PCWize Vol 4, Issue 17 - Virtual dough April 23, 2000 ______________________________________________________________________ You could win $10,000 and a Sony DVD player just by recommending PCWize to a friend! ------ For all of you MP3 mavins out there who just can't get enough, take a look at Maximum PCs little setup for running 256 hours worth of MP3 goodness through your car's stereo system. Toss out that old, clunky CD jukebox in your trunk and let this baby provide the music for your soul. ------ Have you met Ananova yet? She made her big debut on the 19th of April as the first computer animated newscaster. If reading the news isn't your bag, then maybe Ananova is more your style. Besides, she has way-cool hair! ------ Have you heard of the Paypal service? It's kind of like an on-line bank but allows you to transfer money to anyone with an e-mail address. You set up your account by securing it with either a bank account or credit card. Once you're all signed up, you can start zapping money around the Internet. So what is this useful for? You can use it to purchase things on e-bay, pay a friend back for lunch, send instant funds to your kids etc. No more writing checks or taking out $20 from the ATM just to pay your colleague back $6.50 for lunch. The service is free because Paypal makes its money from the interest gained on the balances in Paypal user's accounts. If you sign up now, you'll get a free $5.00 balance to get started with. The caveat being that you have to secure the account with a credit card. Currently, the service is available only to U.S. residents, but look for this to change in the future. I have never before recommended a service or product where I would directly benefit by you all signing up because I felt that you (my readers) might view it as a get rich quick scheme for Leif. Yes, if you sign up by using the referrer ID, I will get $5.00 for each person who completes the account set-up and secures their account with a credit card. It's a nice way to support the PCWize newsletter without you really "paying" for it. I will leave the choice up to you though. If you like what Paypal has to offer, then sign up under my referrer ID. If not, then just go to and sign up without the referrer ID. Here's my referrer ID: ______________________________________________________________________ TOC 1. Voting Booth and Other PCWize Stuff 2. Software Review 3. Cool Sites 4. Tips, Tricks, Do's and Don't Do's 5. That's the news! 6. Security Issues, Hoaxes, Viruses and Other Urban Legends 7. 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 ** ------ http://www.freecreditanalyzer.com - Get your credit situation analyzed online without affecting your credit report. ------ Want to see your advertisement here? For more information, go 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: DX-Ball 2 v1.2 by Longbow Digital Arts Genre: Games Platform: PC Win 9x/00/NT Type/Cost: Freeware Size: 2.11MB Homepage: Download: Remember the days of Breakout? I do! It's still one of my all time favorite games. DX-Ball 2 is Breakout on steroids! Ultra cool graphics and great tunes via .mod .xm and .s3m music files will keep you engrossed for hours. The freeware version comes with 24 levels, and by registering, you can get additional ones. ______________________________________________________________________ 3. Cool Sites ------ The Internet Tradeshow List If you like to attend seminars, take a look at this site to see which ones will be appearing near you. ------ Comet Alert Mailing List Are you an amateur astronomer? Then this might just be your bag. They have all sorts of categories concerning the latest and greatest of celestial events. ______________________________________________________________________ 4. Tips, Tricks, Do's and Don't Do's ------ Don't own a scroll-wheel mouse yet? Just can't seem to grab hold of those scrollbars either? Sometimes bigger is better! Right-click on your desktop, select properties, choose the Appearance tab, using the dropdown box under Item, select Scrollbar. Next, increase the number in the Size box until you find the size that works for you. On the flip-side of the coin, if you do have a scroll-wheel mouse and never use the Scrollbars, take that number down to eight (the smallest allowed-- at least under Windows 98SE) to gain back some more window space. ______________________________________________________________________ 5. That's the news! ------ What to do about Microsoft? Break it up ala Ma Bell, or leave it alone? I've tended to stay out of this fray, but so many of you have asked my opinion, that I guess I should say something. I like some Microsoft products, and absolutely abhor others. My machine is a mish-mash of highly segregated applications that perform specific functions. For example, my FTP program doesn't do e-mail or view web pages, my e-mail doesn't write HTML mail, and my browser doesn't do e-mail. When I think of the word "monopoly" I think of the board game. Seriously though, a monopoly to me is something that exists in which competition has no chance, or there is a lack of competition entirely. Using my definition, Microsoft is not a monopoly. Yes, they are predatory, and yes, they are highly aggressive! However, competition does exist, and they do have a chance. But you're saying "Microsoft gives their stuff away for free and bundles it with their OS! How can anyone have a chance?" I never said it was going to be given to them on a silver platter. Consumers drive the market. We are the ones who decide which products to use, and in doing so, decide which competitors survive. Let's take a look at the processor market for example. A few years back, there were three major vendors of PC processors. Intel (obviously), AMD, and Cyrix. For the longest time Intel was king-of-the-hill and for good reason. AMD and Cyrix couldn't match the processor speed, nor the floating point units (FPU). AMD was a much closer contender while Cyrix has pretty much disappeared. If you look now, AMD is not just a contender, but a serious competitor. Their processor speeds are par with Intel, their FPU is still a little less comparable, but they make up for it in other ways. One of which was cost. Using our wallets, we told Intel that the majority of computer users weren't looking for top-of-the-line, but for a middle-of-the-road solution. This same scenario can be applied to the OS market. Linux is a contender, but despite all the hype about it unseating Microsoft, I don't believe it will happen. Why? because it's not exactly user friendly. The majority of computer users out there just want to turn the thing on and have it work. They don't want to spend hours dinking with settings and tweaking out every last drop of performance. For geeks like me, this is fun part of computer use, for the rest, it's nothing but pure hassle. Who do I think could become a serious competitor? BeOS! From the way it handled on the Bebox that I was fortunate enough to get to play with during its initial development, it was pretty amazing. I'm still waiting to reformat my hard drive to load it on my notebook (normally you don't have to do this, but a conflict with my hibernation partition is going to make me do it), but I expect that it will be just as impressive there. So how many Windows applications do I use? Well, let's see. I have Microsoft Word loaded because I needed it to write term papers. I have IE5 so I can check the compliancy of my web pages that I write, and Frontpage98 to write the web pages. Lesse, oh yeah, almost forgot... I have Windows 98SE loaded. :^) I use third party programs to do everything else. For example: - Opera for web browsing - The Bat! for e-mail - CuteFTP for FTP - Textpad for ASCII text - FlashGet for a download manager - ICQ for an instant messenger - Adobe for graphics - Agent for usenet news reader - Clipmate for a clipboard manager - WinAMP for audio playback - CCTask as opposed to CTRL-ALT-DEL taskmanager - WS Ping Pro Pack for connection testing and information I'm a firm believer in the adage of Jack-of-all-Trades-Master-of-None. An application that tries to do everything will only succeed in doing it partially well. Granted, it's more work for the user to learn all the different applications, but once you do, you'll see how the do-it-all applications don't do it all very well. The power is in our hands. We decide who stays and who goes. I've just gotta say that if Microsoft is a monopoly, AOL had better look out! ______________________________________________________________________ 6. 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. ------ CIH is a virus that was released into the "wild" (read loose on the Internet) in June of 1998. It was written by a man named Chen Ing-hau whose initials mysteriously match that of the virus name. The virus was written to commemorate the Chernobyl nuclear accident on April 26th 1986. Not surprisingly, its activation date is that of April 26th every year. If your virus signatures are up to date, then you shouldn't have any problem, but it never hurts to be forewarned. The reason for warning on this particular virus is because of its particularly malicious nature. Upon activation, it will overwrite the hard drive with garbage until the machine crashes. Unfortunately, that isn't all. On machines with Flash BIOS (pretty much every recent computer has this now), it will overwrite it. This is extremely bad, because unlike a hard drive which can be reformatted, a bad BIOS will prevent your machine from doing anything. On some motherboards, you can replace the chip. On others, you can't. Either way, it's bad news. FYI, there are actually four different variants of this virus. Three of them activate on April 26th, while the other activates on the 26th of *any* month. Go here for more info: ______________________________________________________________________ 7. 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. ------ This week's sponsor is EasyDesk Software, and they have developed some great applications to make your daily life much easier. Please visit their web site to get the lowdown on all the great products they have, and to help keep the PCWize newsletter FREE! ------ The winner of this weeks random drawing contest is: Shelly White ______________________________________________________________________ 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