FEB 2007 issue of TOE - Channel Islands PC Users Group

Transcription

The Outer E
d
g
e
Newsletter of the Channel Islands PC Users Group
February 2007
Vol. 20, No. 8
Whole No. 238
ISSN 1055-4399
The Friendly Computer Club Helping Make Computers Friendly. On the Web at www.cipcug.org
C O M M A N D. C O M
Attendance at the
January general meeting
98 members and 11 guests
To Contact CIPCUG
The Outer Edge...........(805) 485-7121
General Information.. . . . . . . (805) 289-3960
Mailing Address...P.O. Box 51354, Oxnard, CA
93031-1354
Inside
Walter Yates, the first official
president of what is now CIPCUG,
dies.
— Page 5
Our first webinar leaves excellent
impressions of Paint Shop Pro.
— Page 9
Free and Open Source Software has
an excellent choice for creating
audio CDs.
— Page 11
For the technical readers: What’s all
this about Core Two Duo processors?
— Page 15
By Lois Evans de Violini, President
I
was both pleased and somewhat surprised by how well the online
Corel program went. With travel budgets for presenters becoming
tighter and tighter and, in some cases, no longer in existence, online presentations seem to be the wave of the future. I’m glad that our first try
worked so well. We had a large audience (more than 100 people present),
and all clearly appreciated the presentation. The one tiny glitch of having
to use a cell phone for the presenter to hear the questions
asked by our audience cause only a minor inconvenience.
We heard him fine!!
Again the disk with free programs and updates was so
popular that it sold out. More copies will be prepared and
available at our next meeting.
The club needs some more people to help set up for the
meetings. To help, you need to come early (8 a.m.) before
Evans-de the start of our first SIGs. Thanks in advance for your help.
Violini
In an effort to provide a more personal service to members, we are planning some “Quick Fix” sessions. Rick Smith has agreed
to help individual members on an appointment basis with their computer
problems. Watch for details on the Web site. These “Quick Fix” sessions
will run concurrently with the Q&A session (9:45-11 a.m.) The name
“Mini Repair Shop” was chosen. These sessions will provide diagnostics,
quick fixes and/or recommendations for solving more complex problems.
If possible, it will start in February or March. If successful, it could be
held quarterly.
It’s that time of year again when our officers are up for re-election. I
have appointed a nominating committee of three, Arline and George
Lakes (e-mail: [email protected]) and Paul Westefer
([email protected]). If any of you would like to run for any office,
please contact a member of this nominating committee. The president is
elected for two years and can not serve a consecutive term. It has been my
pleasure to be your president for the last two years. Now it is time for a
(Continued on page 4)
February 2007
The Outer Edge
Page 1
Channel Islands
PC Users Group
Root Directory
CIPCUG NEWS
Benefits......................................... 23
Business meeting, Q&A ................. 5
Coming CIPCUG events................. 3
Command.com................................ 1
Editor’s corner .............................. 20
Executive Board Minutes ............... 3
F1 — Your Help Key ................... 22
Map, schedule............................... 24
Membership report ....................... 21
Program: Paint Shop Pro ................ 9
TOE contributors (2007)............... 20
Treasurer’s report ......................... 20
Web page news............................. 11
GENERAL
Free Linspire offered ................... 14
Here’s how to capture YouTube
videos......................................... 17
IEEE Computer Society
speaker events........................... 14
Penguin’s Lair: Recording and
burning audio to a CD............... 11
Learning with Levy: Make Office programs show full menus ................ 14
Review: Make old hard drive an
external drive ........................... 16
Rick’s rant: Are two always better than
one? .............................................. 15
Security: Shrinking long URLs
makes them easier to use .......... 11
Smart Computing tips
and fun facts ............................. 19
ADVERTISEMENTS
Business Mail Center.................... 12
O’Reilly ........................................ 12
Ventura County Computers .......... 13
CIPCUG mailing address:
P.O. Box 51354, Oxnard, CA
93031-1354
Executive Board
(Elected officials)
President……………Lois Evans de Violini
…………….………[email protected]
Vice President/Program Chairman
………………………………..Craig Ladd
………………[email protected]
Secretary……………..Martha Churchyard
……………………[email protected]
Treasurer…………….……....…Art Lewis
………………….…[email protected]
Membership Chairman.……...Ken Church
....………………[email protected]
Tech Support…………………..Toby Scott
Web Page Editor……………..Helen Long
…………………[email protected]
Newsletter editor…………….John Weigle
………………………[email protected]
Past President…………...…..David Harris
……...………[email protected]
Ex-officio members of Executive
Committee
(Appointed Officials)
Chief Protocol Officer………George Lakes
CIPCUG ISP Signups…………Helen Long
Sound Equipment Technician…..Jim Burke
Legal Adviser………………..John Stanton
Librarian…………………………...Vacant
Marketing Director………...Ron Pinkerton
Program Chairman……………Craig Ladd
Publicity Chairman…………Jim Thornton
SIG coordinator…………………...Vacant
Past Presidents
Walt Yates………………………1987-1989
Lois Evans de Violini…………...1989-1991
Terry Lee………………………..1991-1993
Jerry McLoud…………………...1993-1995
Robert Provart…………………..1995-1997
Toby Scott………………………1997-1999
George Lakes…………………...1999-2001
Andy Toth……………………...2001/2003
David Harris…………………...2003-2005
(With the exception of the immediate past
president, past presidents are not members of the
board.)
Life members
Frank Segesman*
Toby Scott
Lois Evans de Violini
CIPCUG is a member of APCUG,
The Association of PC Users Groups
The Outer Edge
Editor……………………..John Weigle
P.O. Box 6536, Ventura CA 93006
485-7121………[email protected]
The Outer Edge is published monthly by Channel
Islands PC Users Group, an independent, nonprofit
corporation. Contents of The Outer Edge copyright
2001  by Channel Islands PC Users Group.
Permission for reproduction in whole or in part is
granted to other computer user groups for internal
nonprofit use provided credit is given to The Outer
Edge and the authors of the reproduced material. All
other reproduction is prohibited without prior
written consent of Channel Islands PC Users Group.
Opinions expressed in this journal are solely those
of the authors or contributors, and do not necessarily
represent those of Channel Islands PC Users Group,
its officers or membership as a whole. The
information provided is believed to be correct and
useful; however, no warranty, express or implied, is
made by Channel Islands PC Users Group, its
officers, editorial staff or contributors. This
disclaimer extends to all losses, incidental or
consequential, resulting from the use or application
of the information provided.
Channel Islands PC Users Group does not endorse
or recommend any specific hardware or software
products, dealers, distributors or manufacturers. All
trademarked or registered trademarked names are
acknowledged to be the property of their respective
owners, and are used for editorial purposes only.
Advertising in The Outer Edge
Advertising is accepted for computer-related
materials, businesses and services only. Rates are
for Camera-Ready copy (clear, clean black and
white masters). Typesetting and graphics are
available at an additional fee.
SIZE
Cost/Issue
FULL-PAGE (9½”H x 7¼”W)................$50.00
HALF-PAGE (4½”H x 7¼”W)
or (9½”H x 3½”W )....…........$30.00
THIRD-PAGE (3”H x 7¼” W)………….$25.00
QUARTER-PAGE (4½”H x 3½W)..........$20.00
BUSINESS CARD ad...............................$15.00
Discounts for multiple issues (3, 6, 9 and 12
months)
Ad copy deadline is the 5th of the month of
publication.
Make all checks payable to CIPCUG.
*Deceased
2006 Southwest User Group Conference: second place in both the
newsletter and Web site contests.
Page 2
The Outer Edge
February 2007
Society news: Programs and SIGs
Panda security software is February topic
Programs
The February program is scheduled
to be Panda’s security software. In light
of recent experience, however, it’s always a good idea to check the Web site
closer to the meeting for any last-minute
changes.
This month’s meeting will be on the
fourth Saturday of the month, Feb. 24, at
the Camarillo Boys & Girls Club, 1500
Temple Ave. (northeast corner of Ponderosa Drive and Temple Avenue),
Camarillo (see map on page 20).
Panda provided this information
about its product.
The complete protection suite stops
identity theft and Internet threats, safeguards your confidential information,
protects against theft of banking and
credit card details, fights online fraud,
keeps your PC free from spyware, automatically detects and eliminates all
types of viruses, blocks spam, protects
your children on the Internet, has automatic daily updates, and includes a personal firewall with WiFi protection to
impede hackers and prevent secret
online connections.
The suite includes Panda Antivirus,
Panda AntiSyware, Panda Firewall,
Panda TruPrevent, Panda IdentityPro-
Door prizes
We have two types of raffle tickets:
one for prizes offered by the presenter
and one for club-provided prizes. The
tickets for the presenter’s prizes are free
and limited to one per member.
The tickets for the club-provided
prizes are $1 each, $5 for six tickets,
$10 for 13 tickets and $20 for 26 tickets
and are available to anyone.
Consignment table
A consignment table is set up at
every meeting. Anyone can buy, but only
members can sell.
The club gets 10 percent of the sales
price. Sold items must be picked up at
the end of the day’s meeting. Any items
not picked up will become the property
of CIPCUG and will be subject to disposal at the club’s discretion.
CIPCUG is not responsible in any
way for items bought or sold at the table.
Each item is sold as-is unless otherwise
stated.
Meeting, SIG notices
If you would like e-mail notices of
regular meetings and SIGs, go to
www.cipcug.org, where you’ll find a link
on the home page to sign up.
The URL is cipcug.org/listserv.cfm.
You will need your membership
number, which is on the back cover
of TOE, to complete the sign-up.
March 24: CIPCUG member Bill
tect, Panda Antispam, Panda Parental
Control, e-mail tech support and auto- Shelton, Genealogy.
April 28: Smart Computing Magamatic daily updates.
zine
Panda protects up to two PCs.
May 26: TBA.
The doors open at 8:30 a.m., and the
June 23: Cyberdefender.
Beginners and Internet SIGs start at 8:45
July 28: TBA.
a.m.
Aug. 25: TBA.
If you can show up early to help set
Sept. 22: TBA.
up, please do. The room seems to be
Oct. 27: TBA.
different every month, and we have to
Nov. 17: TBA.
move lots of tables and chairs around.
Dec. 22: TBA.
Topics for other coming programs
are as follows:
Executive Board meeting of January 2007
By Martha Churchyard
Secretary
The CIPCUG Executive Board meeting was held on Jan. 30, 2007, at 7 p.m.
at the home of Lois Evans de Violini in
Oxnard.
Present: Ken Church, Martha
Churchyard, Lois Evans De Violini, Art
Lewis, Helen Long and Toby Scott.
The officers gave their usual reports,
which appear elsewhere in TOE. Jim
Thornton submitted his report via email.
The update and freeware CD sold
out very quickly, and more will be made
for next meeting.
Toby’s partner, Rick, is hoping to
get started on holding the fix-it sessions
February 2007
for members’ computers at one of the
meetings, and details were discussed.
The name of “Mini Repair Shop” was
chosen. They will do diagnostics, quick
fixes and/or recommendations for solving more complex problems. They are
suggesting holding it in the Beginners’
SIG room, during the main Q&A session, from 9:30 to 11 a.m. Members
would sign up on the club Web site for
an appointment. If possible, it will start
in February or March. If successful, it
could be held quarterly.
Toby had a meeting with the new
management of the Camarillo Boys &
Girls Club. A church has rented the
auditorium, so CIPCUG doesn’t have to
put the chairs away, move the tables, etc
The Outer Edge
after meetings. The Boys & Girls club
also hopes to install a network access
point on the stage, to be used when the
wireless is not working.
Volunteers are needed as backups
for the sound system setup. The people
who are doing it now can’t always attend, and help is badly needed. Training
will be available. If you can do this,
please contact a Board member.
The time for club officers’ elections
is coming. This year, the club needs a
new president. Nominations will be announced in March, the election will take
place in April, and the new officers will
start their terms at the annual meeting in
May. Lois will put together a nominating committee.
Page 3
More about coming events ...
(Continued from page 3)
Oxnard. Topic TBA.
SIGs
March
Wednesday, March 14: HTML/CSS,
Toby Scott, topic TBA.
Thursday, March 22: Linux, Bill
Wayson, recording from a radio and
burning it to a CD.
Saturday, March 24: Internet/E-mail,
8:45 a.m., Boys & Girls Club, Toby
Scott, get answers to your Internet and
e-mail questions.
Windows XP for Beginners, 8:45
a.m., Boys & Girls Club, David Harris.
See Mentor for Windows XP SIGs, Session 3, for details.
1:15 p.m., Michael Shalkey, topic
TBA. After-meeting SIG at CompUSA
on Rose Avenue in Oxnard from 1:15 to
3:30 p.m.
Special Interest Groups (SIGs) are
sponsored by CIPCUG and led by volunteer club members. There is no charge
for members to attend.
Unless otherwise noted, SIGs run
from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. at Ventura
County Computers, 2175 Goodyear
Ave., Unit 117, Ventura; phone 805289-3960. From the 101 Freeway, exit at
Telephone, take Telephone south to
McGrath, turn left and go one block.
Turn right on Goodyear and then right
again into the second driveway. Unit
117 is the back, right corner of the
industrial building.
The general schedule follows:
Second Wednesday: Toby Scott on
HTML, CSS and Web design.
Third Thursday: Open.
Fourth Thursday: Linux.
Fourth Saturday (or after the regular meeting): Michael Shalkey’s SIG at
CompUSA in the Shopping at the Rose
center in Oxnard.
Details on the SIGs for February and
March:
February
Wednesday, Feb. 14: HTML/CSS,
Toby Scott. Topic TBA.
Thursday, Feb. 22: Linux, Bill Wayson. Topic: Upgrading Linux.
Saturday, Feb. 24, 8:45 a.m.: Internet/E-mail, Toby Scott. Get answers to
your Internet and e-mail questions. Premeeting SIG at Boys & Girls Club of
Camarillo.
Saturday, Feb. 24, 8:45 a.m.: Windows XP for Beginners, David Harris.
Pre-meeting SIG at Boys & Girls Club
of Camarillo. See separate listing of
topics for all six meetings.
Saturday, Feb. 24, 1:15 p.m.: Michael Shalkey’s after-meeting SIG at
CompUSA at Shopping at the Rose in
More on Command.com
new president. Please step forward and
help. It’s not a lot of work, and sometime it’s fun. Come join us and help
find new ways to help your fellow computer friends!
Page 4
Mentor for Windows XP SIGS
Here is the full schedule for the repeat of the Windows mentor SIG that
occurs before the regular Saturday meeting:
Session 1: Jan. 27: The Basics of Windows
XP — 10 minutes: Master the basics of Windows
XP, from using toolbars and menus, to launching
your favorite programs, to shutting down your
computer. Topics: Explore the Start Menu, Explore the Parts of a Window, Explore Toolbars,
Explore Right-Clicking to Open Shortcut Menus,
Adjust the Date and Time, Adjust, Move, and
Close Windows. Turn Off the Computer
Navigate Files and Folders — 21 minutes:
The building blocks of Windows XP are files and
folders. Learn how they’re created, how they're
organized, and how you can access them. Topics:
Overview of Files and Folders. Explore the My
Documents Folder, Explore Internet Integration,
Navigate with My Computer, Use Windows Explorer, Use Search, Use History, Clear My History, Use Favorites, Add a Location to Favorites,
Organize Favorites
Session 2: Feb. 24: Manage Files and Folders
— 10 minutes: As you save work to your computer, you can accumulate many files and folders
to store information. Keep everything organized
by creating new folders, updating the names of
folders as their contents change, changing the
programs associated with files, and deleting items
that you no longer need. Topics: Create a Folder,
Open a File, Copy a File or Folder, Rename a File
or Folder, Open a File with Another Program,
Open a File with Drag and Drop, Change the Program that Opens a File Type, Delete a File or
Folder, Restore a Deleted File or Folder, Permanently Delete Items.
Sort and Display Files and Folders — 4 minutes. With Windows XP, you can change the way
that your files and folders display, so that you can
access them quickly and view important information about them. Topics: Sort Files and Folders,
The Outer Edge
Display File and Folder Types and Locations,
Change the Way Files or Folders Display, Use the
Details View.
Use Programs — 10 minutes: Windows XP
allows you to work with programs in a number of
different ways. You can quickly switch between
applications, add new software, remove old software, and even schedule a program to run on a
specific date. Topics: Start and End Programs,
Close a Program that Isn’t Responding, Switch
Between Programs, Use the Run Command,
Schedule a Program, Add Software, Remove Software.
Session 3: March 24: Work with Basic Windows Utilities — 18 minutes: Windows XP comes
with an assortment of powerful applications called
utilities. Work with text editors, graphics utilities,
calculators, and find out about advanced accessibility. Topics: Explore Notepad, Explore WordPad, Edit a Document with WordPad, Embed
Information in Another Document, Explore the
Paint Utility, Create a Picture, Modify a Picture,
Explore Accessibility Features, Explore the Calculator.
Print — 4 Minutes: Need a hard copy of that
document? Discover how to print in Windows XP.
You can also monitor and control print jobs once
they've begun. Topics: Print from a Program,
Control Print Jobs.
Session 4 - April 28: Work on the Internet —
5 minutes: Before you can take advantage of the
information contained on the World Wide Web,
you need to set up your computer to connect to the
Internet. You can also optimize different browsers
for your personal use. Topics: Connect to the
Internet, Overview of Internet Explorer
Customize the Desktop — 10 minutes: You
can use the Windows XP desktop to place shortcuts for quick access to files, folders, and programs you use often. You can also liven up your
desktop with wallpaper images, background patterns, and screen savers. Topics: Show System
Icons, Create Shortcuts, Customize System Icons,
Customize Shortcut Icons, Arrange Icons, Hide
Desktop Icons, Add a Background Image, Select a
Screen Saver, Configure a Screen Saver.
Customize the Taskbar and Start Menu — 8
minutes: The taskbar serves as a launch pad for
just about everything you need to do in Windows
XP. Learn how to change its position on the desktop, rearrange the toolbars in it, hide it, or even
customize the Start menu. Topics: Explore the
Taskbar, Reposition and Resize the Taskbar, Rearrange Toolbars in the Taskbar, Hide the Taskbar,
Customize the Start Menu, Add Programs to the
Start Menu.
Session 5: May 26: Customize Toolbars —
10 minutes. Toolbars allow you to perform various
tasks and functions. You can move them, add to
them, and even create new ones to customize your
Windows experience. Topics: Reposition Toolbars, Rearrange Toolbars on Separate Lines,
Change the Way Toolbars Display, Show the
Quick Launch Bar, Add a Program to the Quick
Launch Bar, Remove a Program from the Quick
Launch Bar, Add the Address Bar, Add the Links
Toolbar, Modify the Links Toolbar, Create a New
February 2007
More on programs
and SIGs ...
Toolbar, Close a Toolbar.
Customize Folder — 6 minutes: Do the default folder settings suit your preferences or
needs? Customize the appearance of folder content and the way folders open by changing folder
options. Topics: Overview of Folder Options,
Change the Folder Template, Add a Picture to a
Folder Thumbnail, Change a Folder’s Icon.
Maintain the Drives — 6 minutes: Rev up
your engines — learn how to take care of your
computer’s hard drives to provide effective performance. Topics: Clean Up the Disk to Improve
System Performance, Detect and Repair Disk
Errors, Defragment a Drive to Improve System
Performance.
Session 6: June 23: Prevent and Resolve
System Problems — 8 minutes: Is your system
running properly? If not, use System Restore or
Remote Assistance to get you system back on
track. Topics: Use the System Restore Feature,
Display the System Configuration, Obtain Remote Assistance, Provide Remote Assistance.
Update the System — 10 minutes: Keep your
Windows XP machine on the cutting edge by
adding new features and components. Windows
can even do it for you with its Automatic Update
feature. Topics: Add New Windows Features,
Add Windows Components, Remove Windows
Components, Use Automatic Update, Get Older
Programs to Work in Windows XP.
Business Meeting, Q&A
Power failures can destroy
your electronic equipment
Business meeting
President Lois Evans de Violini presided, and the officers gave their usual
reports, which appear elsewhere in TOE.
Craig Ladd listed the programs
planned so far for 2007: February,
Panda Security Suite; March, CIPCUG
member Bill Shelton, Genealogy; April,
Marcy for Smart Computing magazine;
May TBA; June, CyberDefender. Mindshare is interested but has not committed
to a date.
For those of us who are old enough
to remember them, there is a Web site
with sound files for thousands of oldtime radio shows. The URL is otr.net.
Lois announced that Walt Yates, one
of the founders of CIPCUG and the first
official president, passed away recently.
Some of his many contributions to the
community are memorialized on the
Web site.
Obituary
Q&A
Walter Yates
Unless otherwise noted, Toby Scott,
a partner in Ventura County Computers
and our technical advisor, answered
questions. Michael Shalkey also contributed and handled the demonstrations
projected on the screen.
This introductory information was
provided by Lois Evans de Violini. —
Editor
According to Vol. 1, No. 1, of what
was TOE at the time, Ralph Wefel,
Don Click and Wally Drew met to organize the agenda of the first meeting
of the Leading Edge Users Group and
Don Click served as temporary president and chairman for the first meeting.
This was in July of 1987.
In August of 1987, the next meeting
was held at the Camarillo Library.
I believe that at this meeting Walt
Yates was elected president. The election itself doesn’t seem to have been
reported, but by September Walt was in
the masthead as president and I had
joined the group and was librarian.
Walt was president for the term 198789. I became president in July 1989. It
was during my term as president that
February 2007
Power failures and their effects
Toby: Before we get started, did any
of you read about a drunken driver, I
think, who ran into a power pole by
Ventura College? Here is a power supply from a computer that we replaced.
When the power went out, there was an
initial surge, which blew out refrigerators, washing machines, microwaves,
computers, monitors, routers, and so on.
If any of you don’t have UPS units or at
least really good surge suppressors —
I’m not talking about the $3.99 unit at
Target — you might think about it.
Free-standing DVD recorder speeds
Q: I have a free-standing DVD recorder which seems to offer me the option of recording at different speeds, up
to 300 or 360 minutes or something, and
I thought that meant I could put six
The Outer Edge
This month’s Q&A topics:
Power failures and uninterruptible power supplies
Free-standing DVD recording
speeds
TurboTax and other older programs that are no longer supported
Upgrading to Vista
Inserting pictures in e-mail
E-mails that can’t be deleted
Svchost.exe errors
Zone Alarm conflicts with other
programs
Service Pack 2 Windows firewall, Service Pack 2 in general
hours of material on the DVD, yet I
seem to get only two hours of recording.
Can you help me understand what is
going on?
A: From audience: He said a standalone DVD recorder. I used to have one,
and it can be set so you can record more
than the playback hours. It does compression, and the quality will decrease as
the number of hours saved increases. It
compresses on the fly, and records on
the fly. You have to use the setup for the
unit to set it for extended play, long
play, super long play, and so on.
Toby: You may also only be able to
get that speed if you play the DVD in
the same recorder it was recorded in.
Q: When I try to go beyond two
hours, at whatever speed I have selected,
it reports to me that it is full, and will
not take any more recording. Is there a
different kind of DVD that I can buy
that will go six hours?
A: There are DVDs that record on
both sides, but that’s not the same thing.
The only thing I can suggest is to look at
the manual. Every one of those external
drives is going to be different. Read the
manual, and if it doesn’t work the way
they say it is supposed to, contact tech
support for the device. You may have a
defective unit. You should be able to
Page 5
More on Q&A: Older programs not supported
Millennium Edition, and they are no
record super-slow on some units, but longer updating it to keep the viruses at
you can only play back on those units.
bay. If you are doing something like
TurboTax, you might be on the wrong
TurboTax won’t run on Windows Me
platform anyway. (Will that get me
Q: I use TurboTax, and when I tried
lynched?) If you never connect to the
to install it, it said “you are using MilInternet you should be perfectly safe.
lennium Edition,” and it won’t run. I
At any rate, companies like Intuit are
think that’s p-ss-poor.
finding it increasingly expensive to
A: Far be it from me to disagree
maintain programs that will run on Winwith your opinion, but now that Windows 98, and there are not enough peodows Vista is coming out, Microsoft is
ple using them to justify the expense.
no longer supporting Windows 98 or
They are doing it to make money; if
they can’t make money, they are not
going to build it. There are not enough
of you 98/Millennium people around to
support a project.
What should we do about Vista?
Q: Toby, how are you going to deal
with Vista?
A: With a big stick. We’ve talked
about this before. About every year or
so I burn my computer down and start
over again. I do beta testing and try all
More on Walter Yates obituary ...
the name was changed to Channel Islands PC Users Group.
Walt was a wonderful person, very
devoted to helping all of us. He was
very supportive of the people who
worked with him. He held many of our
board meeting in his home. He was
great, and I’ll miss having him around.
This is the obituary as it appeared
in the Jan. 5, 2007, Ventura County
Star:
Walton Edison Yates, known as
“Walt” to his many friends, finished
his courageous fight with cancer surrounded by his family. He peacefully
passed away on Jan. 3, 2007.
Walt was born in Rinard, Ill., on
Nov. 13, 1922, to Charles and Bertha
Yates. He graduated from Flora High
School in 1941 and enlisted in the
Navy, which became his first career.
He retired in 1969 as a lieutenant commander and maintained a lifelong interest in military affairs.
He was a life member of the Military Order of World Wars and Retired
Officers Association and served on the
board of many other military organizations.
Walt loved to study and learn.
While still in the Navy, he first earned
a Bachelor of Science degree in business administration from San Fernando
Valley State College, graduating
magna cum laude, and followed this
with a Master of Business Administra-
Page 6
tion from University of Southern California, finishing with a 4.0 grade-point
average.
He began his second career when
he went to work for the City of Oxnard
in 1969 as senior accountant, retiring
in 1986 after eight years as the city’s
finance director.
Walt had many gifts and devoted
countless hours of his time to help others, serving with many organizations.
Known for his patience and kindness, he was a great teacher. In his role
as founding president of the Channel
Islands PC User’s Club, he created an
arena in which members could provide
mutual assistance for computer problems as well as a resource for members
of the general public to better understand and use their computers.
Many other organizations benefited
from his financial expertise, including
the Kiwanis Club of Oxnard, the Oxnard Chamber of Commerce, the Harbor Missionary Church, and others,
where he served as treasurer or financial adviser, bringing a professional
level of skill much appreciated by the
nonprofit community.
The Salvation Army was especially
close to his heart.
With his political savvy and financial acumen, he was instrumental in
recruiting key members to its governing board, was a major force in the
successful effort to build a new community center, and in 1999 was honored with the Salvation Army’s highest
The Outer Edge
honor, The Other Award. It was only
the third one ever presented in 100
years in Oxnard. He lived by the Salvation Army motto, “Heart to God,
Hand to Man.”
Walt was married to Hazel
Marjorie Steven on April 30, 1948, in
Hernando, Miss. She preceded him in
death on March 15, 1972. He was also
preceded in death by his parents, Bertha G. and Charles C. Yates of Rinard,
Ill., and brother, Gene F. Yates of
Mansfield, Ohio.
He is survived by his wife Joy Carson Yates, whom he married on April
13, 1974, in Olney, Ill.; children, Richard Neil Yates of Santa Barbara, David
Alan Yates of Costa Mesa, Calif., Janet
Lynn Yates of Ventura and Robert
Kent Carson and wife Sandy of Lake
Brandon, Wis.; and grandchildren,
Tedmon Kent Carson and Amanda
Jane Carson of Chicago, Ill.
Visitation will be from 2 to 8 p.m.
Saturday, Jan. 6, at Conrad-Carroll
Mortuary, 401 W. Channel Islands
Blvd., Oxnard.
A celebration of Walt's life will be
held at 2 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 10, at
Ventura Missionary Church, 500 High
Point Drive, Ventura, with a reception
to follow.
A graveside military service will be
held at National Cemetery at March
Air Force Base in Riverside, Calif.
In lieu of flowers, the family requests donations to Walt’s favorite
charity, the Salvation Army.
February 2007
More on Q&A: Vista and DOS, e-mail issues
sorts of programs, and eventually my
registry just fills up and things won’t
work. We subscribe to the Microsoft
Action Pack, which is supposed to give
us a copy of new things before they go
live to the public. I am waiting for that
to install Vista on a new computer at
work; I’ll be the guinea pig. There are a
couple of problems that I know about
already, and I will be trying most of the
programs that are commonly used on the
club freeware CD: Open Office, Firefox,
Thunderbird, IrfanView, etc., and we
will put a list of what is Vista-ready on
the CD.
As far as the club goes, we will
probably have a Q&A or Vista session
at the meeting, after a couple of months
when more information is available,
what works and what doesn’t. I don’t
recommend that anyone get Vista when
it comes out on Tuesday. HP or Dell
may guarantee it will work — the computer may work, but programs you depend on may not. You need to be very
careful about what works and what
doesn’t, and the list of things that won’t
run, or only run with workarounds, is
fairly long. With any reasonably modern
computer, you can make Vista run, but
the question is, what do you run with it?
Most of us don’t run computers, we run
programs. The programs will be the killer.
Our illustrious president should be
talking about this, because we built a
computer with Vista beta on it for her.
Lois: I’ve tried several versions of
QuickBooks — 2006 and 2007 and the
DOS version work., but 2004 and earlier
versions do not. All of Microsoft Office
works fine, all versions, even Office 97.
What about the versions?
Q: Which version of Vista will you
use?
A: The Ultimate, the one that has
everything.
Q: Which version will the club computer use?
A: It will be the version that most of
the members are using, because there
are significant differences. Probably it
will be the advanced home version,
Home Premium, but that will be a deciFebruary 2007
sion that the board will make, perhaps
after some discussion with the whole
group. The business edition primarily
allows connecting to a domain, and CIPCUG doesn’t have a domain; the Home
Basic is so stripped down that most people won’t want it.
Vista and DOS
Q: Will it do DOS?
A: Yes, like previous versions of
Windows. (Demonstrating) Click on
Start, Run, then type “cmd,” and you
have a DOS Window. Technically, Windows 3.1 and earlier versions ran on top
of DOS; Windows 98 sort of ran on top
of DOS, a comingled thing, but since
then they have not. What you see is a
DOS window, with most of the DOS
commands available for those of you
who are familiar with them.
Interestingly enough, if you get into
networking and setting up servers and so
forth, there are many things that can’t be
done any other way. For instance,
“Ipconfig” will give you the network
settings; “Ipconfig /all” gives extended
settings. “Ping” will tell you if you are
connected to different sites
(demonstrating “ping google.com”)
Outlook Express storage
Q: I have a question about Outlook
Express and e-mail.
A: First, let me say, in the past every
time we have had a new version of Internet Explorer, it has come with a new
version of Outlook Express. Did any of
you notice that with IE 7 you are still
using Outlook Express 6? Outlook Express is at the end of the line; it will not
be updated. In Vista they are calling it
Microsoft Mail, and it is a different program. But apparently it does not work
on XP; at least I can’t find a version for
XP, or what their plans are for XP.
image, that’s what you get. You can use
HTML to shrink that down, but the correct way is to make a copy of the picture
and shrink that down. If you want a picture only 200 pixels wide, shrink it
down. IrfanView, on the freeware disk,
works well for this. You will find that
the file size is reduced proportionately: a
picture one-fourth of the original is a file
one-sixteenth of the original size. Do
your recipient a favor by shrinking it
before you send it; the download time
will be much faster, particularly for your
friends on dial-up.
There is a difference between insert
and attach. An attachment will come up
with a paperclip and won’t necessarily
display in the e-mail. If you insert it, it is
actually embedded in the e-mail. The
imbedded picture can also be resized by
dragging from the corners, in Outlook
and Outlook Express. (Demonstrating)
Why can’t messages be deleted?
Q: I wanted to ask about the situation where e-mails could not be deleted
and why?
A: He had some e-mails in Outlook
Express that couldn’t be deleted. We
went in and compacted the file. Go to
the File menu, Folder, Compact All
Folders. Depending on the size of your
e-mail, this will take a little while, but it
will shrink everything down and then
reindex. Usually when you have a problem with your Outlook Express file, if
you look at the files on disk there are
actually two files; one is an index file
and the other is the data file. Usually
when you have a problem it is because
the two files get out of sync. So when he
tried to delete, the pointer wasn’t in the
right location, and nothing would happen. Often compacting will cause the
main file to be shrunk down, and then,
once it’s shrunk, it goes through a reindexing process that syncs the files up
again. That can fix problems such as
your e-mail not displaying correctly;
you can’t move or delete messages, or
some kind of strange behavior.
Pictures inserted in e-mail are too big
Q: Trying to put a picture in an email, I typically drag and drop it, but the
picture is exploded and is too big for the
screen. How do you reduce that to a
proper size?
Svchost error messages
A: There are two answers to this
Q: A couple of weeks ago I got an
question: First, when you drop it in, it
Svchost.exe error and my computer
goes to the native dimension that the file
is, so if it is 1024 by 768 bitmap or Jpeg
The Outer Edge
Page 7
More on Q&A: Svchost.exe, program conflicts
froze up. I looked it up on the Internet,
and it seemed it was an indication of
Windows Update problems ….
A: OK, let’s talk about Svchost.exe,
actually called “service host.” Do a CtlAlt-Del and go to the Running Processes. (Demonstrating) We will probably find six or seven service hosts running. Service hosts actually host a service; without getting too technical, they
create a wrapper around some function
and allow it to run in the background on
your computer. So the issue is, if you get
a service host error, until you know what
it is wrapped around, you have no idea
what went wrong. So you have to go
into the Event Viewer (Control Panel,
Administrative Tools, Event Viewer)
which has a list of three or four classes
of events. You want to go to the System
Events log, because this is a system
event; and click on it to open up a list of
events. The errors have a big red ‘x’ —
double click on that to see the complete
error message. If you want to see what
Microsoft knows about this error, you
can click on the link to the Microsoft
Help and Support Center and see what it
has. Often it will say, we don’t have any
more information available. But if it
does, and you follow up carefully, usually you can fix it yourself.
Disable Automatic Updates suggested
Q: Following up on it with Google, I
found a suggestion to disable Automatic
Updates, and the problem disappeared.
A: Service hosts can wrap around all
kinds of things, including Automatic
Update. The fact that you had done an
automatic update probably indicated that
that was what caused the problem. But
understand, whatever it is that caused
automatic update not to process correctly is still sitting on your computer.
That underlying problem is still there
waiting to bite some other program, or
the next update you do. All you’ve done
is gotten rid of the error message; you
didn’t fix the problem. You can go into
the event viewer, open the error message, and click on the link to Microsoft
Help & Support. Microsoft may — or
may not — be able to tell you how to fix
Page 8
the underlying problem. Sometimes they
will say you had a bad download of a
particular update, and when it attempted
to install it failed CRC check, or the
like. In that case, what you need to do is
go into Add/Remove Programs and get
rid of the offending attempted install,
and then go do the updates again.
Sometimes this can happen — transmissions over the Internet are not foolproof.
There are all kinds of issues that can
arise, so I strongly suggest you do a little bit of detective work to make sure
you have fixed the problem that you
might have thought you fixed. Turning
off automatic updates, if automatic updates is really the problem, means it’s
only a matter of time before you get the
next virus. We have a fairly ugly one
running around out there now, and there
will be variants of that one for a while
yet.
Incidentally, if any of you have been
lax about updating your antivirus, please
go update immediately.
Zone Alarm messed up my computer
Q: I would like to warn everyone
who has Zone Alarm on their computer.
The last couple of months I’ve really
had problems with my computer — it
was running like molasses, freezing up,
and I couldn’t open anything up. A
friend came over yesterday and took
Zone Alarm off, and it’s like I have a
brand new computer now.
What is it about Zone Alarm that
would cause that?
A: There’s nothing wrong with Zone
Alarm. You could reinstall Zone Alarm
and probably your computer would run
just fine. But Zone Alarm is a firewall:
It prevents things from running, and it
creates rules. After you have been running it for a year or two, it has a whole
lot of rules and so on that have accumulated, and it starts to take up more and
more processing power. If you have the
Windows XP Service Pack 2 firewall
running at the same time, it potentially
could have conflicts and other issues.
There are all kinds of potential issues
that could cause your computer to start
doing recurring checks while it is running, and it will run in the background
The Outer Edge
for a long time before you get something
to display. There isn’t really anything
wrong with Zone Alarm, but in some
setups you can install it and it will never
run, because there is some sort of conflict — and you can spend a lifetime
trying to figure out what that is. I’ve had
the same kind of issue with Norton Antivirus worm protection, which is the replacement for the Service Pack 2 Firewall. I’ve had some situations where the
only thing you can do is just turn the
worm protection off and use the Service
Pack 2 Firewall.
This is not an exact science, and you
can have problems that even the best
Microsoft engineer, the guy who wrote
the section that you have problems with,
can’t fix. Microsoft has troubleshooters
all over — they have 27 things to try —
26 are real tries, number 27 is format the
hard drive and reinstall Windows. The
last one is always the same on every
troubleshooter, because there are some
things they can’t fix.
People come into the shop, and say,
“My computer is running real slow.” It
turns out they are running the iPod,
Adobe Acrobat Reader, 15 layers of
antivirus, Palm Desktop, some viewer,
and so on. When they boot the computer
they have 75 processes running. No
wonder it’s so slow. Figure out what you
really need. Everything you install and
everything you run in the background is
a trade-off between speed versus the
utility of running that thing in the background. Do you really need seven HP
programs running in the background to
print — especially once a week? Everything you install inflates the size of the
registry, and slows your computer down,
so if you don’t really need it, don’t install it. Even if you uninstall, a lot of the
things it put in the registry don’t go
away. It’s just sitting there waiting to
trip up some other program later.
Is Service Pack 2 Firewall any good?
Q: I have just a quick question about
the quality of the Service Pack 2 firewall; is it a good one or not so good?
A: I think the Service Pack 2 firewall
is fairly decent. There are better prod(Continued on page 9)
February 2007
Program
Paint Shop Pro offers lots of new features
By John Weigle
[email protected]
ur first webinar program attracted
a large crowd to the January
meeting, and a lot of hands went up
when the audience was asked how
many people had come because the
program was Corel.
For those of you who missed the
meeting, a webinar is an online seminar. The presenter, Shawn Kardell, was
somewhere else — he didn’t say where
— and we listened and watched as he
demonstrated Paint Shop Pro Photo 11
on his computer and we projected the
results on the big screen.
There were a couple of glitches
getting the program set up, but once
they were figured out, all went well.
Questions were asked and relayed to
Kardell by cell phone.
The latest Paint Shop Pro offers
lots of new features to repair old pictures and improve new ones. It does
not have a stitching program to combine a series of pictures into a panoramic view, he said in answer to a
question.
The Paint Shop Pro tools range
from a One Step Photo Fix to make
several adjustments to a photo at one
time. “It might not always work,” he
said, in which case a user can move to
more specialized tools and make one
fix at a time.
Paint Shop Pro shows thumbnails
of photos to help you pick the ones you
O
Photos by Jerry Crocker
Corel’s Paint Shop Pro was the subject of our first webinar
presentation. The screen of the presenter’s computer was projected
on our screen, left, and questions were relayed by cell phone while
Michael Shalkey, right, monitored the effort.
want to work with.
Most work starts with a toolbar on
the left, he said. Cropping photos and
removing red eye are only two of the
functions found there.
The program includes a Learning
Center that walks users through whatever function they want to perform,
Kardell said. “In Paint Shop Pro, it’s a
very valuable window,” he said.
Corel’s publicity for the program
called Paint Shop Pro Photo XI “the
ideal choice for people who want extraordinary photos. With a built-in
Learning Center to help first-time users
get started, it’s the easiest way to get
professional-looking photos —fast!”
A feature that will no doubt help
many amateur photographers is a
straightening tool. You find a line that
should be perfectly horizontal or vertical, mark it, tell the program to do its
thing, and the picture will be rotated to
the proper orientation. If you pick the
topic in the Learning Center, it opens
the tutorial and picks the proper tool
for you to work with, he said.
Another tool can change the perspective of a picture. Perspective becomes a problem if you take a picture
of a tall building from the sidewalk
while looking toward the top of the
building, for instance. Paint Shop Pro
fixes the problem, which makes parallel lines like they’re going to converge
as they go higher.
More on Q&A: Service Pack 2 and its firewall
ucts out, but the problem is that if you
are running a complex set of software,
you’re probably better off using the
Service Pack 2 firewall because everything is going to work with it. If you
start running Zone Alarm or Norton
worm protection, or the McAfee firewall or something else, it can create
problems. People bring computers into
the shop regularly that we can fix simply by turning off the third-party fireFebruary 2007
wall and going back to the Service
Pack 2 firewall. If you have anything at
all complicated on your computer, and
ease of use or utility is important, everything runs with Service Pack 2. They
don’t all run with Norton, McAfee,
Zone Alarm, etc. Or it might be that
Zone Alarm picked up a setting from
something else, and the combination of
those two things interferes with your
program. Computers get real complicated real fast.
The Outer Edge
Do versions of Service Pack 2 differ?
Q: If I ordered Service Pack 2 a
year or so ago, and I order it today, are
they the same?
A: No, but they are very close. If
you have been doing your updates
regularly, you have the same end result. In the latest Service Pack 2 they
have rolled up some of the updates,
although there are still some that have
not been.
Page 9
More on Paint Shop Pro ...
The tool is “pretty unique, pretty
straightforward and solves a a very
specific problem,” which, he said, is
typical of many of the program’s tools.
For old photos with problems,
Paint Shop Pro includes fade correction and a variety of restore and repair
functions to get rid of scratches and
other such problems.
Kardell demonstrated the Clone
Tool and Scratch Remover and said
it’s best to fix a problem a little bit at a
time rather than all at once. The tools
can be used to get rid of blemishes and
straight lines, such as telephone lines,
that distract from the main subject.
Newer photos on the other hand,
can be made to look old. Color pictures
can be converted to black and white or
can be made to look like they were
taken in a different era by using the
new Time Machine tool. And if you
change a color photo to black and
white, you can bring color back to just
part of the picture — such as flowers
being held by a bride.
Colors can be changed quickly,
giving the subjects of your photos a
brand new wardrobe. Once you’ve
marked the area you want to change,
you can run through all the available
colors.
Paint Shop Pro also offers a depth
of field effect that can blur the background of a picture to put the emphasis
on whatever is in the foreground
(Kardell demonstrated the effect with a
closeup picture of a dog).
It’s also possible to combine pictures to get the best features of each.
Kardell demonstrated with a picture of
a castle with a dull background and a
second picture with dramatic sky and
clouds.
Photos can be saved in a variety of
formats with the Save As feature, he
said. They can also be resized easily to
reduce download times for pictures
What’s new?
Corel pointed to these features
in publicity sent before the program:
■ The Organizer: A one-stop
photo management center that
takes the guesswork out of finding
photos by letting you search for
images on your computer by filename, date, file type, or folder location.
■ Color Changer Tool: Easily
and realistically change colors of
any objects in your photos.
■ Time Machine: An amazing
special effects filter plus a history
lesson all in one! It shows what
photos would look like if they were
taken in another era, ranging from
the 1800s to the 1990s.
■ Depth of Field Effect: Apply
realistic depth that is usually only
captured with expensive lenses and
a digital SLR camera. It quickly
simulates an out-of-focus background to draw attention to the
main subject.
■ Skin Smoothing: Automatically remove wrinkles, scars, or
signs of aging from faces in digital
photos.
■ Film and Filter Effects: Make
photos look like they were taken
with a specific type of film or filter.
sent by e-mail.
Kardell recommends scanning photos into the system at the highest resolution possible so you can get the best
results in the original and in any retouching. You can adjust the compression when you save a picture to send or
upload to a Web site, he said.
One questioner asked about color
prints that don’t look the same as the
picture did on the computer screen.
Choose from over 50 different combinations or create and save your
own look .
■ Enhanced Crop Tool: This
makes it easier than ever to get
specific print sizes in a flash.
■ Levels and Curves: Get exceptional control over some of the
most critical image adjustments
such as contrast, color depth and
levels.
■ Training Videos: See Paint
Shop Pro Photo in action. Get helpful instructions on how to use new
tools and other familiar features in
two hours worth of informative videos.
■ E-mail Features: It’s easier
and faster than ever to share photos with friends and family. Send as
attachments or embed photo directly in the body of an e-mail. Paint
Shop Pro Photo automatically resizes photos for email so you don’t
have to open and resave.
■ Corel Painter and Corel
Painter Essentials Compatibility:
Open, edit, create and save images
as RIFF files to create a seamless
workflow with the world’s most
popular painting and illustration
software.
■ Video Preview: Review, open
and organize videos and extract
single-frames from video clips.
Paint Shop Pro does not have a fix for
that, Kardell said, but if it becomes a
major problem, calibration tools are
available to adjust the monitor display.
On the Net:
User group prices for Paint Shop
Pro and other Corel products can be
found at www.corel.com/
specialusergroups.
Shawn Kardell’s e-mail address is
[email protected].
Practice safe computing:
Back up, back up, back up. And then test the backup to be sure it worked.
Page 10
The Outer Edge
February 2007
Excellent FTP program is on CIPCUG disc
T
oby got a chuckle out of my booboo last month referring to my
FileZILLA FTP site and I referred to it
as Flotilla. I couldn't believe I had written such a thing, but Toby said because
my spell checker didn't recognize FileZILLA, it substituted
Flotilla. I assure you
Web page
the name of the FTP
site is FileZILLA and it
works like a charm.
It is one of the freeware programs on the
club’s disc, which we
will have more of at
Long
this meeting. It’s only a
$5 donation to the club
and is packed full of very useful freeway programs including the most recent
Service Pack 2 for XP.
David is selling copies of MENTOR
XP for $5 each, a donation to the club. It
certainly is a helpful tool for those of us
who are brain dead or computer crippled. If your memory is like mine, this
is a must have for refresher courses after
the classes. And don’t we all need that
occasionally? His XP classes are still
moving along, and he has the January
through June 2007 classes posted at
cipcug.org/dhsigs.cfm.
Toby is currently working on a new
face for CIPCUG, but he is waiting for
me to validate all of the pages so that
the transition will go smoothly when he
does his thing with it. I never really
went back to the very early pages to do
the validation. Everything I have done
for the past couple of years validated,
but I kept putting off going back to the
beginning of our online service. If you
have ever tried to validate pages with
what they call “unreadable text,” that is,
things that W3C cannot read, such as
double dashes and curly apostrophes
and quotes, you haven’t a clue how tedious this job is. It is worse than flyspecking a graphic image, because the
eye reads right over what you are looking for. Once I get it cleaned up, we will
never have to do THAT part of the process again.
HAVE YOU RUN YOUR ANTISPY WARE PROGRAMS LATELY?
Recording and burning audio to a CD
By Bill Wayson
[email protected]
omewhat over a year ago I bought a
new car, and I was very lucky to be
able to do so. It is a nice car, by the way,
and I was and still am very happy with
it. But shortly after
Penguin’s
picking it up, I realized
Lair
it had no cassette tape
player. “So what?” you
may ask. Well, there
were (and still are) several radio shows that
played on weekends that
I liked to listen to. However, since I spent the
better part of my free
time either trying to
Wayson
come up with new topics for this column or actually writing it,
I could not afford the time to just sit
down and listen to them at the time they
were on. Up until then, I simply waited
for these shows to start, popped cassette
tapes into the recorder, pressed the record button, and returned to my journalistic life. I would listen to these tapes
S
February 2007
during the free time I had during which I
could not write, namely my commute to
work.
Now this solution was not usable,
and I needed to come up with a new one.
Assessing what the new car did offer for
playing audio, a few possibilities presented themselves, such as an audio input jack. But I quickly dismissed this
and homed in on the CD player. I believed that CD technology would be
around for quite a while, plus the car’s
CD player could also play MP3 discs.
So, I set my sights on figuring out how I
could, using Free and Open Source Software (FOSS), record my radio shows to
a CD that would play in my new car.
Here is what I came up with. (Note
that I am using KDE with its utilities.
Users of other windowing environments
will have to find their equivalent utilities.)
I don't think I’ve seen a PC or laptop
for years that did not come with an audio device, either built in or as a sound
card. If yours does not have one, it must
be very, very old by PC standards. My
main PC did have sound, and I knew my
The Outer Edge
Linux supported it since it played all
sorts of symphonic ditties to notify me
that something had just happened. Like
most other PCs, it had three sound jacks:
line-output (these are plugged into powered speakers); line-input (for relatively
strong audio sources); and a microphone
input (for weak audio sources like microphones). I knew that the headphone
jack on a portable radio was an acceptable source for a line-input, and I had a
good portable radio with a stereo headphone jack. To connect the radio to my
PC, I bought a suitably sized stereo
male-to-male cable at an electronics
store and used it to connect the headphone jack of the radio to the line-input
jack on my PC. I set the volume level
low on the radio, turned it on, then
started the PC and logged in.
Now, I needed some way of recording. I looked in my K-menu under
Multimedia and noticed an icon called
“Recording.” Selecting it started KRecord, the KDE sound recorder application. Not a fancy application, it would
record anything that could be played
Page 11
More on Pengiun’s Lair ...
through my PC and save it to a WAV
file. To help with the necessary process
of setting the sound level before recording, I clicked on the colored bar
icon at the top of KRecord. This opened
up an input level window, which serves
the same purpose as the VU meters on
my tape deck: It helped to set the recording level as high as it could be set
before distortion resulted. The input
level window showed green horizontal
bars that got longer as the input level
rose and turned red when distortion was
detected. The next step was to get the
radio to play through the PC speakers,
which would allow me to hear what
KRecord was recording.
To do this, I opened up the KMix
sound mixer applet by using the Options
menu of KRecord. The mixer is similar
to a hardware audio mixer. It controls
and mixes, in one place, one to several
audio input sources to one or more of
several output destinations. The contents
of KMix will vary depending on your
PC’s audio hardware, but it will almost
always have three tabs: Output, Input,
and Switches. For details for KMix options, see the documentation for your
audio hardware and use a good Web
search engine. Also be aware that for
some combinations of hardware and
audio drivers, the labels you see in
KMix may not be correct. Experimentation may be helpful, and perseverence.
Once this part is done, you may never
need to touch the mixer settings again. I
first selected the Output tab and set the
Master slider about half way up. I then
selected the Input tab and enabled the
PC’s line input jack by finding the Line
slider, setting it at about half way up,
and clicking on the green button at the
top to light it up. The radio started playing out of the PC speakers.
If you still hear no sound, select the
Switches tab and make sure the Line-In
Mode drop down, if it exists, shows
Line-In. You may also need to experiment with turning on and off the
switches in this tab and judiciously adjusting the volume level on the radio.
You don’t want the volume level to be
too high when the radio finally starts
playing through the PC. Also be aware
that the Capture slider on the Input tab,
if it exists, may need to be enabled and
set to a suitable level in order to record.
With the radio playing through the PC
and the input level meters bouncing
around, now was the time to set the recording level. Again, to protect my PC
speakers, I slid the Master output slider
low and I selected the red button at the
bottom of KMix’s Line input slider. The
red buttons select the sources that KRecord will record — I disabled the other
sources so that I didn’t record things like
my PC’s notification sounds. The recording level was controlled by a combination of KRecord’s Line input level
and the volume output by the radio since
I was using its headphone output. And in
most cases I was aware of, any audio
adjustment tends to distort if it gets too
close to its upper limit. I didn’t want
either KMix’s or the radio’s levels to be
too high. I carefully increased the level
of each of them until the bars in the input level meter started turning red during the loudest parts of the radio show,
then backed each level down a bit. I was
ready to record.
By default, KRecord records directly
to RAM. Knowing that ultimately the
recording would be put on a CD by another program, I used the File menu to
create a file buffer. Thus KRecord
would record to a disc file, which I
could then use elsewhere. When created,
the file appeared in the KRecord window. Before recording, you can create
multiple file buffers, each of which will
appear in KRecord. Make sure you have
sufficient free space in the disc partition
you are recording to — WAV files can
get very big. An hour of recording will
create a file roughly 600 MB is size.
Select the file you wish to record to before you start to record. Having done
that, I waited to hear the beginning of
my radio show and pressed the red
“Start Record” button in KRecord. At
this point I walked away and set a
kitchen timer for 55 minutes. When it
went off, I knew it was time to return to
the PC to stop the recording. I just
waited for my show to sign off, then
pressed the blue “Stop Record/
Playback” button with the square in the
middle. KRecord saves the file buffer as
it is recording, so I simply closed KRecord, which also closed the input level
window, and closed KMix. I now had an
audio WAV file of my radio show.
At this point I could have created a
standard audio CD using the WAV file.
But such a CD holds no more than about
74 minutes of audio, and I record a good
deal more than that in one weekend. I
wanted to see if I could get all my weekend recordings on one disc. I could have
converted the WAV files to much
smaller OGG files, which use the freely
The Outer Edge is printed and mailed by
VENTURA PRINTING
AND BUSINESS MAIL
CENTER
200 N. Elevar St., Oxnard, CA 93031
Phone: 805-604-1766 Fax: 805-604-1765
Page 12
The Outer Edge
February 2007
More on Penguin’s Lair ...
available Ogg Vorbis format. Unfortunately, my car’s CD player does not recognize OGG files, so that was not an
option. But remember that it does play
MP3 (Mpeg Layer 3) audio. So I decided to convert the WAV files to MP3
files.
I quickly ran into a problem: My
default Linux installation had no utilities
to make this conversion, and there were
none on the installation DVD. Some
searching on the Internet revealed the
reason. The format used in MP3 files is
patented technology, and the owner of
the patent wants royalties for its use.
Even though the patent is under some
dispute, few if any U.S. distributors of
Linux give you an out-of-the box ability
to create MP3 files. Some include players for MP3 files, but in those cases I
would guess somewhere someone has
paid the MP3 patent owner for the privilege. Personally, I would pay a reasonable amount to be able to create MP3
files above-board, but I am unaware of
any mechanism to do this, either through
the purchase of commercial software
that runs on Linux or paying the patent
owner directly. In short, if you live in a
country like the U.S. and wish to create
MP3 files under Linux, you must cross
into a gray legal area and download software that originates outside your country.
I am not suggesting that you
download or install this software, nor is
CIPCUG. I simply describe one way of
getting MP3-creation software if you
decide to do so. The MP3 patent is not
recognized by several countries worldwide, so MP3 software is easily available from many places. The most wellknown (to me) program for creating
MP3s is called “lame” for Lame Ain’t
no MP3 Encoder. You can find SuSE
rpms for lame (and lots more) at http://
packman.links2linux.org/. Just search
for lame to find the package’s page, then
select the package for your version of
SuSE Linux and your PC’s architecture.
Users of most other Linux distributions
Ventura County Computers
can undoubtedly find suitable packages
by using a good Web search engine.
Once I had lame installed on my PC
(SuSE users can install from the Konqueror file manager or running as root
“rpm -Uvh lame-<version>.rpm” from a
command window), converting a WAV
file to an MP3 was simple since I was
comfortable with the command line. I
just opened a command window, navigated to the directory where I saved my
WAV file, and just typed in “lame -help.” This brought up some help, one
line of which appeared under a heading
called RECOMMENDED. This showed
me the current recommended syntax for
converting a WAV file to an MP3 — in
the current version 3.97 it is “lame -V2
input.wav output.mp3”. I changed input
and output to appropriate values and ran
it after ensuring that I had sufficient disc
space available. The MP3 file lame created was roughly 10 percent of the size
of the WAV file, and it took a few minutes to complete.
(805) 289-3960
2175 Goodyear Ave. #117 Ventura 93003
Happy New Year
From Toby, Rick and Michael
HUGE LCD Monitor SALE!!!!
We will match or beat any valid
price on LCD displays in stock.
Or at least give it our best effort!
Come on in and twist Rick’s arm!
No reasonable offer refused!
Now's the time to buy!
Don’t wait, come in today!
February 2007
The Outer Edge
Page 13
Make Office programs show full menus
can force the display of
Learning
the full menu every time
y default, when you open drop- with Levy
you open any of the opdown menus in Microsoft Office
tions from the menu bar
programs, you’ll often see a doubleat the top of your prodown arrow at the bottom of the dropgram window. Here’s
down, and if you click on it you’ll be
how.
able to see the full drop-down menu in
Click on Tools and
all of its glory. What you may not know Levy
then click on Customize.
is that if you do nothing at all when the
In the personalized
drop-down menu opens, it will open the
Menus and Toolbars section you’ll see a
full version automatically after just a
checkmark next to “Show full menus
few seconds.
after a short delay.”
If all of this is too much for you, you
To change that, click next to
By Jeff Levy
B
“Always show full menus.”
Now click Close.
That’s it.
You’re done.
This lesson is copyright by Jeff Levy
and printed with permission. Jeff is the
host of “Computer News with Jeff Levy”
from noon to 3 p.m. every Saturday and
Sunday on KNX News Radio, 1070 AM
on the dial. All of his more than 400
lessons for both the PC and the Mac
may be found on his Web site, jefflevy.com.
More on Penguin’s Lair ...
Now I had an MP3 file that could
be burned to a CD. KDE users can use
the very nice K3b CD and DVD burning application. Interestingly, I discovered that as far as K3b is concerned, an
MP3 audio disc is really a data disc. I
selected New Data CD Project, which
opened a file manager-like panel at the
bottom of K3b’s window with a “Use
drag’n’drop ...” prompt in it. I used
Konqueror to navigate to my MP3 file
and simply dragged it from the Konqueror window to K3b. K3b added the
file to the lower Current Projects pane.
Next I clicked on the CD-with-fire
icon in the Current Projects icon bar,
which opened up a dialog where lots
and lots of options could be changed.
For my purposes, all but one of these
had suitable default values. I had both
CD and DVD burners in my PC, so I
verified that the Burning Device on the
Writing tab was the CD drive that I
wanted to use. Once that was done, I
pressed the burn button and went off to
do other things. I had configured my
K3b to play a little ditty upon successfully creating a disc. After a few minutes, when I heard it, I returned to my
PC, and there in the open CD drive
tray was my MP3 CD. With much anticipation I took it to the garage, sat in
my car, turned on the radio, and loaded
the CD. After a short bit, the recorded
radio show started playing from the
Page 14
car’s speakers. It was going to be a
satisfying commute Monday morning.
I will make one plug for your pocketbook and our environment. I have
had very, very good luck using rewritable CDs (CD-RW discs) for my
MP3 CDs. I have reused the same two
discs many times and have encountered no problems in my car or on several other PCs using drives from various manufacturers. I recommend that
everyone find out which types of rewritable CDs and DVDs their drives
support, buy a small quantity of them,
and experiment with them. If they
work for you, you’ll save a lot of
money and keep a lot of plastic and
other trash out of the landfill.
This is the process I settled on and
still use to record my weekend radio
shows. One thing I found out is that the
player in my car supports one level of
folders when playing MP3s. So I save
my MP3 files to folders that signify
different radio shows and drag the
folders to K3b. (I actually did this
once, then saved the configuration as a
K3b project. Each weekend, I doubleclick the project, and everything is set
for burning a new CD.) I just can’t put
folders into folders. This may be a
common feature of MP3 discs — I just
have little experience with them other
than the use described here.
If you have questions or would like
to learn more about Linux and FOSS,
The Outer Edge
come to the February Linux SIG meeting at 6:30 p.m. on Thursday, Feb. 22
at Ventura County Computers in Ventura. We will show this process of recording from a radio and burning it to
a CD. See the CIPCUG Web site for
more information. If you have a question or topic you would like the Lair or
Linux SIG to cover, drop me a line at
[email protected]. Until next
month, happy computing.
Free Linspire offered
Linspire is providing APCUGmember groups with a free downloadable copy of Linspire 5.0 Version 2.0
($49.95 value) in ISO format. Linspire
5.0 can be downloaded until March 1.
Use this link to download the program:
www.linspire.com/apcug
No coupon code is needed. After
going to the Web page, click the
checkout button. If you do not already
have a Linspire account, you will need
to create one. Click the continue buttons until you get to the download directions page. NOTE: Linspire is provided in ISO boot image format. You
will need to use your CD-ROM burning software to burn the image to a
CD-ROM that can then be booted.
Linspire provides directions on its
download page.
— Judy Taylour, Chair
APCUG Benefits/Services
Committee
February 2007
Are two really better than one?
By Rick Smith
[email protected]
ith all the marketing hype we
receive about computers and all
the related components it’s getting
harder to understand what’s what any
more. I’m going to spend some time and
try not to get too technical to explain
what we’ve been hearing a lot about
lately, Dual Core Processors! Currently
both Intel Corp. and AMD (Advanced
Micro Devices) have products on the
shelves. Intel started with Pentium and
Celeron D and morphed into Core 2
Duo. AMD has its verRick’s
sion called the X2. This
rant
time I have to give some
credit to Intel because it
kept the MB socket 775
unchanged while AMD
went from socket 939 to
socket 940. In the course
of one year, AMD has
wiped out two whole
Smith
classes of main boards;
sockets 754 and 939 are
now retired to bone yard, which includes our old favorites, Slot 1, socket
478, socket A and socket 462.
So let’s get down to “brass tacks”
and talk about the differences and enhancements the new technologies offer.
Oh, I forgot to say where that saying
came from. To the best of my knowledge, it comes from when you used to
buy bolts of cloth at the local mercantile. After choosing the appreciate fabric
you would lay it out on the counter,
which had brass tacks inserted in it to
mark the yards and would haggle over
the price. This has since come to mean
“let’s get down to business” and finish
the deal. With that I’ll do the same.
Intel was the first processor vendor
to push thread-level parallelism into the
mainstream with its Hyper-Threading
(HT) technology five years ago. It was
implemented as a way to make more
efficient use of Pentium 4’s onboard
resources. The ability to address multiple threads simultaneously supposedly
benefited power uses, but, Hell, I never
noticed the difference. Intel came out
with the first dual-core desktop chip in
2005, The Pentium D. Whereas hyper-
W
February 2007
T
he passing of time has
seen even the fastest
single-core models lose their
luster. Clock speed is no
l o ng e r co n s i de re d t h e
measuring stick by which
benchmarks are won — a fact
proven by Intel’s Core 2 Duo
processor.
threading divided one physical CPU into
two logical processors sharing a single
set of resources, the Pentium D fused a
pair of physical processors together.
Dual-threaded applications were faster
and could multi-task more efficiently.
But really, why you ask? Keep reading,
and I’ll explain. Anyone who needed
performance could benefit from dualcore over HT.
Dual-core didn’t win over everyone’s heart. Since each multi-core chip
incorporated twice the number of transistors as any predecessor, pure complexity necessitated a reduction in operating frequency. Power users broke up
into two camps at that point: those who
favored frequency above all else, generally because they played single-threaded
games, and those who preferred the
overall alacrity of a dual-core system.
Speed became the hallmark of singlecore and productivity the domain of
dual-core.
The passing of time has seen even
the fastest single-core models lose their
luster. Clock speed is no longer considered the measuring stick by which
benchmarks are won — a fact proven by
Intel’s Core 2 Duo processor. Although
the flagship Core 2 Duo operates several
hundred megahertz slower than the Netburst chips before it, plenty of cache and
an optimized execution pipeline help
procure unprecedented benchmark numbers.
The technology underlying Core 2
Duo is the product of a perfect storm.
Intel’s Core Microarchitecture, on
The Outer Edge
which Core 2 Duo is based, follows a
design philosophy centered on efficiency. Whereas the Pentium 4 was built
to deliver super-fast clock speeds and
featured a long, 31-stage execution
pipeline as a means to achieve those
numbers, Core boasts a 14-stage pipe
endowed with the resources to field
more instructions at once. The result is
an architecture that inherently — without any other enhancement — functions
more efficiently.
As Core development continued,
Intel was also finalizing its 65nm manufacturing plans, yielding the ability to
build smaller processing cores with
more transistors. Thus, the first desktop
Core 2 Duo included a maximum of
4MB L2 cache, implemented as a shared
repository between both processing
cores. Taken alone, the cache infusion
would have given Intel’s best effort a
decided boost in performance. Added to
its Core Microarchitecture, however, the
extra memory helps even more.
Right from the get-go, Intel intended
Core to operate natively in a dual-core
environment — a claim evidenced by
that shared L2 cache. Each execution
core sports unique 32KB data and instruction caches. But the L2, either 2MB
or 4MB in size, can either be used in
part or as a whole by each core, depending on the workload. Dual-core NetBurst processors used the front-side bus
to share data from one cache to the next.
The Core Microarchitecture simply
transfers ownership of that information,
giving Core 2 Duo chips a significant
advantage. Moreover, cache is allocated
dynamically, enabling real-time optimization when the execution cores aren’t
being used evenly.
There’s more, a lot more, but my
head is starting to spin. I hope this gives
you more answers that it creates questions. If the readership likes, I can spit
out lots of techno-babble each month
and educate everyone to the point of
nonunderstanding. BUT I really prefer
to talk about what irritates me the most,
and this month, it’s Microsoft Vista, but
I’m out of space and the editor has me
on a short leash after being so late on
my articles. So see you next month.
Page 15
Securitiy
Shrinking long URLs makes them easier to use
By Bob de Violini
[email protected]
’m going to start this month with a
security-related item wrapped inside
a nonsecurity related item. How many
of you have tried copying and pasting a
R E A L L Y L O N G URL from your
browser into an e-mail or other document, just to not have the whole thing
fit, or the link not work because it got
chopped off? Well, there’s a solution,
and it’s totally free. It’s called TinyURL.com, and that’s also its Web location, tinyurl.com. It will take any
URL you throw at it and shorten it
tremendously. Best of all, the link is
permanent! No worrying about it lasting only one week or one month. As an
example, here’s a normal link to a
great article about how to protect your
wireless equipped laptop while surfing
at a public WiFi hot spot:
http://www.computerworld.com/
a c t i o n / a r t i c l e . d o ?
c
o
m
mand=viewArticleBasic&taxonomyNa
me=security&articleId=9007142&taxo
nomyId=17&intsrc=kc_feat
(Microsoft Publisher insists on
hyphenating command, even if I set the
URL unjustified. If you type this in, be
sure not to type the hyphen. — Editor)
See how much of the link was
wrapped here in TOE? Same goes for
an e-ail you might need to send, but the
e-mail editor might just chop it off at
the end of the line. To avoid this, just
go to tinyurl.com and right there in the
middle of the page is a space for you to
enter the URL you want to shorten.
Just copy and paste into the box and
click on the “Make TinyURL” button.
Viola, you’ve shortened the URL
above to the following: http://
tinyurl.com/uc9dk.
By the way, the links above lead to
an excellent article on just how to
make sure your laptop is safe from
anyone who might be trying to see
what you’re doing online while at a
public hot spot. Because they’re for the
general public, they’re not secure, and
I
Page 16
anyone can use them. However, this
invites nothing but trouble if you’re
not adequately prepared. Someone else
within the vicinity of the hot spot could
be trying to capture the packets that
your laptop is sending to the WiFi
router, which can then give them
things such as passwords and user
names for Web sites you’ve had to log
on to during your session at the hot
spot. If you’re taking care of business
for your company, they could possible
intercept data contained within business-sensitive e-mail traffic sent to you
or by you. The tips in the article will
help you stay secure and surf safely
while at most any hot spot. The article
is written in fairly plain language without a lot of really technical terms,
which makes it really easy for anyone
to understand.
GPS Trojan
OK, onward and upward. There are
several reports which came out right at
the end of January that indicate that a
popular, well-advertised, GPS system
is infected with a Trojan horse type of
virus. This particular Trojan has been
known to and prevented by anti virus
companies since the middle of last
year. This Trojan runs once the GPS
unit’s been connected to your PC. The
affected GPS unit is the latest TomTom model GO 910, with version 6.51
of the device’s software. More info can
be had at the following link: http://
tinyurl.com/3bo7cn. By the way, that’s
a lowercase o, not a zero, in the link. I
did some poking around on the TomTom site but didn’t find a mention of a
special update to address this virus.
The closest I came was instructions on
how to update your unit’s software.
For further assistance, you might try
calling their customer service number
at 1-866-486-6866 from 5:30 a.m. to 4
p.m. PST. If they do have a fix for
their infected software, their tech support folks should be able to help. In the
meanwhile, make sure your antivirus
scanner and resident program has the
latest updates to help catch this Trojan
if it tries making its way onto your
The Outer Edge
computer.
Now, for some info from our
friends at the SANS Institute, via their
monthly OUCH Newsletter for February: (All links below are as they appear
in the newsletter and have not been
shortened by Tinyurl)
MySpace Mute on
Malware Epidemic
MySpace.com, an online social
networking club, has become a favorite
target of miscreants seeking to spread
malware onto the computers of its 90
million members. The site has been
used by hackers to distribute Windows
AntiVirus Pro, DriveCleaner, Error
Safe New Release Install, a worm exploiting the recent QuickTime player
bug, banner ads that infected millions
of computers with adware, and a phishing attack targeting music fans. A
MySpace spokeswoman, who said she
was not permitted to be cited by name,
emphasized that malware violates the
site's terms of service and that a dedicated security team works 24/7 to
stamp out offenders.
More information:
h
t
t
p
:
/
/
www.theregister.co.uk/2007/01/27/
myspace_scareware_myscare/.
Apple Patches QuickTime Bug
Apple has fixed a flaw in its QuickTime media playback software that
allowed malicious coders to install
malware onto vulnerable systems. The
vulnerability, affecting both Windows
and Mac OS X, was published as part
of the “Month of Apple Bugs” project,
which set out to release details of previously undisclosed Mac OS X or Apple application security bugs every day
in January.
More information:
h
t
t
p
:
/
/
www.theregister.co.uk/2007/01/24/
apple_patches_quicktime_bug/ &
http://projects.info-pull.com/moab/.
[I’d just like to add that, if you
February 2007
Here’s how to capture YouTube video
This information was given to me at
the last meeting, and I didn’t realize
the name of the person who contributed
it was not on the printout until I
scanned it in for this issue. If you’ll let
me know who you are, I’ll credit the
information in the next issue. — John
Weigle, editor
I had a link sent to a video on YouTube showing a Ferrari V12 engine
being manufactured, which caused me
to want to keep the video. It’s not possible from the Web site, but a bit of
research turned up the following:
It all works a treat, enjoy.
How to capture “YouTube”
and other flash movies
YouTube.Com has a lot of great
videos, but I have to be online in order
to watch them — there’s no integrated
way to save the movies locally. So
after a bit of Google-fu, here is the
procedure for capturing a flash movie
to your local machine to watch offline.
There are probably other ways; I found
this to be the simplest.
1) First, you may need a program
for watching the Flash movie on your
machine after you capture it — I found
the simplest to install and use to be FL
V Player 1.3.3. You can download it
either from the author’s home page, or
direct from TheMook.Net.
2) After downloading that file,
flvplayer_setup.exe, run it and follow
the on-screen prompts to install (as you
would any other program). If you’re
asked whether to associate the FLV
Player as your default player for
“.FLV” files, choose “Yes.”
3) Now that your player is installed,
it’s time to grab a video. As an example I’ll use this video, “Arnold Rave,”
from YouTube.Com.
4) Copy the URL of the video you
want to your clipboard — in this case,
the URL for “Arnold Rave” is “http://
www.youtube.com/watch?v+PkbBX9654s”
5) Go to KeepVid.Com and paste
your copied URL into the textbox at
the top of the page; then choose
“YouTube” from the drop-down list at
right; and finally, hit the “Download”
button.
6) The KeepVid.Com page will
refresh, and now there will be a new
link named “Download Link” just under the textbox. Right-click the
“Download Link” and choose “Save
Target As …” or “Save Link As…”
Save the file wherever you like on your
local machine — the default file name
is “get_video.htm.”
7) Once the file is downloaded,
rename it to whatever you like, as long
as it ends with an “.FLV” extension.
For example, rename “get_video.htm”
to “conan.flv.”
8) And that’s it, you’re done. If you
double-click the file “conan.flv,” the
FLV Player you installed in Step 1
should automatically open and play the
movie for you.
Then, if you need to convert to
MPEG:
Get the encoder from http://
f i l e s . b r o t h e r s o f t . c o m / f r e e wa r e /
RivaEncoderSetup.exe
Install, load flv file, on output
change the output with mpeg extenstion. E.g., Test.FLV to Test.MPG.
More on security ...
have QuickTime version 7.1.3, using the
built-in updater within QuickTime will
NOT get you this update. You MUST
use a separate little utility that stands
alone from QuickTime, called the
“Apple Software Update” that is offered
as part of the installation of QuickTime
7.1.3.
[I had to uninstall and reinstall
QuickTime to get it to work, but the
entire uninstall and reinstall process
took no more than 10 minutes. The option for the Apple Software Update
shows up on the screen where you’re
prompted for the directory in which you
want to install the program. Look for a
small square check box just above the
installation directory’s default path.
Make sure that box is checked. That will
then install QuickTime 7.1.3 AND the
February 2007
More information: http://
Apple Software Update. You’ll then find
the Apple Software Update listed on stopbadware.org/ &
http://www.consumerwebwatch.org/
your Start Menu and the program will
take it from there.]
Well, that’s all for this month! With
so many vulnerabilities for Microsoft’s
Badware Alliance Seeks to Do Good
Office products being actively exploited
StopBadware.org is an Internet
so far this year, especially in the last
“Neighborhood Watch” campaign ormonth, I can’t stress enough the imporganized cooperatively by Harvard Law
tance of checking the Microsoft Update
School’s Berkman Center for Internet &
site or the combination of the Windows
Society and Oxford University’s Oxford
Update and the Office Update sites.
Internet Institute, and supported by sevAlthough Microsoft hasn’t released
eral prominent tech companies, includany updates ahead of the normal seconding Google, Lenovo, and Sun MicrosysTuesday-of-the-month schedule, you
tems. Consumer Reports’ WebWatch is
never know just when they might. So,
serving as an unpaid special adviser.
it’s a good idea to turn on your AutoThe site provides information about
matic Updates to at least tell you that
software applications intended to help
new updates are available, or check the
consumers make better choices about
Microsoft sites mentioned above on a
what they download onto their comregular basis during the month.
puters.
The Outer Edge
Page 17
Make old hard drive an external drive
By Jim Thornton
([email protected])
ou just bought a new hard drive
to replace your computer’s original drive and your new one is three
times larger. You needed this larger
capacity drive to store all of those family and vacation photographs as well as
all of the MP3 music files that you
have been downloading. Now, what to
do with the old drive — sell it on eBay
or give it away? But
Product
wait, don’t do that.
Evaluation
Let’s buy an external
hard drive enclosure to
mount the drive into,
and now you have a
great place to store
your backup files and/
or a portable hard drive
that you can use on
Thornton
different computers.
This is a good use for any unused drive
that you have stored in the closet.
The housing of Macally PHR100AC Firewire/USB2.0 External Enclosure is made of solid aluminum and
serves to fully protect the hard drive
from any external damage. It has
shock-absorbent rubber strips on its top
and bottom. The enclosure also is designed to be stackable, can either lay
flat or with its mounting stand on its
side, and serves as a heat dissipater.
This model is designed to accept any
capacity 3.5-inch ATA hard drive (the
standard hard drive in most computers). The enclosure is connected to
Y
the computer by either a USB (1.1 or
2.0) or firewire (IEEE 1394A) cable,
and there is a second firewire jack for
daisy chaining. It has its own power
supply so it isn’t robbing power from
your computer, an ON-OFF switch,
and a large neon blue LED to indicate
when the power is on and when data is
being transferred.
The enclosure works with both PC
(Windows 98, Me, 2000, and XP) and
Mac (OS 9.2, 10.1.5, 10.2, and 10.3)
desktop and notebook computers and
supports hot plug-and-play. Its physical size is 5.2 inches wide, 1.8 high,
and 8.7 long, and it weighs 1.3 pounds.
It comes with the manufacturer’s oneyear warranty.
The enclosure comes with an installation CD, printed instructions, a
vertical mounting stand, firewire cable,
USB cable, and power supply. The
manufacturer’s Web site is
www.macally.com, and the manufacturer’s suggested retail price is $69;
Amazon sells it for $49.
The manufacturer offers several
models — five USB only; three USB
and IEEE1394A firewire; two
IEEE1394A firewire only; two USB
and IEEE1394A with data encryption;
one USB and IEEE1394B 800 firewire; one USB for use on a network;
and one USB for copying or transferring data between a USB flash drive,
card reader, MP3 player (except iPod),
digital camera, hard drive, etc., all
without a computer. The other major
difference between the models is
physical size of the hard drives (1.8,
2.5, 3.5, and 5.25-inches).
Installation is easy:
(1) Remove two screws from the
rear panel of the housing, remove the
panel, slide the enclosure out of its
housing.
(2) Install four anti-shock mounts
onto your hard drive, set the drive’s
jumper to Master, and connect the 40pin ribbon data and four-pin power
cables to the drive.
(3) Slide and secure the drive into
place in the open enclosure, slide the
enclosure back onto its housing, replace the panel, and reinsert the two
screws.
(4) Plug the AC adapter into a standard electrical wall outlet and into the
enclosure, and plug the USB or firewire cable into your computer and into
the enclosure.
(5) Your computer should immediately see the new hard drive and display a notice that it has found new
hardware. If for some reason your
computer doesn’t see the new drive,
the installation CD provides detailed
information on how to resolve the
problem.
Bottom line, I’m pleased with the
concept and the way to put to good use
our old but totally usable hard drives.
My wife is using the enclosure on her
computer to store our old 35mm family
and vacation slides that she is scanning
as individual JPG files.
IEEE invites CIPCUG members to variety of events
Karol Pessin, JD, patent attorney and
recovering IP litigator.
June 6: 7 p.m., location TBA,
“Reinventing Yourself When Your Industry Disappears,” Rosemary Christopher, recruiter, personal coach.
Sept. 5, 7 p.m., location TBA:
“Yesterday Engineer, Today CEO, Tomorrow Investor — How To Do It,”
Section presentations
speaker TBA.
April 4: 7 p.m., location TBA,
Nov. 7: 7 p.m., location TBA. “The
“Translating a Brilliant Inspiration into
Successful Engineering Consultant,”
Revenues — Patenting Your Ideas,”
Lyman Hays, Westech principal.
The Buenaventura Chapter of the
Institute of Electrical and Electronics
Engineers (IEEE) has invited CIPCUG
members to join its meetings. More information on the group is available at
www.ieee-buenaventura.org.
Here’s some information on coming
programs.
Page 18
The Outer Edge
Microwave Theory and Techniques
events
Feb. 21: 6:30 p.m. pizza, 7 p.m.,
talk, Ciao Wireless, “Small Scale Energy Harbvesting from Ocean Waves,”
Jeffrey Cheung, PhD.
Communications Society events
(All meetings at EDO-CCS, 3500
Willow Lane, Thousand Oaks. Networking and dinner at 6:30 p.m., talks begin
at 7 p.m.)
February 2007
Smart Computing tips and fun facts
Reprinted with permission from
Smart Computing. Visit http://
www.smartcomputing.com/groups to
learn what Smart Computing can do for
you and your user group.
Tables In Word: Tools such as Microsoft Word 2003 offer a variety of
standard formats that can be applied to
tables. Just click anywhere in your table
and then click Table and Table AutoFormat. A formatting dialog box will
appear, so you can select from a variety
of established format styles. Examples
are shown for each format, so you can
experiment with different looks until
you find the one that suits the situation
best. When you decide on a format,
click Apply to reformat you table. If you
make a mistake or change your mind,
click Undo and repeat this process to
apply another table format.
Garbage In, Garbage Out: It’s
great to take pictures at low resolution
because you can cram more photos in
your camera’s memory. But with all
things PC, the GIGO (garbage in, garbage out) rule applies. Low-resolution
photos are ideal for posting to Web sites
or e-mailing, but not for printing, unless
you’re willing to keep the size down to
roughly passport-photo size or smaller.
Let’s say your printer works best at 200
pixels per inch. For a good 4-x-6-inch
photo, you need 800 x 1200 pixels; double that for an 8-x-10-inch. Low resolution for today’s cameras usually means
640 x 480 pixels, not nearly enough for
anything but a 3-x-5-inch picture. Shoot
at higher resolutions for larger photos.
Slow Computer? If your computer
is running slowly, you don’t necessarily
need to reinstall your operating system;
make sure that you don’t have unwanted
programs hogging your memory.
Do thorough spyware and antivirus
scans, and then uninstall any unnecessary programs.
Check your system tray. Are there a
lot of programs running? Disable anything that you don’t actually need, then
see if you system performance improves. If all these fixes don’t help, and
it’s been at least a year since you got
your computer or you reinstalled the
OS, then your PC might be a good candidate for reinstalling.
More on IEEE events ...
March 13: “Getting Your Signals
Uncrossed — Intelligent Metro Network Managements,” speaker TBA.
April 10: “GPON (fiber-to-thehome) Systems — Tomorrow’s Internet Connection Here Today,” Doug
Askegard, program manager, LuminentOIC Inc.
May 8: “Provider Perspective on
VoIP Networks,” speaker TBA.
June 11: “Enterprise Network Solutions — A Wireless Perspective,”
speaker TBA.
July 10: “Fiber Optic Extensions
Can Yield Reliable Machine-toMachine Communications,” speaker
TBA.
Sept. 11: “WiMAX in Los Angeles,” speaker TBA.
Oct. 9: “Planar Lightwave Circuit
(PLC) Switches Answer the Call for
Next-Generation All-Optical Switching,” speaker TBA.
Nov. 13: “Innovative SAN Devices
— Integrated Fibre Channel and iSDSI
Storage,” speaker TBA.
Engineering in Medicine
and Biology events
(All events in the CLU Science
building, 60 W. Olsen Road, Thousand
February 2007
Oaks. Networking and dinner at 6
p.m., talk at 7 p.m.)
Feb. 28: “Engineering a Better
Cancer Fighter,” Mark E. Davis, PhD,
Chemical Engineering Department of
Caltech.
March 28: “Epilepsy and Brain
Mapping,” Dr. William Suthering,
MD, Huntingon Institute.
April 25: “Planetary Protection of
Biological Samples Returning to
Earth,” Jason Kastner JPL.
May 30: “Strategic Partnering and
Start Up Funding for Biomedical Insutray,” Stephanie Yanchinski, Pasadedna Entretec.
June 27: “Toward Wearable Kidney,” David N. Lee, UCLA Veterans
Hospital.
July 25: “Development of The
Medtone Insulin Inhaler,” Darlene
Rosario, World Wide Regulatory Affairs for Mankind Corp.
Sept. 26: “Biomolecular Manipulations with Nanosecond Pulsled Electrical Fields,” Martin Gunderson, PhD,
USC.
Oct. 24: “Non-Invasive Opitcal
Imaging and Spectroscopic Tecnologies, Vishal Saxena, PhD, Childrens
Hospital, Saban Research Institute of
Childrens Hospital Los Angeles.
The Outer Edge
Nov. 14: “Tissue Engineering,”
Student Presentation from CLU Bioengeneering Departmnet.
Dec. 12: “Biologically Inspired
Computational Intelligence,” Andzej
Bieszczad, CSU Channel Islands.
Computer Society events
(All events are the CLU Science
Building, 60 W. Olsenh Road, Thousand Oaks. Networking at 6:30 p.m.,
talk at 7 p.m.)
March 15: Topic TBA, Professor
Virginia Green.
April 19: “Animation Techniques,
speaker TBA.
May 17: “Dolphin Bio Sonar Project,” speaker TBA.
June 21: Speaker, topic TBA.
Sept. 20: “Seeing Is Hard: A
Glimpse into Computer Vision,” Craig
Reinhart, PhD.
Oct. 18: Speaker, topic TBA.
Nov. 15: Speaker, topic TBA.
Electronic Devices and Circuits and
Systems Society events
Meeting locations vary. Networking at 6:30 p.m., talk at 7 p.m.
Feb. 21: Ciao Wireless, “Small
Scale Energy Harvesting from Ocean
Waves,” Jeffrey Cheung, PhD.
Page 19
If you were editor, what Treasurer’s
report for
would you change?
O
nce again, we had so much information to present that this
issue of TOE is 24 pages instead of the normal 20. As I’ve
noted before in this column, it’s easier to do larger issues now that
we no longer have to fold them to make them fit through a USPS
template. Ideally, Walter Yates’ obituary, which is on page 5,
should have been in the January issue, but I missed it in The Star
and didn’t hear about it until after the deadline had passed.
This question has come up before, but I’ve had little response
so I decided to try again as we approach election time for new
officers and possible changes in the way the club
Editor’s
does things. What kind of information do the memcorner
bers like to see in The Outer Edge?
Should we cut back or increase the coverage of
CIPCUG itself (i.e., the Q&A, business meeting,
executive board meeting, membership report and
treasurer’s report)?
Would you like to see more articles by members
(and, if so, would you be willing to write some?) or
more articles from outside the group, such as those
provided by the Association of PC Users Groups
Weigle
(APCUG)?
Would you like more or fewer articles about how to use a
computer and various programs (and, again, would you be willing
to share your information) or would you prefer to see lots of reviews of hardware, software, and books (and, repeating the nowcommon question, would you be willing to write some)? Are the
articles too technical or not technical enough?
There are, of course, some other possibilities: Would you prefer to just get a postcard or e-mail reminder of the meetings and
skip TOE? Do you get all the information you want on the Web
site? Or do you like everything the way it is?
Drop me an e-mail or talk to me at any meeting. I’d always
like to know how we can make TOE work better for you.
***
You’ll notice an offer for a free download of Linspire on page
14. It’s one of the benefits of our membership in APCUG, which I
mentioned above. Just as a warning, however, I tried the
download twice on my dial-up connection and got a message each
time that the file was incomplete. You might have better luck with
a high-speed connection.
— John Weigle
[email protected]
More on IEEE events ...
March 8: Location TBA, “Working with Aircraft Models:
From Balsa Wood Kits to Antenna Systems R&D,” Adrian Popa.
April 24: Location TBA. “Today’s Energy Crunch and What
Your Colleagues Are Doing About It,” Chuck Miller.
May 17 and June 21: Locations, topics, speakers TBA.
Oct. 8 and Nov. 15: Locations, topics, speakers TBA.
Page 20
The Outer Edge
December 2006
By Art Lewis
Lewis
[email protected]
12-1 through
12-31, 2006
Category Description
INFLOWS
Coffee income
ISP Income
Membership Income
New members 35.00
Renewals
570.00
TOTAL MEMBERSHIP
Publication Sales
Raffle
TOTAL INFLOWS
1.00
195.00
605.00
429.00
-87.64
1,142.36
OUTFLOWS
ISP Expense
Rent Paid
TOE
340.50
150.00
351.71
TOTAL OUTFLOWS
842.21
OVERALL TOTAL
300.15
Unrestricted Funds
Restricted Funds
Bank Balance 11-30-06
Year to Date Income
Year to Date Expense
2,902.74
2,000.00
4,902.74
5,828.62
-5,446.48
2007 contributors to The Outer Edge
Your name can appear here, too. Share your
knowledge with other members by sending an article, letter or computer tip to [email protected].
Ken Church
Martha Churchyard
Jerry Crocker
Bob de Violini
Lois Evans de Violini
Jeff Levy
Art Lewis
Helen Long
Smart Computing
Rick Smith
Jim Thornton
Bill Wayson
John Weigle
February 2007
Membership report:
Is it time to renew?
By Ken Church
email address: [email protected]
CHURCH
New Members: Chuck Smith, John Bray and
Jim Zimmerman
Attendance at the January 2007 general meeting:
98 members and 11 guests.
Total membership: 272
MEMBER RENEWAL INFORMATION
$30 for single membership,
$35 for two or more family membership.
NEW MEMBER INFORMATION
$40 first year for single membership,
$55 first year for two or more family membership in same household.
Please send your renewal payment to:
CIPCUG MEMBERSHIP
P.O. BOX 51354
OXNARD, CA 93031-1354
Or bring your payment to the sign in table for
the February 24, 2007 Meeting.
December 2006 renewals payment due:
Mbr# Last Name
First Name Pd to Dt
0390 Kelly
Bob
200612
January 2007 renewals payment due:
Mbr# Last Name
First Name Pd to Dt
0544 Beardshear
Paul
200701
0056 Malinowski
Roy
200701
0910
Smitley
Lee
200701
T
1134 Stanton
John
200701
February 2007
February 2007 renewals payment due:
Mbr# Last Name
First Name Pd to Dt
0299 Boshoff
Henri
200702
1168 Brown
James
200702
1138k Burke
Tanner
200702
0959
Church
Debbie
200702
A
0959 Church
Ken
200702
1063 Field
Dwayne
200702
1063
Field
Sharon
200702
A
0412 Guess
John
200702
0843 Isaman
Harry
200702
1182 Jewett
Gary
200702
1139 Lardin
Shawne
200702
1084
Martinez
Grace
200702
A
1084 Martinez
Sam
200702
0566 Meeker
Kirsten
200702
0565 Meeker
Mary
200702
1141 Meler
John
200702
0656
Mori
Ken
200702
T
1184 Murray
Tom
200702
1183 Norbutas
John
200702
1047 Norton
Henry
200702
1082 Perry
Jim
200702
1135 Sherbrooke
Rosalie
200702
1169 Smith
Donald
200702
1083 Stoutz
Hank
200702
1054 Wasserman
Harold
200702
1055 Wasserman
Jan
200702
1140 Wayson
Bill
200702
1050 Wennerholm Ernest
200702
1051 Wennerholm Naomi
200702
0130 Whelchel
Claude
200702
1086 Wiens
Jim
200702
Oh, no, I’m due for renewal, too.
The Outer Edge
Page 21
Initials
Name
(805)
BDV
BR
Bob de Violini
Bill Robinson
BW
DM
Bart Wood
David Minkin
JM
Jerry McLoud
[email protected]
389-2997 (b)
[email protected]
482-4993 (e)
469-6970 (cell);
484-2974 (home);
[email protected] or
[email protected]
(818) 889-6176 (e)
JT
Jim Thornton
MS
F1—Your Help Key
(Revised June 6, 2006)
COMMUNICATIONS/INTERNET (GENERAL)
World Wide Web
DM
DATABASES
Access
BR
DOS
RP
RP
TZ
987-1748 (d)
[email protected]
Michael Shalkey 483-9921, ext 142 (d)
[email protected]
Robert Provart 498-8477 (b)
Trish Zakas
985-8519 (b)
Phone: (d) = days; (e) = evenings; (b) = both
If you would like to volunteer to help others, please send
your contact information and programs you’re willing to
help on to <[email protected]>.
........................
EDUCATIONAL / CHILDREN TZ
E-MAIL
Eudora
Outlook
Outlook Express
Thunderbird
JT
MS
BR, DM
MS
HARDWARE, UPGRADING
JM
GRAHICS PROGRAMS
IrfanView
Paint Shop Pro
Print Shop
MS, JT
DM
BR
SPREADSHEETS
Microsoft Excel
Quattro Pro
DM
DM
UTILITY PROGRAMS
Norton Utilities
DM, JT (and Anti Virus)
WORD PROCESSING
Microsoft Word
WordPerfect
BW, DM
DM
WINDOWS
Windows 98, 95
Windows Me
Windows 2000
Windows XP
DM, JM, MS (98)
JT
BDV
JT, DM
Page 22
The Outer Edge
WEB HELP SITES
Annoyances Central blog (from authors of the O’Reilly
Anno yances ser ies, including Steve Bass) :
www.annoyancescentral.com/
DSL reports: www.dslreports.com
Steve Gibson: grc.com/
Kim Komando: www.komando.com
Fred Langa: www.langa.com
Leo Laporte: leoville.com/
Jeff Levy: www.jefflevy.com
Microsoft: www.microsoft.com/
Microsoft Windows XP The Official Magazine (UK):
www.windowsxpmagazine.co.uk/
PC Pitstop: pcpitstop.com/
PC World: pcworld.com/
SANS Institute — Computer Security Education and
Information Security Training: www.sans.org/
Smart Computing: www.smartcomputing.com/
Spyware Warrior: www.spywarewarrior.com/
User Group Relations (Gene Barlow): ugr.com/
Ventura County Computers (Rick and Toby’s shop):
www.vccomputers.com
Virus Bulletin: www.virus-bulletin.com/
ZD Net spyware blog: blogs.zdnet.com/Spyware
If you have a favorite help site on the Web, please forward it, so we can expand the section.
February 2007
Why join Channel Islands PC Users
Group (CIPCUG)?
Please make checks payable to
CIPCUG.
Every month, members of the
Channel Islands PC Users Group have
access to:
♦The Outer Edge newsletter, which
includes a list of members willing to
help other members.
♦The general meeting, featuring a
question-and-answer session and
program on new software or hardware.
♦Special Interest Groups — special
meetings held several times a .
♦Door prizes at the regular
meeting.
Other benefits include:
♦Special user group discounts on
books and software.
♦An Internet Service Provider at a
large discount (see next column).
♦A chance to make friends with
people who have similar interests.
♦The ability to put your knowledge
to good use by helping other members.
The whole concept of user groups is
members helping members.
Please clip the coupon below and
send with payment to CIPCUGMembership, P.O. Box 51354, Oxnard,
CA 93031-1354.
Dues for new members
Individual member, $40.
Family membership (same address),
$55.
Renewals are $30 and $35 per year
respectively
You may make payments in threemonth, six-month or annual increments.
We also give a 12-month subscription if
prepaid in advance at the 11-month
price of $165. Many of our club members are electing to do this to keep Helen
from nagging them for money.
Renewals can also be mailed to
Treasurer; just be sure to mention the
dates that your check is to cover.
There is no program to install; you
will use programs that are already on
your computer. It’s simple to talk you
through the set-up, but if you’re the least
bit timid about setting up your
computer, a club member will come to
your house and make the necessary
arrangements. Our agreement will also
give you a 5 MB Web page allowance.
CIPCUG members are eligible to
sign up for the group’s Internet Service
Provider (ISP) at the low price of only
$15 per month plus a $15 processing
fee.
CIPCUG INTERNET SERVICE
To sign up, contact one of the club’s
TECH TEAM
techies (see next column). Call one of Helen Long, 642-6521
them you may know or one in your area,
[email protected]
and they will be glad to provide you David Minkin, 469-6970 (cell), 4842974 (home)
with the details necessary for signing up.
Checks should be made payable to
[email protected] or
CIPCUG and sent to Treasurer, c/o
[email protected]
CIPCUG, P.O. Box 51354, Oxnard CA Bob Thompson, 647-2287
93031. Don’t forget to include the $15
set-up fee in your first sign-up check.
CIPCUG MEMBERSHIP
APPLICATION
Phone (Home): ______________(Work): ______________
Amount enclosed: ____________________________
E-mail address: ________________________________
Please Print the following information:
User level: Novice ____; Intermediate _____; Advanced
_____
Name: _______________________________________
Can you help the club as a volunteer? If so, what would you
be interested in working on?
Address: ______________________________________
City: ___________________________, State:________
ZIP Code: _______________________________
Date __________________ Member # ____________
February 2007
The Outer Edge
Page 23
|
|
NON-PROFIT
U.S. POSTAGE
PAID
OXNARD. CA
PERMIT NO. 1785
Channel Islands PC
Users Group Inc.
P.O.Box 51354
Oxnard, CA. 93031
DATED MATERIAL
Please Do Not Delay
DUES REMINDER
If the number above your
name is 200702, your
membership dues are
payable in February 2007.
February 2007 Meeting
Meeting
Of the Channel Islands PC Users Group
Saturday morning, Feb. 24,
At the Boys & Girls Club,
Ponderosa Drive and Temple
Avenue, Camarillo, Calif.
The map shows
the easiest
route to the
Boys & Girls
Club, but if you
prefer, you can
take the
Carmen Drive
offramp to
Ponderosa
Drive, which
leads to
Temple
Avenue.
Page 24
Meeting Schedule:
8:30 a.m. Doors open
8:45-9:30 Windows XP SIG, Internet SIG
9:30-10:30 Business meeting, Q&A
10:30-11:00 Break — Please contribute requested
amounts for coffee and doughnuts
11:00-12:00 Program (Panda security software),
Drawing
1:15 p.m.
SIG at CompUSA at Shopping at the
Rose at Highway 101 and Rose
Avenue in Oxnard
The Outer Edge
February 2007

FEB 2007 issue of TOE - Channel Islands PC Users Group

Transcription

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