific pages to print. They are in the middle of the web page for that month’s issue of the newsletter, and I’ve been told it is about 26 pages to print it all! Downloading and printing the .pdf file is much faster!

If you have any questions or concerns over any of the proposed changes, be sure to contact any officer and discuss them. Members are welcome, at the Board meeting or next month’s general meeting, to bring up any concerns, also.

A Bit More on the December Showcase Spectacular
One of the things I missed getting into last month’s newsletter, was a special thank you to the many involved. There were people who donated items to be sold or auctioned off at the Showcase Spectacular in December, and individuals who brought computers, helped set up or run systems and demos, and participated in the swap meet. In addition, there were many people who just gave a hand here and there, wherever one was needed. The problem here is that I don’t know all the names. I could list those I know, or those I remember, but I’m sure I would miss someone (I know me!). So, I’m not really sure that listing the names of individuals is a good idea, although I sure wish I could.

What I would like to do is express the sincere appreciation of myself and the other board members, as well as all the general members, to those that took the time to do whatever they could that night. Whether it was donating an item to be auctioned, running errands or being a gopher for someone who was working, helping setup or tear down or clean up, or just whatever, I know it was a better night for your help!

For those that are interested in the financial success of the night, Marty Mielke reported the following figures:

A Users Group is no stronger than its membership. And the strongest membership is one where each member contributes time and/or talents. Your attendance at the meetings is of great value to you and to the group. Perhaps you will know the answer to a question asked at Q and A. Or perhaps you will have a question, which someone else is afraid to ask. Your asking will benefit that person and probably others.

To encourage attendance at the general meetings, a record will be kept of each month’s attendance beginning with the December1999 meeting and continuing through the December 2000 meeting. All members attending ALL of these 12 meeting will be eligible to participate in a drawing for a CASH PRIZE of $100.00. Officers and Directors appearing on the EPCUG Officers list in this newsletter are not eligible for the drawing.

This prize is being donated by the Membership Director. If there are no members eligible for the drawing, the money goes to the EPCUG treasury. I personally hope there are at least 100 members in the drawing.

As I expected, at the last EPCUG meeting there were many questions about Windows 2000, the new operating system from Microsoft. Even after I said several times that I do not suggest that everyone rush out and purchase the new software the first day, several people wanted to know if this was the right software for them to use.

In this article I will be borrowing from the ZDNET/PC Magazine article about Windows 2000. This is because I have not had time to do all the high-level testing that they have completed. I will try to always credit them when I have used their information, but if I miss, sorry.

First, is Windows 2000 the panacea of everything good and wonderful in the world of computing? No, it is not. For the average private user and many 2-4 computer, peer-to-peer networked offices, it is a large ponderous program that is much harder to set up, administer, and maintain than Windows 95 or Windows 98.

If you are a small to mid-size company that needs to upgrade to give more enterprise-wide applications, then you need to review what Windows 2000 does for you against the cost of other options.

If you are a mid- size company with several servers, more than 30 users, and internet and intranet access, then Windows 2000 Professional for the workstations and either Windows 2000 Server or Windows 2000 Advanced Server are for you. Quoting PC Magazine whose labs have been testing Microsoft Windows 2000 for over a year, “we’re very impressed with the scope and power of its new features. We’re even more impressed with its stability; crashes have been exceedingly rare.” They also stated that, “For medium-size and large organizations, Windows 2000 provides valuable tools for building and expanding your e-business.”

Again quoting PC Magazine, “If you’re a small office, multimedia company, or game user, we advise waiting for the rest of the industry to catch up before embracing Windows 2000.” Please note that they did not talk about the home user at all. Gee, where have you heard that before? If you were at the Users Group meeting, you heard almost the same thing there. Windows 2000 is really the latest version of the Windows NT line and at the start is targeted at corporations and power users.

There are several reasons for this. First is that to upgrade from Windows 98 systems to Windows 2000 Professional is at best very tricky, and sometimes nearly impossible. There are many hardware issues versus driver issues versus software requirements that will cause problems with compatibility. Even upgrading Windows NT systems is somewhat easier but this still is not without pitfalls and traps along the way.

As much as possible, the rest of this article will be devoted to Windows 2000 Professional that is for workstations, either stand alone, or networked. Here is information on pros and cons of upgrading Windows 2000 from other Windows operating systems.

Now, let’s make some sense out of all this. According to several reviews of the software, Windows 2000 Professional has been rated either a 3 or a 4 out of 5, with 5 as the best, based on several evaluations tests. Basically across the board, Windows 2000 when used with included NTFS format and more than 64MB of RAM is faster than Windows NT 4.0 Workstation and much faster than Windows 98. Most of the speed difference was because of the improved hard drive access speed for IDE hard drives. Windows 2000 uses Direct Memory Access that is faster than Windows NT programmed I/O procedures.

There is a small disclaimer that needs to be inserted. Windows NT 4.0 was slightly faster than Windows 2000 in displaying Web pages. This is because of the way that the graphics are displayed. The amount of difference is very small, but it should be noted if your largest need is reading Web pages. The other problem is that there are very few drivers for older video cards, and this causes problems in configuring video cards in the software.

There is a “known” problem loading large files in Windows 2000 Beta software that has been tested. According to Microsoft, this problem has been fixed, but this gives a very slight edge to Windows NT over Windows 2000 Professional in tests conducted with Beta and pre-release software. Even with the problem, Windows 2000 and Windows NT 4.0 both were much faster than Windows 98.

New laptop computers can take advantage of the power of Windows 2000 especially for PC Cards (the new name for PCMCIA cards) and USB ports. There is no need for special Windows NT 4.0 drivers that match your motherboard. Again, here is a warning. If you have a PII or PIII laptop, then you can take advantage of the software. If you have a 486 or early Pentium system, then you need to stay with Windows 98 or Windows 95. The older systems are not supported well in Windows 2000. This is because support for non-MMX systems was not included in Windows 2000.

The last major point is that loading a Windows 2000 Professional upgrade is not going to be an operation that everyone can do quickly and easily. In fact, several publications recommend that you install a new hard drive that is set to be the master drive, and your current hard drive is set to be the slave. When you begin the installation process and are asked for the old operating system, point to the slave drive. You then get a “clean” install of Windows 2000, and can access your old data from the slave drive.

If this is what the “experts” are saying, then the average user should take this as a warning that not everyone can do the upgrade. Like the Windows 98 upgrade, problems from your old operating system will only increase when you do the upgrade. That is the reason that it is strongly suggested that a “clean” upgrade be used.

Hope everyone had a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. The Genealogy Special Interest Group (GenSIG) is held the 2nd Saturday of each month at the Elkhart Public Library from 10:00am til Noon. Our first meeting of the new millenium was held January 8th.

We had quite a discussion about Y2K problems several members were having. The press said there were none. Don’t believe it. They just weren’t published. If you have an old version of software it was suggested that you update to the newest version. Or check to see if there are any Y2K fixes for your existing software. Drivers for modems, video cards, serial ports, etc. should be checked to see if they should be updated. If you’re not sure about what you have on your computer, go to Start, Settings, Control Panel, System and print out the report. (It will not tell you the Video driver but all other drivers should be listed.) Then you can review and figure out what drivers should be updated and which are okay.

If you haven’t done so, buy an Antivirus program, install it and use it often. If you have AOL’s buddy list or a similar chat room capability, turn off this feature. There are viruses getting into computers through this live medium and unless you manually run your antivirus software daily, a virus will get in and ruin your computer before your software runs its scheduled scan. I have Norton Antivirus and I got virus updates 3 days in a row, so viruses are being created daily and you need to keep scanning your computer often to protect it.

Enough about Y2K problems. I’m sure we will hear more Y2K horror stories in the next few months.

At the January meeting the Elkhart Genealogical Society (EGS) allowed us to use their video on Family Tree Maker v5 (FTM) . This video showed a very good demonstration of the features of FTM and the reports available. If you would like to see it contact EGS and I’m sure they will let you view it.

How many FTM CD’s, or other CD’s, do you have that contain genealogy information? Do you have CD’s you will never use? Are you willing to loan out, look up, or let someone review information that you may have on your CD’s? It was suggested that a list be made of the CD’s among the GenSIG members with the idea that we share what resources we have among the group. A great idea! Let’s start a list.

A new genealogy web site has been discovered that is not only a how-to, but where-to site. Where to go on the internet to find information. At http://www.genealogy.com/university.html you learn about Newsgroups, Queries, Genealogy Data Online, Armchair Travel for Genealogists (sounds like my speed), Historical Timelines and Resources, Conducting Online Research, The Mechanics of Writing Your Family History, Software?: Tips for Finding the Right Genealogy Program... Just to name a few. I can’t wait to explore this site.

The king is dead! Long live the king! (Until a successor ascends the throne.) The “dead king” in this case is the traditional 3.5-inch floppy disk drive and its cousins: Zip drives, Super Drives, tape backups and other removable storage media.

The new king is the CD-RW (Compact Disk-ReWriteable) drive. The successor, already waiting in the wings, is the DVD-RW (Digital Versatile Disc or Digital Video Disk, depending on your orientation). Portable USB hard drives may be pretenders to the throne.

Of course I’m exaggerating a bit. You can’t count out the lowly 1.44-megabyte floppy drive just yet. It is adequate for typical word processing and other applications that don’t produce big files. Prices are low enough for both drives and diskettes to keep them alive for the near term. Shipments should peak in 2001, then start a slow decline.

Iomga’s Zip and Jaz products, Super floppies, tape drives and their kin won’t disappear overnight either, but they all have drawbacks that will make it hard for them to compete with CD-RW drives in the long term. Generally, they have more limited capacity, higher media costs, and aren’t priced all that much lower than the CD products. (Note that Iomega recognizes the inevitable and introduced its own CD-RW drive, the ZipCD, in June 1999.)

For example, a 100MB Zip drive costs about $100 to $130, depending on type (internal, external, SCSI, parallel, USB). Disk prices range from about $8 to $15 as this is written in mid-January, 2000. A 1GB Jaz drive costs about $200, with disks going for $90 to $100.

By comparison, CD-RW drives hold 650MB and sell for anywhere from $170 to about $400, with most in the $200-250 range. That means their disks hold as much as 6.5 Zip 100 disks and roughly 66% as much as the 1-gig Jaz disk. The kicker is the cost of media.

CD-R disks cost just $1 to $2 each. You can only write files to them once, no rewriting, but you can write to them in increments; adding files until the disk is full. This makes them ideal for permanent backup or archiving files. They are easily portable, since they are compatible with all CD-ROM drives of recent years. And they’re so cheap you can use a lot of them without busting the budget.

CD-RW disks cost more, about $5 to $6, but you can write and rewrite to them just as you would a floppy or Zip drive. Generally there are more compatibility issues than with CD-R disks; they may not be readable in any CD-ROM, or even other CD-RW, drives. They are best used for day-to-day backup.

The nice thing is that a CD-RW drive gives you the best of both worlds, since you can burn CD-R disks or use CD-RW disks in one.

Let me tell you about my experiences with two quite different types of CD-RW drives I’ve been using for four months, since Sept. 1999. One is a Verbatim brand, Model 4420a (4X Record, 4X Rewrite, 20X Read): the drive itself is made by Mitsubishi The other is more exotic: a Compro external drive from ACS Innovations. Made specifically for use with notebook computers, it weighs just over a pound and connects to a notebook PCMCIA slot or USB port.

Necessity led me to the CD-RW drives. I was preparing to do my Media Workshop in Orlando, FL last fall and realized the PowerPoint slide show I use to support my presentation was far too big to fit on a floppy. Putting it on a CD-ROM disk was the logical way to go. I began by investigating CD-R (record only) drives. They were cheap ($160 or.less) but I learned this was because they were being phased out. I was advised to go for a CD-RW drive instead — and settled on the Verbatim 4420a as one of the fastest in my price range.

Installing it was simplicity itself. I merely disconnected my existing CD-ROM drive and plugged in the new drive in its place, using the existing cable. It came with just!burn software from CeQuadrat (taken over by Adaptec in mid-1999), which I found very easy to use after an initial goof. I ruined several disks by trying to format them not realizing that they were preformatted by Verbatim!

The just!burn Wizard makes it easy to create backup, audio or data disks. The CD-ROM disks I’ve burned with the CeQuadrat software have been readable by every CD drive in which I have tested them. The tests have included drives in a half-dozen desktop computers and three notebook computers. I should mention that none of the drives was more than 24 to 30 months old. I can’t vouch for compatibility with older drives.

The Compro notebook CD-RW drive is a real gem, the world’s first CD Rewriter with CD 4X recording, 4X rewriting and 20X reading function all in a slim 23mm height housing. Bare drive weight is only 18 oz. Other weights are: battery pack w/5 AA batteries (Alkaline or NiCAD and NiMH 1.2V rechargables), 7 oz; AC adapter, 8 oz; PCMCIA card/cable, 5 oz; USB cable, 4oz. Current price is $269.

The whole works adds up to 42 oz., but one normally would use either the PCMCIA or USB cable so actual weight, including a few disks, is less than 2.5 lbs.

The amazing thing is how well this little drive works. It performs so well I don’t use it only with my notebook. It is connected via USB port to one of the desktop machines in our office when I’m not travelling.

The Compro slimline came with Adaptec’s Easy CD Creator, which most experts consider the top CD creation program. It includes DirectCD, which lets you treat CD-RW drive like a floppy drive. You can copy information in small packets and erase separate files (“random erase”) instead of having to erase the entire CD. Packet writing allows sending of small amounts of data or “packets” to CD-R and CD-RW drives without wasted overhead and without risk of data transfer interruptions (buffer underruns).

Easy CD Creator makes it simple to create music, photo, video, and data CDs. You can even make bootable CDs. I have V.3.5 but plan to upgrade soon to V.4.0 which has some desirable features added. (Check it out at www.adaptec.com/products/overview/ecdc.html)

As always, your comments and experiences with these or similar products are welcome. I also invite you visit my website: www.zyworld.com/wordsmithken.

Isn’t it incredible? The number of Internet users is growing by 20-30% per year. In just a few more years, the industrialized countries will have 80-85% of all their citizens connected. But with all the excitement over the number of people joining the Internet, it is easy to overlook the gigantic number of web sites that are being created!

Personal home pages, business home pages, news articles, retail sites, government sites, the figures are mind-boggling! From November of 1997 to November of 1999, total web pages grew from 320 million to 830 million! And the number will continue to grow exponentially as more people gain Internet access. One of the reasons for this vast increase is because people are creating their own personal web pages like there is no tomorrow! I believe that within 3 years, most people connected to the Web will have their own personal website. Admit it, haven’t you at least thought about having a web page with your name on it? Imagine it, big as life! .org>, your portal to prestige, convenience and networking possibilities!

Personal web pages can be used for current addresses, resumes, life history, goals, pictures and any other information that you want others to have. Or create an extended family website that would be a 1-stop information resource where all family members could keep information current, show their pictures, tell what they are presently doing, show where they are living and talk about what they are working on. Each family member would have a subdirectory linked to the main page, such as .com/, along with an email address @.com. Privacy can also be assured by requiring a password before anyone can view your site.

But think, what is the one thing that every one of these web pages needs? Bingo! A unique address! And this is where trouble appears. Believe it or not, your name is probably already registered to someone else! While there may be thousands of John Smith’s, there are currently only a few easy ways to set up a web page called Johnsmith. The main ways are with a .com, .net and. org. Additionally every nation has its own designation such as .uk for the United Kingdom, or .to for Tonga. Some countries require that you live there in order to use their designation, while others see it as a lucrative revenue stream to sell the designation to people desperate for an easy to remember address.

Finding a good web address is made even more difficult since many organizations will register all permutations of their name to prevent imitators and gripe web sites. I first came to grips with this when I tried to register Morgan.com. It seems that the J.P. Morgan Corporation has taken all of the morgan.com, net, and org site names out of availability. And let’s face it, look in the phone book and there are hundreds of families named Morgan in there. Based on how hard it is to find any available name with Morgan in it, these people are gobbling up web addresses like there is no tomorrow! And who can blame them? Once someone registers a web address, they can keep it as long as they keep on paying the yearly registration! They do not even need to have a web site up!

But cheer up! If you are flexible, there are other ways to get a good web address. Your Internet provider will often host your web page and include 5 to 20 megabytes of web space as a member benefit. The downside is that your name is just a part of the provider’s name, such as users. .com/. If you belong to a smaller provider, you will be able to get a name that is very similar to your own. As the provider becomes larger, the competition for popular names gets fierce. There are also several commercial web sites on the internet that provide up to 20 megabytes for storage of your personal web site, but they will force anyone browsing your website to look at the floating advertising box that is on every page. Another problem is that your web address will have about 10-20 subdirectory names, which is too many for people to easily remember.

OK, you are now in a panic to find out if someone out there is using your name. How do you find out? ICANN, or the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, is the official non-profit corporation that keeps the Internet naming system in order. But they let other companies actually do all the work. There are hundreds of companies that will check out the names you want and tell you if they are available; most of them also offer web-hosting services for your newly acquired web name. One of my favorite’s is a Canadian Company called Net Nation at http://www.netnation.ca, There you can find out if any of the .com, .net, .org, .to, .nu and .cc suffixes are available, just by putting in the name you would like to search for. If the name you want is taken, it will even tell you who currently owns it! Once you have decided on a name, registration cost varies depending on what country you are registering with, and what company is registering your name. I have seen a low of $17.00 per year and a high of $50.00 per year. The site you are registering with might also charge an additional fee.

So go and register your name now! With 20,000 domain names registered every week, you can’t afford to wait! Next Month we will talk about some great low-cost companies that will host your web site, and also examine the different ways to create your very own web site!

If you do research on the Internet, or have a student who does, you quite often encounter two repeated problems.

1) How many countless numbers of times have you saved a web page, or the contents of one for reference notes, and then later needed to know the web address. Then’s when you discover it is not on the web page.

2) You just need a paragraph or two of the page, and it’s such a pain to open notepad and copy it into it, save it, etc., and then you STILL have trouble with number one, because you forgot to copy the address into the notepad text!

Well, give a look at BookMarklets. No, these are not things that helps you organize your bookmarks from your browser nor actually do they have anything to do with them, short of the fact that they appear in your browser as normal bookmarks.

These are actually short little scripts that perform a variety of wonderful functions. The one that solves the problems in the above paragraph is called “Make Page with Selection” and falls in the Page Data category. You simply highlight the text you wish to keep for later, select the “Make Page with Selection” bookmarklet, then save the pop-up window in the directory with the name of your choice (usually it’s already appropriate named the same as the original web page). Now, when you are ready to start going through your saved notes, the highlighted text is in the html file, along with the address of the original page!

The formatting is gone, and needs worked on, if you are going to directly quote the text, but you have to do that if you copy into notepad, too. And, hey, it’s free and does the hard part! Always save the file with the default html choice, so that you get the URL reference. I did find that there is no other html coding in the file, so after you save it, you can then change the extension to .txt and double click the file open with notepad.

Another useful bookmarklet is used when you are on a page with scrolling text in the status bar. If you want to see what the URL for a link on the page it is usually shown in the status bar, but if they have scrolling text, you can’t see it. Click on Statusbar Shows URL and you can then get the URL. Also, List All Links is handy. It makes a web page of all the links on a page, which you can then save.

Under Page Look, Page Color..., Page Color to White, and Remove Background Image are three bookmarklets for those that have trouble dealing with colors or background graphics. Pay attention, some of these are specific to the browser, some have a version for each, and most do not work on frames.

Some of them are just for fun, and were made just as a joke, but most have at least a slightly useful function. Some bookmarklets are specifically designed to help those who work with web pages; others enable the average surfer to do some serious and interesting searching. Browse around, you might find several that help you out somewhere.

Instructions for saving these bookmarklets to your browser bookmarks is on the website, and some of them are dual versioned for Netscape and MSIE both. If you are using Netscape 4+ you can add a folder in your personal toolbar, and store them there. This makes them very easy to get at! You can find bookmarklets and read more about them at: http://www.bookmarklets.com/

The software proudly proclaims that it has searched your hard drive and found a zillion duplicate files. Now it wants to know if you want to reclaim all that wasted space by deleting those duplicates. Sounds like a great idea, doesn’t it?

Well, the hard reality is that unless you know what those files are, you are asking for serious trouble by deleting them. And even if you know what they are, you could still have problems. I hope I can shed some light on why NOT to mess around with these types of clean up software without great caution.

When you install most Windows programs, they install their main .exe file, and then add anywhere from a couple to a couple hundred extra ‘helper’ files. They install the bulk of these in their own directory and use them from there, but they install a great deal of them in the Windows directory and subdirectories. The reason for this is so that other programs can access them and save you space by sharing these helper files. When the programs load, they look to see if there is already a copy of certain files already on your system. If it is, sometimes they don’t install their own copy, they use the one already installed. Other times they over-write the existing file, but that’s another dirty issue. And still other programs add their helper files within their own directory, but USE the one in the Windows directory. There are even some that will use the helper files of another program from within the other program’s directory. Now, if you don’t think that causes problems!

The problem comes when you want to uninstall a program that is no longer being used. Or, clean up some of that wasted space by eliminating duplicate files. How can you tell which program is using which copy of which helper file? How do you know if more than one program is using it? Many a user has rendered programs, including Windows itself, useless by deleting duplicate files! It is not uncommon to uninstall one program, only to discover another no longer works correctly!

So, does that mean you can never delete duplicates because the risk is too high? No, it just means you need to be cautious and take extra steps when doing so. The first thing is to never *delete* files to begin with. You should always MOVE them into a safekeeping directory. I generally try to make two safe directories: i.e., safehold/windows and safehold/windows/system. This tells me where to replace the files if I have trouble later.

Are you trying the new 4.3 beta of Eudora? I really like it, but if you are not using it yet, be sure you realize it is still in beta, and that means re-downloading the program and reinstalling every 30 days or so. So far, I’ve only found one bug in it, and that was corrected in this release.

It is a combination ad-sponsored/free/pro version. They will no longer have separate free and pro versions. They will have a free, lesser-featured option, an advertising paid for pro option, and a paid for ad free option, all within the same program. Makes it a bit large, but not yet near what browsers are getting to these days!!!

The ad is small and unobtrusive. No animation or sound allowed, and is simply the bottom of the mailbox column. Rather than your mailboxes going all the way to the bottom of the window, it is now a half window, which you scroll up and down if you have that many mailboxes.

There are some extras that are nice if you’ve only been using the freebie and some improvements too, if like me, you’ve been using the pro version. There are some new things to learn, so don’t expect it to be ‘just like the old one’. That’s why it’s called a new version, so just plan on it now. One of the biggest and best improvements is the background-downloading feature! Now you can continue reading or writing while new mail is being downloaded. Never was anything more frustrating than having to wait until an attachment downloaded before you could read or write! You could plan to just sit and twiddle your thumbs for quite sometime if it was a large file.

Multiple personalities is now an option for everybody. No, not the psychological-Sybil kind! The ones used for checking multiple email accounts. Now you can easily set up Eudora to check several email accounts. It is really another nice feature.

The find feature is now a useful tool. It always used to aggravate me to search for a word, find it in an email, then have to try to figure out which mailbox that email was in! How dumb! Also, you never had much choice on where you searched before. Now, you can select the specific mailboxes you want searched, and they even added great search criteria. What a deal. Almost like getting my cake and eating it too!

I really like this new version, can you tell? And while I’ve always been partial to Eudora, I wouldn’t switch to something else now for anything! This is one great program, and it just keeps on getting better! Check out the beta 4.3 version at www.eudora.com

Don’t forget to make a backup copy of your original Eudora directory, just in case something goes haywire, or if you are really hung up on the old version and don’t like the new one. I install right in my Eudora directory over top the old version, always have, but I *always* make a copy of the directory first. You can delete the back up in a few days when you are sure all is going well with the new version.

EPCUG Editor’s Note: This site appears to be a very indepth course for learning the ins and outs of Linux. Author/instructor, Henry White, seems to be a straightforward, honest person who is going to pull no punches, and ‘teach it like it is’. Without even registering for the course, you can gather a great deal of beginning sites to look at. The following are excerpts from the informational pages. If you are planning to run Linux, you really should check this site out. --Sherry L. Nisly

“This course is free, but requires registration. You will need a textbook and a copy of any Linux distribution - both of which you can obtain online for free, or you can buy a printed version of the text and many of the distributions on CD-ROM at your local book/computer store or online.”

“Important Dates: A new term begins the first Monday of every month. Cut off date is Saturday of the following week.”

“A word of caution: If you’re having an anxiety attack and are in a rush to get Linux up and running, this is definitely not the place for you to be. Go to the printed manual or homepage for whichever distribution you have for detailed instructions specifically to that distribution (S.u.S.E. is the only major distribution does not have an online version of the manual). You can easily be finished within a couple of hours; then you can relax and take this course to round out your education. Getting Linux installed is not going to do much for you unless you know how to use it, and that’s what this course is about.”

“This is also not the place to casually drop in to get free advice about what ails your system. Everything you need to know is readily available online, mainly in the HOWTOs and mini-HOWTOs on the Linux Documentation Homepage. If you have some exotic hardware, you’re best bet is to find other people who have it too and can tell you how they solved problems with it.”

“Linux is not for PC-weenees! Take responsibility for your system, and show the rest of the Linux community that you’ve made a genuine effort, including checking the archives, before you post to the newsgroups. If you’re “too busy” to be bothered with the fundamentals - like reading the available documentation - you might as well forget about Linux right now. You can fake your way through other operating systems, but not for very long with Linux.”

“This course is not going to be easy - you’re going to have to work to get much out of it. You will have to put some effort into learning about most of the things that are not required with other operating systems. You will have to know exactly what hardware is installed on your system, and you’ll probably have to do a little tweaking here and there to get Linux and XFree86 up and running. None of it is particularly difficult, there’s just a lot of new things that you have to know and be able to do. So if you’re lazy, bail out now.”

(EPCUG Editor’s Note: This article is by no means reprinted in its entirety. There is a great deal more that Don McAlvany had to say regarding thes issues, unfortunately, we only have so much room. My attempt here was to print enough to peak your appetite enough to go read the entire article if you are interested in these issues. The elipses (.....) are the indications of where I stopped and restarted excerpting. My appreciation to Jocelyne Slough for submitting this article for reprint. —Sherry L. Nisly)

January 2000 Special Issue
http://www.mcalvany.com/janspecialreport.htm

I. LIVING IN THE DAY OF THE LIE; THE REAL STATUS OF THE Y2K FAILURES
II. APPROACHING CRISES WHICH DWARF Y2K
A. THE RISE OF THE HARD-LINERS IN RUSSIA
B. CHINA PREPARING FOR WAR
C. TERRORIST ATTACKS ON AMERICA
D. THE EXPLODING FINANCIAL BUBBLE - PRELUDE TO HYPERINFLATION?
III. YOUR PREPARATIONS WERE FOR MORE THAN Y2K

(NOTE: This is a special issue of The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor, which is not a part of the regular monthly newsletter. Feel free to copy and distribute it, to place it on your website, etc.) [SPECIAL REPORT ED. NOTE: For those who still think that the whole Y2K crisis was a hoax or a fraud, AP reported in a story from CNN/FN (1/4/00) that one state took three computers which it did not fix, left them running through midnight 12/31/99 and, according to John Koskinen: “All three of the systems failed following the Y2K rollover and could not be used. The systems simply stopped and became unusable.” Maybe fixing them was a good idea after all.]

*1. WHAT REALLY HAPPENED A PERSPECTIVE ON Y2K
Y2K was (and is) a real problem worldwide it was not just a fabrication of governments; software remediation companies; food, gold, water filter or other preparedness companies; or fanatical gloom and doomers eagerly anticipating the end of the world. Governments and businesses around the world (according to Y2K Czar John Koskinen) spent an estimated $500 billion on Y2K remediation (which is a lot to spend on a non-problem).

Hundreds of U.S. embassy personnel worldwide were brought home because of fear of Y2K problems in countries like Russia. Governments, military forces, law enforcement agencies, emergency management groups and corporate IT personnel were placed on the highest state of mobilization or alert over the New Years weekend in U.S. or world history it was truly a working weekend and we were truly a hairsbreadth from a national or global state of emergency. For the first time in U.S. history, all 10 FEMA Regional Centers were activated and all 50 state emergency management organizations were fully staffed and operational. They were stunned that we had no infrastructure problems.

*4. ARE GOVERNMENTS AND THE MEDIA COVERING UP FAILURES?
It should be pointed out that there is a massive domestic and global coverup by governments, the media and businesses (including banks) of Y2K-related computer glitches or failures. Governments all over the world have a mutual understanding that they will report no failures at least until they are fixed, and maybe not even then. There has also been a global media blackout of reporting on failures. The standard, orchestrated party-line from governments and the media regarding any glitches or failures is: “It’s not Y2K-related.” When you hear that phrase, you can safely assume that it is probably Y2K related.

When problems do occur, no one will talk about them not government, banks or businesses. They will keep them very quiet, hoping that no one will notice until they are fixed. In most instances, we’ll only know about the breakdowns if they are too large to coverup like the East Coast air traffic control problems or the Norwegian train wreck - and even then, we will quickly hear that familiar refrain “It’s not Y2K-related.” It is worth repeating - you won’t hear about the glitches if they are coverable.

*5. THE ROLE OF THE Y2K ALARMISTS
“We owe a debt of thanks to the people who sounded the early alarms on Y2K. Had there been no alarmists, the Y2K disaster would have been huge, because just 24 months ago there was widespread ignorance and denial of the problem.” John Koskinen Y2K Czar (1/2/2000)

In spite of the fact that longtime Y2K skeptics are now gloating that “they were right Y2K never was really a problem,” and mocking the warnings and motives of the Y2K awareness movement (the Norths Misslers, Lords, Yourdons, Yardenis, Hyatts, and others), the fact remains that these warnings over the past two to three years (Gary North began over three years ago) woke up millions of people and convinced hundreds of thousands of people in governments, businesses, banks, and the financial world that Y2K was truly a huge, potentially devastating problem, and that serious remediation efforts needed to be launched.

A half a trillion dollars was subsequently spent globally on the Y2K fix. John Koskinen and other government and business leaders have acknowledged since January 1 that Y2K was potentially huge and that the half trillion dollar global remediation effort (which did make a positive difference) should be credited in large part to the early, frequent, detailed, vocal warnings of these Y2K alarmists.

CDMax, Audiofile Internet Companion (AIC), and Tim
Turn your confusing stacks of music CDs into an organized database with these two freeware programs and instructions from the third page, and the online CDDB. To fully turn your collection into a database, Tim’s instructions use MSAccess, other database programs could be used if you know how to convert the instructions.

Tip: Instead of purchasing the AIC, simply use the free features and then import into the also free CDMax.
http://www.mindspring.com/~clark_tisdale/CDmax/
http://www.mindspring.com/~clark_tisdale/CDmax/
http://www.tim.schauer.com/audioeng.htm

CD-R Central
Got a CD-R or CD-RW? Check out this site for great faqs and links to help.
http://www.eciusa.com/cdr/index.htm

PAINTSHOP 101
Petsburgh PSP is holding an ongoing Paint Shop Pro class geared for the beginner! It is a basic course, going over such things as backgrounds and borders, but not dealing with difficult techniques. It’s just enough to give the novice confidence to get their feet wet and get enough tools to create wonderful graphics!
http://www.geocities.com/Petsburgh/Reserve/2010

FREE Linux for Dummies Book!
Fill out a form and receive the Special Edition of “Linux for Dummies”, courtesy of Alpha Processor, Inc. I received mine, it is a 48 pg mini booklet giving the basic infomation about Linux, it’s components, and installation. Curious about Linux? This might hold your answers
http://www.alpha-processor.com/corporate/linux_request.asp

Another URL For You
2 Freebies for Excel Business Users & Other Executives

Promoting, MBA's Guide to Microsoft(r) Excel 2000 book, two freebies. 20-page QuickPrimer on how to create and use Excel databases, and a business-planning workbook for performing profit-volume analysis and making breakeven calculations.
www.redtechpress.com

I don’t know about the e-mail tax issue, but I can tell you the Internet taxation issue is out there, check out:

THE POWER TO DESTROY
WorldNetDaily Exclusive
Don't tax the Net!
www.worldnetdaily.com/bluesky_exnews/19991224_xex_wnd_to_lead_.shtml

Christian Midi Page
The name says it all. Enjoy!
http://www.fcpc.org/midi.htm

US Constitution Admendments Thereto
The US Constitution and all of the admendments. Good educational site.
http://www.mv.com/users/sos/Constitution.html

Student.Com -- College Life Online
Specifically check out the Fun & Games page! Lots of things to do with that ‘few minutes between exams’ to cool off the intensity. Have some fun!
http://www.student.com/funandgames/

JoBlo's Movie Screensavers
An excellent guide to free movie screensavers on the net. If you’d like ‘em, and they’re out there, he can find ‘em!
http://www.joblo.com/moviescreensavers.htm

Online Etch-A-Sketch
Here’s another site to just waste time and blow off steam. Works just like the original did!
http://www.etch-a-sketch.com/html/onlineetch.htm

Learning Disabilities
Got a child with a Learning Disability? Do you know where to turn for help? Here’s a start. Good info, helpful links.
http://www.ldonline.org/ccldinfo/

There seem to be more accounts of Win98 reacting unfavorably with other pieces of software. As I mentioned in my ‘Pinball’ article, upgrading to Win98 may cause some pieces of software to fail. Unfortunately, this is not just me saying so.

On CNN’s website is an article about Win98 disabling software. One of the programs and drivers mentioned was the Twain driver, used by scanners to communicate to Windows. This problem happened to me on one of my systems hooked up to a Mustek scanner - I was forced to reinstall the scanner drivers after running Win98 as the operating system ‘forgot’ a scanner existed.

Now other larger companies are getting into the ‘your software messes up my software’ game. On ZDNet’s site is a series of articles about RealNetworks accusing Microsoft of disabling its RealPlayer G2 software whenever Media Player is active. In this case, the disabling seems to be due to a bug in the G2 installation program, according to the Association for Competitive Technology.

I have even mentioned, in the forums, about problems with Symantec’s software (such as Norton AntiVirus) and Win98. By not installing a patch graciously delivered by Symantec on their website at (http://www.symantec.com), Win98 will constantly crash with blue-screen VXD errors.

Many more cases can be presented regarding problems with Win98 and other software packages. Although these are disturbing and extremely irritating, think for a minute and cool your head before you begin complaining to companies loudly that their software does not work under Win98. Many software programs were not made with Win98 in mind. Some were made when only betas of Win98 were available. And, as a software developer myself, I can say that it is impossible for a programmer to predict every single situation where a program can be run. There are varying types of CPUs, memory configurations, different software installed on a system, and other things that can cause a normally fine program to crash.

There are too many variables. With Windows, we all assumed we had a standard for computing. In many ways, we do - we have the standard menus, minimize buttons, and the like. But we have thousands of DLLs (dynamic link libraries - snippets of code that perform frequently reused tasks) that large applications, utilities, and games require, and probably tens of thousands or more different versions of said DLLs floating around in cyberspace and in commercial products. Most programs are too complex nowadays to not require the use of someone else’s code or run-time libraries. When you have to rely on other peoples’ code, if the code or library breaks or is modified anywhere, you are in trouble - and that’s exactly what is happening. That’s right - you could install a program from two years ago that modifies a key run-time library, crashing five programs developed last week that also rely on the library or code, just a different version of the code. It’s insane and it will only get worse.

Here’s a question to ponder - the idea of placing all of the run-time libraries and reused code in a central location was designed so the same pieces of code would not have to be re-acquired, re-installed, and re-used. Using the same code saves hard drive space and memory. But does it save hassle? With memory prices falling, with hard drive prices diminishing rapidly, is it time we consider perhaps making each application self-sufficient so its DLLs and run-time libraries cannot interfere with others? Wild thought, but that’s what I’m here for.

Article copyright 1998 Andrew Malek - All Rights Reserved. This article may not be redistributed without permission of Andrew Malek. All trademarks mentioned in this article are owned by their respective companies.

User Error
Replace User
Press any key to continue

Probably every PC support department or call center has the above sign somewhere on premises. Oh, it probably isn’t visible, but it is there, perhaps behind a door or inside of a parts cabinet. Indeed it is there: trust me on this.

Don’t get me wrong, I love users. Well, I love (most) users. There are always the exceptions.

A reader of this column once chastised me with the words “you have such disdain for the dumb.” The reader was wrong, but he was on the right track. I don’t have any problem with users who struggle with the technology, or the newest software, or even with a particularly persnickety computer. We all have a lot to learn, and one of the reasons that I don’t have the initials CNE or MCSE after my name is that I’m too dumb to pass the tests. I’ll eventually earn those initials, but it may take me some time.

What I do struggle with is users who are stupid. This is different, in my mind, than being dumb. We are all dumb about one thing or another. We struggle daily trying to increase our knowledge, but in the end, we know there is just an awful lot that we simply don’t know.

There is a great scene in the movie Smokey and the Bandit that I think is relevant. Burt Reynolds has just picked up Sally Fields as she, complete in white gown, flees her wedding from the son of the sheriff (Jackie Gleason). As they race through Texas back roads in their black Trans-Am, running point for a truck load of bootleg Coors beer, they begin to get acquainted. Sally, a dancer by trade, tries to find common ground with Burt, a star of truck rodeos. She rattles off names of great American music composers and performing artists, Burt responds with the names of country & western stars, and they exhibit a classic disconnect. Burt then offers the following (paraphrased): “How smart you are or how dumb you are often depends upon where you are when the question is being asked.”

Stupid people irritate me. Stupid people are those who make no effort to learn. Stupid people are those who would never, ever read a computer self-help book, attend a user group or a company-sponsored class, or make any effort to increase their own knowledge.

I routinely deal with one such person. A department manager, this person is a double threat, which to me means the person has both a desktop and a laptop computer. This person knows nothing about computers, and makes a point of loudly announcing that fact at every opportunity. I have never seen anyone who is so proud of being so stupid in my entire life. This person and the three other people in that department account for nearly 10% of the total support calls generated within the state. One or the other or both of this person’s computers “breaks” nearly every day. We make the dutiful 40-mile round trip to check out the problem, and can almost never seem to duplicate it. Software installs must be done immediately because there is always a critical need, and then a month later a trouble ticket appears saying the software doesn’t work, and never has worked. We have taken to swapping parts on this person’s computer with parts from inventory, and we simply restock our inventory with the old parts - which work perfectly well on other computers. We are on about the third power supply, fourth or fifth stick of memory (bet you didn’t know that memory wears out!), and the second processor. We rue the integrated video, because that is one less part we have the opportunity to replace.

Clearly, user errors are behind most of the problems, but we dutifully replace parts, because that is all that seems to satisfy this user.

Yet, I have walked other users through Windows Registry edits over the telephone. Without problems, because even though they did not have any idea what we were doing, they were able to follow instructions, and they did not power-off their brains when they powered-on their computer.

This, really, is all anyone who services a computer really wants. A good technician can do wondrous things with a user over the telephone. We generally ask that the users be our eyes and our ears, that they listen carefully, and that they ask for clarification if our instructions are unclear. It’s not rocket science. A spirit of adventure is helpful, but not required. An honest appraisal of the user’s skill level is appropriate. A three-act musical that extols the user’s stupidity is hardly necessary.

Since I began with a sign, allow me to close with a sign I once saw in a bicycle shop: Repairs $15 per hour $20 per hour if you watch $25 per hour if you help.

About the Author: Frank is a Computer Bits’ magazine editor-at-large. Computer Bits’ Online and information regarding their print edition subscriptions can be found at http://www.ComputerBits.com/

This article is reprinted in the Elkhart PC Users Group by express permission from Frank Vaughan and is not to be included in any article exchange agreement EPCUG may have with any other publication or organization. Any reprint requests for this article must be directed to Mr. Vaughan. E-mail to frankv@computerbits.com.