PCWize Vol 4, Issue 30 - Geeksterone pills July 23, 2000 ______________________________________________________________________ You could win $10,000 and a Sony DVD player just by recommending PCWize to a friend! ------ We went on a camping trip to a place we go each year for a very good fireworks show. The fireworks were spectacular as always, but even though we left about 10 to 15 minutes before the finale, we still got stuck in traffic for an hour. No exaggeration! For one hour, we sat at a complete standstill until vehicles parked closer to the only road out were finally on their way. I probably wouldn't have complained as much if I'd had brought my laptop along, but then again, that would have killed the whole purpose of our camping trip-- to get away from it all. In the very near future, getting away from it all will be nearly impossible. Just take my new cell phone for example-- Not only can I talk to people, but I can send and receive e-mail, get stock quotes, browse web pages, check the latest news and weather, and even play games all on a little tiny phone 1 3/4" x 3/4" x 5" with a color LCD screen measuring 1" x 1 1/2". *Warning - This page is in Japanese, so you'll need Japanese language support in your browser. You can still see the pictures though! I've already got a watch that not only tells time, but has a thermometer, barometer, altimeter, and a digital compass , and I don't think it'll be too long before you can get a watch or cell phone that really does it *all*! There are just too many geeky toys out there! :^) ------ You'll notice, last issue didn't get out. I apologize, and I wish that I could say it's going to get better, but the truth of the matter is that it's going to get a little worse first. I'm due to separate from the military in October of this year, so with the preparations for moving, job hunting, and all the other miscellaneous things that have to be taken care of, there will most likely be a few more missed issues. I figure by December, or at worst, the first of next year, PCWize will be back on track with no more missed issues. ------ It wasn't a planned stop, but I had to hit Akihabara again while I was in Tokyo. The first thing I saw when we stepped off the train, was the huge signs announcing Akibax 2000. It's been ages since I went to a computer expo, so that became top priority for my excursion. While I saw many great new toys for computers and consumer electronics, I'm ashamed to admit that my geek factor was low that day. I must have had a chemical imbalance where too much testosterone was in my geeksterone system, because I spent much of my time ogling the soft but very firmware bipeds that abound at just about any expo with booths. The highlight of the day was the peck on the cheek I got from a girl who they modelled a computer generated character from for a game called Lucky Legs. Let me tell you, she was quite the fitting model for the aptly named game. At any rate, I eventually got enough geeksterone into my system to buy a Microsoft Intellimouse Explorer (about $75.00 USD) and a 534MB IDE microdrive (about $4.50 USD) to use in an upcoming ubergeek project. Thanks to those who wrote in to let me know about the Intellimouse series as well as the Logitech mice. It was a hard decision, but the Intellimouse was more comfortable. For those of you who haven't heard of the Microsoft Intellimouse Explorer, here's the lowdown: - Two normally placed buttons, a scrollwheel (also a programmable button), and two thumb buttons for a total of five programmable buttons. - It's USB which can convert to PS/2 with adapter. - It doesn't use a ball on the underside, but a LED which does indeed work on every surface I tried it on with exception to a mirror-- The box said it wouldn't, but I had to try anyway! I also got to play with a Watchcam made by Casio. While it was only capable of taking black-and-white still images, during the snapshot phase you viewed the screen in video mode (not slowly changing still images.) The resolution is pretty good for such a small camera-- located in the "top" (in reference to normally viewing a watch face.) Take look at it here: ______________________________________________________________________ Table Of Contents - Voting Booth and Other PCWize Stuff - Software Review - Cool Sites - Tips, Tricks, Do's and Don't Do's - That's the news! - Security Issues, Hoaxes, Viruses and Other Urban Legends - 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 as written, please change your e-mail font to Courier New. ______________________________________________________________________ ** A word from our sponsors ** ------ http://www.creditcardanalyzer.com - find out how much your credit cards are costing you and see how much money you could save by transferring the balance to a lower interest card ------ Want to see your advertisement here? For more information, go here: ______________________________________________________________________ HackTech by The NMI Reuse, Recycle, Reboot... ------ Hello again, and welcome to another episode of "What's the Geek up to" :) You'll never guess what I'm writing this week's article on. No, really, go ahead and guess! I happen to be using one of the first REAL laptop computers, called the TRS-80 Model 100. This little beauty, while it doesn't come with Windows, and can't do web pages, has something even better: Convenience. Yes, you got that right, convenience. I do a lot of writing, not all of it for PCWize. Sometimes I like to just jump right in and start typing. Does Microsoft let me do that? Nooooo... If I'm starting from power off, I have to turn it on, wait for the system to load up Windows, a good few minutes or so (hey, I'm spoiled) THEN I get to wait for Word to open up, so I can use THAT, another minute... In a day when computers cost as much as a cheap used car (sometimes MORE depending on the car :) Why in the heck should I have to wait for everything to boot up?? I want it NOW and I don't like having to wait for something I paid 2 grand for to "get around to it". I know, not everyone has fast machines, and you might have to wait even longer. Well, back in 1983, when this Model 100 came out, it was called "instant on". I turn it on, and it's ready to type again, no waiting, no booting up, no long TV-channel-check-and-refrigerator-raid-while-loading kind of thing happening. Yep, when I hit that power switch, it goes right into the main menu, and gives you a few options, like BASIC, TEXT, TELCOM, ADDRSS, and SCHEDL. Sure, the options are pretty brief, but for back then, this kind of technology was simply amazing. Now, of course, we have fancy graphics and... well... fancy graphics. It doesn't seem like our programs are loading THAT much faster (aside from the days of Cassette Loading, where you could almost literally drink a six-pac of your favorite beverage while waiting) but all these graphics are only useful if they convey some meaningful information. When I'm on the web, the only meaningful information I get from most pictures is how long my patience can hold out while the 5th banner ad in a row loads up BEFORE I get to the information I'm looking for. Where HAS technology gone in the last almost 20 years, anyway?? Let's see... Well, I can look at pretty colors and a nice picture that tells me to WAIT. I can get icons that pop up and tell me to WAIT. I even get nice well-drawn screen messages that appear and say ERROR- PLEASE WAIT. It seems for all of our achievements, we're still waiting... So while I'm waiting for my 98 system to boot up, load Word, and connect to the Internet so I can send this thing off, I think I'll take the laptop apart and see what I can rewire... Tune in next week when I give the results of the Great Internet Vs. Outernet debate! on the PCWize Forum . TheNMI Send your passwords and TRS-80 Model 100 schematics to: TheNMI@PCWIZE.COM Editor's note: This article brings back fond memories of my first home PC; The most awesome TRS-80 Model I-- which used cassette tapes instead of disks, and for which I bought a huge, whopping, crowd gathering, make your friends green with envy, 128KB memory expansion card. Sigh.... Those were the days. Believe it or not, I still have some of those cassette tapes with my first programming attempts. Speaking of which, if any of you readers out there know where I can pick a TRS-80 Model I up at, I would be most appreciative! ______________________________________________________________________ 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 can discuss anything computer related and it's a good place to get help with any computer questions you may have. ______________________________________________________________________ Software Review ------ Name: 602Pro PCPro Suite v2000a by Software602 Inc. Genre: Office Applications Platform: PC Win9x/00/NT Type/Cost: Freeware Size: 12.70MB Homepage: Download: If you're like me, you don't want to spend the big bucks to play in the same sandbox as the rest of the kids. If Microsoft Office is a little out of your range, then give PCPro Suite a spin. It is compatible with Microsoft Word and Excel documents, integrates well with Outlook Express and offers some pretty comparable features. It even comes with a photo editor. ______________________________________________________________________ Cool Sites ------ Baby Gender Predictor I've seen all sorts of these things in charts and books etc., but this one is pretty cool. ------ IP address to Latitude and Longitude Do you just gotta know where a machine is physically located? Try this cool gem. ------ Scanner Help - Basics 101 I recently tried to scan in an 8 1/2" x 11" document that my basic little text scanning program couldn't handle-- It was a form with little boxes and diagrams, so I tried to scan it in with my graphics program. After dinking with it for quite a while, I finally got what I wanted at a filesize I could afford. I wish I had run across Scantips, because it would have saved me a few grey hairs. Wayne Fulton breaks it down into step-by-step explanations of how to get the most out of your scanner. He covers everything, so no matter how strange your situation may be, it'll be covered on his site. ______________________________________________________________________ Tips, Tricks, Do's and Don't Do's ------ In the realm of hidden but very useful applications, comes ipconfig. You can use Winipcfg to get much of the same information, but if you're looking to either print out the information, or file it away for later reference, then Winipcfg just won't do the trick. >From a DOS window, type "ipconfig /all" (without the quotes of course.) Did the info fly by too fast? Try "ipconfig /all | more". The "|" is called a pipe and it is usually located above the "\" key. It takes the output of the previous command and "pipes" it to the input of the following command. In case the pipe character is not above your "\", then it looks like a colon ":" but instead of dots, it has two short vertical lines. If you'd like to get a copy of the output in a file, you can do it this way "ipconfig /all > ipconfig.txt". The ">" is a redirection command that works like a pipe, but is used to send it to an output rather than another command. Another example, is if you'd like to send the output to a printer, try "ipconfig /all > prn". If your computer days didn't include DOS, you can use the redirection command to print other things like text files too. i.e. "mytextfile.txt > prn" ------ If your UNIX/Linux use leans more to the Solaris side of the house, then check out Solaris Guides at: ______________________________________________________________________ That's the news! ------ E-mail taps by the FBI Have you heard of Carnivore? It eats e-mail like candy, and here I was thinking that carnivores only ate meat. The legalities are still up in the air, but suffice it to say that this is another chink in the already Swiss cheesed Internet security and privacy we have to live with. Got something to say about it? Take it to the forum. ------ House passes bill against spammers! Well, it's about darn time. I mean we've had junk mail laws in effect for FAX machines forever now, and I don't understand what took so long to get this puppy passed. Got something to say about it? Take it to the forum. ______________________________________________________________________ Security Issues, Hoaxes, Viruses and Other Urban Legends ------ Please visit http://www.pcwize.com/tech/computer/secdef.shtml if you would like to know the definitions for hoaxes, viruses, worms and urban legends. ------ Yet another bug in the MS Office suite You might have already heard about this one-- This was supposed to go out last week, but this concerns an HTML script vulnerability. ------ It's been a quiet couple of weeks on the new virus/worm front. Let's hope it stays that way for a while! ______________________________________________________________________ PCWize Contests and Winner Announcement ------ 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 editor@pcwize.com so that we can work a deal. ------ Sorry, no contest this week. I haven't had time to line up some new sponsors. Once this move gets all worked out, we'll be back on track with some great stuff to give away. ______________________________________________________________________ Well, that's it for this issue! Have a good week and I'll see you in seven days. Leif Gregory Copyright © 1997-00 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