PCWize Edition #26 -Boo! October 31, 1999 ______________________________________________________________________ For those of you who are celebrating Halloween, may your pants be scared off! ------ I'm going to go ahead and apologize now. This month's feature article is absolutely, positively, undeniably, GARGANTUAN! I just couldn't help it, the closer I thought I was to finishing it, the more I thought of to write. Believe it or not, I even had to break it into two parts. You'll get the second part which covers LCD screens as next month's feature article. So tell the spouse and kids to go see a couple of movies, order yourself a pizza, pull up an ice-chest full of your favorite liquid refreshment, and start reading. :^) Quick note, for those who would rather read it in HTML (IMHO, it's easier on the eyes), you can read it at: http://vbok.theoretic.com/tech/computer/monitors.shtml ------ I thought that I'd bring you along on my quest to buy a new laptop. I'm planning on purchasing it around Christmas time, so I've got plenty of time to shop around. Hopefully, some of you will benefit from my research if you're in the market for a 'desktop replacement' grade laptop. Here is what I am looking for: Intel Celeron 500MHz or better 128MB SDRAM Minimum 14" Active Matrix LCD screen Minimum 8MB AGP 3D graphics card Minimum of a 6.4GB HDD Built in 1.44MB floppy Built in 4X DVD-ROM drive Decent sound, but it doesn't have to be awesome. Touchpad mouse (none of that eraser head stuff for me) PCMCIA 56K V.90 modem (combined w/ network card would be nice) I/O 1S / 1P / 1 IrDA / 1 USB / 1 IEEE-1394 / 1 Port replicator External SVGA connector, sound mic in, headphone out, line in, S-Video out. I want my drives to all be simultaneously installed, but if they are modular also, that would be a big plus. So far, the best price I've found is at www.netlux.com for $2200 USD. ______________________________________________________________________ TOC 1. Monitors and how they work 2. Voting Booth and Other PCWize Stuff 3. Software Review 4. Cool Sites 5. Tips, Tricks, Do's and Don't Do's 6. That's the news! 7. Security Issues, Hoaxes, Viruses and Other Urban Legends 8. PCWize Contests and winner announcement If the columns in the below articles appear misaligned, it's because you are using a non-fixed width font. If you would like to see them nice and straight, change your e-mail font to Courier New. ______________________________________________________________________ ** A word from our sponsors ** ------ * LiveWire! Broadcast - Easily locate and play Live Radio and TV stations on the Internet * MediaGrab! - Find and download MP3s and 18 other types of multimedia files. * WebGrab! - Great web tool for viewing and downloading webpage elements. * UsenetGrab! - Integrated Usenet News browser and more. EastBay Technologies - http://www.eastbaytech.com ------ Want to see your advertisement here? Send mail to with the text 'Advertiser' in the SUBJECT line for more information. ______________________________________________________________________ 1. Monitors and how they work ------ One thing to remember about purchasing a monitor is that it doesn't lose value as fast as all of your other computer system components. Advancements are still made in monitors, but the technology doesn't change anywhere near as fast as say CPUs and RAM. In fact, by purchasing a high quality monitor, you most likely will be able to use it on the next computer that you purchase. Shortly, I'll get into what qualities you should look for in a monitor, but first I want to say that monitors are very subjective to the viewer. The saying "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder", applies very much to monitor purchases. While it's important to pay attention to the "numbers" of a monitor, your final decision should always lie with what looks best to you. It's your monitor anyway, and you'll be the one staring at it for the next few years. Let's start off with how a monitor works. Cathode Ray Tube (CRT) monitors are made up of three basic parts: Electron guns - In color CRTs, there are three guns. One for red, one for green, and one for blue. They fire electrons down a vacuum tube to light up phosphors on the screen (we'll get to that in a minute). Even though the name suggests that the electron guns are color (red gun, green gun, blue gun), they do not actually fire colored electrons. What each gun does, is to fire electrons only at its respectively colored phosphors on the screen. Steering magnet (focusing coil) - Once an electron has been fired from the guns, there needs to be a way to steer or focus it onto the phosphor it needs to light up on the screen. This is done by energizing magnets along the tube to deflect the electron away from the tube walls and at the target phosphor. This is pretty complicated in that there are extremely high tolerances involved. After all, an electron is very small and is moving extremely fast. Without steering, you would have only one bright dot right in the middle of your screen. The speed at which the steering can manipulate the electrons determines your refresh rate. The refresh rate is very important, as it directly affects how fluid and flicker-free your screen will appear. More on refresh rates after I explain phosphors. Phosphor coated screen - This is the part of your monitor you see every day; with exception to the fact that you are looking at it from the outside. On the inside, the screen is coated with phosphors which glow for a short duration after being struck with energy. The amount of time it glows after being struck is called persistence. If you remember, I said there are three electron guns. Because electrons aren't colored, the phosphors must be. That means for every pixel (picture element) on the screen, there are three phosphors (red, green and blue) arranged in what is called a triad. The closeness (density) of these triads determines your monitors dot pitch in millimeters (you usually see these represented as .28, .26, .25 etc., and I'll get into this in a little bit.) Now that you know what phosphors do, we can get back to the refresh rate. Because phosphors only glow for a very short duration after being struck by energy, they need to be constantly bombarded with it (refreshed). A CRT is refreshed in what is called a "Raster" pattern. This means the electron beam starts at the top left, scans to the right, drops down one line and repeats. There are two numbers associated with this: horizontal and vertical scan rates. The numbers are how many times the screen is updated per second. You'll typically find the horizontal scan rate to be between 31KHz and 90KHz, and is generally ignored as the vertical scan rate is considered to be much more important because it is so much slower. As the vertical refresh rate drops, you'll notice an annoying flicker beginning around 60Hz (unless you are a little more sensitive like myself where 70Hz is the absolute minimum.) Generally speaking, the lower your resolution, the higher your vertical refresh rate. This is because it doesn't have to rasterize as many vertical pixels. Take for example a screen resolution of 640x480. There are 480 vertical pixels, and you could scan through this relatively quickly as compared to say a resolution of 1600x1200 (1200 vertical pixels.) If you notice flicker, you might try to up your refresh rate, but remember this is dependent upon your video card and monitor specifications. Consult your manuals first, as setting an incorrectly matched refresh rate could possibly damage your monitor. Another thing to check is to make sure that your monitor is not running in interlaced mode. Interlacing is a means of refreshing the screen every other line and relying on the human eye to combine two adjacent lines. Interlaced mode also rasterizes the screen, but it does so in two passes. The first pass draws all of the odd lines, and the second, all the even. This produces a much more apparent flicker. Ok, I said I would talk about dot pitch later... Well, it's later! :^) Dot Pitch can be one of the most misleading facts available to you when comparing monitors. Dot pitch is measured diagonally between two adjacent phosphor dots of the same color expressed in millimeters. If you remember from the intro, I explained that there were three colored phosphor dots (red, green and blue). These dots are arranged on the screen in what are called triads. What most people fail to understand is that you can only compare dot pitch between monitors of the same type. Below are three different types of masking used in CRT monitors. I'll explain what a mask is shortly. Dot Mask - The screen mask has little holes in the shape of dots. Slot Mask - The screen mask has vertically elongated holes. Aperture Grill - No screen mask, but uses thin vertical strips. So what is this mask thing I'm talking about? The mask is a very fine mesh screen that is applied to the back side of the monitor screen which allows electrons to hit only the phosphor groups. Think of it this way, anyone who has ever used stencils before knows that the paint will only be applied to the object being painted through the holes/shapes/letters in the stencil. It works the same way for the mesh screen. For each of the three different types of masks, they offer some advantages and disadvantages over the others. Slot mask offers a little advantage over dot mask in that it allows more of the electron beam to pass through, therefore providing an overall brighter picture. Aperture grill allows even more electron beam to pass through, but has one distinct disadvantage. Because the thin vertical strips are less stable in structure than a mesh screen, they must run two or three horizontal stabilizing wires (called damper wires). While they are very thin, you can still see a shadow of the wires on the screen (the shadow is created because the wires are between the electron guns and the phosphors on the screen.) However, one thing I've discovered is that it is a very similar phenomenon to the letterbox standard on videocassette. That's where there is a black horizontal bar on top and bottom of the actual movie picture. At first it was distracting, but after watching a few movies in that style, it basically becomes unnoticeable. It's the same way with the horizontal shadows on the aperture grill monitors. They're extremely bothersome at first, but after time it gets to the point where you don't even notice them anymore. Ok, we are now out of geek territory, so we'll move on with what to look for during your monitor purchase. If you are trying to decide between two monitors and they are pretty much equal in all other areas, get the one with the smaller dot pitch. a .26 is better than .28 and .25 is even better still. Remember, compare apples to apples. Don't pick a .25 pitch slot mask over a .26 aperture grill just because the number is smaller. Another factor you should consider is monitor size and this should be determined by your budget limits and how much desk space you have. All things being equal, you should purchase the largest monitor that you can afford. Having a large monitor allows you to set your screen resolution much higher, which enables you to view much more information on screen. While you can do this with smaller monitors, it also means that the information displayed is much smaller in size. This causes some difficulty in reading text. One misleading issue that resellers fail to mention is that CRT screen sizes are measured diagonally. To further muddy the waters, that measurement is made on the actual glass tube before it is placed into the plastic casing. Between manufacturers of monitors I have seen as little as 1/4 inch on each side of the glass tube, and as much as 1/2 inch. Think about it. Let's say you buy a 17 inch monitor that has 1/4 inch of the tube covered by plastic. 1/4 inch times four sides is one inch. The effective viewable area on your monitor is now 16 inches (diagonally). In the 1/2 inch scenario, 1/2 inch times four sides is two inches. Your effective viewable area is now 15 inches! What I'm getting at is that you should ask what the actual viewable area measured diagonally is before purchasing any monitor. Below is a chart with recommended monitor sizes versus screen resolution. You can take these with a grain of salt depending on how good your eyes are and what you feel comfortable with. In my case, I have a 17" monitor (16" viewable) and I'm running 1600x1200 resolution. For the most part everything is great, but sometimes it's difficult to distinguish between a comma and a period with 10pt font. To correct for this, I usually zoom my text up to 120 percent. Resolution Recommended Minimum Monitor Size 640x480 13" 800x600 15" 1024x768 17" 1280x1024 21" Another factor that you might need to consider is the power consumption. Monitors are the most power consuming of all components on your desktop. If electric bills are high in your area and you plan on keeping your computer powered on all the time, then you need to look for a monitor with Display Power Management Signaling (DPMS). Power Management (DPMS) - Intel and Microsoft developed a standard together called Advanced Power Management (APM), which is a Basic Input/Output System (BIOS) interface between the Operating System (OS) and the video hardware (graphics card and monitor.) In effect, DPMS/APM allows the OS to switch your monitor into various states of low power during intervals of nonuse. Three main modes of power down are stand-by, suspend and off. These modes are signaled by varying the synch pulse to the monitor. Standby mode is the quickest to recover from (blank screen to readability), while suspend takes longer and off will require you to manually push the on button. Well, this basically concludes the CRT section. All in all, your eye is the best discriminating tool you can use. If possible have the monitors set up side by side and compare coloring, brightness, clarity and screen size. Not all people see monitors in the same way, so that saying "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder" applies very much here. ______________________________________________________________________ 1. Voting Booth and Other PCWize Stuff ------ Click here to vote for PCWize as one of the best newsletters in the "E-zines Top Ten Poll"! It's just a click, no need to fill anything out. ------ Come visit the PCWize forum and live chat. You may discuss anything computer related and it's a good place to get help with any computer questions you may have. ______________________________________________________________________ 2. Software Review ------ Name: Media Grab! v2.7 by East Bay Technologies Genre: Search Engines Platform: PC 95/98/NT Type/Cost: Shareware/ Size: 2.83MB Homepage: Download: I never really got into the MP3 revolution. I suppose it's because I could think of better things to use my speed demon of a 28.8Kbps connection on. However, this week, I decided to take a look at Media Grab! just to see what all was out there. This program takes all of the guesswork out of finding any of the following file types: MP2, RealAudio, XDM, MIDI, MP3, Netshow, AIFF, MOD, MP4, Shockwave, AAC, AVI, VQF, QuickTime, AU/SND, TSP, WAV, MPEG, KAR. Media Grab! is a very flexible piece of software. It allows you to search http, ftp, and even usenet newsgroups. The software even comes with a list of the top 100 web sites that specialize in the file format you are interested in. Just on my first search for a song by Santana, I had over 200 hits. ______________________________________________________________________ 3. Cool Sites ------ Just in time for Halloween! This is such an original idea. Using just HTML pages and hidden links, you begin on a quest through gruesome looking pages and eerie sounds trying to find the link to get to the next level. Your ultimate goal is to find the 'Cavern of Jewels' which frees you from your nightmare. Warning! One wrong step and you could end up a limbless, bloodless, magot-ridden casualty. ______________________________________________________________________ 4. Tips, Tricks, Do's and Don't Do's ------ I'm a ZIP file freak; constantly zipping up files and storing them somewhere on my hard drive to conserve space on my laptop. Unfortunately, I'm not the best cataloger of exactly what files went where and as a result I sometimes spend a lot of time looking for which ZIP file contains what I want. For any of you who have the same problem, here is a tip to help you out when searching for that ZIP file containing the file you need. 1. Single left-click somewhere on the desktop. 2. Hit the F3 key (this brings up the find window.) 3. Type '*.ZIP' (w/o the quotes) in the 'Named' field. 4. Type the filename you are looking for in the 'Containing Text' field. You can use wildcard characters here if you don't remember the exact name. 5. Click 'OK' If any filenames contained in the ZIP file match your query, then you will be presented with the ZIP's filename and location. ______________________________________________________________________ 5. That's the news! ------ Sniff, sniff, "Wheeew... What is that smell?!?" Well, it could be your computer if Digiscents iSmell takes off. Imagine getting a digital anniversary card that smells like roses, a wish you were here card that smells like Paris (is that a good thing?), or how about playing Duke Nukem and smelling the pungent odor of dog bombs as they squish under your boots. This could be a lot of fun. I know what my first few smell-o-grams will be! ;^) ______________________________________________________________________ 6. Security Issues, Hoaxes, Viruses and Other Urban Legends ------ Before we begin, let me define these for you: Security Issues: These are issues affecting your privacy and security while on the Internet. Most security risks that will be mentioned here are ones concerning holes in software which leak information or will allow people to gain access to private information. Viruses/Trojans/Worms: These will be *real* warnings about new viruses. If I'm warning you of a virus, then you can take it to the bank that I've fully checked its validity first. Hoaxes: The most memorable in all of your minds is most likely the Good Times Virus hoax. These are warnings about some new fangled virus that will wreck your life. The difference between this and other virus warnings is that they aren't for real. Their entire purpose is to scare people and bog down mail servers with all the forwarding going on. The reason I'll be telling you about them is so that you'll be in the know and won't forward them to everyone in your address book. Urban Legends: These are stories that will be computer related, but aren't necessarily virus related. A warning/story moves out of the hoaxes category when it keeps making a comeback. An example of an urban legend would be the one about the FCC allowing phone companies to charge for local access to the ISP in which the cost would be passed onto us as users. ------ Name: South Park Newsletter Category: Hoax If you receive the below message, you may ignore it as this is the newest hoax flavor of the week. ** Start Hoax Message ** Warning on 1/1/2000 you may receive an email called, south park news letter do not open it, it contains a deadly virus it will erase your windows system files and and send this virus to all the people on your address book. PLS FIND OUT ALL YOU CAN ABOUT THIS VIRUS OR HOAXS. AS I AM STUDYING VIRUS AND [sic] SEACHING AND STOPPING THESE FROM CIRCULATION. THANXS ** End Hoax Message ** For more information: ______________________________________________________________________ 7. PCWize Contests and Winner Announcement ------ This weeks contest sponsor is Eastbay Technologies and they have generously offered four of their products to be used as prizes in our random drawing contests. Eastbay Technologies offers a wide variety of software to meet many different user's needs. Take a look at some of what they have to offer: * LiveWire! Broadcast - Easily locate and play Live Radio and TV stations on the Internet * MediaGrab! - Find and download MP3s and 18 other types of multimedia files. * WebGrab! - Great web tool for viewing and downloading webpage elements. * UsenetGrab! - Integrated Usenet News browser and more. EastBay Technologies - http://www.eastbaytech.com ------ Each week PCWize holds a random drawing contest and gives away free stuff (usually software) to its subscribers. We will continue to do this as long as there are advertisers who are willing to provide the prizes. If you are such an individual/company, then please contact me at vbok@biogate.com so that we can work a deal. ------ The winner of this weeks random drawing contest is: Tim Larson ______________________________________________________________________ Well, that's it for this issue! Have a good week and I'll see you in seven days. Leif Gregory Copyright © 1997-99 by Leif Gregory. All rights reserved. You may share this copy of the PCWize newsletter with others as long as it is reprinted in it's entirety to include the copyright notice and subscription directions. If you've received this edition of the PCWize newsletter from a friend or colleague and wish to start receiving your own copy, then click the below link and send the generated e-mail message. I have made every attempt to ensure that all information contained in this newsletter is accurate to the best of my ability. Due to the myriad of possible configurations in the PC platform, information and software discussed here may not always work with your particular configuration. That being said, Leif Gregory and the PCWize newsletter can not be held liable for any damages you may incur either directly or indirectly from the use of anything contained in this newsletter. PCWize does not endorse any of the products or services provided by advertisers in this newsletter. As with anything in life, please check the credibility of the advertiser as well as to use common sense. If it sounds too good to be true, then it probably is. PCWize Editor PCWize Homepage Unsubscribe Back-Edition Titles