PCWize Edition #30 - LCD Screens November 28, 1999 ______________________________________________________________________ Hello once again, I'd like to apologize to everyone who had difficulties reaching me by e-mail as well as trying to get to the PCWize web site. My web host seems to have disappeared. Unfortunately, I've been asking my readers to do as I say and not do as I do. If I had followed my own advice about fully checking out deals you get on the Internet, then maybe I wouldn't have gotten taken for a ride that cost me $90 USD. I won't tell you which web host was doing the driving, yet, as I still want to give the guy a chance to reconcile our differences, and I'm not one to cry wolf. However, you may be seeing a bozo alert sometime soon on this service. I am glad to say that the PCWize web site has been moved to a much more reputable host, and I'm definite that I can trust this guy as we've been friends for eight years. At any rate, PCWize should be up and running very soon. To help you all help yourselves, next week we will feature an article on how you can check out Internet based services and minimize your exposure to scams. For now, you can catch a sneak preview of the PCWize web site at . ------ Check out the next installment of Leif's Laptop Quest! ______________________________________________________________________ TOC 1. LCD Screens 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. LCD Screens ------ Last month I discussed CRTs, we will now continue into LCD screens which differ completely from CRT monitors. Choosing a display has never been so difficult as with LCD screens. There are so many acronyms, so many differences, and so little information. My wife and I decided to purchase a laptop for her to do her work and school on. Of course e-mail was a necessity as she and her brother's wife spend ungodly amounts of time talking on the phone, and speaking of which, my wife and her have the strangest rules of engagement for e-mail I have ever witnessed. One of them will send an e-mail in the normal e-mail sending fashion, and then for some unknown reason, some unforeseen force, some primal urge, they will pick up the phone and proceed to tell the recipient exactly what was contained in the e-mail. I'm confused! Maybe I missed something? Possibly there is an RFC that discusses this phenomenon. But, I digress. Let's get back to LCD screens. LCD stands for Liquid Crystal Display and you've seen the technology hundreds, if not thousands of times while looking at your digital watch. How it works is both simple but very interesting. A liquid containing crystalline structures is sandwiched between two sheets of glass and the crystals react to electrical pulses by changing their position. Depending on the position of the crystal, it either allows light to pass or blocks it much like a shutter in a camera. Of course, the LCDs used in computer screens are a much more complex technology due to the need for color and the the ability to view the screen from the widest possible angles. Let's start off by classifying the types of LCD technology, and then we'll move into what each offers. There are two main types of LCD displays called Passive-Matrix and Active-Matrix. Passive Matrix CSTN - Color Super Twist Nematic DSTN - Double-layered Super Twist Nematic TSTN - Triple Super Twist Nematic HPA - High Performance Addressing Active Matrix (synonymous with TFT) No major differences. Active Matrix is currently the king for LCD displays as it offers the brightest overall picture and the widest viewing angle. However, this performance comes at a price. The reason for this is the main difference in Active Matrix and Passive Matrix screens. Passive Matrix screens access the pixels on the screen via a column and row type of power system. Let's say the screen size is 800x600 pixels, and to access any particular pixel you activate it by sending an electrical pulse to the column and row that the pixel resides on. This is done with the use of transistors at the heads of each column and row. Because our screen is 800 x 600 we need 1,400 total transistors to do this job. Active Matrix screens differ in that every single pixel has between one and four transistors each! This means that for an 800 x 600 screen you would have at a minimum of 480,000 or a maximum of 1,920,000 transistors per screen. The high cost is a result of low yields in the manufacturing process, because if a certain number of those transistors were to fail (either constantly bright pixels or constantly dark ones) you would have a worthless screen. Notice I said "a certain number of failed transistors". Depending on the manufacturer's quality control guidelines, there are certain criteria for sellable and non-sellable screens. They differ from manufacturer to manufacturer, but basically state that only a certain number of dark pixels and a certain number of bright pixels within a certain distance from each other can exist in a sellable screen. This is why it is imperative that you ensure there is a no questions asked return policy for the screen/laptop you purchase. While it may pass the QC criteria at the manufacturer level, it can be an extremely aggravating and annoying thing to actually have to look at while using the screen. A test you should perform before purchasing that LCD screen is to do this: 1. Right click on a blank area of the desktop. 2. On the Background tab, select "None" and click Apply. 3. On the Appearance tab, Item dropdown box, select Desktop 4. To the right of that, change the color to Black and click OK 5. Close any open windows. 6. Look closely at the screen, are any pixels not black? 7. Move the icons that are on the screen to a different area and check the screen where the icons were. 8. Go back to step 4 and make the color White, then do steps 5 - 7 except you are looking for non-white pixels You should probably try to set everything back to the way it was before your test, so as not to make the salesperson angry :^). If you noticed no incorrect pixels, then that screen is good, however that may not be the case with your actual purchase. Again, check for a no questions asked return policy. Chances are that you will most likely not be able to find a screen that does not have some defect, but it's your screen and you make the decision. As for Passive Matrix screens, the order in which I listed them above goes from worst to best. Passive Matrix screens used to be a no-no for the serious LCD user, but new advances in the ability to twist the lightwaves provides a brighter screen and a wider degree of viewability. They still can't match an Active Matrix, but they can still be a very viable alternative for someone looking to cut costs on their purchase. The only real test is to try and see the different types next to each other before buying them. One other item worthy of note is that Active Matrix screens use more power than their Passive Matrix counterparts. A real nitty-gritty resource for those of you who wish to delve deeper into the mysteries of LCD technology should go to: ______________________________________________________________________ 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: TextPad v4.0 by Helios Software Solutions Genre: Text editor Platform: PC Win 95/98/NT Type/Cost: Shareware / $27 USD Size: 5.45MB Homepage: Download: Believe it or not, most of my text editing is done right in my e-mail program, but sometimes I need a little more functionality than it provides. Wordpad, which comes with Windows 95/98/NT usually fits the bill, but I've shelved that one since finding Textpad. Two features that really make this software stand out are its plugin clip libraries and macros. The clip libraries are shortcuts which sit off to the side in their own window that allow you to input text just by double clicking the clip. For example, just by using the clip for an 'ordered list' from the HTML clips, I can enter the below with no typing required from me.
  1. ?
You can also create you own clip libraries or modify an already existing one to create shortcuts for your commonly used text. The other nice feature is macros. There are tons of them that people have already written and are just waiting for you to download. One of my favorites is 'strip HTML', which will take an HTML document and strip out all of the HTML tags, leaving behind just the text. ______________________________________________________________________ 3. Cool Sites ------ Do you truly know yourself? Do you really want to? If you want to see what kind of person you are, try the psychtests.com site. You'll find a whole battery of tests you can take on-line to test your intelligence, relationships, personality, emotional health, and your career personality. If you lie, they'll know... ______________________________________________________________________ 4. Tips, Tricks, Do's and Don't Do's ------ A very irritating thing with Windows is its apparent lack of ability to allow you to change a filename's extension e.g. .DOC, .TXT etc. without a lot of hassle. Here is a great tip to fix that problem. Create a batch file named 'Rename.BAT' and put the below line between the *+*+*+*+*s in it. Save the batch file. Now go to the folder C:\Windows\SendTo and create a shortcut to the batch file (the shortcut will allow you to later define a .PIF which you can set up to auto-close the DOS window.) *+*+*+*+* ren %1 *.zxcv *+*+*+*+* Now, when you are ready to rename a file, right click it, go to the SendTo menu, select rename and the extension will change to .zxcv. Just rename the extension like you normally would to whatever you want, because now you can see it. ______________________________________________________________________ 5. That's the news! ------ Our days of tax free purchases over the Internet may be numbered. I especially like paragraph eight about it being voluntary. ______________________________________________________________________ 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: Bubbleboy Category: Worm Just some more information on bubbleboy. Microsoft has posted fixes for this problem at: ______________________________________________________________________ 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: Scottie DeHart ______________________________________________________________________ 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