If undeliverable, return to: Winnipeg PC User Group Please Rotate 337C Pembina Highway I thought I’d give you Winnipeg, Manitoba R3L 2E4 folks something to perform that you couldn’t easily do
July 16
June 18
June 25
Garrick Theatre with the PDF version
What a
Summer!
Gene Barlow Demos Tid Bits N Bytes PowerQuest Products like
Microsoft Win98 Presentation
UG Participates in Win98 Rollout at ROTATE YOUR MONITOR! from the
WINNIPEG PC USER GROUP, INC.
A Charter Member of the Association of PC User Groups (APCUG)
VOLUME 16 NUMBER 10/11 JUN/JUL, 1998
80XXX
1. Can you believe this? — A PRINTED newsletter! Now we need ALL you folks to per- suade your favorite computer dealer to help us defray some costs by advertising with us! 2. General meetings are held at the Mennonite Brethren Collegiate Institute, Jubilee Auditorium, 181 Riverton. Meetings start at 7 p.m. The facility is wheelchair accessible. 3. The June General Meeting (Thursday, June 18th) will feature a presentation of Win- dows 98 by Neil Froggatt, Microsoft Product Manager, Windows Platform Team! You asked for it — you got it! And then — a week later (June 25th) the WPCUG will be participating in the rollout of Win98 at the Garrick Theatre! Call 1-800-615-0319 and register for Event #18125 or go to: http://www.microsoft.com/events/windows98. 4. The July General Meeting will be held on Thursday, July 16th at MBCI. The presenta- tion will be made by Gene Barlow (formerly with UG Relations of IBM) and now repre- senting the PowerQuest Corporation. Come and see some exciting new products from this innovative Utah company! You will LOVE Gene! 5. If you haven’t made your initial $28.50 (incl. PST/GST) deposit towards our Internet serv- ice, bring along your VISA or MASTERCARD to this meeting. You can also enroll by charging it to your “plastic” by opening the door called INTRNET on the BBS. Renewal of your User Group membership can also be made through the BBS using your credit card. Just open the door JOINUG and follow the on screen instructions. Winnipeg PC User Group, Inc. Volume 16, Number 10/11, Page 2 June/July 1998
he Winnipeg PC User Group, Inc. is a non-profit or- Elected Officers for the election year ending Oct. 1998: Tganization formed to provide those with an interest in Home Phone the IBM Personal Computer or compatible computer, President George Bowman ...... 338 2658 with an opportunity to come together and otherwise assist Past President Roger Buchanan ...... 475 2936 one another in the use and understanding of these computers. Vice Pres. Jon Phillips...... 888 9180 The group serves as a forum to exchange ideas, to discuss the Treasurer Perry Exley ...... 488 6830 latest developments, and share information. Membership Art Cavenagh...... 888 1432 ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ Exec. Sec. Brian Lowe...... 478 3561 Online Serv. Mgr. Michael Kendrick (acting) ...... TBA This periodical is published monthly for the purpose of ad- Newsletter Paul Stephen ...... 284 2810 vising members of the various group activities and sharing of Shawn Zayac...... 222 1813 information between other similar User Groups around the Group-Buyer Greg McClure ...... 942 3301 world. It is mailed by bulk mail to all members of the group Advertising Mgr. Bert Gutzmann ...... 932 3357 and to all other User Groups who reciprocate with a copy of Forum Coordinator John Kesson ...... 489 7617 their newsletter. (Please do not call executive members after 9 P.M.)
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ Home Phone The group is not affiliated with any commercial organization Program George Bowman ...... 338 2658 and receives no financial support other than through member- ship dues and paid advertising in the periodical. The officers BBS ...... 958-7280 (28.8 kbps) are volunteers and only receive the following benefits: they Resource Centre “Voice Line” ...... 958 7228 learn more about their computer; gain satisfaction from hav- Resource Centre “FAX Line” ...... 958 7229 ing helped others and meet many people with common inter- *** N E W S L E T T E R *** ests and problems. Home Phone Editor Paul Stephen ...... 284 2810 ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ Co-editor Shawn Zayac...... 222 1813 Group By-Laws describing the purpose of the group, can be obtained from the Executive Secretary at no cost. Res. Centre Mgr. Bert Gutzmann ...... 932 3357 ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ Contributors To This Issue: Membership Information can be obtained from the Mem- G. McClure, J. Phillips, B. Gutzmann, G. Bowman, B. Vane, B. Lowe, bership Secretary, explaining the various benefits of member- J. Binkely, D. Christle, N. Longmuir (photos), D. Gonse and P. Stephen. ship. Deadline & Ad Sizes ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ All copy and all advertising MUST reach the newsletter editor no later Monthly Meetings are held on the 3rd Thursday of each than the third Thursday of each month. A cheque or Money Order month. The Executive meets on the 2nd Thursday. Volun- MUST accompany ad copy. Classified ads MUST be submitted in typed teers for many activities are always needed. form and must not exceed four 42 character lines. Ad copy MUST be ready to offset print and MUST fit: WPCUG ONLINE sERVICES Winnipeg PCUG BBS Width Length Full Page - 7.5" X 10" 958-7280 28.8 kbps Half Page - 7.5" X 5" - 3.5" X 10" Quarter Page -3.5"X5" Winnipeg PCUG Internet Service -7.5"X2.5" Eighth Page -3.5"X2.5" 958-7220 USR 33.6 kbps -7.5"X1.25" Advertising Rates
No of times(x)/12 issues COPYRIGHT POLICY & LIABILITY WAIVER (Dollars) This publication is (C)opyright, Winnipeg PC User Group, Inc., Ad. Size 1998. The reprinting in another publication, of original material ap- pearing in this newsletter must give credit to the Winnipeg PC User 1x 3x 6x 12x Group Inc. and to any author indicated. Such material may be re- printed at no cost, but a copy of the publication in which it has Full Page 50.00 135.00 240.00 420.00 been reprinted must be provided at no cost to the Winnipeg. PC Half Page 25.00 67.50 120.00 210.00 User Group Inc. Some images copyright www.arttoday.com. Business Card 10.00 30.00 60.00 120.00 Flyer Inserts 225.00 Views and opinions expressed are those of the author indicated (or the editor) and not necessarily of the group or Executive. The group, contributors, and the editor of this newsletter do not as- Classified Members entitled to one FREE Ads 4 (42 Char.) sume any liability for damages arising out of the publication or line ad. - non-commercial - per issue, non-publication of any advertisement article, or other item herein. others $3.75 per 4 line ad. Extra lines $0.90 each. Winnipeg PC User Group, Inc. Volume 16, Number 10/11, Page 3 June/July 1998
Mailing Addresses Contents Of This Issue Page Advertisers General Correspondence: — Attn: Exec. Sec.
Membership: — Attn: Membership Secretary Dave’s Quick Print ...... 18 Healey Visual Inc...... 4 Winnipeg PC User Group Inc. Tellier Electronics ...... 32 P.O.Box 3149 Winnipeg PC User Group ISP ...... 27 Winnipeg, Manitoba R3C 4E6 Items This Month Controlled Escape ...... 5 Periodical Exchange & Review Software: The President’s Report ...... 8 Paul Stephen Wondering About Microsoft Windows 98? ...... 8 401-1025 Grant Avenue Experiences from the Saturday Drop-In and Install Forum 10 Winnipeg, Manitoba Winnipeg PC User Group Forums ...... 11 R3M 1Y4 Evan Burns — “Champion of the Disabled” ...... 11 Group Meeting Schedule / Coming Attractions ...... 12 Yearly Membership Dues: PowerQuest Presentation — July 16, 1998 ...... 12 Home Improvement Help for Computer Users Junior Membership(under age 18) ...... $25 A Review of the Book and CD-ROM Adult Membership ...... $49.95 “Just Ask Jon Eakes” ...... 13 Associate Membership ...... $20 DiskMapper2 — A Software Review ...... 14 Corporate Membershp ...... $125 Through the Years With the WPCUG — A Contest . . . 15 PowerDesk Utilities 98: A Review ...... 16 With an adult membership you receive one copy of our peri- Upcoming Changes to Our Internet Service ...... 17 odical and any member of your family (age 12 and under) may attend the UG meetings. After an adult membership has Report from the April 1998 General Meeting been purchased, additional associate memberships may be of the Winnipeg PC User Group ...... 19 purchased which include a BBS ID, draw ticket, but no pe- System Commander Deluxe Version 4.0 ...... 23 riodical. A corporate membership entitles you to two copies The Saturday Drop-In Install Forum ...... 25 of the periodical and any member(s) of your organization New Cartoonist — Don Gonse ...... 25 may attend our general meetings. Ask Art Cavenagh for fur- Claris Home Page 2.0 ...... 26 ther details. FreeSpace 1.0 — A Revolutionary New Way to Periodical Submissions Get More Hard Drive Space ...... 28 Report on the May 1998 General Meeting ...... 30 The editor will accept almost anything you wish to contribute. Short submissions may be in any form whatsoever. Internet Access Form ...... 31 Longer submissions should be made on 5.25/3.5" floppy disks or uploaded to our BBS. Files must be zipped before uploaded. If you I would like to thank all those members who participated use the BBS, send a message to Paul Stephen, and use the SA in the User Group survey. The deadline has been EX- (save attachment command) to attach the file to the message. TENDED until June 25th to encourage more members to Other acceptable formats include: WordStar 3.x—5.0, WordPerfect participate. Prizes will likely be awarded at the July gen- 4.x—5.1, Word 4.0, XyWrite and ASCII. If you use one of the above eral meeting, although you will not have to be in atten- wordprocessors, DO NOT put blank lines between paragraphs or at- tempt to “format” your text! dance to win. Survey URL: http://survey.wpcusrgrp.org The SurveyMaster, aka... Paul Stephen
The Periodical Toolbox
This periodical is produced using the following software and hardware tools: WordPerfect 5.1 (donated by the WordPerfect Corporation), WordStar 4.0, Corel Publisher, HiJaak (donated by Inset Sys- tems), Adobe PostScript Cartridge (donated by Adobe Sys- tems), HP Series 4M LaserJet. A special friend of this User Group is Corel Systems which has provided us with CorelDRAW! and and an entire CD- ROM system. Thanks to its CEO, Dr. Michael Cowpland! Winnipeg PC User Group, Inc. Volume 16, Number 10/11, Page 4 June/July 1998
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Healey Visual Inc. 891 Wall Street Winnipeg, Manitoba R3G 2T9 (204) 772-9638 / (204) 772-9645 http://www.healey.mb.ca Winnipeg PC User Group, Inc. Volume 16, Number 10/11, Page 5 June/July 1998
Controlled E ape sc ✍ by Paul Stephen [email protected] ell gang — we’re back to a paper publication! I just $5 on any order — and you don’t pay any PST if you’re Wknow some of you love the electronic version, but outside British Columbia. Now that’s my kind of store! for the editors, the paper edition will allow us to
In case you ever need to return defective Iomega merchan- be a MAPI mail program, but there’s no place to input the dise the 800 number for Canadians is 800-624-9857. The path of that program. If I try and send mail, I just get an error other number given to me was 800-331-7147. I have no idea box which tells me there’s no info in MSMAIL.INI. I don’t who’s on the other end of that line! get it. I’ve told the program I’m not using MSMAIL! If you’ve got a horror story or a Cinderella tale with regards One gripe I do have with NN is the fact that its mail icon is to getting defective computer hardware repaired or replaced, at the bottom right of the screen and many times I hit that tell me about it! icon accidentally when using the The Schizophrenic Computer In- scroll bars. Couldn’t they move this dustry icon towards the middle of the screen? In 1988, while working at the U of M, we had diddly squat to spend As far as bookmarks go, NN wins. I for computers. So — thinking about like the “drag and drop” operations. all the giant food companies where Now if I could just merge the best graduates from our department “end of both of these browsers I would up”, I asked for some donations. I be very happy! thought I would surely be able to Newsletter Graphics raise $5000-$8000 which would have allowed us to get perhaps four Yours truly has zero artistic skills. I or five computer systems. I sent out am truly enamored of individuals letters to literally every food com- who can create logos or slick adver- pany in Canada. Guess how much tising campaigns. I even feel guilty help I got? Zero, zilch, nada — although the companies did about tossing glitzy brochures into the garbage because I send me “excuses” as to why they couldn’t come through know the work that went into creating them. with even a minor league donation. I was tempted to build a I’ve been filling up the “nooks and crannies” of the newslet- “wall of shame” to show students how cheap the food indus- ter from a cartoonist on the web who didn’t appear to have try really was. any copyright restrictions on his work. Well, I went looking I guess I was approaching the wrong people. I see the stu- for his latest creations in March and his website had van- dents at Earl Grey School got a donation of 20 computer ished. Just great — where am I going to find “art” now? systems from Hewlett-Packard. Hey, they didn’t just get (Yes, I’ve got a TaskForce CD — but you can never have “run of the mill systems”, either. These systems came com- enough clip art.) plete with 19" monitors — and the donation was tallied to be After doing a web search I found this site: arttoday.com. For worth around 90 grand! Hey, I don’t begrudge these young a yearly fee of $US17.95 you have access to megabyte num- folks computer systems, but do eighth graders really need bers of files (clip art, pictures, fonts). Once you’ve joined, $4500 systems with 19" monitors? I don’t think so. Most you preview thumbnails of images and put your selections computer professionals in Universities don’t have such luxu- into your shopping basket. When you are finished grabbing rious CPUs. images, the site asks the compression method you’d like to One of the girls in the program was quoted as saying, “I use to archive your files for download (ZIP for the PC, HQX think it’s really neat that we have a chance to explore all this for the Mac), and boom, down they come. new technology. I wouldn’t have had the same chance if I’d I remember a few years at COMDEX (and which was re- gone to a different school.” Why should one school get ported in this column) a Seattle company was offering a “cream” and another “whey”? This individual will get a rude BBS-type service for pictures and clip art. If memory serves awakening when she reaches University! me correctly, the price for a single file might have been be- Browsers tween $US5-$10! Things have sure changed! Things might be different for all you folks in the Win95 Where Have All Your Floppies Gone? world, but browsers in Win31 are a bit strange. For some So “old timers”, where are your 5.25" floppy disks? In reason, I cannot print many web pages on the UG’s LaserJet boxes? In the trash? There must be millions of these things PostScript printer when I use Netscape Navigator Gold — out there, but they seem to have vanished! 3.02. I just get timeout errors. I originally thought this prob- I decided to flip through a few boxes of my collection. Do lem was due to the fact that it appeared files were being you remember, DoubleDOS, Bookmark, dBXL, etc.? It’s downloaded too slowly from the net, so I took one unprint- amazing how the computer landscape changes in just a few able webpage and put all the files on my local drive. Same years (I consider a decade to be a short period of time — problem. Now if I use Internet Explorer 3.01, everything now). prints fine. Life goes so fast — how many more refrigerators are you If I want to send mail, however, Netscape Navigator wins. going to buy in your lifetime? One? Two? Three? But with The info supplied with Internet Explorer on how to setup computers, hey, five, ten, twenty?
K-Tel — One Weird Stock Quote of the Month If you owned stock in K-Tel in March and sold it in early Bill Gates: For those of us who live in May, are you folks laughing. Take a look at the chart on the developed countries, it’s easy to forget previous page. Why did the stock zoom up? Some dolts fig- that two-thirds of the world’s people ure that because K-Tel has a website it is going to do a land have never even made a phone call. office business in CD sales. Well, the site opened on May 1st Shawn Zayac, my new co-editor, will so I paid it a visit (ktel.com). I thought it would be full of be handling the August/September “golden oldies” but on the main page it was selling the Ti- newsletter. Ah — I can relax until mid- tanic CD for about $US12.50 plus shipping. Hey, I could get September. See you in October. the same thing at a local discount store for less! Some inves- tors are really going to get burned. Paul Winnipeg Computer Expo Show 1998 ✍ by Greg McClure, Jon Phillips, Bert Gutzmann ell another year has flown by and once again the fect Suite 8 and Corel Photo House Magic. Thanks! WWPCUG had a booth at the Computer Expo. This • Manlab Resources Inc. loaned the WPCUG three high year in our opinion we had quality monitor stands. Special the BEST booth at the show! We thanks to Fred Choy for all his received a lot of interest from peo- help. ple who stopped by the booth to • watch the demonstrations that were Thanks must also go to Cana- put on, inquiry about membership dian Advanced Industries Ltd. in the group and ask computer re- who manufacture Angel note- lated questions from the volunteers books, for loaning the group a in the booth. excellent Pentium notebook com- puter for our theatre presenta- One reason that our booth was so tions. Dave from “All About successful this year was due to the Computers” arranged the loan generous donations from: of this notebook for the group’s • Future Shop, who loaned the use. group 3 high end Pentium II • Thanks to Jonathan Strauss, computers complete with 17 publisher of the Computer inch monitors. These computers Post, who produced the Com- allowed us to attract people to puter Expo again this year and the booth and demonstrate to Winnipeg PCUG Booth at Computer Expo to Hewlett Packard for loaning them the hardware required to the group an HP C20 digital run CPU intensive software camera for the Candid Camera such as Adobe Photoshop. A Contest. special thanks to Ian Pfeiffer of the Pembina Highway Fu- • The Candid Camera contest ture Shop who came through turned out to be an excellent and went out of his way to sat- idea and show stopper! The isfy our requirements for the contest consisted of taking digi- computer hardware on very tal photos of some of the peo- short notice. ple at the show and then • displaying their pictures in a PowerQuest and their User slide show on a monitor at our Group rep, Gene Barlow, who booth. Periodically during the were very generous in donat- day it would be announced on ing numerous copies of Parti- the PA system “SMILE YOU tion Magic, Drive Image, and Neil Longmuir Conducts a Demo ARE ON CANDID CAM- Drive Copy to the group with ERA”, the first person who very little notice. spotted their picture at our • Also thanks to Aladdin Systems for donating copies of booth won one of the software prizes. This was so popular, their Flashback software. that the first time we held the contest half the people • The Corel Corporation kindly donated copies of WordPer- watching a demonstration at the Advance Electronics Winnipeg PC User Group, Inc. Volume 16, Number 10/11, Page 8 June/July 1998
booth jumped up and ran over to Steve Vincze printed up the colour the WPCUG booth to try to win a posters for us, that Barry McClure prize! spent time designing. Thanks Steve • Due to the hard work of the many and Barry! volunteers, we were very success- Arnold Zatser (again) provided his ful in signing up new members at car at the last minute to help get stuff the show. Also on the following to the Convention Centre and got a Saturday at the resource centre we large truck to bring it all back after had more people show up to check the show, thanks Arnold, we can al- out the Beginner’s Forum and be- ways count on you! Aryeh Zatser, come new members. one of our younger members, went Once again this year we received a out of his way and gave the WPCUG free booth, thanks to the daily pres- more exposure by standing at the en- entations in the Expo theatre put on Jon Phillips Awards a PowerQuest Prize trance to the Expo and handing out by, Karl Strieby — “How to Buy a newsletters to everyone entering the Computer”, Jon Phillips — “How to show. Great idea Aryeh, thanks! Build a Computer”, and Kim Zayac All in all it was a great show, a great — “Choosing an ISP”. booth, and a great time, but it would Neil Longmuir, Shawn Zayac, never have happened without the fol- Mike (here’s the deal) Kendrick did lowing volunteers: a excellent job of demonstrating Jack Binkley, Tom Blatch, Art PhotoShop, WordPerfect, Front Cavanaugh, Magnus Thompson, Page 98, and How to Create an Dave Estey, Taied Sharei, Perry ISP, right in our booth. Exley, Lenonard Driscoll, Art Special kudos need to go to all the Jonasson, Lorin Berard, Carrol volunteers and the three supervisors Longmuir, Neil Longmuir, Alex of the Expo show. Greg McClure, Avecilla, George Bowman, Doug Jon Phillips, and Bert Gutzmann McNaughten, John Madden, Brian went above and beyond the call of Lowe, Roger Buchanan, Darcy duty with the amount of time they Lanktree, Lucien Loh, Barb Ran- spent planning and supervising the Neil Longmuir Awards Corel WordPerfect dle, Enid Freese, Kevin Mason, group’s participation in the show Sue Spiece, Harvey Zimberg, Terry this year. [sic; yes, we the authors are patting ourselves on Ward, Roy Lutz, Jonathon Edwards, George Froese, Ar- our backs, but we deserve it
July: Gene Barlow of the PowerQuest Corporation will will be here to demo PSP 5.0 and other JASC products. visit us to demo the brand new utility tools from this innova- October: USRobotics will be here to show us its line of tive software company. modems and other nifty hardware products. August: Glenn Dukelow, will be here to show us Polaroid’s Contact George Bowman ([email protected]) for digital photo products suggestions on vendor presentations. September: JASC Software, publishers of PaintShop Pro, PowerQuest Presentation — July 16, 1998 ur guest presenter will be Gene Barlow from Power- user group. Shortly after IBM announced the IBM PC, Gene OQuest Corporation, the makers of PartitionMagic. moved to Florida to manage IBM’s User Group Support PowerQuest has just announced a number of exciting program. He continued to guide IBM’s efforts in the user new products that will be introduced to your user group, in- group community until the first of last year, when he retired cluding Guardian Angel, the only product that prevents PC from IBM and joined the PowerQuest Corporation as their problems before they occur, restricts changes by unauthorized key user group person. Gene is no newcomer to user groups users and protects against system configuration changes made and loves working with them. while connected to the Internet. Gene is an informative and en- PowerQuest’s new Drive Im- tertaining presenter. You will age 2.0 is faster, easier to use come away from this meeting and feature-packed. The feature- with a much better under- packed upgrade includes a new “Gene promises to bring informative standing of your hard drive and graphical interface, enhanced handouts for all, door prizes, and a how to tune it for best perform- removable media support, the special user group price for those ance. He also has the knack to ability to extract individual files keep his audience interested and from within an image, and the wishing to purchase this exciting product alert. ability to resize images to fit at the meeting.” Gene promises to bring informa- smaller drives. Also included is tive handouts for all, door more technology from Power- prizes, and a special user group Quest’s award-winning Parti- price for those wishing to pur- tionMagic, and a new security feature, ImageShield, which chase this exciting product at the meeting. It should be a su- allows users to password protect important image files. Up- per event. Don’t miss it! grading your system is finally fast, easy and safe. Gene Barlow is the Director of User Group Relations for PowerQuest and has worked with user groups for over 18 years. In the late 70’s, Gene was the president of an Apple user group in California and later the Vice President of a PC Winnipeg PC User Group, Inc. Volume 16, Number 10/11, Page 13 June/July 1998 Home Improvement Help for Computer Users A Review of the Book and CD-ROM “Just Ask Jon Eakes” ✍ by J.R. (Jack) Binkley, Winnipeg PC User Group E-mail: [email protected] he buzzword “convergence”, the melding together of another way to get to the presentations. Tvarious media, may not be taking place at the lightning For each topic, video appears, with accompanying sound, be- speed some “experts” had predicted; but the overlap side a scrollable text box that gives a detailed explanation of between various communication tools is very real. the subject of the video. Figure 2 shows a part of the screen Over the years many TV viewers have enjoyed the for a segment on checking your furnace flame, shows of Jon Eakes, one of Canada’s media handy- less the text box to the right and a couple of men, and he’s still very active as a do-it-yourself icons. This is a good example of where the CD guru on the cable Life Network. This is his sixth shines over a static picture, you see flames where TV series, many will remember him as “Mr. the furnace needs a tune-up, and the flame where Chips.” Jon is shown in Figure 1, and more info on it is properly adjusted. You can pause if you wish, him can be found on the Internet at read over the text, and then go back to the video http://www.lifenetwork.ca/hostinfo.asp?HostID=31. picture or animation. Jon has also been a published author along the way. An icon will take you to “Related Questions”, I still refer to a book of his called “You Can Do It that have more answers and information. There is ...”, published in 1980, and based after his TV show often a “More Info” icon as well, which leads to of that era. yet greater depth on discussion of the subject, It should therefore be no surprise that there is now product info and supplier contact data such as 1- a book, published in 1997 by Reader’s Digest, en- Figure 1. 800 numbers, and in many cases, a link to an In- titled “Just Ask Jon Eakes”, the same name as his Jon Eakes ternet site that provides yet more information, current show. The show’s home page is at when the CD program launches your browser and http://www.lifenetwork.ca/show.asp?ShowID=81. Viewers of hits the relevant Website. the show appreciate something where he excels over his There are also cute touches, like the sound of a power or competitors, in addition to hands-on work with the subject hand tool (such as a saw) as the CD “cuts” from one se- matters he’s discussing, his explanations of do-it-yourself and quence to another on a user prompt. In the opening sequence, home renovation issues are usually well-illustrated by com- Jon opens a real tool box, and out pops a cloud picture that puter generated graphics and animations. expands to fill the video screen and become an animation The media overlap was cranked up a notch with this book. with Jon’s voice-over. Sold via his TV show, it includes a com- As one would expect from a CD, with its puter CD-ROM that illustrates some of the several hundred megabytes, and the whole subject matter of the book. Together, the Internet to back it up, there is a wealth of book and CD tackle ten chapters of topics information here. It is well presented, and on the modern house, with headings such as like the TV show, the CD is clear, useful and Plumbing, Lighting & Electricity, Heating practical. The book is also easy and worth- & Cooling, and all the structural compo- while reading on its own, and it’s not just a nents from foundation to roof. poor second cousin to the CD. It has great As evidence of another growing trend graphics and treats many different topics. reaching wider and wider, my wife Gwen The book’s index shows where the CD has ordered the book and CD as a gift for me additional information. via the Life Network Website, on one of Together, this book and CD combination are her early forays onto the Internet. worthy successors to my eighteen year old The CD opens with some video of Jon, ex- Jon Eakes book. To those that enjoy both plaining how the CD is organized. Three-D computers and home improvement work, computer animation and video clips guide these are a publication pair that are worth a you through a modern home. You just click look, and then many more looks as projects on a part of a cutaway home picture to ex- require it. If CD technology and the good amine that component. You then get to Figure 2. Lord both cooperate, I hope to be still refer- either a treatment of the topic, or a “zoom Video Clip ring to both eighteen years from now, so that in” view where there are a further choice of I get at least as much use out of this product questions. There is also an index page as as the 1980 publication. If I can’t use the Winnipeg PC User Group, Inc. Volume 16, Number 10/11, Page 14 June/July 1998
CD by then; modern medicine being what it is, Jon Eakes Just Ask Jon Eakes — Book and CD-ROM (who is like myself a grandfather) may still be active enough (CD for both PC and Mac) to be appearing on a new show on whatever evolved conver- $24.96 for both book and CD gence of multimedia we have by that time. Reader’s Digest Internet: http://www.readersdigest.ca/RDHL/HL_jaje/index.html DiskMapper2 — A Software Review ✍ by George Bowman, Winnipeg PC User Group n this day of hard drives becoming larger and larger while of intellectual agonizing can, at a glance, see how all the Ithe same time hard drive prices are dropping it would folders/files on a drive compare to all the others for size. seem at first glance that a Installation, as with most Win- programme such as DiskMap- dows 95 applications today is per which advertises on the simple and uncomplicated. In- shipping sleeve MORE DISK sert the disk into the 3.5" drive, SPACE, would be unnecessary. from the Start Menu of Win 95 This reviewer’s experience is select Run. A dialog box ap- that this is patently untrue. I pears, type A: (or B: as neces- have run the gamut of having sary), press the Enter key and one hard drive in my computer follow the on-screen instruc- (340MB) to adding a second tions. (840MB) to replacing the 340MB HDD with one of Please refer to Figure 1 which 3.5GB. illustrates the Folder TEMP on my C: drive, with 14 sub-fold- I have used PowerQuest’s Par- ers or files. All this is repre- tition Magic to create a total of sented in the left-hand pane by 10 logical HDDs. Even with all Figure 1. a standard tree showing drive this I’m still scrambling, on too name (C:), folder name many occasions for hard drive (TEMP) the titles of the 14 space to accommodate the files and sub-folders. These bloat-ware monsters that soft- and the sub-folders also have ware vendors are releasing to the number of bytes and kilo- the market. bytes printed in numbers to As I also have a removable ex- their immediate right. ternal HDD (a SyQuest Easy The right-hand pane represents 135 Drive) this scrambling has exactly the same information also included decisions as to using “...a new “nested rectan- which files/directories/folders I gle” technique...” which Disk- should/could siphon off to my Mapper says will give the user SyQuest drive and cartridges. the most hard disk usage infor- There is a difficulty associated mation at a glance. A variation with this latter approach, that on the “...one picture...a thou- of going through each sand words...” adage. drive/folder/directory, almost Figure 2. file by file, in order to deter- The user can view a map of the mine what must be moved and entire drive or as I have in this what can stay. To arrive at a decision in every case, the example zoom in on a single Folder/Directory for a detailed amount of bytes each file contains is the determining factor. inspection. One of DiskMapper’s advantages of is that a user Comparing big numbers with even bigger numbers or in can delete or compress unwanted or unnecessary items di- some cases smaller number. rectly from the programme. DiskMapper2 By examining Figure 1’s Task Bar the following information is given: the path (C:\TEMP\LsP6yls72ng.exe ; the date this DiskMapper2 offers a graphical solution to this problem. It data is being examined (05/09/98); the type of File (Applica- not only presents you, the user, with a standard tree, showing tion); the number of file areas being examined (Qty 1); size the number of bytes, kilobytes or megabytes, it also shows of the file (6.6M) If and as you run your mouse pointer over you what these look like, compared to one another, as geo- either the tree or the rectangles the information in the 3rd and graphical areas. Something that the average user without a lot 5th from the left windows in the Task Bar will change. Plac- Winnipeg PC User Group, Inc. Volume 16, Number 10/11, Page 15 June/July 1998 ing the arrow on SNAG-006.tif in the tree on the left will Unzipping a compressed file is quite simple. Select the file cause (in my case) “Corel Photo House Document” to re- from the directory/file tree in the left-hand pane, click on the place “Application” and “Size 304.0K” to replace “Size (Un)Zip Tool Bar button, select the file in the resulting de- 13.4M” on the Task Bar. Placing the mouse pointer on the compression dialogue box and click Extract and the file is rectangle labelled SNAG-006.tif will cause identical Task Bar unzipped and reappears as a suitably labelled rectangular area changes. However in addition a rectangle containing the label on the disk map. “SNAG-009.tif” will appear to the left of the rectangle. Dou- The accompanying, very slim, twenty-eight page manual is ble clicking in the SNAG-006.tif rectangle causes red and extremely well-written. Easy to follow, it takes the user from white diagonal stripes to appear as the background to the rec- an Introduction to DiskMapper2 all the information needed to tangle and at the same time (again in my case) Corel Photo install, do a quick start and be up and running in very short House is invoked and displays the screen-shot represented by order. Perhaps two of the most important chapters, in this SNAG-006.tif. (See Figure 2). reviewer’s opinion, are the 5th which explains the Toolbar, Compressing, Decompressing Files 6th which covers the Basics and the 7th explaining Deleting To compress a file, in my case SNAG-006.tif, select the rec- Files. tangular area labelled such, then choose File|(Un)Zip (or se- DiskMapper2 is a very useful piece of software. Especially lect the (Un)ZIP Tool Bar button. On the resulting dialogue for those who have only one or two hard drives in their com- box (See Figure 3) check “Delete files after compressing”. puter, thus are faced with regularly examining the contents of Click OK. the hard drive in order to maintain the highest possible free space. I recommend it without reservation. Requirements: Windows 95 3.5" disk drive 486 computer or higher 600KB free disk space 8 MB RAM Figure 3. Product: DiskMapper2 Publisher: Micro Logic Corp. The result was that the rectangle labelled SNAG-006.tif dis- P.O. Box 70 appeared from the disk map and a file SNAG-006.zip ap- Hackensack, NJ 07602 peared on the File Tree in the left-hand pane. While this SLP: CN$194.94 might be acceptable for some files that the user wants to Street Price: CN$129.94 compress, particularly if there may be a need to un-compress, WWW: http://www.miclog.com use the file, on a frequent basis. However I believe that it might be more to the point to move the file off the hard drive to a floppy or a removable HDD. Personal preference, of course, on my part. Through the Years with the WPCUG — A Contest OK, here’s a quick 10 question contest. A draw will be made 4. What candy did the WordPerfect Corporation always from the individuals supplying the most correct answers to toss out prior to their presentations? determine the winner. Yes, this contest favors “old timers”, but these folks deserve an edge. The prize? A coupon that 5. Where was our first BBS located? (the exact location!) will give you a $10 credit when you renew your membership. 6. What is the name of the first person to demo Send your answers to me (Paul Stephen) on the BBS (make CorelDRAW to our User Group? them PRIVATE), or via e-mail at [email protected]. En- tries must be received by 8 p.m. on Wednesday, June 17th to 7. We met at the University of Manitoba’s multi-purpose be eligible. room once. Who was our guest speaker that evening? 1. What month and year was the WPCUG newsletter first printed on a laser printer? (Desktop Published) 8. Name all the editors and co-editors who have worked on the WPCUG newsletter (to Feb/98). 2. Give me the date (DD/MM/YY) when Dr. Alan Ashton paid his first visit to our User Group. 9. Who did most of the work drafting our first set of by- laws? 3. Name (in chronological order) all the Past Presidents of the Winnipeg PCUG. (We’ll separate the men/women 10. Name all of the locations where the WPCUG has held its from the boys/girls here!) monthly meetings (since Fall/83). Winnipeg PC User Group, Inc. Volume 16, Number 10/11, Page 16 June/July 1998 PowerDesk Utilities 98: A Review ✍ by Daniel Christle, Winnipeg PC User Group here is little doubt that Windows 95/98 leave plenty of dows Explorer and sporting Office 97 style toolbars, it does Troom for file management utilities. These operating much more by incorporating features such as file compres- systems allow you to do ba- sion, encryption and enhancing sic chores but can make it rather simple file chores like copying and cumbersome to get the job done. moving. You can right click on a Enter PowerDesk Utilities 98 by file and copy or move it to another the Mijenix Corporation. This folder without having to use the package comes packed with several copy and paste command or open- utilities designed to make working ing another instance of Explorer to with files in Windows 95 much eas- drag the file across to. Because you ier — the most notable of which is can open up two drive windows in the Explorer replacement — Pow- PowerDesk Explorer you don’t erDesk Explorer. even have to scroll through your I installed PowerDesk Utilities 98 folders hoping to drag a file to the on a Pentium 120 with 64MB of right place. This is a throw back to RAM running Windows 98 Beta 3. the File Manager of the Windows The install was very simple and 3.1 days and a feature that is sadly took just a couple of minutes. Once lacking in Explorer itself. Power- installed you can get to work con- Desk Explorer provides support for figuring the utilities to suit your a variety of compressed file formats such as zip, arj, cab, z and zoo to own working style. The first thing I PowerDesk Main Screen did was to configure the Toolbar. name a few, and treats them as With the Toolbar Wizard you can folders. This makes working with configure a toolbar that is personal- the files within the archive trans- ized to suit your needs. You have parent to the user, allowing you to three choices during configuration: easily drag and drop files in and out a small toolbar that floats at the top of the compressed file with no ef- of the screen, a taskbar tool bar fort at all. For many new users, which resides on the Windows tool- working with compressed files can bar and a floating toolbar that takes be a somewhat trying experience so up more screen space but allows this is rather refreshing to see. you easy access to more features. If you need to protect your data The Toolbar provides you one click you can encrypt files or folders access to your program groups and with standard or DES Encryption. printers, plus you can add in a Not the highest level of encryption QuickLaunch feature that is similar available but it can be rather effec- to the Windows 98 or Internet Ex- tive in thwarting people from plorer 4.0 Quick Launch enhance- snooping through your files. En- ment for Window’s taskbar. Simply crypting a file is very straight for- put, you can launch your favorite ward and comes with ample warn- programs with a single click from Size Manager Utility ings of how permanent this process the toolbar. You can also add the can be should you forget your key- System Monitor to the toolbar so code. you can easily track your system resources such as CPU us- In fact another key benefit of PowerDesk Explorer is that you age, free GDI and USER resources, active number of threads can integrate it further into Windows 95 and have it com- and free disk space. Another feature found on the toolbar is pletely replace Explorer and open all folders and My Com- MultiView. This feature gives you more screen space through puter. the use of virtual screens. You can have different programs open on different screens and move between them by click- PowerDesk Explorer also provides easy access to Control ing on the screen of your choice. Very much liking working Panel applets such as Add/Remove Programs and Create with more than one monitor at a time. Startup Disk as well as simple disk commands like format, label, disk copy and erase disk. The centerpiece of this utility suite is PowerDesk Explorer. This is a Windows Explorer replacement that really makes If you have favorite programs you like to use you can add file management chores simple. Looking very similar to Win- them to the Favorites menu so they are handy as you work on your files. If you prefer you can also access your favorite Winnipeg PC User Group, Inc. Volume 16, Number 10/11, Page 17 June/July 1998 programs from the Launchbar, a fully customizable toolbar tents of two folders identical. This can be handy if you want within PowerDesk Explorer itself. If you want to quickly to keep files synchronized between a laptop and desktop view a file and not go to the bother of opening up a large computer or between a network drive and your local ma- application like Word, you can activate the viewer pane to do chine. It is an easy to use utility that came in quite handy so. synchronizing documents between my laptop and home sys- It has support for the most common and latest file formats tem. such as Word 97 and Excel 97. It can also support many com- Overall, PowerDesk Utilities 98 is a handy group of utilities mon graphic file formats, such as jpeg and gif, and convert that is on my list of necessary utilities. It makes working them to other file formats. In short, PowerDesk Explorer pro- with files simple and straightforward, overcoming the short- vides an easy to use central interface for dealing with you comings of Windows 95 while negating the purchase of sepa- file management needs. rate utilities to get the same jobs done. You really can’t get a Other utilities included in the suite are File Finder, which is better value than this. very similar to the Windows 95 find command except for Product: Powerdesk Utilities 98 added speed and more options. You can search not only by Publisher: Mijenix Corporation name but also by attribute, date, time and text in the file 303 Sterling Circle itself. This make searching your system much more effective Boulder, CO 80301 and productive. WWW: http://www.mijenix.com There is the Size Manager, a little utility that gives you vis- Telephone: 1-800-MIJENIX ual feedback on the amount of disk space occupied by the SRP: US$39.95 file within each folder. You can drilldown through the sub- folders to see where the disk space is being utilized. There is also a Folder Synchronizer that allows you to keep the con- Upcoming Changes to Our Internet Service s some of you are aware there are changes planned this instructions on how to reconfigure the more popular newsgroup Asummer for our Internet service. We will be implementing readers for the change in the news group server. We will remind a switch to the V.90 ‘standard’ that has been recently all users of the Internet service of the upcoming changes and agreed upon by the major modem manufacturers. This will al- email them prior to the implementation date. As I write this arti- low us to provide you with the ability to connect to the Internet cle the implementation date has not yet been determined. As at speeds up to 53KB since current telephone regulations limit mentioned please check our web page for further updates. You the receiving speeds. If you want to connect above speeds of can also configure your newsgroup reader and visit our server at 33.6KBps then you must use a V.90 modem or a 3COM/USR news.wpcusrgrp.org. Please note that due to SECURITY restric- modem which has the older x2 technology code. Those with the tions on our ISP this newsgroup server is only usable by mem- 56Flex technology modems, which have not yet upgraded to the bers of our Internet service. V.90 ‘standard’, will have their highest connect speed limited to Since the above changes will involve installing new hardware as 33.6KBps. Older modems will still be able to connect at 33.6, well as some reprogramming we will endeavor to do as much 28.8 or 14.4 KBps. testing as possible before the implementation date. However as This upgrade means we will replace the current USR Sportster the old saying goes “the best laid plans of mice and program- and Courier modems currently in use on the service. We will mers...” so we hope that you bear with us during the switch also replace the corresponding analog phone lines with over period. 3Com/USR Netserver boxes and digital phone lines. At the Just a friendly reminder to users of the Internet service to check same time we will be replacing the actual connection or ‘pipe’ their email on a regular basis. Several users appear to either not that allows us to connect to the Internet. This switch in the to check their mail on a regular basis or if they are, have config- ‘pipe’ will mean that the name for our USENET news group ured their email software to leave the mail on our mail server. server, currently NEWS.MTS.NET will also be affected. Either of these actions cause a large amount of disk space on When we install the new digital phone lines there will be a new our server to be wasted. Please ensure that whatever email pro- phone number, yet to be determined, for the Internet service. gram you are using, that it is configured to delete the mail from Also at the same time the Domain Name Server or DNS num- our server after retrieving your mail. This is normally the de- bers will need to be modified. The Domain Name Server is used fault setting and can be verified by looking for an option in whenever you venture out to a web site or to retrieve your mail. your software similar to “leave mail on server” or “leave a The system needs to translate the character based names i.e. copy of mail on server”. If you see a this type of option ensure www.wpcusrgrp.org to their equivalent numeric address i.e. that it is TURNED OFF. This will help free up disk space on 198.163.254.11. This enables you to reach your destination on our equipment. Also if you are having a problem retrieving your the information super highway. mail then by all means leave a message at the resource centre 958-7228 for me. Thank you for your assistance. I plan to have instructions on the user group’s home page, wwww.wpcusrgrp.org, on how to change the current DNS num- Greg McClure
Dave’s Quick Print Ad Winnipeg PC User Group, Inc. Volume 16, Number 10/11, Page 19 June/July 1998 Report from the April 1998 General Meeting of the Winnipeg PC User Group ✍ by Brian Lowe, Winnipeg PCUG Announcements web page. Combining miscellaneous images, fills, effects, ser Group president George Bowman opened the and text, she quickly produced a wide, squat JPG file that she meeting with a couple of announcements. used to replace the text-only header on the page. To ensure U quick downloading of the image, she used a feature in Pic- ture Publisher that altered the compression ratio of the JPG 1. Bert Gutzmann is co-ordinating our program for the up- file and estimated its time to download at 14,400 baud. A coming Computer Expo. People willing to volunteer a preview allowed her to balance download time with the in- bit of time manning our booth are invited to speak with evitable effects of image loss due to compression. him, or send e-mail to [email protected]. The text-only e-mail link was replaced by an image created 2. We are conducting another survey of our membership. in Simply 3D. Starting with an animated GIF of the phrase Yellow survey forms were made available at the door, “Micrografx” orbiting counter to a spinning earth, she altered and we urge you to fill them out and return them at the the text to read “E-Mail,” changed its font, and replaced the end of the meeting, or at the Resource Centre. However, Earth with a rotating mailbox. Similarly, the text-only links to save time and trouble transcribing the information, on the page were replaced with a pair of animated GIFs that you can do the form electronically on the web at: contained the text cycling through three different fonts and http://survey.wpcusrgrp.org. colours. Presentation Starting Picture Publisher again, Amy went to work on the portrait of the young girl. Marking off the background, she George then introduced our presenter for the evening, Amy used a depth-of-field effect to blur it slightly out of focus and Iverson of Micrografx, to show a preview of their soon to make it less prominent. Then she employed another effect to be released product suite, Webtricity 2. keep the subject’s face in focus while softening the remainder Amy began with a brief history of Micrografx. In 1982, the of the image. After creating a wooden frame around the por- company introduced one of the first drawing programs for trait, she added the effect of two overhead lights shining on DOS based systems, followed in 1989 by a drawing program the picture and a drop shadow. for Windows, of which Micrografx Designer is a direct de- To complete the page, she checked the properties of the GIFs scendent. During the 1990s they acquired a couple of other that served as links to ensure they pointed to the correct programs by purchasing the companies that wrote them. links, then instructed Windows Draw to render the page into Combined, these programs make up the Webtricity suite. HTML. The resulting file she opened in Netscape Navigator, Webtricity 2 consists of four programs designed to work in to show the audience the image built using Windows Draw concert to create web pages: would be faithfully reproduced in a Web browser. • Windows Draw 6, a vector drawing and layup program that Overall, the Webtricity Suite seems well designed, supported can produce an HTML file, by multiple tutorials and wizards to help get the job done. • Picture Publisher 2, a photograph manipulation program, They may not be as tightly integrated as they could be, though, since moving objects among the four programs re- • Simply 3D Version 3, a 2D to 3D conversion program, and quired either cutting and pasting them through the clipboard, • Media Manager, which catalogues various media files, pro- or saving the file in one program and opening it in another. ducing thumbnail sketches of them and maintaining links Webtricity from Micrografx is available on the shelf for to the actual data files. US$199.00, or through a special user group offer at a reduced For the demonstration, Amy opened an HTML file in Win- price of US$169.00, which includes a $50.00 rebate coupon, dows Draw 6, a web page for a mythical company called Star reducing the price to approximately US$119.00. The rebate Portraits. The text on the simple page consisted of a large text coupon is a mail-in offer, so taxes are paid on the higher header, a couple of paragraphs describing the company, two price of US$169.00. For Canadian purchasers, the price links to the companies’ specialty areas, and an e-mail link. might out work as follows: Two graphics, a company logo and a portrait of a young girl, rounded out the page. Webtricity 2 Suite $169.00 Exchange at 0.70 $ 72.43 Using the various programs in Webtricity, Amy proceeded to Canadian price $241.43 jazz up the straightforward web page. The simple “Star Por- Brokerage fees (estimate) $ 5.00 traits” logo was copied via the clipboard to Simply 3D. She Subtotal $246.43 extruded the logo to turn it into a 3-D object, then applied a GST on $246.43 $ 17.25 texture to the object’s face and set up the edges to cycle PST on $241.43 $ 16.90 through three separate colours. After applying a lighting ef- Total before rebate $280.58 fect to the object, she saved finished result as a GIF file and Rebate ($US 50.00 at 0.70)$ 71.43 imported into the Windows Draw web page. TOTAL COST $209.15 Next Amy used Picture Publisher to create a banner for the Winnipeg PC User Group, Inc. Volume 16, Number 10/11, Page 20 June/July 1998
Amy finished her presentation with a description of the Mi- the ability for any member on any ISP to access our FTP crografx Chili for Children campaign. Each year at Comdex site. A higher level access will be required for our sysad- the company sponsors a chili cook-off, with participants from min staff to move files between directories and make several companies such as Hewlett-Packard, Borland, Intel, changes to our virtual FTP server. Hayes, Microsoft, and (of course) Micrografx. People at- tending Comdex participate by paying to enter the hall where 9. Users will need to be provided with a daily updated re- the cook-off is held, where they can sample the results and cord of the time usage. This can be a web page or any purchase hardware and software at reduced cost. All proceeds other method you prefer. from the event are donated to the Center for Missing and Ex- ploited Children. 10. Unlimited time and bytes on a high speed Internet con- nection for our resource centre currently located at 337C Future of the WPCUG Internet Service Pembina Highway. This can be accomplished via ISDN, Following the break, Michael Kendrick was asked to make a cable modem, ADSL, or any other equivalent service. presentation on the future of the group’s Internet service. The link will need to support 12 IP addresses. Mike began by saying our cost for the telephone lines are currently protected by a contract we signed three years ago. 11. Technical support will be required from 9AM - 12 Mid- But the contract is due to expire at the end of June, so on night (2 hour response.) WPCUG will provide first level July 1 our cost increases substantially and the service will no support and only our designated representatives will call longer make a profit. your support staff after checking into the problem. In response to this, the board and the ISP committee prepared 12. E-mail IDs for all WPCUG members. Alias e-mail ad- the following Request for Proposal (RFP) and sent it to a dresses will also be required for executive members (Ex- number of companies that could be expected to provide the ample: [email protected]) service. Request for Quotation Winnipeg Personal Computer User 13. Any new technologies offered to other clients will be of- Group Internet Access for Group Members fered to WPCUG members. The following is a list of the required items that need to be in 14. Support for CGI scripts and a method for CGI testing. your responding quote. The Winnipeg PC User Group (WPCUG) will provide first level support and exclusive con- 15. Front Page extensions (not required but would be nice to tact with our membership. Any technical support will be pro- have.) vided to the WPCUG designated contact representative only. The WPCUG will bill our membership of all services. Further 16. Any successful bidder will be required to provide secure information can be obtained by e-mail at mken- backup of all data used by the WPCUG and members of [email protected] or phone (204) 453-4862. this service. 1. The WPCUG will require the provision of V.90 (or up- 17. How many MB of data per userid is required? Can addi- grade plans and timetables to provide this feature) capa- tional be purchased and for what cost? ble dial modems. We will require 21 ports to start. 18. (Due to a numbering error, no requirement number 18 2. We will expect to be able to increase and/or decrease the appears on the copy.) number of dial ports with 30 days notice. 19. The WPCUG will require 20MB minimum for our inter- 3. A radius (or equivalent) log file will be required. This nal uses (web pages, FTP sites, etc) as well as that used file is to be sent to the WPCUG contact every month. by our members dialing into your service.
4. News server access will be provided to the members di- 20. All bidders must guarantee to not compete for clients aling into the rented modem pool. We will require up to within the WPCUG membership. 36 news groups for our Internet use. All WPCUG mem- bers on any ISP require access to these newsgroups. 21. There shall be no contacts with any of our members until one year after the termination of any contract. 5. The WPCUG will require use of a list server with up to 20 lists for mail to our membership and other parties we 22. No bidder will ever disclose any information about the correspond with. WPCUG to any party without the express consent of the WPCUG. Members’ names, etc, will not be sold or oth- 6. Hosting of up to 10 Domains with up to 12 virtual ma- erwise given to any party without the written consent of chines per Domain. the WPCUG.
7. WPCUG will be provided with 1 class C address space 23. Any other services you would like to offer to our mem- for our exclusive use. bership would be welcome.
8. Non firewalled access to FTP services. We will require 24. This contract will be for fixed price and no other fees, Winnipeg PC User Group, Inc. Volume 16, Number 10/11, Page 21 June/July 1998
costs will be billed Table 1. Monthly Profit and Loss from the WPCUG Internet Services However, doing this to the WPCUG. would require approxi- Today July 1998 mately $10,000 worth 25. The contract will be INCOME $4692.00 $4067.00 of new hardware, since for a one-year dura- EXPENSES our current modem pool tion with renewal Port charge $1999.00 $1999.00 will not handle ISDN options for further T1 line rental $ 580.00 $ 580.00 lines. A couple of leas- years. Price quota- Dial lines $ 819.00 $1932.00 ing companies are will- tions for second and VISA charges $ 210.00 $ 210.00 ing to give us a three third years would Taxes $ 505.12 $ 660.94 year lease on new mo- be beneficial. Total Expenses $4113.12 $5381.94 dems, and the numbers NET PROFIT (loss) $578.88 ($1314.94) indicate we could pay 26. The WPCUG re- Notes: out the lease within a serves the right to 1. Income numbers are based 243 members paying about $16.75/month. year. Table 3 contains accept any (or no the details of this pro- tenders) quoted of- 2. The WPCUG has a contract with IBS that pays us $625 a month. IBS posal. fer. Lowest cost is has given the User Group notice of termination, thus as of July 1998 Mike then said the not the only consid- the $625/month will no longer be coming in as income. eration. Board of Directors was recommending to the 3. Dial telephone lines will cost $92.00 per line per month starting in membership that we go 27. All submissions July. must be delivered with option number 1 by 6 PM Tuesday on Table 3. He then in- April 7, 1998. Quotes can be sent via e-mail to mken- vited questions from the audience. [email protected] or delivered to 6 - 709 Corydon Question: Will there be any change in our user-to-modem Avenue, R3B 0W4. ratio? Copies of the above Answer: No; we are RFP were sent to Es- Table 2. Responses to our RFP. looking to keep cape, Pangea, Vendor #1 Vendor #2 Vendor #3 everything running GateWest, MTS, INCOME $4067.00 $4067.00 $4067.00 the way it is now. Sprint, Autobahn, EXPENSES Our current ratio is NetCom, UUnet, PSI Dial lines $2415.00 $3690.00 $4200.00 about eleven and a net, Interlink, A & W VISA charges $ 210.00 $ 210.00 $ 210.00 half to one. Internet, and Astra. E-mail addresses $ 458.33 $ 0.00 $ 0.00 Question:Why do the Of these, we re- Internet for Resource Centre $ 198.00 $ 0.00 “current” numbers ceived replies from Taxes $ 459.39 $ 546.00 $ 774.90 show an income of Pangea, GateWest, Total Expenses $3740.70 $4446.00 $6309.90 $600/month more Escape, MTS and NET PROFIT (loss) $ 326.28 ($379.00) ($2196.78) than all the other sce- Sprint. Sprint’s re- Notes: narios? sponse was along the lines of “Just sign 1. Income numbers are based 243 members paying about $16.75/month. Answer: Kim and your members up Mike, through their 2. Vendor #1 wants $115 per line, $20 per e-mail address, and $198 per month with us!” Of the re- company IBS, are for a link to the Resource Centre. mainder, the three purchasing bandwidth best replies were from the user group 3. Vendor #2 wants $145 per line if we expand beyond 21 lines. The quoted for $650 per month. tabulated and are cost includes an ISDN line to the Resource Centre. presented in Table 2. This arrangement was To prevent bias 4. Vendor #3 wants $200 per line, $2.50 per e-mail address, and $500 a month entered into back based on individual for an ISDN line to the Resource Centre. when there were only perceptions of the two options for get- vendors, only the ting connected to the numbers are given in the table. net: either a 128 kb/s ISDN or a 1.466 Mb/s T1. Since ISDN was too slow for the number of users we had, and two ISDN Mike then said that outsourcing is not the only way to go. By lines cost just as much as a T1, we bought the T1 and sold switching our telephone lines to digital ISDN lines, the some of our excess bandwidth to IBS. monthly rental drops to only $51 per line each month. And by getting connected to the Internet through a company other Times have changed. It is now possible to get bandwidth in than MTS, we can save a substantial amount on port and T1 increments of about 128 kb/s. So IBS has decided to remove charges. their equipment from the resource centre and purchase band- width somewhere else. This will allow the User Group to Winnipeg PC User Group, Inc. Volume 16, Number 10/11, Page 22 June/July 1998 purchase a smaller pipe at Table 3. Keeping the Internet Service In-house with income and costs for the group as a whole, a greatly reduced cost. a New Link to the Net. Question: What band- and it was difficult Option #1 Option #2 breaking out the width would we be pur- INCOME $4067.00 $4067.00 chasing for $350/month? numbers as they per- EXPENSES tained to the ISP. Answer: 786 kb/s, about Port charges $ 350.00 $ 710.00 Once an analysis was twice what we currently T1 line rental $ 0.00 $ 580.00 performed on the use. Dial lines $1122.00 $1122.00 books and a business Question: Did we try VISA charges $ 210.00 $ 210.00 case was built, the Videon? Lease repayments $1000.00 $1000.00 board was able to ac- Taxes $ 375.48 $ 507.08 Answer: We might have. cept recommendation Total Expenses $3057.48 $4129.08 that kept the service We are showing the re- NET PROFIT (loss) $1009.52 ($379.00) plies we received to the within the group. In RFPs we sent, but prefer Notes: addition, there were not to disclose the vendors 1. Income numbers are based 243 members paying about $16.75/month. some personality to prevent personal biases conflicts among the from slipping in to the de- 2. Line connection to the internet is at 512 kb/s. We currently experience members of the cision. peak usage at about 350 kb/s. board and the ISP committee that inter- Question: It was men- 3. In option #1, the T1 line rental is paid for by the company from which fered with the ex- tioned that going with the we purchase our Internet bandwidth. change of informa- board’s recommendation tion. will prevent the group 4. The lease payments are for the first year only, after which our Question: Have all from relocating our re- monthly profit increases to $2000/month. source centre to the east the costs been fac- side of the Red River. tored into the equa- Does this mean that members living east of the Red will be tion? Does not the unable to access the service? ISP pay “rent” on its space in the resource centre? Answer: No. Members access the service over the telephone Answer: The ISP is part of the group’s operations and is run lines, and they do not care which side of the river they are for the benefit of the group as a whole. All profits from the on. But the Group as a whole is limited in the location of the ISP will be entered into the group’s books, to be spent as the Resource Centre because that’s where our ISP connects to the group sees fit. net. The company that wants to provide the connection has Question: How many users is the income based on? fibre optic cable running up and down Pembina Highway. Answer: 243. Question: Will we be able to run the IS as a volunteer or- Question: Will the group’s ISP eventually have to go out of ganization? business? Answer: We have run it for three years already, and are Answer: Perhaps. There is the possibility that cable modems training new people to take over the jobs of anyone who may and ADSL will take over the dial-up business, but we don’t be approaching burnout. see that happening for about another two and a half years. Question: Are we covered for obsolescence? The cable companies still have to recover their enormous in- Answer: We are getting V.90 modems, which are currently frastructure and startup costs, and ADSL is still quite expen- the state of the art. Research and development cycles are sive. about two and a half years, so we are probably going to be Question: Some of the numbers we see on the screen don’t covered until about mid-2000. seem to add up. Question: Are there costs in switching over to ISDN dial-up Answer:Taxes have been factored in but are not shown sepa- lines and V.90 modems that are not reflected in the numbers? rately, and there is an $800 cost for telephone lines that does Answer: No. The quotes we received were on the lease were not appear because of the way the projector is failing to dis- for hardware, installation, labour, etc. play a colour. Question: Are the monies we can expect to receive from the Question: Are the costs guaranteed? sale of our current modem pool reflected in the numbers? Answer: The vendor is willing to give us a one, two, or Answer: No, although the group does intend to sell the mo- three year contract. dems. Question: Can we cover the costs of additional lines and Question: Why did the previous board not go with these modems if we get a sudden rush of new users? numbers? Answer: Yes, we can pay for three new lines with the num- Answer: The books as kept by the previous board recorded bers as they currently stand, about 40 new members’ worth. Winnipeg PC User Group, Inc. Volume 16, Number 10/11, Page 23 June/July 1998
MOTION: Moved by Art Jonasson, seconded by Sue Instant IE4 Dynamic HTML book, Spiece, that the User Group membership accept the recom- Neck clip from Rockwell, and mendation of the board with regard to the group’s Internet Connectix Photomate program: Eric Cowdrey service. Carried. K56 Plus frisbee, WildCard games CD, Prize Winners Ipswitch T-Shirt: Ken Fox Buck for your Butt prize winners: Doorprize Winners: ExpensAble program from Quicken, Rick Singbiel, Harvey Zimberg, Ken Fox, and Ken Car- Marilyn Monroe CD: Eric Cowdrey penter System Commander Deluxe Version 4.0 ✍ by Greg McClure, Winnipeg PC User Group id you get your beta copy of Windows 98 installed yet? dows 3.1, and OS/2 on the same machine and they won’t try DOr are you itching to try out that free copy of Linux? to duke it out with each other. That’s because they won’t even Do you want to see if NT is as reliable as they claim? know the others even exist. So why haven’t you installed them yet? Well, if you’re like When System Commander Deluxe (SCD) is installed on a most users who have dozens or perhaps a hundred or more computer and rebooted, it displays a menu with all of the programs installed on their machine, the thought of installing various operating systems that have been installed on the a new operating system ranks right up there with a do-it- computer. Simply select one of the menu items and it will yourself root canal. Chances are you’re procrastinating be- boot to that operating system as if it was the only operating cause you don’t want to destroy your current Windows 95 system on the computer. It accomplishes this feat by preserv- installation in the process. After all, it took you months to get ing its own copy of the boot up files needed for each operat- Windows 95 working just the way you want (or about as near ing system and copies these files to the root of the boot drive as you can get it). when an operating system is selected from its menu. The But there are other things to consider. If you’re working in a whole process takes about 5 seconds and the time delay is bilingual office that needs a French version of Windows 95 barely noticeable. Another nice feature is it doesn’t consume you may not have the money in the budget for a removable any additional memory or load anything resident that could hard drive or a new computer. Especially if it involves updat- conflict with the operating system or with your programs. Af- ing several computers. Buying new computers or hard disks ter the operating system has been loaded, all traces of System will quickly break your budget. What do you do? How do Commander are removed from memory. you maximize the equipment you have now and still get it to handle multiple operating systems and languages? If you already have the space on your hard disk for another operating system, all you need is a copy of System Com- mander Deluxe Version 4.0. System Commander Deluxe solves these problems by allowing the user to switch between dozens of different operating systems on the same computer. Just think of the possibilities. You could have Linux, two cop- ies of Windows 95 one English and the other French, Win-
There are 2 versions of System Commander — Regular (SCR) and Deluxe (SCD). The Deluxe version has an OS Wizard which creates the best configuration for your new op- erating system and can resize your partitions while preserving the data. It also has universal mouse support which I gather Winnipeg PC User Group, Inc. Volume 16, Number 10/11, Page 24 June/July 1998 will load the proper mouse driver when the operating system me after I hit that tree, so maybe it applies to student drivers is loaded. But the primary reason to get the Deluxe version is too g. to get the OS Wizard that will walk you through the installa- Both versions of System Commander come with a password tion of a new operating system. Wizards are great and will security feature that is really quite good. You’re able to set eliminate the need to pour (or cry?) over manuals. up a list of users and passwords to limit access to certain Installation is pretty straightforward. For example, if you operating systems. You could for example limit John to Win- have Windows 95 on your machine you simply insert the Sys- dows 3.1 and DOS 6, while Mary can have access to Win- tem Commander diskette and reboot your machine. A wizard dows 95 and a power user like Jake can use NT 4. If some- pops up that guides you through the various setup options. one tries to break into your computer by entering the wrong The whole process takes about 10 minutes. When you’re password, after ‘x’ attempts the computer will sound an done you’ll have a bootup menu that allows you to boot to a) alarm through the speaker and will lock itself up tighter than Windows 95, b) DOS, or c) from the A: drive. If you now an unopened pickle jar. The next time the legitimate user logs want to install a beta copy of Windows 98 and keep your old in, they’re given the date and time when someone tried to copy of Windows 95 (or Windows 3.1) you need to install gain entry with an invalid password. You can also set up an Windows 98 in a new primary partition because both Win- expiration date for a particular user so the password will ex- dows 98 and Windows 95 need to have their bootup files on pire in ‘x’ days which comes in real handy when granting a drive C:. By default, if Windows 98 finds Windows 95 on the temporary employee or a guest access to your computer. The drive, it will install itself overtop of Windows 95. Luckily expiration date means you don’t need to remember to revoke SCD’s wizard will create the new partition for you and up- the password after the person leaves. System Commander dates its menu once the new operating system has been in- will do that for you automatically. The security administrator stalled. If you’re a bit masochistic, you can also create the also has access to the dates and times when each user had partition using FDISK and copy the files ourselves. Other op- last signed on to the computer. Unfortunately it does not in- erating systems are installed in a similar manner except un- clude the logoff time so you have no way of knowing how like Windows 95/98, you may not need to create separate par- long the computer was being used. And it doesn’t keep a titions since they can usually be installed on the same daily record of the sign on activity, just the date and time volume. System Commander doesn’t like to have the volume when the user last signed on. Unfortunately the security stops containing the operating system to be compressed so if at bootup. Once a person has entered the correct password you’re using Drive Space on drive C:, you will need to un- and the operating system has been loaded, System Com- compress it. (Good luck!) mander is no longer in memory and can’t prevent the person from accessing any volume on the hard disk. This type of security is handled by the operating system that was just loaded and if there are no passwords defined by the operating system, the user can access any volume on the hard disk. This means the DOS user can access the Win95 files although he won’t be able to run them. One way around this problem is to put each operating system on its own primary partition (maximum 4) so only 1 of the 4 partitions can be accessed. If you’re really paranoid, the Access Protection option may be what you’re looking for. If you turn this option on before the computer is powered off, the hard disk and floppy drives will be disabled until the proper password is entered the next time the computer is booted up. This means someone can’t access the hard disk by booting with a floppy diskette. Of course to enable this type of protection you have to shut down and reboot your computer to get the SC boot menu to appear and then select the Access Protection option. This is an extra step to perform prior to turning the computer off and can be easily overlooked. Keep in mind this type of security SCD has an option to manually adjust partition sizes while can still be bypassed if the thief knows their way around preserving the data. It’s not quite as powerful or easy to use as Partition Magic from PowerQuest. I prefer Partition computer hardware. So if you have Aunt Mabel’s secret jam recipe stored on your computer, and you need to protect if Magic because it’s more visual and has a more user friendly from your competitors, you better switch to data encryption interface. However if you don’t have Partition Magic then SCD’s partition tools will do in a pinch. I would still recom- or write it down on a piece of paper and store it in the bot- tom of your sock drawer where it’s really safe. Now if you mend you back up your hard disk before you try to resize it. ever saw my sock drawer, you’d know what I was talking My motto is, “Before you can go forward, you gotta about. Socks disappear from there every week, probably by backup!” This is a precaution that should be observed by anyone using disk utilities for the first time. But if memory teams of foreign agents looking for that jam recipe I bet! serves me correctly it’s also what my driving instructor told If you have your computer running 24 hours a day and you Winnipeg PC User Group, Inc. Volume 16, Number 10/11, Page 25 June/July 1998 need it to reboot automatically if there’s a power failure, SC DOS or Windows 95/98 required to install but not for use can oblige (provided you don’t have a password set up). SC Uses no resident memory can be configured to reboot to the last operating system that 2MB hard disk space was loaded if a new operating system isn’t selected after ’x’ Supports Intel, AMD, Cyrix, and any other x86 compatible seconds. Of course if you have a password defined, it will CPU wait until the password has been entered. This can be annoy- Any combination of IDE, EIDE, or SCSI hard drives ing if you’re like me and you boot the computer in the morn- FAT, FAT-32, VFAT, NTFS, HPFS, and all x86 UNIX file ing and walk away to get something done, and you return systems only to find the password screen sitting there without having Product: System Commander Version 4.0 yet loaded Windows 95. But of course this does give you Publisher: V Communications more time to grab yet another cup of coffee so you can be San Jose CA USA hyper for most of the morning. WWW: www.v-com.com System Commander supports a huge number of operating sys- SRP: System Commander Deluxe $US69.99 tems, and they claim *all* of them can be installed on a sin- System Commander $US49.99 gle machine. I haven’t tried it because it could take me a few Note: V Communications has released a Maintenance Re- days and I’d run out of aspirin long before I finished. But if lease for System Commander Deluxe. The maintenance re- someone wants to provide me with all these operating sys- lease adds among other things support for drives larger than tems and an 8 gig drive, I’d be happy to give it a try! Here’s 8.4 GB,improved compatibility with Norton Utilities V3 the list of operating systems that can be handled by System Speed Disk on FAT32 partitions, improved compatibility with Commander: other partitioning products when they resize the partition Sys- Windows: 3.x, 95, 98, NT tem Commander is installed in. For further information on the DOS: DOS/V, DR-DOS, MS-DOS, Novell-DOS, Open DOS, maintenance release see http://www.v-comm.com/upgr401.html. PC-DOS, PTS-DOS, DOS 98 System Commander Deluxe is available locally at most well Unix: Coherent, Unix, Free BSD, Interactive Unix, Linux, stocked computer stores or by calling V Communications at Lynx OS, Minix, NetBSD, Next Step, OpenStep, SCO Unix, 1-408-965-4000. They also have multi-user licenses available Solaris, UnixWare, XENIX that can bring the cost down even lower. But at $69.99 (USD), it will solve a lot of headaches and will allow you to Others: OS/2, NetWare, CTOS, Pick, QNX, THEOS, CP/M experiment with new operating systems like Windows 98 or (and any other PC compatible OS!) NT and if you don’t like them, blow them away without af- System Requirements: fecting your current operating systems. I’ve been using it for IBM PC or compatible 80386 or higher years and I highly recommended it. The Saturday Drop-In/Install Forum he aim of the Saturday Drop-In/Install forum is two of contributing funds donate their old computer equipment to Tfold. One is to allow members of the user group to the group while others donate their time and effort into the avail themselves of a service which if obtained else- running of the user group. However a vast majority can af- where in the city would certainly cost hundreds of dollars. ford to donate a small token of their appreciation, as they The second is to be able to build a new high end computer have us install new software or hardware often worth hun- for the resource centre from the funds collected. Initially we dreds of dollars or more without making any donation to the would collect between $20 — $80 per Saturday. In the past “Build a PC Fund”. If this trend continues we may either two months we have brought in a TOTAL of only $22! start charging a per hour fee or cancel the forum all together. We know that some members may not be able to afford to Regrettably, contribute financially, and that is fine. Some people instead Greg McClure and Jon Phillips
New Cartoonist Don Gonse! hanks to the Internet, I have had the opportunity to and her son, Don, does the cartoons. Tconverse with executive members of many other So enjoy his “toons” in this issue! User Groups. Cartoons are offered free to User Groups only, with credit One such group, the Orange County IBM PC Users’ to Don Gonse and Nibbles & Bits. Send reprint date and Group, whose newsletter editor is Linda Gonse, has a publication name, or requests for computer images, to the very talented family. Her newsletter is literally a “family Editor: [email protected]. affair”. Her daughter, Cindy, writes a column profiling members of their User Group (oh why couldn’t a local do that for me) Winnipeg PC User Group, Inc. Volume 16, Number 10/11, Page 26 June/July 1998 Claris Home Page 2.0 ✍ by Roger Buchanan, Winnipeg PCUG y now most people are ton on the ToolBar to call up Bpretty familiar with the your browser. term “web page”. Lots The dialog boxes in Home of people even have their own Page are very helpful, provid- “home pages”, listing pertinent ing either descriptions or exam- information, and providing ples for what you can do with links off to their favourite sites. them. For example, when I However, although most peo- went to insert a email link, the ple are familiar with what a dialogue box showed me the web page is, most are not able proper syntax for inserting the to actually create their own link. There on after the dialog pages. Claris Home Page 2.0 box kept a running total of the helps people get over that hur- various links that I had used in dle. case I wanted to use them Whereas most Windows soft- again. ware takes tons of hard drive The problem that people most space, and has a learning curve Figure 1. WYSIWYG View in Home Page often have with web pages isn’t steeper than your favourite related to the software they use roller coaster, Home Page is to make that page. Rather, it is compact. It takes up about 10 with the design of that page. megs for a typical install. Too often people use really Claris proves with Home Page good software, and make a, that size isn’t everything. Ver- well, less than satisfactory web sion 2.0 gets things done with page. The Home Page manual a minimum of fuss. provides a set of tutorials to It is amusing that web page help the user with design is- software is a more recent de- sues, as well as with becoming velopment than are web more familiar with using the browsers. The truth be known, software. web pages can be made in a Home Page will allow you to word processor, as long as you make the really sophisticated know HTML (Hyper Text site. It handles all the neat Markup Language), the stuff of stuff, Tables, Frames, Forms, web pages. To save us ordinary Figure 2. HTML Viewer in Home Page JAVA, etc., well and good. people from having to remem- However, you might want to ber all of that, HTML editors come out to a few of the were invented. They just do the “converting” into HTML for HTML Forums that the WPCUG offers its members before us. That doesn’t hurt my feelings in the least! you start developing that site. Home Page is easy to use, and If you have ever used a word processor, then you won’t be very comprehensive, but even it can’t counter the effects of too distressed by using a HTML editor like Home Page. As a poor design and implementation. matter of fact, figure one shows Home Page in it’s natural That said, there are a few things that I would add or change. form, Edit Mode. It looks just like a word processor. You A lot of the support information is in the Adobe Portable enter and format the text to appear the way you want it to, Document Format, which requires the Acrobat Reader. I’d and then use the “extended” features to add the functionality prefer something built in to Home Page, like help files. The to the page. Allow an image to jump off to another page, only “problem” that I had was saving my page to the web click on a link to have the user send mail to you. server. I didn’t find the dialog box all that easy to work with, The user interface for something as potentially confusing as so I just used the good old FTP utility, and my page was an HTML editor is rather straightforward in Home Page. The posted in seconds. Drag and Drop to the web server would be immediate familiarity of a word processor puts the user at a good feature to have. Although all the functionality of ease right off the hop. An easy click on the ToolBar converts Home Page is there, I’d appreciate some “automation”, much the editing space to the HTML viewer (Figure 2), or the like the “wizards” we are seeing everywhere. In all fairness browser. Yep, you can view your page as it will appear on the though, this is a review of 2.0, and version 3.0 is out on the web without having to leave Home Page. To really give your shelves. (Shame on me, I know!) web page, or website, a workout, Home Page provides a but- Winnipeg PC User Group, Inc. Volume 16, Number 10/11, Page 27 June/July 1998
If you can make a slide show, or do simple desktop publish- System requirements: ing then you can make a web page, or even a web site, with 486 or better Home Page. It is that straightforward, and that easy. All the 8 megs RAM tools are there, in a format that is both subtly familiar as well Win95 as functional. I wish I had it when I made my first, and only, CD-ROM website a couple of years ago. Internet site: http://www.claris.com Internet Service All “Let us connect you to the world!” 33.6
modems! People helping people Need help getting set up? Call ahead and bring your PC down to the
WPCUG Clubhouse for “hands on” use computers help.
$15/Month þ 30 hours/month FREE $0.25/hr after 30 hours þ PPP dial up access Maximum billing of $25/month þ Guaranteed user/modem ratio of 15:1 etup ee Just 1 þ T1 to the Internet þ Preconfigured softwarev.90 COMINGSupport SOON!! to get you connected There is just one thing needed þ 2 MB of disk space to make this for your own home page service to our membership YOU! þ Full Telnet shell access to better -- maintain your home page We run on a cost recovery þ basis. Every dollar goes to Unlimited technical support improve, not just the Internet via e-mail, phone, BBS Service, but all the other and the clubhouse services the User Group provides as well. þ Your own e-mail address þ No disconnection policy Please remember that the Internet Service is a cooperative effort. Give others a chance to no matter how long you connect. Hang up when you are not actively using the Internet! Thanks!!! are on Make the RIGHT connection so YOU don’t end up like this! Winnipeg PC User Group, Inc. Volume 16, Number 10/11, Page 28 June/July 1998 FreeSpace 1.0 A Revolutionary New Way to Get More Hard Drive Space A Utility from the Mijenix Corporation ✍ by Beverley Vane, Winnipeg PC User Group ther than archiving specific files ger tips and with animation enabled Owith PKZip and WinZip, I have the icon acts as compression and de- always been cautious about my compression indicator. When I hard drive and resisted all previous opened a compressed file the taskbar compressions and compaction soft- icon did a shrink-grown animation ware. I must have been feeling par- indicating that decompression was ticularly daring when Paul offered me taking place. With FreeSpace added this package. to the file properties’ dialogue you FreeSpace promises to compress spe- access information about the com- cific folders and to bring files in and pression saving on any particular out of those folders without me even file. The information added to file noticing. I figured I would give it a properties by FreeSpace is shown in try. In brief it works like a seamless Figure 3. Enabling the three Explorer Zip, you don’t have to set aside a re- options allows you to access gion of the hard drive because the FreeSpace from the context menu of compression is file specific. It works Fig. 1 FreeSpace Manager, Main Window Explorer and to view the compressed and I like it. But let me explain why I file size in Explorer Details. With like it. “Show compressed files in a differ- ent colour” enabled and with blue In this age of huge software applica- selected under “set color to...”, files tions this utility was surprisingly tiny, and folders, compressed with Free shipping on one floppy with a read- Space, display in blue when listed in able 38 page manual. It also has mod- Explorer. Since all these options est hardware requirements: 8 MB of seemed helpful, and seemed to have RAM and 2.5 MB of disk space. It no major memory implications, I left works with Windows95 (including them all enabled. OSR2 and FAT32 partitions) and NT 4.0 on NTFS partitions only. Installa- Now let’s look at some ways tion was simple — the install wizard FreeSpace can save you space. One only needed confirmation on where it way of getting some quick compres- should put itself and asked if I sion is by clicking on QuickSpace wanted an icon on the Task Bar. I an- from FreeSpace Manager. swered Yes to the latter and this al- QuickSpace — allows quick com- lows quick access, compression at Fig. 2 FreeSpace Integration Settings pression to make a specific amount your finger tips, so to speak. of free space. On starting Quick- Following installation, it gets right Space a wizard asks how much down to business as the FreeSpace space you need, on which drive you Manager main window displayed need the space and presents you with (Figure 1). Let’s discuss the options a list of folders and files to select for presented there and although it is not compression. Selecting a folder auto- first on the list, let’s take a look at matically selects all the sub folders settings. and files therein. Settings — allows you to customize Sounds good in an emergency when FreeSpace. Settings are accessed from you just can’t get the data you need the Free Space Manger or through downloaded because you are out of the context menu of the taskbar icon. space. So how did it work? It All the options are enabled on install worked wonderfully. The Quick- (Figure 2), but you can disable any Space wizard can be started from the that you don’t find useful. FreeSpace Manager or from the Fig. 3 Compression Information from context menu associated with the The Enabling Show icon on the FreeSpace icon on the taskbar. The Taskbar puts FreeSpace at your fin- FreeSpace Winnipeg PC User Group, Inc. Volume 16, Number 10/11, Page 29 June/July 1998 first step is to specify how much through the modification date, setting space I wanted. I went with the 10 this as important will give older files MB default and requested that the a high eligibility score; space saving space be made available on Drive potential, setting this as important D:\. QuickSpace than analysed D:\ will give large files that will com- drive and presented me with a list of press well a high score; or compres- folders and subfolders that if com- sion ratio, setting this as important pressed would provide me with at will score high files that compress least 10 MB space. If you don’t like well. You then specify which drive the suggestion you can request a you want to make space on and New Suggestion and it will present whether you want to compress fold- you with another list. The Our Data ers or individual files. FreeSpace folder and its sub folders was an ex- then generates a list of candidates cellent choice, these are back up files ranked according to the criteria you anyway. Proceeding to the next step, Fig. 4 Graphical Representation of determined in step 1. From the re- QuickSpace sensibly now asks if I sulting list you check the folders or wanted to back up the files before Compression files you want to compress using the compression. I let it proceed without ranking criteria. For example a backup. Figure 4 shows the graphi- FreeSpace assigned my Acrobat cal presentation as QuickSpace com- folder three stars because it would presses data. The last windows of the free up 1.99 MB at a 41% compres- wizard shows the total compression sion ratio. The Graphics folder was achieved for each file and the amount assigned five stars, because it would of free space created (Figure 5). free up 55.6 MB with a 51% com- The final test for QuickSpace was if pression ratio. You make the final se- the files were accessible to their na- lection and FreeSpace starts com- tive applications. I tested Corel Word- pression and displays a monitoring Perfect, Quattro Pro 8, Microsoft window similar to that shown in Fig- Word, Excel 97 and CorelDRAW 8 ure 4 and a summary window simi- files. These opened perfectly and lar to that of Figure 5. with little delay in opening. With You can decompress files just as eas- ily as you compress them be using slower processors and large files you Fig. 5 Space Created by QuickSpace may notice a delay but the animated Decompress from the FreeSpace icon in the taskbar reminds you that Manager (Figure 1). something is happening and to be pa- Decompress — allows you to sys- tient. For me the performance hit tematically restore files compressed was worth the extra space created. with FreeSpace. The first step of this There was an interesting difference wizard asks if you want to decom- between the Corel and Microsoft press folders or specific file types. It products. In the File Open dialogue then asks on which drive you wish to box the Corel programs listed the search for compressed files and after compressed files in a blue font, just it searches it presents a list of com- as they are displayed in Explorer, pressed folders and files for you to while the Microsoft products did not select for decompression. It checks to use the alternate colour to display the make sure there is enough space on compressed files. the hard drive to decompress the files Another way of freeing up disk before proceeding. space with FreeSpace is by using The decompression facility also asks Compress from the FreeSpace if you want to convert the files to a Manager. Fig. 6 Context Sensitive Menu zip format. Very handy for sharing Compress — allows you to system- Through Explorer data since nearly everyone can han- atically compress data on the hard dle zipped files and the latter also drive. It uses a wizard which can be travel well through e-mail systems. activated through the FreeSpace Manager window or The last two items accessed from the FreeSpace Manager through the context menu associated with the FreeSpace task are Disk Checkup and Easy Update. The former will check bar icon. This wizard begins by asking you to set criteria to all compressed files and folders to ensure that data is valid use in determining files or folder eligibility for compression. and in good condition and repair it if necessary. The latter Using sliders you determine the balance between file age will automatically update the current version of FreeSpace if Winnipeg PC User Group, Inc. Volume 16, Number 10/11, Page 30 June/July 1998 updates are available. pressing any given folder. For example, The quickest way to handle files in Figure 7, you can see that Training with FreeSpace is directly from Files is currently 6.21 MB but would the context sensitive menu ac- compress to 1.93 MB. Analyzer will cessed from Explorer (Figure 6) also provide disk information about sec- or you can compress folders sim- tors, clusters and the amount of space ply by moving them to a com- used and available. pressed folder. In short, FreeSpace is a powerful, useful An application that comes with and compact program. FreeSpace is FreeSpace Ana- Product: FreeSpace 1.0 lyzer. You start it from the Start Publisher: Mijenix Corporation Menu and it has many of the 303 Sterling Circle same functions as Explorer, like Boulder, Colorado copying, moving, and finding 80301 files, but with some interesting Fig. 7 FreeSpace Analyzer WWW: http://www.mijenix.com differences. For example it will SRP: $US39.95 graphically present how much space could be saved by com- Report On the May 1998 General Meeting ✍ by Brian Lowe, Winnipeg PCUG eorge Bowman, our President, was unable to attend the coming out only once every two months. Gmeeting due to illness. In his stead, Vice-President Jon An organization in the city is looking for a person to instruct Phillips chaired the meeting. visually impaired people in the use of various computer pro- Announcements grams. The person they are looking for should have skills in While we encourage members to come by the Saturday Drop Windows 95, Excel 97, Word 97 with Mail Merge, Internet In/Hang Out forum at the Resource Centre, any member browsing, and E-Mail. They intend to have three students per whishing to have his computer looked at must book an ap- class, and two classes per day, the first from 1:00 pm to 4:00 pointment first. We have had members coming down to the pm, and the second from 5:00 pm to 8:00 p.m. For more Resource Centre with their computer, only to discover no one information, please contact Jon Phillips. is available to work on it. Members wishing to book an ap- Presentation pointment may do by by e-mail to Jon Phillips (jphil- Following the announcements, Jon called on long time user [email protected]) or Greg McClure group member Mike Kendrick to make the evening’s pres- ([email protected]), or by phoning Jon. entation. Mike opened saying the group was given three We have managed to negotiate a $150/month reduction on products from Mijenix Corporation (http://www.mi- the hall rental, so we now pay only $250/month for the hall. jenix.com) for demonstration purposes: ZipMagic, their flag- So, for the time being, we will continue to meet at Jubilee ship archiving and compression product; FreeSpace, which Place. compresses individual files on the fly; and the PowerDesk Jon thanked all the individuals and companies that supported Utilities, a set of useful programs for Windows 95/98. the User Group at Computer Expo. He proceeded to give an overview of ZipMagic and Power- At the June general meeting we will have a representative Desk. FreeSpace was not demonstrated at the meeting. [EN: from Microsoft giving a demonstration of Windows 98. The See Beverley Vane’s review of FreeSpace in this issue of the following week, June 25, is the official release of Windows newsletter.] 98, and Microsoft is inviting people in Winnipeg to join Business them at the Garrick Theatre for the Winnipeg portion of the Following the break, Jon Phillips introduced the following world-wide event. item of business: Moved by the Board of directors that the 150 posters advertising the Windows 98 presentation at the group offer a month-to-month WPCUG membership for Winnipeg PC User Group were available at the door, and Jon $5.00 per month to people wishing to purchase service from encouraged members to pick up one or more of them and the group’s ISP, in addition to the current monthly ISP rate, post them on public notice boards. subject to ratification by the membership. We need three or four people to volunteer to be at our meet- Jon noted that in the time since the Board passed this motion ings at 6:15 PM to assist with the setting up of tables. Three in early April, we have instituted a four month payment op- people at the meeting indicated their willingness to do so. tion for new members who want to join the group and the We are returning to a printed newsletter! For the moment, group’s Internet Service at the same time. A discussion fol- until our finances are more stable, the newsletter will be lowed, then the motion on the month-to-month membership plan was put to a vote. The motion was defeated. Winnipeg PC User Group, Inc. Volume 16, Number 10/11, Page 31 June/July 1998
Following the debate on the month-to-month membership, Bob Chochinov, seconded by Earl Zabenski, moved that the group switch to single date renewal system, with all member- Internet Access Form ships to come due at the end of the month of the annual gen- Complete and return with $28.50 eral meeting, and memberships taken out or renewed between [$10 registration + $15 (first month’s fee) + $3.50 (PST/GST)] annual meetings to be prorated to the month of the AGM. A TO: discussion followed, but owing to time constraints it was Winnipeg PC User Group moved by Jack Binkley, seconded by Art Jonasson, that the c/o Internet Subscriptions motion be tabled to the June general meeting. The motion to table was passed. P.O. Box 3149 Winnipeg, Manitoba R3C 4E6 In response to a question from the floor, Jon said we have been audited by the provincial taxation department and were assessed a total of $961 in back taxes and penalties, which Name: (last, First, Initial) we paid. It could have been worse: the initial assessment was nearly $18,000! The GST people are still going through our books to assess if we own anything, in addition to attempting to determine if our dues are subject to GST. In the meantime, Home Address: however, our Internet Service is subject to both PST and GST, and as of now we are collecting and remitting those taxes. Door Prize Winners: City:Postal Code: Partition Magic: Ray Cumming DriveImage: Shawn Marten DriveCopy: Murray Bennett Buck for Your Butt Winners: Home Phone:Business Phone: Corel Nature Scenes CD, Borland Delphi Start-up for Windows 95, and Instant DHTML scriplets book: Norm Leach PC User Group Membership Number DriveImage, Stock Market Prospector CD, and Mutual Funds Prospector CD: John Kesson Borland Visual Solutions Pack, Bill Method: Partition Magic, and Mutual Funds Prospector CD: Doug McNaughton r Pre Pay Borland Paradox and Quattro Pro, Drive Copy, and r r Stock Market Prospector CD: Raymond Guenette Visa Mastercard Card #: Expiry Date / Mo Year r Direct withdrawal from Bank Account (provide sample void cheque)
Bank Branch Account
Signature: Date:
I authorize the Winnipeg PC User Group to charge my bank account monthly for my use of the WPCUG Internet connection.
Parental/Guardian signature required for members under 18.
WPCUG Membership required for ISP membership! Winnipeg PC User Group, Inc. Volume 16, Number 10/11, Page 32 June/July 1998
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