-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= |-=>CompuNotes<=-| -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Notes from The Cutting Edge of Personal Computing April 20, 1997 Issue 75 +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+= Managing Editor: Patrick Grote -- mailto:pgrote@inlink.com Assistant Editor: Writer Liaison: Doug Reed-- mailto:dr2web@sprynet.com Archives: ftp://ftp.uu.net/published/compunotes/ Website: email: mailto:notes@inlink.com fax: (314) 909-1662 voice: (314) 909-1662 +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+= CONTENTS My Notes: 1=> Commentary: My Access was Cut! Patrick Grote, mailto:pgrote@inlink.com 2=> This Week's Winner! Web Site Reviews: 3=> Web Site Review: REVIEW OF ICQ, By Jack Decker and Thom Byxbe Reviews: 4=> Product: Special Edition Using Word for Windows 95 by Ron Person and Karen Rose Reviewed By: Robert Hering, mailto:crhering@acy.digex.net 5=> Product: Norton AntiVirus Version 2.0 for Windows95 Reviewed By: Danny Williams, mailto:danny@packet.net 6=> Product: Descent II: The Infinite Abyss Reviewed By: Doug Reed, mailto:dr2web@sprynet.com +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+= CompuNotes is: Available weekly via email and on-line. We cover the PC computing world with comprehensive reviews, news, hot web sites, great columns and interviews. We also give away one software package a week to a lucky winner for just reading our fine publication! Never dull, sometimes tardy, we are here to bring you the computing world the way it is! Please tell every online friend you know about us! CompuNotes B440 1315 Woodgate Drive St. Louis, MO 63122 notes@inlink.com +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+= To subscribe, send an email to listserv@peach.ease.lsoft.com SUBSCRIBE COMPUNOTES-L FirstName LastName To unsubscribe, send an email to listserv@peach.ease.lsoft.com SIGNOFF COMPUNOTES-L +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+= Patrick's Notes 1=> Commentary By Patrick Grote, mailto:pgrote@inlink.com Internet access means more than anything to me. I mean if I can't check my email constantly during the day I feel disconnected from the world. You know, that feeling of surprise when an unexpected email lands in your in basket or the latest, hot issue of CompuNotes arrives. Last week I suffered an outage so to speak. It occurred with my primary internet provider, Inlink. Inlink is like thousands of other city based internet providers offering $19.00 a month access while sitting on the bubble of technology. I stay with Inlink not because I like them, but because I am chained to them with my email addresses. I have, seven, yes, seven email addresses through them. I know I could set up a forwarding file or something, but why risk loosing the precious email. I digress . . . I received an email from Inlink about two weeks ago saying I owed $35.00. This was odd as I just received a free month from them after I referred someone. The email said I would receive an invoice and I should pay it. Not wanting to loose my access I vigilantly waited by the postal mailbox and nothing arrived. I quickly surmised that it must have been a mistake and forgot about it. Forgot about it that is until last Tuesday. On Tuesday I found my main mail account was giving me password access errors. Knowing this is the sign of a suspended account I tried to call their offer. Unfortunately, Inlink was in the middle of a major outage. One of a few they have had recently. When I called I didn't get any options on the voice of talking to support or billing, just a recorded message saying they were experiencing "technical difficulties." The phone then disconnected. Hmmmmm.... After work I stopped by the ATM, got out $35.00 on a hunch and made my way to their offices. I entered their spartan accommodations and found no one available. Hmmm, there is a nice Cisco router someone could use. Oh, look, a 17 inch monitor . . . After three minutes or so of waiting, someone finally appeared. The young man had a beard and a pack of Lucky Strikes in his pocket. I quickly thought two things, "Someone actually under the age of 50 smokes Lucky Strikes and have the Internet service providers of the 90s become the local auto garage from the 50s?" The young man took my money and gave me a hand written receipt. He asked if my service had been suspended, I told him I didn't know since the ISP was down. He told me they were up and he would check on my account. I then asked that question anyone who works with networks asks someone in the biz. "What happened?," I asked. Shooting me the typical "You wouldn't understand" look, he mumbled something about partitions being messed up. He then told me someone would send me a detailed listing of my bill. It's been a week and I haven't gotten anything . . . Ugh! Why does it have to be so hard? 2=> Winner! This week's winner is mailto:pwebb@HAL-PC.ORG! Send them a congrats message mailto:pwebb@HAL-PC.ORG! 3=> Web Site Review: REVIEW OF ICQ, By Jack Decker and Thom Byxbe We have come across a new Internet application that is simple in concept, but which addresses a problem that has plagued some of us for a long time. Here's the scoop: Many of us spend a lot of time (or at least some time) each day on the Internet. While we are online, in theory we should be able to connect to any of our friends or associates who are also online at the same time (no matter where in the world they may be at the moment) and chat. By "chat" we don't necessarily mean voice over the Internet (although that is certainly possible), but in this case we're using the word "chat" in the more traditional sense (traditional for online computer networks, that is), which is to type short messages back and forth between two (or possibly more) people in real time. Real-time chats are a lot faster than e-mail (which most of us find indispensable) because you can ask a question and get an immediate answer. It's similar to using a phone in speed of response, but you don't have to place a call and you can save a transcript of the chat for later review (this is great if you are communicating difficult concepts, important details, or even just things that are difficult to spell!). Again, if you are online and someone else is online, in theory you should be able to quickly set up a chat session between the two of you at any time. However, in the past it has been difficult to set up such chats. The reason (without getting too technical) is that most of us don't have fixed IP addresses, so most conventional chat software (such as WinTalk or other "talk" programs) has no idea how to find us. Knowing that someone is on the 'net but not knowing their IP address (which for most of us is different each time we connect to our Internet Service Provider) is like knowing that they are somewhere on a long passenger train but not knowing which car... without that specific information, they are very difficult to locate. Up until now, most "chat" type programs weren't up to the task. But now there is a new program called ICQ. This is not just a "chat" program - in fact, it has enough features that it could potentially replace as many as four or five other software programs that you may now be using. The unique thing about ICQ is that its creators (Mirabilis LTD. of Sunnyvale, California) have set up a server that keeps track of where all ICQ users are on the net, all the time. Every time you connect to the Internet, your ICQ client (which you can download for free) sends a message to the ICQ server telling it where you are. Anyone else using the ICQ program can then find you easily. In fact, you can create a list of friends or associates that you communicate with frequently, and ICQ will keep track of whether they are currently online or not, so you will know immediately whether they can be contacted. The ICQ program itself lets you chat with other users, and send messages, files or URL's (Web page addresses - if you send one of those, the user has the option of view the page with a Web browser, or saving the URL to a bookmark file). There is even a "pager" mode that lets anyone with World Wide Web access send a short text message to you for instant delivery (instant if you are online, or it will pop up immediately when you next connect to the 'net if you are currently offline). ICQ also interfaces with other Internet telephone or conferencing type programs, so you can use it to facilitate voice (or even video) conversations, or to use the advanced capabilities of other conferencing programs. Now, we have seen other programs that do some of what this program does, and have been fairly unimpressed. In part this because at least one of the authors of this review tends to value his privacy... he's not real comfortable leaving his name, e-mail address, postal address, etc. (and he wouldn't even THINK of leaving his phone number) on a server when he doesn't know how exactly how that information will be used. He already gets enough "spam" e-mail, thank you, and telemarketers are on his list of major annoyances of late-20th century living! So if a program demands that he enter a lot of personal information, it generally has a very short lifespan on his hard drive. So, it was a pleasant surprise to find that ICQ lets you choose how much information you want to make available to others. You can leave any information you wish, and people can search for you using that information. It is recommended that you enter at least your first name, last name, e-mail address, and a nickname - but you are not required to enter ANY of this information. When you register (registration is free, at least for now), you are given a unique six- digit user ID number, and anyone you give that number to will be able to contact you. If you don't leave any personal information on the server, having that number would be the ONLY way they could contact you, or add you to their ICQ "contact list" - and even then, you have the option of refusing to let others add you to their "contact list" without your express prior approval (you can set ICQ up so that anyone who wants to add you to their contact list can do so, or you can set it so that you have to approve any such addition first). Another nice thing about ICQ is that there is an option to set yourself as being "away" (or if you have provided details about yourself, to make yourself "invisible"). This is great for those times when you want to get some work done and don't really want to be disturbed! People can still send you e-mail during those times, of course. On more than one occasion, we were pleasantly surprised to find that this program actually worked the way we would want it to if we had designed it. When we told it to send e-mail, it fired up our e-mail program and brought up the "new mail" window, with the recipient's e- mail address already copied into the "To:" field. When we called up the "Help" menu and clicked on "ICQ Web page", it didn't just bring up a text window containing their URL, it actually fired up our Web browser and took us there. Yet for all this program does, the installation was very easy - in fact it was one of the simplest installations we have seen considering the complexity of the program. It did not ask for a lot of information, or how to find various pieces of software on the system. The current version is still a beta version, however, and we did discover a couple of minor nits (such as the fact that you can't seem to set yourself as being "away" if no one on your "contact list" is currently online). Also, the one inherent problem with programs that depend upon the use of a server being up and running somewhere on the net is that if that server goes offline, crashes, or becomes unreachable for some reason, the client program will be dead in the water. And at the time of this writing, that is a problem that plagues ICQ during certain times of the day. However, we have discovered that they are moving their server to New York in the next few days and will have a much better Internet connection, which should help resolve those problems. To find out more about the ICQ program or to download it, go to the Web page at . The current version is for Windows '95 only, with a version for Windows 3.X and for the NT platform soon to be released. There is also a Macintosh client under development. We give ICQ our TOP product recommendation. If you install it on your system, search for user ID (UID) number 244058 (that's your fearless TechKnow Times editor!) and add it to your contact list and send us an ICQ message letting us know how you like the program. If we're not too busy we might even be available for a short chat! 4=> Product: Special Edition Using Word for Windows 95 by Ron Person and Karen Rose Reviewed By: Robert Hering, mailto:crhering@acy.digex.net MSRP: $34.99 U.S. $46.99 Canada Pages: 1,226 Book Audience: Beginners through professionals could all benefit from this significant reference work. Author Credentials: Mr. Ron Person was one of Microsoft's original twelve Consulting Partners, and is a MS Solutions Planner. Ms. Karen Rose provides desktop publishing techniques, and is the owner and publisher of Little Red Book Press. Technical editing was conducted by Mr. Bruce Wynn, a Microsoft Certified Professional. Content: This reference work describes how to use Word for Windows, Version 7.0, under Windows 95, in detail. The "Special Edition" description refers to specific sections added since the first edition was published in 1995. The book is unparalleled in its depth, covering everything from the basics of word processing and initial use, through Desktop Publishing and Professional Tips. The book is organized into the following parts: Part 1. Everyday Word Processing Part 2. Formatting Documents Part 3. Creating Envelopes and Mailings Part 4. Mastering Special Features Part 5. Publishing with Graphics Part 6. Handling Large Documents Part 7. Using Word with Office and Networks Part 8. Customizing with Word Part 9. Techniques from the Pros Format: A key reason for this book's length, and content value, is the extensive use of graphics and exhibits, from what to expect on-screen to examples of actual results, and handy reference charts showing related commands and short-cuts. Review Comments: Anyone who has used Microsoft's built-in Word for Windows95 Help to understand the nuances of the Word program will appreciate the amount of effort required to produce this work. The book simply replaces the need for the typical help screens. In effect, it contains enough information about the application to enable complete mastery over its many powerful features. Each chapter's content is succinctly summarized at the beginning of the chapter, alerting the reader what to expect. The tone of the text is conversational, unlike the typical software user manual. Parts One through Three cover the basics of Word for Windows95, such as creating and editing a document, formatting techniques such as columns, mailmerge and printing controls. These parts tend to be similar to many other help manuals, but the level of detail is significant. Even so, the chapter on using styles for repetitive formats is distinctive in its treatment of how to use the style gallery and methods of application. The fun begins, and similarities with other manuals end, with Part 4, the "Special Features" section. Here, the reader finds how to handle tables ranging from the table setup, formatting, column and row editing, calculating math results, and fine-tuning the table styles. This section also addresses how to develop and work in Outline mode, and how to automate field codes for such features as table of contents, indices, and tables of authorities. The chapter on building forms and fill-in dialog boxes is very informative, and helpful, for developing business applications. Step-by-step methods for creating customized form fields, including illustrations and figures, are provided to guide the reader. The "Publishing with Graphics" section, which is over 100 pages, contains innumerable techniques and methods for importing, modifying and controlling graphic images, framing and moving text and graphics. It explores Word's drawing tools, creating special effects with WordArt, and how to graph data. For those that have MS Office 95, there are many clip art images available, royalty free, that can be used in Word documents such as newsletters and brochures. The methods for placement and control of these images to enhance the document's appearance are thoroughly covered. Special text effects are also explored in-depth, with focus on such areas as rotating text, kerning (spacing between letters), and how to modify the vertical spacing between lines in a paragraph. In the "Handling Large Documents" section, techniques and methods to control Footnotes and Endnotes are provided, along with creating Indexes and Tables of Contents. The reader is guided through the process of creating a master document, and then a series of sub- documents. This chapter would be particularly useful to a administrator responsible for multiple document creation and revisions for a department or agency. And, last but not least, the book contains an Index of Common Problems, offering assistance by referencing the proper book section for solutions. This book should be considered the standard reference for Word for Windows. QUE Corporation 201 W. 103rd Street Indianapolis, IN 46290 Sales: 1-800-428-5331 Ratings: Install/ease of use: Not Applicable User Friendliness: GOLD Support: Not Applicable Quality: GOLD 5=> Product: Norton AntiVirus Version 2.0 for Windows95 Reviewed By: Danny Williams, mailto:danny@packet.net Reviewed on: Pentium 60, 16 MB RAM, Windows 95 Requires: Windows95, otherwise unspecified Street price: $65 Most people with computers have heard about viruses - nasty little programs that cause you trouble after attaching themselves to other programs and places in your system like boot records. Trouble that might be only a silly message that pops up on your screen or trouble that might toast your whole hard drive. ...with your 100 page research paper on it. ...the night before it is due. ...and your backups are infected too and disappear as soon as you restore them. Since that would probably ruin your whole day (at least), a great stress-saver is a virus scanning program like Norton AntiVirus (NAV). NAV protects you computers by checking your files for typical virus "signatures" by comparing them to an easily updatable signature file, repairing or deleting infected programs when they are found, and keeping information about scanned, clean files to warn you when they have changed, possibly by the intrusion of a virus. One of the things that always frustrated me about antivirus programs was the intrusiveness of the TSRs and the amount of memory they took. NAV does a good job of staying in the background and giving me control over what it will do and when it will run. The installation provides choices for setting up NAVs level of protection and corresponding intrusiveness and cost in system resources. In a high risk situation where several people use the same computer, don't format floppies before reusing them, run unshrinkwrapped software, and files are regularly downloaded from the Internet or other outside source, it makes sense to let NAV "Load auto protect at startup" which is an always active program which constantly monitors for virus presence. In a computer which is less at risk of viruses - one that is used by one person, is not connected to a network or modem, runs only shrinkwrapped software and formats all floppies before they are reused, "Scan critical files at startup," which does a quick scan of the boot sector and system files before Windows starts, is probably enough. Rather than forget to do a systemwide scan every once in a while, you can let NAV "Schedule weekly scans of hard disks" automatically. NAV offers to make a set of "rescue" disks. These are a boot disk, an NAV program disk, and a virus definition disk and are what save the day when that boot sector virus shows up. If the scan done at boot time detects a virus, you can reboot with the rescue diskette and repair or delete the infected files before infecting more files on your disk. Everyone should have such a set of disks, because some viruses can render your computer unbootable and thus leave you no way to repair the damage without some bootable diskettes with the correct tools. After getting answers to all its configuration questions, the installation takes a pause before writing the NAV programs to disk and shows a list of what will happen in the installation. This is a great touch that more installation program should do. I reviewed the list of what the installation planned to do: 1. Update startup files 2. Update registry 3. Create rescue disks 4. Add virus protection to Netscape I saw everything was like I thought it was, and gave the OK. A couple of disk flips later, and I was ready to run...almost. NAV had detected that I had Netscape Navigator installed on my computer and offered to install itself as a helper application. Now every download I do from Netscape first runs through NAV, thus scanning and proclaiming safe any file before it is usable. It's a nice feature, and keeps me from forgetting to scan files downloaded from the Internet, but unfortunately I had some trouble with this feature. I spent about 1/2 hour downloading a program, NAV did its thing and said the file was virus free. Then it asked where I wanted to save the file. I selected a directory on a disk with lots of space, and it told me simply that it could not save the file. No option to save it elsewhere, no retry, just "OK." The file was lost and I had to start over. That happened the with the first two files I tried to download after installing NAV, so I turned the helper app off and did a couple of downloads - they worked fine. I turned the helper back on and now it saves fine too. I can't definitely pin this oddity on either NAV or Netscape or my computer setup, so your mileage will most certainly vary on this one. For a virus scanning package to be very useful, its virus list must be updated regularly. I've heard the number of new viruses written every year is around 2,000. At that pace, any virus definition file is outdated very quickly. In fact, this brand new copy of NAV gave me a warning at the end of the installation that my definition file was outdated and should be replaced. If updating these definitions is difficult, then it probably won't get done very often, thus leaving the computer at higher risk. Rather than leaving me to track down a BBS number and make that long distance call (although one is available) or call an 800 number to have a diskette sent out (although one is available) NAV makes the whole update completely painless by connecting through my Internet connection and downloading the new file from an FTP server. It only took a minute or two and I was protected with the most current definitions. Once installed and updated, NAV can protect your computer in several ways. Each of these is selectable and configurable, so you can tailor NAVs activity to match your own level of risk and resources. The most straightforward is "Manual Scan." You run the program, tell it to look for viruses, and it tells you if it finds any and offers to fix them. This one uses no resources unless you are actually running the program, of course. "Scheduled Scan" runs automatically at predetermined intervals and doesn't take many resources from your other programs while it is waiting to run. "Startup Scan" checks boot records and the files your computer uses to boot up, and does so very quickly at boot time. "Auto Protect" checks every program, document, and template files as they are used. It also looks for "virus-like" activity, like formatting your hard disk, and warns you in case you are not the one who initiated such a drastic event. This uses the most resources, but can save a lot of grief in a high risk situation. "Inoculation" is a preventative measure that records information about an inoculated file (a program or document of yours) without changing the original. This information can be used later to see if the file has been changed, and warn you of that fact. NAV can scan single files, directories, whole hard drives, or multiple drives all in one pass. For all the work it is doing, NAV seems very fast - scanning my 540Mb drive with 423Mb of data on it in 2,584 files, Memory, boot records took less than three minutes on my Pentium 60. Single files and most directories take only a couple of seconds. The combination of good speed, configurability, and easy updates means this program is very likely to be used regularly, kept up to date, and thus keep you protected from nasty little viruses out to ruin your whole day. Symantec, Inc. 10201 Torre Ave. Cupertino, CA 95014 (800) 441-7234 6=> Product: Descent II: The Infinite Abyss Reviewed By: Doug Reed, mailto:dr2web@sprynet.com Requires: 486/66, 8 MB RAM, 2xCDROM, DOS MSRP: $49.95 Descent II: The Infinite Abyss is not a new game but is instead an enhanced and expanded version of the hit sequel released last spring by Interplay. In addition to the original "Counterstrike" missions that were part of the original Descent II release, Interplay and Parallax (the creators of Descent) have added on 22 new missions (the "Vertigo" series) containing 12 new robots and all sorts of nasty surprises, and a mission builder that can create missions for either Descent or Descent II. To top it all off, they've included not only the DOS version of Descent II but also the native Windows 95 version and the S3Virge version (enhanced for 3D graphics cards) as well. Wow! Even if you already own Descent II, there is plenty here to justify getting this newer version. I previously reviewed Descent II last spring and found it to be one of the really great sequels; it surpasses it's predecessor in almost every way. I also cautioned everyone then that if you didn't like Descent you wouldn't like Descent II. That is still true. This enhanced version is definitely for Descentophiles like myself. With my Assassin 3D/Sidewinder setup, the game is definitely a killer. The starting cutscene along with those for the "Counterstrike" missions are incredible, better than even those in Mechwarrior II. Could I possibly puff up this game any more? I doubt it. The game comes on two CDs, the first includes the original game (DOS, Windows 95, and S3 Virge versions) while the second contains the Vertigo missions as well as the mission builder. From Windows 95 the whole installation runs smoothly, thanks to autoplay, and installs both the Windows 95 and DOS versions (in case your computer doesn't have the horses for the Windows 95 version). The Windows 95 version does require significantly more horsepower than the DOS version; a Pentium CPU is recommended along with 16 MB RAM. I don't find it that much on an inconvenience to play the DOS version, however, and the game runs significantly faster in DOS mode (I mean really, who the heck can do multi-tasking while playing this game?). The Vertigo missions are definitely hard; if you've never played Descent or Descent II before I definitely recommend that you start with the Counterstrike missions. Oddly, the cutscenes for the Vertigo missions that a leap backwards to the same type used in the original Descent (although somewhat better looking). No great animation or effects; simple stills with text flowing across them. Nice, but not nearly as great as the Intro! Still, if you've completed all of the missions in Descent and Descent II, the Vertigo series will give you more of the same intense, claustrophobic action you love. The prize with this package however is the Mission Builder. I've dabbled with Mission Builders before; most are third-party utilities made by small companies or individuals. It has been my experience that most of the third-party utilities are tough to work with and more often than not your hard work crashes when you load it into the game. This is not the case with this Mission Builder, probably simply because it was made by the same guys who made the game! Bottom line is simple; if you love Descent or Descent II then this is probably a good buy simply for the additional missions alone. If you ever had the itch to create your own levels, however, than this is simply a must-have. Interplay and Parallax have upped the ante again. Interplay Productions 16815 Von Karman Ave. Irvine, CA 92606 mailto:Info@Interplay.com Ratings: Installation/Ease of Use: Gold User-Friendliness: Gold Quality: Gold User: First-person action gamers and fans of Descent --END OF ISSUE