Monitor • December 1997 - Capital Personal Computer User Group

Transcription

Internet Issue
December 1997
Volume 16
$3.00
Number 11
No January 1998 issue
®
Features
16 The Internet: How I Found a House and Job
3000 Miles Away by Greg Smith
18 Health Resources on the Internet by William DeRoche
20 Internet Newsgroups: The World’s Largest
Bulletin Board by Doug Boulter
25 cpcug.org’s Response to Spam by Scott Mohnkern
29 Introduction to the Benefits of Shell Accounts by Bob Mills
32 Delivering Training Over the Web by Russ Williams
34 Taking Your Web Site to the Next Level: Some Simple
Approaches To Upgrading From “Brochureware”
to Interactivity by Tony Byrne
37 What’s Wrong With Today’s Computers:
And What the Future Holds by Michael W. Focke
41 How To Maintain Your PC:
And What You Need To Do It by Michael W. Focke
Reviews
52 Product Reviews Coordinated by Richard Biffl
Internet Utilities 97 • Norton Omniform 2.0 • Treasure
MathStorm!
Book Review:
Introducing Microsoft FrontPage97 by Kerry A. Lehto and W. Brett Polonsky
Columns
44 Rich’s Ramblings by Rich Schinnell
47 Gene’s Scene by Gene Gould
49 Microletter by Paul Shapiro
Departments
4
6
8
10
Publishing Post
President’s Notes
Volunteers
Calendar
12
58
62
72
General Meeting News
77 MIX
Training
78 Directions
Special Interest Groups (SIGs)
Helpline Directory
GENERAL MEETING, Monday, January 12
7:00PM Q&A
8:00PM Hilgraeve’s DropChute+ (See page 12.)
9:00PM “Late Night”(in cafeteria)
NIH, Masur Auditorium, Bethesda, Maryland
Coming February 9—Intuit’s TurboTax Deluxe
Coming March 9—Centaur Technology presents the IDT WinChip
URL for updates: http://www.cpcug.org/user/comm/gen-meet.html
FREE SATURDAY SEMINAR, January 17
Topic—To be announced (http://www.cpcug.org/user/comm/free-sem.html)
NIH, Lipsett Amphitheater, Bethesda, Maryland, 9AM to NOON
Th M
i
f th C
it l PC U
G
I
Capital PC User Group Training
January, February, and March Classes, Seminars, and Workshops
Hardware
Before You Build or Buy Your Next PC
2100 Free 3/21/98
9AM–1:30PM
Saturday
Build Your Own PC Workshop
2500 $75
1/10/98
8AM–5PM
Saturday
3000 $35
1/18/98
2/15/98
3/15/98
3:30–5:30PM
3:30–5:30PM
3:30–5:30PM
Sunday
Sunday
Sunday
4225 Free 1/3/98
3/7/98
1–4PM
1–4PM
Saturday
Saturday
Internet Primer
4405 $35
3/29/98
1–4PM
Sunday
Introduction to Unix
4420 $20
2/28/98
9AM–NOON
Saturday
Installing and Using Windows 95 Microsoft
Internet Explorer Software for Graphical
Internet Access Via cpcug.org
4455 $35
1/17/98
2/21/98
3/21/98
1–4PM
1–4PM
1–4PM
Saturday
Saturday
Saturday
Searching the Internet
4465 $30
2/14/98
3/14/98
1–4PM
1–4PM
Saturday
Saturday
Creating World Wide Web Pages
(Hands On)
4480 $45
1/17/98
2/14/98
3/28/98
9AM–NOON
9AM–NOON
9AM–NOON
Saturday
Saturday
Saturday
New
Larry McGoldrick’s Internet Topics
4600 $35
1/27/98
2/24/98
3/24/98
7–10PM
7–10PM
7–10PM
Tuesday
Tuesday
Tuesday
New
Pretty Good Privacy (PGP)
4700 $35
1/24/98
1–4PM
Saturday
Operating Systems
A DOS Primer
Communications
Communicating With the MIX
Internet
To register for classes, call Registrar Harold Motin at (301) 762-5216 or (301) 593–0531.
For course descriptions, see the Training section in this magazine on page 58.
M O N I T O R
Monitor (ISSN 1070-2792) is published monthly, except for January, by the
Capital PC User Group, Inc., 51 Monroe
Street, Plaza East Two, Rockville, MD
20850-2421. Membership is $42 ($78 for
two years; $110 for three years), or $60
per year for overseas members. Overseas
members should make their checks or
money orders payable to CPCUG in U.S.
funds, drawn on a U.S. bank. Periodicals
postage paid at Rockville, MD. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to
Monitor, Capital PC User Group, Plaza
East Two, 51 Monroe Street, Rockville,
MD 20850.
B O A R D
O F
D I R E C T O R S
Executive Committee
Title
Member
Phone/E-mail
President
Lillian Milliner
First VP
Rich Schinnell
Capital Area VP
Randy Steer
Maryland VP
Virginia VP
Herb Fredricksen
Luis Garcia
D (301) 933-1717
EVE/WE (301) 963-9053
Fax (301) 963-9386
[email protected]
EVE/WE (301) 949-9292
[email protected]
D (202) 395-3164
EVE/WE (202) 745-5932
[email protected]
D/EVE/WE (301) 840-2056
D (301) 457-1451
EVE/WE (703) 425-6902
[email protected]
Secretary
Treasurer
Vacant
Patrick McVeigh
Past President
Greg Smith
D (301) 881-7900
EVE/WE (301) 963-7304
[email protected]
[email protected]
STAFF
Publisher/Editor
Barbara Conn (202) 508-1494
Executive Editors
Michael Kane (202) 801-8652 (pager)
Richard Biffl (301) 927-8753
Product Review Coordinator
Richard Biffl (301) 927-8753
Activities Editor
Barbara Conn (202) 508-1494
Contributing Editors
Gene Gould
Peggy Ireland
Lillian Milliner
Ranjit Sahai
Rich Schinnell
Paul Shapiro
Helpline
Elliott Fein (301) 762-6261
Reporter
Paul Van Akkeren (301) 603-0837
Photographer (Digital)
Rich Schinnell (301) 949-9292
MIX Liaison
Fred Holmes
Business Manager
(301) 762-9372
Advertising Sales
(301) 762-9372
Appointed Directors
Build or Buy Program
Chip Dodge
Buying Group
Chip Dodge
Community Services
Rene Thirion
Corporate
Communications
Barbara Conn
Corporate Information
Systems
Education and
Training
Henry Noble
Jerry Lawson
Industry Relations
Internet Services
K–12 Education
Vacant
Larry McGoldrick
Carol Hyatt
Library Services
Ann Dorsey
Medical Computing
Bill DeRoche
Membership
MIX
Vacant
Michael Kane
Monitor Editor
Barbara Conn
Program
Peggy Ireland
Public Relations
George Ely
Science Fair
Coordinator
Walter Houser
Software Library
Volunteers
Vacant
Paul Shapiro
Editors Emeriti
Eldon Sarte, 1994–1997
Alan Blandamer, 1990–1994
Bob Morrison, 1989–1990
Walter Knorr, 1987–1989
Jerry Schneider, 1986–1987
Doug Thompson, 1983–1986
Ramona Landberg, 1982-1983
2
EVE/WE (703) 425-7038
[email protected]
EVE/WE (703) 425-7038
[email protected]
D/EVE/WE (703) 256-6764
[email protected]
D (202) 508-1494
EVE/WE (202) 452-7484
[email protected]
D/EVE/WE (301) 963-3737
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
D/EVE/WE (301) 948-3748
[email protected]
D/EVE/WE (301) 320-7984
[email protected]
D (202) 283-5237
EVE/WE (301) 530-9699
[email protected]
D (202) 801-8652 (pager)
[email protected]
D (202) 508-1494
EVE/WE (202) 452-7484
[email protected]
D/EVE/WE (301) 423-1618
[email protected]
(301) 762-3002
[email protected]
D (202) 273-8012
EVE/WE (301) 299-0593
[email protected]
D (301) 770-7899
EVE/WE (301) 770-9512
[email protected]
Access (MS)
Rick Shaddock
Alpha 4/5 Database
Steve Workings
AutoCAD
David Drazin
D (703) 486-2222
[email protected]
D/EVE/WE (301) 933-3832
[email protected]
EVE/WE (301) 279-7593
Capital PC User Group • Monitor • December 1997
B O A R D
O F
D I R E C T O R S
Title
Member
Phone/E-mail
Baltimore
Bill Lutz
Beginners
Les Le Vine
Clipper
Naseem Saab
Delphi
Richard Maley
D/EVE/WE (410) 256-9403
[email protected]
D/EVE/WE (301) 652-2532
[email protected]
D/EVE/WE (703) 860-5022
[email protected]
D (202) 736-3929
EVE/WE (301) 840-1554
[email protected]
D (703) 207-0477
EVE/WE (703) 799-4751
[email protected]
D (301) 286-6203
EVE/WE (301) 279-7929
[email protected]
EVE/WE (301) 840-2056
D (202) 273-8012
EVE/WE (301) 299-0593
[email protected]
D/EVE/WE (703) 941-1657
[email protected]
EVE/WE (301) 270-6790
D/EVE/WE (301) 598-2825
[email protected]
D (703) 847-5820
EVE/WE (703) 938-5831
[email protected]
D/EVE/WE (202) 462-3047
[email protected]
D (703) 827-2365
EVE/WE (703) 791-5747
[email protected]
D (301) 681-8088
EVE/WE (301) 754-0735
[email protected]
D (703) 276-3000
EVE/WE pager (202) 490-0166
[email protected]
EVE/WE (703) 715-1032
[email protected]
D/EVE/WE (301) 474-7091
[email protected]
Electronic Publishing
Mary Thekla Brosnan
Framework
Bill Redisch
GeoWorks
HTML
Herb Fredricksen
Walter Houser
Internet
Gabriel Goldberg
Investment
Leisure World
Andy Thompson
Roy Rosfeld
MetroMUG
(formerly
Multimedia)
OS/2
Alta Oben
Paradox
Robert Clemenzi
Peachtree
Norman Risch
Project Management
Ruben Worrell
Reston
Jane Benson
Seniors
Jack Carlson
Shareware
Statistics
Vacant
Charles Hallahan
Virginia
Luis Garcia
Visual Basic
Ruben Worrell
Windows
Patrick McVeigh
WordPerfect
Les Le Vine
Richard Price
M O N I T O R
Monitor is your publication. As
such, you are encouraged to
submit articles for publication. If
you would like to discuss an idea
for an article or column, please
contact the Editor.
Publication Submissions
Guidelines. We prefer WordPerfect 5.0
format. Please—do not justify your text. Use
no attributes. (Any word processor or text
editor capable of producing straight ASCII text
files may also be used.) Single space between
lines and double space between paragraphs.
Paragraphs should not be indented.
Recommended line length is 65 character
spaces. Include your name, e-mail address,
and day and evening telephone numbers at
the top of your article so we can contact you if
we have any questions.
Submittal. Articles should be zipped and
uploaded to the Monitor Conference of the
MIX BBS (301) 738-9060. (See box on this
page for Maryland and Virginia numbers.)
Give your article the extension MON and
indicate that the file is an article for Monitor.
Leave a nonprivate message in MONITOR
Conference telling the editors the file name
and format. Articles may also be sent as
zipped file attachments to [email protected]. If
you do not have communications capability,
you can mail your file on diskette to Editor,
Monitor, 51 Monroe Street, PE2, Rockville, MD
20850.
Articles must be received at least 60 days
before publication. All articles are subject to
editing. Articles accepted for publication in
the print version of the Monitor will also
appear in the Internet Web pages of the
Monitor and in the files section of the MIX.
Notice to Members
D (202) 694-5051
EVE/WE (703) 532-2930
[email protected]
D (301) 457-1451
EVE/WE (703) 425-6902
[email protected]
D (703) 276-3000
EVE/WE pager (202) 490-0166
[email protected]
D (301) 881-7900
EVE/WE (301) 963-7304
D/EVE/WE (301) 652-2532
[email protected]
Capital PC User Group Information
CPCUG Home Page
Executive Director (Lynne Sturtz), 10AM to 3PM, weekdays
http://www.cpcug.org/
(301) 762-9372
[email protected]
After-Hours Answering Machine
(301) 762-9374
FAX
(301) 762-9375
Training Registration, Harold Motin, Registrar
(301) 593-0531 or (301) 762-5216
Member Information eXchange (MIX) Bulletin Board System:
Main Number
(301) 738-9060
Maryland, non-metro
(301) 220-0543
Virginia, non-metro
(703) 319-0069
Address Changes. Please send change of
address notices with current phone numbers to
Capital PC User Group, Attn: Membership
Director, Plaza East Two, 51 Monroe Street,
Rockville, MD 20850. Monitor is mailed at
periodicals rates and is not forwarded unless
you have made special arrangements with your
post office.
Renewals. One renewal notice is sent to
members.You may renew your membership by
sending your check for $42 ($78 for two years;
$110 for three years) along with your mailing
label to the address above. Five dollars of the
membership fee is for a subscription to
Monitor. Be sure to correct your mailing label if
any of the information has changed, and
always include your current phone numbers
and membership number.
The fine print: Unless specifically stated otherwise, the
opinions expressed in any article or column are those of the
individual author(s) and do not represent an official position
of, or endorsement by, the Capital PC User Group. CPCUG is
an independent, nonprofit user group and is not affiliated in
any way with any vendor or equipment manufacturer.
Copyright © 1997 by the Capital PC User Group, Inc. All
rights reserved. Permission for reproduction in whole or in
part is hereby granted to other nonprofit and computer user
groups for internal, nonprofit use, provided credit is given to
Monitor and to the author(s) of the reproduced material, and
attribution of copyright is included. All other reproduction
without the prior written permission of the Capital PC User
Group is prohibited.
3
Publishing Post
by Barbara Conn
CPCUG Communications
CPCUG announcement and discussion lists by going to
http://www.cpcug.org/list
For budgetary reasons, the Capital
PC User Group recently made
changes in production procedures for
its magazine, the Monitor. Unfortunately, the transition was bumpy.
An abbreviated Monitor (dated
November 1997) with updated calendar and CPCUG activities information for 12 weeks finally started arriving in member mailboxes the first
week in December.
This jumbo “December”issue of the
Monitor is really a combined
December/January issue. So there will
be no Monitor dated January 1998.
There will, however, be a July issue.
Members will receive 11 issues of the
Monitor in 1998, just as in 1997. The
plan is to return to 12 issues in 1999.
In the future, the Monitor will arrive
the last week of the month preceding
the cover date.The February 1998
issue will arrive the last week of
January 1998.
I’m grateful for the support of
Monitor readers and contributors, and
want to thank everyone for continued
patience during this period of transition.
What should you do when you
need or want up-to-date information
about planned CPCUG activities? If
you have a modem and a communications program installed on your
computer (even Windows 3.1
Terminal and Windows 95
HyperTerminal, included with these
operating systems, are sufficient for
this communications purpose), consider subscribing to CPCUG’s weekly
e-mail calendar by sending e-mail to
[email protected] containing the line
subscribe cpcugcal-l
<firstname> <lastname>
Leave the subject line blank.You,
and/or any member of your family,
can subscribe to and receive mail
from this list through your MIX
Internet e-mail account.
If you have Web access, you can
subscribe online to this and other
There you will see the lists available
and may subscribe to any CPCUG
e-mail distribution lists of interest to
you.
Another option for getting up-todate information about CPCUG activities is to take advantage of the
names and phone numbers published on pages 2 and 3 of every issue
of the Monitor. Pick out the name of a
person who is likely to be the contact
for the activity of interest to you—
then give him or her a call.You’ll
learn what you need to know and
“meet”a fellow Capital PC User
Group “User Helping Users” at the
same time.
Barbara is CPCUG’s Director of Corporate
Communications and Editor of the Monitor.
She can be reached at [email protected]. If
you don’t have or absolutely hate e-mail, you
can reach her at (202) 452-7484.
,
Entertainment 98 Books
If you haven’t yet acquired an Entertainment ,98 Book, get yours today!
January 15 is absolutely, positively the last day to order.
For more information, see the inside back cover of this issue of the Monitor.
4
12 Benefits of CPCUG Membership
Your CPCUG membership entitles each member of your family living in your household to all
CPCUG membership benefits—
1.
Expert advice from friendly and knowledgeable user group members—when you join
CPCUG, you can call volunteer “Helpline”participants listed in our Helpline Directory—
experts in a wide variety of computer hardware and software topics are available and are
listed—experts who patiently help fellow CPCUG members with hardware and software
questions and problems
2.
Separate Internet e-mail accounts through our electronic bulletin board system for each
member of your family living in your household—no extra cost
3.
Our award-winning magazine, the Monitor, with its practical tips for computer users,
CPCUG event calendar, Special Interest Group and Training program information, technical
articles, regular columns, and CPCUG-member-authored reviews of the latest software,
hardware, and computer-related books (one copy of the Monitor per family)
4.
Technical information and support from users of our electronic bulletin board system
called the MIX (Member Information eXchange)—members of CPCUG have greater access
time (two hours per family member) and freeware/shareware and other file downloading
privileges not available to nonmembers
5.
Very affordable (and sometimes even free) computer education and training classes, seminars, workshops, and labs
6.
Discounts on selected software and hardware items that are made available by vendors to
members of our user group
7.
The opportunity to become a member of the Product Review Coordinator’s Team—
participants receive a byline in our monthly magazine, the Monitor, and are entitled to keep
reviewed software and/or books in exchange for timely publishable reviews
8.
9.
Shell access to the Internet (extra charge item)
Opportunities to gain professional experience (and to augment resumes) by participating
in and/or organizing CPCUG-sponsored computer-related activities that serve our communities
10.
Free monthly educational seminars including semiannual “Before You Buy Your Next
PC” seminars to learn how the latest in computer hardware and software can help you
(nonmembers may attend as well)
11.
Your choice of almost 30 special interest groups (SIGs) whose members share information
about specific hardware or software issues (and employment and consulting
opportunities)—you may participate in as many as your schedule allows (nonmembers may
attend as well)
12.
Answers to your computer questions—at our monthly General Meeting we often have
general Q&A sessions during which you can ask your computer questions and get the
answers you need, learn from the answers to questions posed by others, and then learn
about the latest in computer hardware and software during the main presentation
(nonmembers may attend as well)
5
President’s Notes
by Lillian Milliner
Are We Day Dreaming or
Do We Have a Vision?
I have been struggling with
whether the Capital PC User Group
(CPCUG) has enough resources to
survive. It is an awesome responsibility to make decisions that will determine whether CPCUG will be around
in the next year, let alone the next
millennium. It has been painful, confusing, and, at times, just plain frustrating. Questions such as: Will we
have to move to a new location? Will
there be a meeting room? Is staff in or
out? Is training in or out?
I thank God for my courage and
faith during this difficult time. Last
Sunday, my Pastor spoke a message I
needed to hear. It was entitled,“Are
You Day Dreaming or Do You Have a
Vision?”My first reaction was—
Where was he possibly going with
this, and how could this help me
decide what to do about my involvement with CPCUG? Was it time for
me to give up or give in to the critics?
Could I finally scream? Could I now
stop answering all the e-mail and
phone messages? Or would I be
called to do even more? (“Please
Lord, not that!”) Well, let me get on
with his point.
The Pastor defined day dreaming as
what most people do when they have
an idea. They talk about it, discuss it
with others, talk about it some more,
meet on it, then talk about it yet
again. Nothing actually gets done, but
the person feels good about
discussing the idea thoroughly. All
that input allows us to convince ourselves that we actually are working on
the idea. The Pastor defines this activity as day dreaming, because nothing
6
gets accomplished, in or out of sleep.
This may seem very familiar to many
members of CPCUG.
On the other hand, a vision is that
thing you want badly enough to start
walking toward.You work on it.You
take steps to manifest that vision.
Activity takes place. Some actions
may work and some may not, but you
are constant in your effort to make
the vision reality. The Pastor’s message had two important words for our
organization: vision and work.
The vision for CPCUG when it was
chartered was “Users Helping Users.”
That means clearly that members
help other members in the group.
That was the vision more than 15
years ago. The de facto vision has
become—let 1.5 percent help 98.5
percent become better users with
speedy, excellent, and cheap services.
Sounds as if we are either missing the
mark or the mark has changed. The
98.5 percent need to let us know so
we can discontinue our philanthropist
activities and start getting paid. If you
believe in the vision set in our charter,
please read on. If not, I’m sorry for
boring you—please feel free to read
the other articles in this magazine.
This next message is for the 98.5
percent who have heard the call, but
have not yet answered. Work will be
required to continue our organization.
Webster’s Dictionary defines the word
“work”as “continued exertion or activity directed to some purpose or
end.”I personally like this definition
because it requires a continued effort.
It asks the question: What work have
you done for CPCUG lately? Are you
resting on effort made months or
even years ago?
Because our purpose is helping
other users understand computers
better, it leaves the door open for
many activities. Paul Shapiro, the
Volunteers Director ([email protected])
is waiting to hear from you. If someone does not get back to you in a
couple weeks after he refers you—let
us know. We really do need help, and
I apologize in advance if you receive
no response to an offer to volunteer.
Please don’t remain quiet. Let me
know what’s going on. Pick an area
that interests you most and stick with
it. If it is only 4 hours a month, we can
use you. Teach a class, hand out literature at a trade show, sell Entertainment
,
98 books, or set a goal of recruiting
four new members a month. Do
whatever you can.
This message was meant to shake
us all up. From those to whom much
is given, much is expected. Are you
tired of an organization having so
many people who choose to sleepwalk rather than get involved with
changing the way computing is
viewed in the school, home, or the
office? Up until now, we have only
placed a comma in CPCUG history
(some may beg to differ and call it a
semicolon), but the bottom line is that
we are not placing a period yet. I
proclaim that there is still life in us—
stories of our demise have been
greatly exaggerated.
The call for volunteers that
appeared in the May 1997Monitor is
repeated in the box that appears on
the facing page.
A New Direction for 1998
Several proposals have come to
light over the last couple of months.
They were geared to drastically
changing CPCUG for the better. It is
time to reorganize and take what we
have at hand and use it better. Lynne
Sturtz has been a valuable resource
that we have underutilized for several
years. She is a former teacher and an
excellent writer, diplomat, and organizer. After careful consideration and
discussion, it is time to change her
passive role in CPCUG.
The Board voted in November to
abolish the Office Manager position
and offer Mrs. Sturtz the position of
Executive Director. I am delighted to
report that she has accepted. This
new position increases her duties and
gives her the authority to take care of
our day-to-day concerns. She will be
coordinating activities with many of
the Directors and Special Interest
Groups. All information will be funneled through her to insure adequate
communication.
Reinventing CPCUG requires a
new Training Director to recruit new
trainers and documentation writers,
review and prepare instructors’evaluations, coordinate all instructors’inservice training, identify and develop
course curriculum, coordinate
Saturday Seminars. The Training
Director will not be required to
schedule classes and will no longer
prepare updates for the Monitor, our
Web page, or course catalogs.
The administration of these
Training tasks will be taken on by the
Executive Director along with volunteers. The Executive Director will be
our primary contact for media and
trade show questions along with the
assistance of the Directors. The
Executive Director will attend all
Board of Directors meetings and provide monthly status reports.
Congratulations, Lynne! We all look
forward to making 1998 the best year
ever for CPCUG!
We Miss You, Frank!
Frank Anoskey passed away the
end of November, leaving a void in
our membership. I received the news
while attending COMDEX in Las
Vegas. I was shocked; it did not seem
right or even possible. I often say to
people,“Tomorrow is not promised,
so live today—fully. I understand that
Volunteer Opportunities at CPCUG
Right now, the work is plenty but the volunteers are few. As an organization, we all need to change that. Whether it is giving money for
a special activity, recruiting colleagues for the organization, training,
or helping with an activity, we need your assistance.
Finally, I have listed some areas where we need help right now;
consider this the short form, not the long, of our current volunteer
requirements.
Advertising
Monitor ad sales
Web page ad sales
Ad management
Community Services
Off-site special training
Recruitment
Small Business Technology
Workshops
Database
Designers
Searchers
Administrators
Education and Training
Instructors
Task coordinators
Technical writers
Training assistants
Facility coordinators
Grants
Task manager
Writers
Grant researcher
Industry Relations
Task managers to be corporate
liaisons
Special events implementers
K-12 Education
ThinkQuest
Computer camps
Teacher workshops
NetDays
Membership
Director
Recruiters
Writers
MIX SYSOPs
Monitor
Editors
Writers
Public Relations
Graphics designers
Writers
TV producers
Science Fair
Judges
Fundraisers
Advertisers
Special Events
Greeters
Demonstrators
Setup/shutdown
Materials distributors
—From the May 1997 Monitor
Frank had a full life, a loving family,
and great friends. He died peacefully
in his sleep.
I have thought about life and living
often during the last week as I begin
to miss Frank’s tenacity, strength, and
will. CPCUG only works because of
people willing to speak their minds,
no matter what. Frank was one of
them. I will personally miss him. I
pray that his family is strengthened
during this time and given God’s
perfect peace. Frank’s memory lives
every time we think about what is
strong and good at CPCUG.
New Year’s Wish
May the New Year bring you joy,
happiness, and peace.
Lillian Milliner is the Executive Director of a
Maryland-based computer training company.
She can be reached at (301) 963-9053
evenings, or at [email protected].
7
Volunteers
by Paul Shapiro
The Backbone of CPCUG
Do you need volunteers for your
pet CPCUG project or idea? If you
do, let me know what your realistic
requirements are, and I will see what
I can do to help. Meanwhile, thanks
to all of you for what you are already
doing.
Volunteerism is the backbone of
the Capital PC User Group
(CPCUG). Almost everything done
by the organization is done by volunteers, with a tip of the hat to our two
or three paid part-timers who help
handle the detail work needed to
support almost 5000 members. There
can be so much of this that money
alone does not suffice.
This is where your help comes in.
We have almost a full complement of
volunteers working in the CPCUG
offices at Monroe Street, but can use
at least one more right now for an
11:30AM–1PM weekday shift, once
every 2 weeks, with parking paid.
Stuffing envelopes, answering the
doorbell or telephone, and maintaining the paper trail of our membership
is an on-going effort that must be
nourished.
If you’d like to help, you have to
step forward and let your desires be
known.We can’t coerce you—we
don't even make telephone calls to
“pressure”you. All we try to do is
publicize the needs and hope you
respond. Once you do, you will be
surprised at how many people appreciate your efforts; and how satisfying
it can be to associate with other
doers.
8
A call went out last month for
someone to initiate our effort, as a
nonprofit charitable organization, to
,
sell Entertainment 98 books in local
jurisdictions. The books cost $35.
CPCUG receives $7 for each book
sold, and buyers receive some nice
discounts. (In just the first 3 weeks, I
saved $6 at a Chinese Restaurant on
Rockville Pike, and another $20 on a
muffler replacement a few blocks up
the same street. I’ve now got 52
weeks to make up the remaining $9
from my investment, after which I am
home truly free, so to speak.)
Alta Oben immediately stepped
forward with a master plan, grabbing
the ball and truly running hard with
it, picking up many books for distribution, creating her own multimedia
presentation that many of you are
seeing at meetings, arranging for
other members to act as clearinghouses for sale of books in homes
and working areas. She still could use
more helpers. And there are perks,
also. (For example, a free book is
available for those who sell the most
books.) Multiply each sale by $7, and
this can be a real boost for us in
paying our increased rent in 1998. We
will be selling these books through
January 15. Can you pitch in? We
need both sellers and buyers. Ask
Alta for the fancy green button designating you as a distributor, but don’t
tell her I told you.
We also need volunteers to transport materials, including brochures
and training catalogs, to General
Meetings, SIG meetings, seminars,
and trade shows.
Some volunteer projects do
require a little computer knowhow,
or a willingness to learn. Recently
we needed someone to become
MIX SYSOP. Rene Thirion has
answered that call and has found
many willing helpers.
Opportunities for volunteers to
participate in CPCUG are always
popping up. Deciding which one to
try requires that you consider the
possibilities, and what's in it for
you, and then go for it. The gamble
is small, but the benefits can be
large.We all want to learn how to
make better use of our computers.
One way is to rub elbows with
those CPCUG members who might
have the information we seek.
One way to get that opportunity
is to sign up to help publicize
CPCUG and recruit new members
at a computer show or other public
activity. At the beginning of
November we had booths at the
DC Convention Center for the
ServerTech Conference and at a
“Microsoft eXtreme”show at the
United Artists Theater in Bethesda.
Unable to get into town for the
first activity, I can only report here
on the Microsoft eXtreme presentation. Microsoft’s Debra Feinstein
paved the way for a local crew from
Microsoft to show us a closedcircuit full-screen introduction to
some new Microsoft products. On
the way in, we were treated to a
large cup of popcorn and a soda,
and on the way out we got a nice Tshirt and a CD-ROM containing,
among other things, Microsoft
Internet Explorer 4.0. The raw, rainy
weather was not a deterrent.
CPCUG volunteers were (in no particular order) George Liao, John
Nickendrew, Ann Dorsey, Dave
Barry, Larry McGoldrick, Lillian
Milliner, Nelson Davis, and Luis
Garcia. Thanks, people!
As CPCUG searches for new and
innovative ideas to appeal to our
members, we seek ways to improve
the training curriculum, for which we
need your help. Wouldn’t it be nice to
have a Windows 95 class regularly, a
spreadsheet class, a word processing
class, and so forth? You get the idea.
We have classes in these particular
subjects, but not as frequently as
might be desired.What is wanted?
You tell us.
We want to know what type of
class you’d find of interest and
whether you want to attend or to
teach. The idea has already been
tossed around to have volunteers
teach an Introduction to Windows 95
class more often than Susan Kousek
is already doing. Can you help?
Would you be willing to teach one
class per year on a subject also taught
by others at different times?
Too often gurus propose courses,
such as Java, that are cutting edge
topics. Most of us are not ready to live
at the cutting edge, even if we could.
We just want to do the basic things
that we have been led to believe are
so easy to do with our computers. In
so many cases, using a computer for
the first time is not that easy. I wish it
were not so, because there are so
many exciting things that we can do
with just a slight helping hand.
With 10,000 hands, we should be
able to do more.You alone know what
we are not covering in our classes, or
what you would be willing to cover as
an instructor, but we need to know
what that is. Even if you do not want
to participate as an instructor, there
must be subjects we are not covering
that you want to know more about.
There has to be a reason you joined
the organization! Talk to us.
If you would like to pitch in and
help in these ongoing endeavors,
even on a one-time only basis or as a
standby, I sure would be delighted to
hear from you.
Paul Shapiro, Director of Volunteers, may be
reached at (301) 770-7899 or at
[email protected].
Capital PC User Group, Inc.,
Conference Room Available for
Member Rental
Location
51 Monroe Street, Plaza East 2,
Rockville, MD
Size
Approximately 1200 square feet
Hours
8AM to 5:30PM weekdays, other hours by negotiation
Options
This room has a movable center divider. When closed,
two meeting rooms with separate entrances are created.
Capacity
75, in theater-style seating
44, as classroom with portable tables
Video
Sharp XGE1000 ceiling-mounted video display with
inputs for video cassette player output and computer
graphics [SVGA (PC or Mac) 600 ✕ 800 dpi].
Sound
Built-in audio amplifier and speaker system with inputs
for supplied microphone, computer sound card, or VCR
Services
A coffee machine with supplies is included in the daily
cost.
Catering is available by prior arrangement.
Computers are available separately.
External telephone line and modem are available.
Cost
$300.00 per day ($250 without video equipment)
$75.00 for the first hour, $65 per hour
thereafter ($60 per hour without video
equipment)—2-hour minimum
Terms
Payable in advance
Check, VISA, or MasterCard accepted
Discounts
CPCUG members receive a 10-percent discount off
daily rates.
Multiday discounts are available.
Contacts
Richard Schinnell, CPCUG Facilities Manager,
(301) 762-9372 or [email protected] or
[email protected]; Lynne Sturtz, Executive Director,
(301) 762-9372, or [email protected].
Coming Attractions
February
Computer Hardware
April (tentative)
Money Management
June
Educational and Game Software
Watch for these special issues of the Monitor.
9
Capital PC User Group Activities
December 28, 1997–February 7, 1998
10
Capital PC User Group Activities
February 8–March 7, 1998
PLEASE COPY AND POST THIS CALENDAR ON YOUR OFFICE BULLETIN BOARD
• All special interest group (SIG) and General Meetings are
Auditorium, and others are held in the Lipsett
free. SIGs meet at the Capital PC User Group HQ offices
Amphitheater.
at 51 Monroe Street in Rockville, Maryland, unless other- • Class descriptions are in “Training.”
wise noted.
• Send e-mail to Rich Schinnell at [email protected]
• Addresses for other locations are on page 51.
regarding the calendar.
• All meetings at NIH are held in the Clinical Center,
• For updates—Web: http://www.cpcug.org/user/comm/
Building 10. General Meetings are held in the Masur
Phone: General Meeting information: (301) 762-9372.
General Meeting, Monday, January 12, 1998, Program Notes
7:00 pm Q&A in Masur Auditorium at the National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland
8:00 pm Hilgraeve’s DropChute+ drag and drop personal file delivery software
9:00 pm “Late Night”in cafeteria
11
General Meeting News
January 12 General Meeting
DropChute+ From Hilgraeve
Personal File Delivery Software
DropChute+ from Hilgraeve enables the user to—
• Deliver files of any kind to any other PC user through the Internet,
intranets, extranets, or by modem, simply by dragging and dropping
the files onto that person’s icon.
• Send files directly to another user’s PC in real time—avoiding the time
lag and insecurity of e-mail store-and-forward mechanisms, and get
immediate confirmation of successful delivery.
• Eliminate e-mail attachment problems relating to file type, size,
quantity, or corruption.
• Send documents and graphics as files instead of by fax—it’s much
faster, 100 percent accurate, and when DropChute+ says a file got
there, it got there!
• Chat in real-time with the person at the other end before, during, or
after a file exchange. Attach cover notes for the recipient.
• Set up a PC to accept file deliveries from others, anytime, just like fax
receipt, except much faster. Constant connection to the Internet is not
required.
• Send and receive all data with iron-clad error correction, crash
recovery, and on-the-fly compression—files come through
intact, safe, secure, and fast.
• Enjoy peace of mind that incoming files are free from the more than
4,500 known computer viruses. Hilgraeve’s patented HyperGuard
technology instantly detects and blocks viruses in received data.
• Exchange files with confidence through the Internet, public
phone lines, or other unsecured public data channels with virtually no risk of interception and deciphering by untrusted parties.
In addition, DropChute+ contains
cryptography APIs to authenticate
users and to encrypt the data stream.
Corporate users can substitute thirdparty security products choice.
12
For more information about
Hilgraeve and its products, go to
http://www.hilgraeve.com
Have other questions about your
computer or software? Arrive at the
Future General Meetings
February 9, 1998:
7:00 cpcug.org
Millkern Communications
8:00 TurboTax Deluxe
Intuit
9:00 CPCUG “Late Night”
March 9, 1998:
7:00 CPCUG Build Team
8:00 IDT WinChip
Centaur Technology
April 13, 1998:
8:00 SecureWin
Security for standalone and
networked computers
Cipher Logics
May 11, 1998
June 8, 1998
July 13, 1998
August 10, 1998
September 14, 1998
October 12, 1998
November 9, 1998
December 7, 1998—1st Monday!
Location: National Institutes of
Health, Masur Auditorium (west
on Center Drive from Rockville
Pike [Wisconsin Avenue] to the
Clinical Center, Building 10, at
West Drive), 9000 Rockville Pike,
Bethesda, MD
All General Meetings are free and
open to the public.
http://www.cpcug.org/user/comm/
gen-meet.html
General Meeting at 7:00PM and get
questions answered during the Q&A
session before the 8:00PM presentation, or stay after the presentation and
get your questions answered downstairs at the informal CPCUG “Late
Night.”
REPORT
October Meeting:
Research and Marketing
Online
by Paul Van Akkeren
Announcements
Program Director Peggy Ireland
started the evening with announcements:
• A group of people are interested in
forming a Voice Recognition special
interest group (SIG) and are
looking for additional interested
members.
• Late night activities (Q&A
sessions, SIG meetings, and other
informal gatherings) will take place
during “Late Night”following the
General Meeting.
,
• A reminder that Entertainment 98
books are available for members to
buy or sell to help raise money for
CPCUG.
Using the Internet for
Research, Collecting, and
Marketing
with Alan Stypeck of
Second Story Books
The main event at 8PM was sponsored by the Investment special interest group (SIG) and introduced by
CPCUG Library Services
During the 7PM event, Ann Dorsey,
CPCUG Director of Library Services,
gave a presentation about the library
and other resources available at
CPCUG HQ at 51 Monroe Street. The
reference library is open any time the
office is open for business as well as
during any CPCUG meetings. It contains more than 600 books, over 50
magazine subscriptions, user group
newsletters, and other materials. The
materials are available to any member
on an honor system. Other resources
include the MIX electronic bulletin
board at ( 301) 738-9060 and the
CPCUG home page at http://cpcug.org.
Allan Stypeck, President of Second
Story Books, at the October
General Meeting.
DropChute+
from Hilgraeve
13
Andy Thompson, its SIG Chair. The
speaker was Allan Stypeck, owner of
Second Story Books, and a speaker
on “The Book Guys”radio show.
While not strictly a computer presentation, the subject was extremely
interesting, partly because of its lively
presentation. I must confess, I frequently became so engrossed in the
presentation that I forgot to take
notes for this report. The presentation centered on the process of
buying and selling rare books and
antiquities, and, in particular, on how
the Internet is being used to make
book catalogs available world wide.
Allan showed several rare books
and other items, such as one of
Alexander Fleming’s original penicillin molds, and discussed how they
are priced. He showed some of the
largest book catalogs available on the
Internet, including those of Second
Story Books and others. He explained
how to read these catalogs, the terminology used, what to look for, and
what to look out for. These online
catalogs are making products available world wide—for example, he
recently made a sale to a buyer in
Antarctica. He showed (with the help
of Ann Dorsey) listings for several
books on different Web sites and
discussed the differences in the individual listings. He mentioned that
Amazon.com, which is being heavily
promoted as a large bookstore, is
actually a listing of books available
from many other booksellers.
Amazon’s actual inventory is very
small.
The speaker gave several anecdotes about original editions and
famous books. He also described
how an individual put together a
collection of memorabilia from Anne
and Otto Frank that was worth considerably more than the sum of its
individual items. It was obvious from
the presentation that Mr. Stypeck
thoroughly enjoys his profession and
that he is eager to pass his knowledge on to others. One of the advantages of his profession is that he is
constantly meeting new people.
He suggests that to collect rare
books successfully, learn everything
possible about the book before purchasing—condition, background of
the book, particular issue, and author.
Second Story Books is at
http://www.paltech.com/secondstory/.
14
REPORT
Panel discussion
September Meeting:
Schools, Education, the
Internet, the Future
The main presentation was a panel
discussion about Schools, Education,
the Internet, the Future. The first
presentation was by Carol Hyatt,
Director of CPCUG’s K-12 program.
She spoke about the ThinkQuest
competition. This is an annual contest
involving students and mentors collaborating to produce Web pages. A
feature in the September 1997
Monitor discusses this program in
detail.
Randy Steer and Jennifer Hartnett
presented information about Tech
Corps and Net Day. Tech Corps consists of volunteer groups in each of
the area jurisdictions who are helping
schools and school systems integrate
computer technology into the curriculum. Net Day is one of its projects. The work involves installing
networks in schools.
Dr. Judith Barlow of American
University told how students are
using computers at Horace Mann
Elementary School. A lively questionand-answer session followed the
presentations.
by Paul Van Akkeren
Child safety online
Peggy Ireland started the evening
at 7PM with a presentation “Child
Safety Online,”discussing Internet
and other online use by children. The
material was developed by the
Montgomery County Police
Department. A major point of the
talk was that when children (and
adults) communicate with individuals
on the Net, there is no way of being
sure who is really on the other end of
the communication. Would you let
your children talk to or go out with
total strangers? If not, then appropriate care should also be taken by parents with children on the Net.
There is little or no regulation in
online communications, and those
regulations that do exist can be circumvented easily. Therefore, parents
are the ones who must provide the
control and oversight.
There is a lot of pornographic and
other unsavory material available on
the Net. And there are pedophiles
and others with less than honorable
intentions using the Net for many
purposes. In Montgomery County,
there were 20 to 25 detected
Internet-related pedophilic events in
the first 8 months of 1997.
Peggy offered suggestions to help
parents cope:
• Learn about computers so you
know what’s going on and how to
respond appropriately to your
child
• Join the Capital PC User Group to
have access to timely information
and help (such as through the MIX
electronic bulletin board)
• Pay attention to what your child is
doing
• Don’t leave your child alone in
“public”(online).
Raffle winners
The meeting concluded with a
drawing for numerous products:
• Adobe Type On Call software:
Charlotte Frasch and Jesse Roth
• American Greetings
CreataCard: Carolyn Dean
• Anysoft Any97 software:
Michelle Burke, Nita Kennedy,
Ralph Ruth, and Henry Whitney
• Corel Professional Photo
Sampler: Robert Clemenzi
• Lotus Freelance: Carol Hyatt
• Microsoft FrontPage97: Robert
Simanski
Paul Van Akkeren is a computer consultant
providing systems analysis, design, and
development of scientific and database management systems. He has been a CPCUG
member for more than 6 years and has been
active in the Fox and Genealogy SIGs.
A good book on the subject is
Bandits on the Information
Superhighway by Daniel J. Barrett.
Help Young Computer Scientists in Your Community
A Special Volunteer Opportunity for CPCUG Members
Each year the DC area’s best and brightest, from ages 11 to 18, set up their booths at science
fairs. The cream of the crop from the area’s middle and high schools, these young people
have worked hard to master complex technology and create interesting experiments. For
their dedication and ingenuity, these boys and girls deserve our appreciation and
acknowledgment.
In 1997, CPCUG made awards to 27 deserving students with computer-related projects
submitted to county science fairs in the Washington metropolitan area. With enough
volunteers, CPCUG will underwrite awards for up to 10 participating county (or equivalent
regional) science fairs again this year.You do not need to have special expertise to be a judge.
But volunteer judges are needed for this project to succeed. CPCUG member Walt
Houser is coordinating this effort, but he needs the help of CPCUG members willing to
volunteer as judges. If you want CPCUG to recognize young scientists in your city, county,
or region, then call Walt at (301) 299-0593, send e-mail to [email protected], or leave a
message (to Walter Houser) in the MIX’s CPCUG Conference (19). Last year judges got
badges and other goodies from Rich Schinnell’s cache in the back room. But the best reward
is seeing the excitement on these young faces as they explain their work and get our
recognition.
Are you wondering whether you know enough about computers to be a judge? That should
not be a problem for the typical CPCUG member. Experienced CPCUG volunteers can get
you oriented, the Science Fair provides judging criteria and instructions, and senior judges
can answer questions and provide help. The most important qualifications of a good judge
are a willingness to learn and an interest in young people. By volunteering, you demonstrate
to these young people that responsible adults are willing to give their time and energy to
promote the intellectual growth of the area’s young people. Also, you will tell these youths
that CPCUG provides enjoyable opportunities to learn and to contribute to others.You will
also encourage young people in the pursuit of technical excellence in the many special
interest groups of CPCUG.
CPCUG makes awards for outstanding performance in the understanding and/or
application of computer or telecommunications technology. Although awards may be made
in any category of the fair at the discretion of the judge, most of us focus our time in the
computer science category. Last year student awardees received a $50 savings bond, a
plaque, and a free one-year full membership to CPCUG, or a certificate of recognition. In
1996, as an extra bonus, Past President and Program Director Rich Schinnell handed out
t-shirts, totebags, screw drivers, and other prizes.
Judges will prepare the award citations to reflect the specific efforts and accomplishments of
the awardee and his/her project. All else being equal, awards will be granted in a manner
that maximizes the number of students receiving recognition at each fair. Therefore, at the
judge’s discretion, preference may be given to deserving projects not already honored.
Contact:
Walt Houser, (301) 299-0593 (h)
E-mail: [email protected]
MIX: Walter Houser in CPCUG Conference (19)
15
The Internet:
How I Found a
House and a Job
3000 Miles Away
by Greg Smith
A
s many of you already know, I recently moved from
Gaithersburg, Maryland, to Rio Rancho, New Mexico
(just outside Albuquerque). Just a little geography and
history lesson here: New Mexico is not a different country, it is a state in the continental United States. It is situated west of Texas, east of Arizona, south of Colorado,
and is referred to as the “Land of Enchantment.” It is the land of the
Roswell alien landing, the largest hot air balloon festival, the first atomic
bomb blast, Billy the Kid, Judge Roy Bean, Pueblo Indians, Apache
Indians, and the Lost Gold of El Dorado that eluded the Spanish
Conquistadors.
I felt this geography/history lesson
necessary because when I was telling
people I was moving, many responded
with,“Why are you moving out of the
country? Are you going to learn the
language there? When are you moving
to Arizona?”
I guess one of the reasons many
know so little about New Mexico is
that it is a state without professional
sports teams. Phoenix has the
Cardinals, and Texas has the
Cowboys. Football fans in the
16
Washington area are familiar with
both teams because they’re in the
National Football Conference East
Division with the Redskins. Colorado
has the Broncos and the Rockies. But
because the Broncos are an American
Football Conference team and the
Rockies are a National League baseball team, they’re not as well known
among many in the Washington area.
Anyway, I was moving my family
of five (my wife, three children, and
me) pretty much cross country. I
didn’t have a job yet, and the family
didn’t have a place to live.You should
have heard the comments from
friends and family. I thought for sure
there would be a hearing to determine my sanity; and, if so, I would
probably lose and be committed. But,
here I am with my family, living in a
nice house with all my belongings
and working for a major semiconductor manufacturer. And this was
pretty much all accomplished using
the Internet.
There were three major components to the move. First, was finding
a place to live; second, was getting
my things there once I found a place
to live; and, third, was finding a job.
Some might place number three first,
but because I knew that wouldn’t be
much of a problem, I put the job
search last in priority. I did, however,
start working on it first.
I was also dealing with a critical
timeline. I couldn’t leave until school
was out on June 19, but I had to be in
New Mexico by July 4 for a family
reunion. These dates guided how I
did everything else.
I used several tools to find a job.
First, I subscribed to the Sunday
edition of the newspaper where I was
moving. This gave me Help Wanted
ads that I could respond to. The
problem with this was that mail delivery took about 10 days, so I was
always behind in responses. The
newspaper had a Web page, but
unlike The Washington Post, the classified sections were not included at
that time. Now the classified ads are
online, which would have made my
life a lot easier when I was looking
for a job. But I guess they will be
there the next time.
In case you want to discover a little
more about the area that I live in
now, the Uniform Resource Locator
(URL) for the Web site for the newspaper is http://www.abqjournal.com. If
you haven’t already checked it out,
the URL for The Washington Post is
http://www.washingtonpost.com. If
you’re looking for a job in either
place, the classified section and the
search capabilities of both Web sites
are great.
The way I actually found my job
was by responding to an ad in the
Sunday edition of the Albuquerque
Journal. It’s rather ironic because the
company that placed the ad is located
in Bethesda but had a job placement
contract with the company I now
work for in Rio Rancho. The ad had
an e-mail address for resumes. I
e-mailed my resume and received a
reply within a day. We communicated
by e-mail a couple of times. When
the time arrived for a preliminary
interview, it was conducted over the
phone. And, eventually I was hired.
During the job search, I was talking to several placement companies,
and some of them have sites on the
Web where they advertise jobs. One
is PDS, whose URL is
http://www.pdsinc.com. There are several job hunting sites on the Web that
can be a great help in finding that
next position. If you go to
http://www.yahoo.com and search for
“jobs,”you will get a listing of career
categories with sites listing jobs in
those categories. There are more than
50 sites with listings for computerrelated positions, and I’m sure even
more sites are listed for some of the
other categories.
Another way to use the Internet to
find a job is through a Web site. If the
company you want to work for has a
Web site, frequently its available jobs
are posted. Go find out.Your exploration of the Web site will also give
you an opportunity to learn more
about the company.
The next item on my To-Do list
was to get my stuff from one place to
another. The reason I needed to get a
head start on this is that the summer
months are the peak months for
moving, and available bookings fill
up fast. If I wanted to make sure that
my schedule could be met, I needed
to get a contract with a mover as
soon as possible.
Again, I went to Yahoo at
http://www.yahoo.com and searched
for movers. I got a list of over 100
movers. I tended to look at the major
names like Mayflower, Atlas, Bekin,
Allied, and North American. Each of
these had a Web site with various
levels of information. I sent an e-mail
to each and got responses from Atlas
and North American. I got estimates
by first getting rough estimates
through entering information on the
Web sites. Firm estimates were made
when an estimator came to the
house.
I won’t go into which company I
selected or the stories about the
actual move because they deal with
the actual vendor and not the
Internet. If you really want to know
more and have 30 minutes or so, I
would be happy to tell of my experience with long distance moving companies.
So now that I had someone to
move my stuff from one place to
another, I had to find that other
place. The decision we made was to
rent a house for the first year so that
we could become more familiar with
the area and the market before
buying. So I went in search of rental
houses, not apartments, on the
Internet.
What I found was very little specific information on rental homes but
some good leads on realtors who had
associations with property management companies having houses for
rent. I also found that many of the
local and regional multiple listing
services (MLS) have information
available on the Internet. Going to
Yahoo on the Internet and searching
for MLS yields a list of the sites available as well as all the sites that deal
with Major League Soccer. Therefore,
search for “MLS”and “real estate”
(use the quotes to label the desired
phrases) so that you get just the MLS
that pertains to real estate.
Another way to find houses is
through individual realtor sites. Many
of them also have the houses that are
listed for sale. Some of them are
elaborate—they allow you to search
by price range, number of bedrooms,
number of baths, and/or square
footage. Some will take you directly
to the MLS listing for their properties. Others have a picture of the
house. And these pictures are in
color, not like the black and white
photographs in the local house-forsale magazines.
I didn’t actually find our house on
the Web because there are very few
sites listing rental houses. But I did
find a realtor/property manager who
was able to help us find a place. What
I was, however, able to do via the
Web was to look at the houses for
sale and see the styles of houses and
the price ranges. I used this information as a guide for further investigation.
I contacted several property management companies. I made plans to
go to Albuquerque to set up a house,
so I told each when I would be there,
what I was looking for, and where I
wanted to live.Virtually all the information I used to make the decisions
of where and what was gathered via
the Internet from the MLS site for
the southwest and the home pages of
individual realtors.
So, as you can see, the Internet
and the Web do have some practical
utility. While there are a lot of things
about everyday life that you can’t
take care of yet on the Net, the
number is growing every day.
Whenever I plan to buy something or
need to make a decision, I try to use
the Net as much as I can to find out
as much as I can. I mentioned a
search site named Yahoo that I used,
and there are several others. I like
Yahoo because of its structure, which
makes things of relevance easier to
find.
Another thing I used the Web for
was to buy a vehicle. I was the victim
of a hit and run accident that totaled
my 10-year-old Taurus station wagon.
I was faced with dealing with the
insurance company to settle my claim
for my totaled vehicle and also with
finding another vehicle. I needed to
make sure that I received a fair settlement and also that I got a good deal
on the car I was purchasing. I used
two sites on the Net to help me with
these problems. I used
http://www.carprices.com and
http://www.kbb.com to get the information I needed. The second address
is for the Kelly Blue Book, one of the
published reference guides for determining used car values.
Each of these services offered me
the ability to enter in the various
vehicle options and the mileage to
17
determine vehicle values more accurately. I was able to determine the
dealers’costs (on new vehicles),
trade-in values, and resale values.
With this information I was able to
negotiate a fair settlement on my
totaled vehicle and get a really good
deal on a used vehicle. The information I got on the Web gave me the
support I needed to make a factual
argument based on industryaccepted references.
I hope you find the opportunity to
use the Net to accomplish some specific goals in your life. It can be a
great asset that is easy and convenient to use. For instance, I use the
Web to send flowers to my mother
and others on special occasions because with the Web I can see what
the arrangements are supposed to
look like before ordering. When I
used just the phone, I couldn’t tell
what they would look like or even
whether they were appropriate.
Now that I’ve told you how I used
the Net to move to New Mexico, let
me say that you don’t want to come
here. It is hot, dry, dusty, and the best
kept secret I know.
Greg Smith is a software engineer working at
Intel. He has adapted quite well to the fresh
mountain air coming over the mesa in the
mornings as he watches the sun rise over the
Sandia mountains from his patio. Because
his lawn is of the typical southwest design,
rocks and cactus, he has more time to ride his
mountain bike with his kids and enjoy the
companionship of his new yellow lab. He can
be reached on the Internet at
[email protected].
Next
Searching the
Internet
Class
February 14, 1998
See page 59
for course description.
Pretty Good Privacy
Class
January 24, 1998
See page 60
18
Health
Resources on
the Internet
by William DeRoche
I
t has been reported that when the Titanic hit the iceberg, Mrs.
Astor said, “I asked for ice, but this is ridiculous.” Internet users
often feel the same way. Most of the skill in using the Internet is
in finding a few cubes of useful information in the field of ice
floating around cyberspace.
The purpose of this article is to
provide some starting points for your
search. First, the disclaimers. I am not
a doctor or a medical expert. Bad
medical advice can kill. Be careful.
Check with your health professionals.
Neither the Capital PC User Group
nor I endorse any of the services
mentioned below.
One of the best ways of keeping
current with health news is the
CRAYON (CReAte Your Own
Newspaper) service. Using it you
create a meganewspaper from hundreds of publications throughout the
world. CRAYON extracts from 14
health newspapers ranging from the
general (CNN Food & Health News) to
the specific (Allergy Forecasts). I have
used this service for several months.
It is one of the best services on the
Internet (http://www.crayon.com).
You may prefer to go directly to a
specific health site. The accompanying box lists some popular medical
Web sites. If you require specific information, you can start with some of
these sites or try a general search of
the Internet.
Search strategies are discussed in
many sources, including earlier issues
of the Monitor. To save time in the
long run, spend time at the outset
learning the features of the search
engines you use. Don’t use just one
search engine because each search
engine has different features. For
example, some search engines let you
Selected Popular Medical Web Sites
Aging
Allergy Forecasts
American Heart Association
Ask Dr. Weil
Ask the Dietitian
The Body
Diabetes
Health Answers
Health World Online
Lycos Health*
Mayo Health
Mental Health Net
Netguide to Health*
Wellness Web
Yahoo! Health*
http://www.nih.gov/nia
http://www.allernet.com
http://www.amhrt.org
http://www.drweil.com
http://www.dietitian.com
http://www.thebody.com
http://www.diabetes.com
http://www.healthanswers.com
http://www.healthy.net
http://www.lycos.com/health
http://www.mayo.ivi.com
http://www.cmhc.com
http://www.netguide.com/health
http://www.wellweb.com
http://www.yahoo.com/headlines/health/
For
information
about
sponsorship
opportunities
*These sites have links to various other health sites.
search newsgroups as well as Web
sites.
On June 26, 1997, the National
Library of Medicine (NLM)
announced free Internet access to its
MEDLINE database of more than 8.8
million references to articles published in almost 4000 biomedical
journals. The Web address is
http://www.nlm.nih.gov, or call 1 (888)
346-3656 or (301) 594-5983. All referenced publications, as well as
MEDLINE terminals, are available at
NLM, which is located at 8600
Rockville Pike in Bethesda,
Maryland.
Newsgroups are a good source for
medical information and support.
Because groups have different personalities, spend some time following the group (called “lurking”)
before joining in the discussion. One
way to get help is to send private
e-mail messages to persons in a
group who seem able and willing to
help. Remember: the more specific
you make your question, the more
likely you are to get the response you
need.
Bill DeRoche is the Capital PC User Group
Director of Medical Computing and may be
reached at [email protected].
available
through
the
Capital
PC
User
Group,
call
Executive
Director
Lynne
Trade your used software for something new!
Sturtz
Great Prices on
New & Used Software
at
Hardware Upgrades and Repairs
(301)
Rockville
Fairfax
Fairfax Court
Federal Plaza
12274 Rockville Pike 11268 James Swart Circle
(703) 385-9190
(301) 984-1446
762-9372.
19
Internet
Newsgroups:
The World’s Largest
Bulletin Board
by Doug Boulter
A
t an Internet special interest group (SIG) meeting a few
months ago, members were asked about their primary
use of the Internet. The uses most frequently mentioned
were e-mail and the World Wide Web. Newsgroup use
was a distant third. Newsgroups, however, offer opportunities for fun and learning quite different from those of
the Web. If you haven’t ventured into the waters of newsgroups, you
probably should give them a try.
Think of the Capital PC User
Group’s MIX electronic bulletin
board. Now, instead of having only
100 or so topic areas, think of it
having 26,000 plus. Instead of mostly
CPCUG members using the board,
think of all Internet users using it.
Instead of topics related mostly to
computers, think of every conceivable
topic under the sun (and some not so
conceivable, such as
alt.swedish.chef.bork.bork.bork). In fact,
the term “newsgroups”is really a
misnomer, because 99 percent of the
20
groups have nothing to do with what
we think of as news. Think of them
instead as discussion groups.
Who should read Internet newsgroups? First, anyone who wants to
play on the bleeding edge of computer hardware and software has to
visit at least periodically. As nice as it
would be if hardware and software
manufacturers announced new products and releases on the MIX, and
visited it periodically to offer technical
support, that won’t realistically
happen. Second, anyone with ques-
tions outside his or her area of expertise should check the newsgroups. It
is likely that there will be a group
frequented by people with a great
deal of expertise. Have a question
about a remodeling project for your
home? The newsgroup alt.home.repair
gets about 100 posts (technically
called articles) a day of questions and
answers. Third, anyone with a hobby
is likely to find fellow hobbyists in a
newsgroup. If you like raccoons, as I
do, you’d want to visit alt.animals.raccoons. Or if you are a Civil War buff,
there is soc.history.war.us-civil-war.
Finally, if you like to talk about issues
of the day, there is probably a newsgroup for your issue. How about
talk.politics.mideast? Or talk.abortion?
In short, there is some newsgroup of
interest to almost everyone.
Types of Newsgroups
There are varying types of newsgroups. Newsgroups are either open
or moderated. Anyone can post to an
open newsgroup. In a moderated
newsgroup, the moderator decides
what gets posted, and all posts must
go through him or her. The intent of a
moderated group is to keep out spam
(more about this shortly), off-topic
posts, and flames. The moderator may
also decide what is worthy of posting.
For example, rec.humor gets over 140
posts a day. Some of the jokes may be
funny. Many of the posts are just
comments on the jokes. On the other
hand, rec.humor.funny is a moderated
newsgroup. If the moderator likes
your joke, it appears. If he doesn’t, it
doesn’t. As a result, that newsgroup
usually has no more than 10 or so
jokes a day, but most of them are
pretty amusing.
Newsgroups are also divided into
text and binary newsgroups. Text
groups are for text messages. Binary
groups are for posting binary files.
While binary files could in theory
include software, most binaries are
pictures, usually in the form of .JPG
or .GIF files. It is considered rude to
post binaries in text newsgroups, and
some news providers will remove any
binaries that they find misposted
because a binary file takes up a great
deal of space.
Because of the nature of the
Internet, binaries cannot be sent in
the form they are stored on your
computer. They are instead sent as
uuencoded or base 64 (MIME) files.
As a result, you won’t be able to view
binary files unless you have software
that will decode them. Most newsreaders include such software, or you
can find it separately as shareware or
freeware.
History of Newsgroups
Newsgroups have their origin in
work done by students of Duke
University and the University of
North Carolina in 1979 to move messages over the phone lines between
two computers using Unix Shell
scripts. Why students of these two
archrivals wanted to message each
other can only be a matter of speculation, but the messages made up a
floating bulletin board that ultimately
took on a hierarchical organization by
topic.
This system slowly evolved into
Usenet news. At the top of the topic
hierarchy were the “Big 7”(see box),
to which an eighth category was
added several years ago. Only groups
whose names begin with these topics
are properly called Usenet
newsgroups. But besides the “Big 8”
categories, there are approximately
500 more topics that might begin a
newsgroup name, the most common
one of which is “alt.”Most of the
others are regional or national designations or deal with areas of very
specialized interests. Many universities have, for example, established a
topic heading for their own newsgroups. As a result, the non-Usenet
newsgroups are sometimes called
Usenet News Categories
comp
misc
news
rec
sci
soc
talk
humanities*
computer hardware and software topics
miscellaneous topics
topics related to newsgroups themselves
topics related to recreation
topics related to science
topics for discussion of social issues
topics for open-ended debate
topics dealing with humanities issues
*An eighth category added several years ago to the original “Big 7.”
“local”or “regional,”but those too are
misnomers, as those groups may be
carried almost as widely as the
Usenet groups.
Why do these two hierarchies
exist? The main reason has to do with
newsgroup creation. To create a
Usenet newsgroup, a user must
submit a proposal for the new group,
called a request for discussion (RFD),
to news.announce.newgroups. Then,
discussion will take place for a month
in news.groups, at which time a call
for votes will be issued. If there are
sufficient yes votes (outnumbering
the no votes by at least 100 and being
two-thirds of the total), the group is
created. Otherwise, it fails. Because
Usenet groups are the most widely
carried newsgroups, almost everyone
reading news can expect to see the
groups created in this fashion.
On the other hand, the anarchical
nature of Internet users made it desirable that there be newsgroups that
did not go through such a rigorous
creation process and were not subject
to the whims of a democratic vote.
This resulted in the creation of the
“alt”hierarchy and many others. In
these hierarchies, it is possible to
create a group simply by sending the
appropriate control message. Because
most users cannot send such a message, however, they must find someone to do it for them. This is often
accomplished by posting the proposal of a new group in alt.config (in
the case of the “alt”hierarchy) and
asking that someone issue the control message. Creating the group,
however, does not mean that news
administrators will accept it for their
systems. While many accept all new
groups automatically, such groups are
less likely to receive wide distribution
than the Usenet groups.
Point your Web browser to http://
web.presby.edu/~jtbell/usenet/newgroup
for more information on newsgroup
creation of all kinds.
Beginning with
Newsgroups
The first step in using newsgroups
is to subscribe to the groups in which
you are interested. Internet service
providers (ISPs) get newsgroups from
different feeds, and news administrators will make different decisions
about which newsgroups to carry on
their service. News is very processor
and storage intensive, and some ISPs
will cut corners here. There are currently over 26,000 newsgroups on
some of the better providers, and that
number will certainly grow by the
time this article is published. Keeping
articles around for a month can fill up
an unbelievable amount of disk
space, especially for binary newsgroups.
If you are a fan of newsgroups and
read some that are obscure or outside
the “Big 8”hierarchy, it is prudent to
explore this issue with your ISP
before you pay your fee. It is also
common for ISPs, especially smaller
ones, to experience delays of several
days before articles appear. This may
be due to their feeds or to internal
problems with their own equipment.
(Updating news is usually a low priority and is done during times of low
demand. This means that they may
update news once a day or sometimes not at all.) If you are a serious
newsgroup user, delays of 2 days will
21
Figure 1. Newsreader view of a small segment of
available Internet newsgroups.
be intolerable. If your ISP will let you
log on to do a test read of the newsgroups, you should certainly do that.
Once you have chosen an ISP, you
will log on and your newsreader will
need to download a list of the available groups. Figure 1 shows my
newsreader displaying a tiny selection of the universe of newsgroups—
a small number of those falling under
the hierarchy alt.fan. As you will
notice, different people have different
Figure 2. List of Internet newsgroups to which I am
subscribed.
views about the musical group
Hanson. Each time you log on, your
newsreader should inform you of any
new groups your ISP has added.
Once you have found groups that
interest you, you will have to subscribe to them. Subscribing means
putting it on a list of groups that you
will regularly check; no one will
know that you are subscribed except
you. It usually involves nothing more
than a mouse double click on the
Figure 3. Newsreader display of a list of subjects available and the article
I am reading.
22
groups’names. Figure 2 shows my
newsreader displaying the list of
groups to which I’ve subscribed.
The newsreader will obtain from
the ISP’s news server the subjects of
all articles posted in those groups, the
names of the people who posted
them, the dates and times they were
posted, the number of lines in the
articles (their length), and the numbers the news server assigned them.
Many newsreaders give you the ability to read the articles either while
you are connected to your ISP or
offline. Offline capability becomes
less important as more ISPs switch to
billing a flat fee for unlimited usage.
In many newsgroups you will want
to read articles very selectively, as
there will be far too many to read at
one time. For this reason, your newsreader should have filtering capability
(to filter out spam among other
things) and the ability to sort by subject, author, and date posted. Figure 3
shows my newsreader displaying a
list of subjects and the article I am
reading. Figure 4 shows a similar
view using Netscape’s newsreader.
Once you have read an article, you
may wish to reply to it. Most newsreaders will allow you to do this
either by e-mail or by posting to the
newsgroup itself. If you reply by email, make sure to look at the address to which you are replying very
carefully. It has become habit for
advertisers to sweep the newsgroups
and acquire any Internet address they
find using automated software. To
alt.test newsgroup just for that purpose. Test your posting there and
there only.
Cross posting
Figure 4. Netscape newsreader view.
defeat this and avoid a mailbox full of
spam, posters have taken to fixing
their addresses in ways that people
would easily recognize, but machines
wouldn’t. I, for example, might
change my address to dboultraterolsdotcom or [email protected]. If
you e-mail someone at such an address, you will get your post returned,
which is, after all, the point.
Newsgroup Etiquette
Like any other part of the Internet,
newsgroups have their own rules of
etiquette that have become
commonly understood over the
years. Many of the rules are simple
common sense—be courteous, don’t
jump into a discussion before you
know what it is about, and the like. It
is amazing, however, how many rules
are violated every day.
If you violate the unwritten rules of
newsgroup courtesy, you may simply
be ignored. On the other hand, depending on what you do, others may
send you very rude flame letters, they
may make fun of you in the newsgroup, they may swamp your ISP
with complaints about you, or they
may mail bomb you by filling your
mailbox with thousands of pieces of
e-mail. These latter two may cause
your ISP to terminate your service.
These things do not happen without
reason; they are inevitably richly
deserved.
With that in mind, here are some
of the breaches of etiquette.
Do you have a question about
raccoons? Ask it in the
alt.animals.raccoons newsgroup. But
don’t also post it to every other newsgroup having to do with animals,
pets, wildlife, hunting, the outdoors,
in the hope that it will get you more
replies. It will, of course, but most of
these will not be friendly and will be
making rude suggestions about what
else you might do with that question.
Also, be careful when responding to a
cross-posted message.Your response
will default to posting to each group
to which the original poster posted.
For that reason, small groups are
often clogged with voluminous articles that are irrelevant to the group.
You can set your newsreader to respond only to your group or the
group that is the most appropriate.
Spamming
Newsgroups are not for advertising
products, services, or causes. The only
places advertisements are appropriate are in the newsgroups starting
with “biz.”If you post an advertisement, you are likely to get the harshest responses, and deservedly so.
People are not reading a newsgroup
to learn about your business.
There is only one way you may
advertise without making other readers angry. Let’s say you run an OS/2
consulting business. If you go to the
OS/2 newsgroups and regularly help
others by answering their questions,
they will not mind if your signature
lines direct them to a Web site or
provide information about how you
can be reached. Do not, however, use
the answer in the body of your message to promote yourself. That is
considered spamming. And be aware
that if you give a wrong answer in
the newsgroup, you are apt to hear
from other users that anyone who
consults with you is as big an idiot as
you obviously are.
Testing
Do not post a message to a newsgroup to see if it really works or your
binary is posted correctly. There is an
Private conversations
These belong in e-mail, not in the
newsgroup. If what you post is of no
interest to anyone except you and the
person to whom you are replying,
you shouldn’t be posting it for the
world to read.
Excessive quoting
It is standard practice to quote
other parts of the message to which
you are replying so others can tell
exactly what it is to which you are
responding. However, quoting 50
lines and responding with 2 is extremely annoying and will not be
appreciated—especially when you
are replying to a reply to a reply, and
there is quite a bit of material. Try to
limit what you quote to only the most
relevant material. A good rule of
thumb is to avoid quoting more lines
than you are writing.
Requesting e-mail answers
I don’t regularly read this newsgroup,
so please respond by e-mail.
Perhaps your question and the
resulting answers are of interest to
other readers of the newsgroup. If
23
you can’t be bothered to check back
for replies occasionally, why should
someone be bothered to answer? In
fact, most people will just answer you
in the newsgroup unless they have
something to say that they don’t wish
to go out to the whole world.
Flaming and trolling
People do tend to be far less tolerant and far more rude in newsgroups
than they might be in person. One
person’s sarcasm is another person’s
flame. Free speech pretty much rules.
Still, it is perhaps easier to give the
other person the benefit of the doubt
or respond by e-mail than start a
flame war where reasoned discussion
gives way to mere name calling. On
the other hand, newsgroups are
known for their passionate and spirited discussions, so be prepared for
this. People come to these areas because they care very much about the
subject. On the other hand, some
enjoy getting attention and making
others look foolish, which is why they
engage in what is called trolling. This
is basically posting something totally
outrageous and provocative and then
sitting back and watching people go
crazy responding to it. This results in
the etiquette error “me, too”-ing.
“Me, too”-ing
It happens every so often.
Someone will troll with an offer that
is too good to be true, and a novice
will respond accepting the offer.
Others will respond by quoting the
whole message, someone else’s response, and then add,“Me, too!”
The most common form of this
troll was the “free porn in your inbox”message to which a number of
AOL Internet neophytes responded
(and still do respond), contributing to
the reputation of AOL users as
people not belonging on a “real”
medium like the Internet. I offer no
judgment on AOL users except to say
that if everyone would avoid
responding to trolls, there would be
far fewer of them.
Sadly, newsgroups are not a good
place for young children. Especially in
get the fancy graphics of the World
Wide Web, but you do get a multitude
of users with expertise in your area of
interest who will answer your questions, allow you to demonstrate your
expertise by answering theirs, or just
want to compare notes about mutual
interests. But be warned! Newsgroups
can be addictive. They can open up a
whole new world if you take the time
to explore them.
Doug Boulter is an OS/2 user from Northern
Virginia who isn’t bothered by the fact that
people using Windows 95 or a Mac might
want to read newsgroups, too. In fact, he
encourages it.
WANTED
Newsreaders
Most people already own a tolerable newsreader that comes with a
Web browser, either Netscape or
Internet Explorer. These are acceptable for beginners, but they lack a
great deal of the power that serious
users will need.
OS/2 users have recently been
blessed by two wonderful
multithreaded and powerful newsreaders, Panacea Software’s Pro News
and Southside/Stardock’s PMI News,
with a third, MR/2 News, on the way
from Secant Software.
DOS users who don’t mind textbased newsreaders can use the
SOUP/YARN combination, still favored by many for its speed and offline capabilities.YARN is available for
Windows 95 and OS/2 as well.
Windows 3.1 and Windows 95
users can choose between Anawave’s
Gravity (Windows 95 only), Forté’s
Agent, WinVN, and NewsXpress
(Windows 3.1 only). The last two of
these are freeware.
If you are a serious newsgroup
reader, you’ll want to take a look at
one of these. Most of the figures in
this article were made from Pro
News.
A Final Comment
Newsgroups and
Children
24
the “alt”area, even newsgroups not
dealing with a sexual topic may be
filled with advertising for 1-900 numbers and XXX-rated Web sites. I’ve
frequently found such material on
alt.home.repair, for example.
Newsgroups in the original “Big 8”
hierarchy are much less likely to contain such postings, but there is no
guarantee. Newsgroups are truly the
Wild West of the Internet, and you
should exercise guidance on what
your children may look at. Let’s say
they are interested in Barney, the
Dinosaur. Doing a search of all newsgroups for “Barney”produces, among
others, alt.sex.bestiality.barney. I can
assure you that there is nothing in
that group that anyone would want
young children to see!
In this article, I’ve tried to give you
a brief overview of the organization
and history of newsgroups and what
newsgroups can do for you.You don’t
The Monitor is always
looking for
feature writers,
reporters,
columnists,
product reviewers,
illustrators,
photographers,
and
proofreaders.
Product Reviewers,
call Richard Biffl at
(301) 927-8753.
Everybody Else,
call Barbara Conn at
(202) 508-1494
cpcug.org’s
Response to
Spam
by Scott Mohnkern
A
lmost all of us receive it in our e-mail boxes every day.
We hate it, and some have said that it is the most serious “threat to the Net.”
What is it? Unsolicited e-mail (more commonly
referred to as “spam”). Most of the time it is advertising, at least for me.
If you haven’t received a piece of
spam in your e-mail box, you should
feel lucky. These messages offering
get-rich-quick schemes, or various
“adult oriented”services are not only
a waste of time as you read them, but
sometimes involve illegal activity. In
the past, the only way to deal with
spam was to set up filters in your
personal e-mail program (Pegasus or
Eudora, most commonly) to look for
these messages, and get rid of them.
The problem people encountered is
that “spammers”(people who send
spam) were getting smart enough
that the header information (the information that identifies the originator of the message, routing, and so
forth) in their spam constantly
changed, and most of the time was
forged. A filter that would work one
day, wouldn’t work the next.
Now you have an option available
to you, if you have a cpcug.org account. Rick Cook and I have written a
system available to all cpcug.org users
where you can choose to have your
e-mail filtered through a predesignated (and continually updated) list
of suspected spammers. If you choose
to activate this option, every piece of
e-mail you receive will be compared
against our list of 2500+ suspected
spammers, and if the program gets a
match, it will take that message and
move it out of your mail spool into
your home directory. That way, the
next time you receive mail, you won’t
have to download this message. The
system is also customizable so that
you can add your own addresses to a
personalized filter list.
You can find information on the
filter program at
http://www.cpcug.org/mailfilt. Most of
what that page describes is also in
this article, but be sure to take the
time to read this page before you
activate the filter.
Here I’m going to show you how to
activate and deactivate the filter, add
and remove entries to your list, and
view what’s been filtered.You’ll need
to have a cpcug.org account and a
Telnet client to activate the filter. After
I’ve explained all this, I’ll go into the
“guts”of the filtering program.
If you are running Windows 95,
you’ve got a Telnet client already built
in (even though they don’t tell you
about it).You can activate the
Windows 95 Telnet client by clicking
on Start, and then Run, and typing in
telnet.exe <Enter>
Activating the Filter
Activating mail filtering is actually
quite easy.You need to log into your
Shell account, by using either Telnet
or a communications program, and
get to the main menu. If you don’t
know how to do this, see the documentation that came with your
cpcug.org account.
Once you’ve come to the main
menu, press <Enter> to exit from the
menu.You’ll be presented with a Shell
25
prompt. (It’s a little different for every
user). At the prompt, Just type:
mailfilt <Enter>
If you get a
command not found
message, you may need to type
/local/bin/mailfilt <Enter>
instead. In a few seconds (most often
right away) you’ll receive a message
stating that:
Unsolicited Mail Filtering has been
installed on your account.
That’s all there is to it! Spam filtering
is now activated on your account.
You may want to know exactly
what changed to enable this
extremely useful service. Three files
were created in your home directory:
.forward, .procmailrc, and myfilters.
The first two files tell the filter to activate, and myfilters is the file that contains your personalized filtering list.
Disabling the Filter
If at any time you decide you want
to remove the filter, it’s just as easy to
do. Just log into your Shell account
and exit from the menu (as described
above) and type:
nofilt <Enter>
The system will then notify you that
mail filtering has been stopped. If you
decide to reactivate filtering, you can
just use the mailfilt command described above.
Viewing What’s Been
Filtered
There are two ways that you can
view what mail has been filtered, via
the Web, or via the e-mail program
Pine in your Shell account. The Web
way is the easiest, but it doesn’t allow
you to delete or respond to mail. I
recommend that you use the Web
approach, and if you find a piece of email that got filtered that you really
want (called overfiltering), use Pine to
read and reply to it.
26
To use the Web-based viewer you
can go to the Web page at http://
www.cpcug.org/mailfilt/filteredform.html.
(If you can’t remember that, there’s a
link on the page
http://www.cpcug.org/mailfilt.) When
you go to this page, the system will
ask you for your userid and password.
Your userid is the “first part”of your
e-mail address before the @ sign. My
e-mail address is [email protected],
so my userid is mohnkern. The password is the “secret password”you use
to access your account. If you don’t
know what it is, you can cut and paste
it from your e-mail program. Fill in
these two fields on the form, and then
click on the “Submit”button.
A brief warning should be given here.
When you put in your userid and
password and click on the Submit
button, your userid and password are
transmitted from your computer to
cpcug.org. There is some chance that
this information may be “intercepted”
while being transmitted. The risk is
about the same as when you use file
transfer protocol (FTP), userid, and
password to access files.
Enough with the warnings! After you
press on the Submit button, the
cpcug.org computer figures out exactly where your filtered mail is located, and comes back with a page
that has the link
Show me what has been filtered
Now, click on this link, and a new
page will come up showing you all
the mail that’s been filtered from your
inbox. The page not only shows
where the message is coming from,
but the route it took, and the body of
the message.
If you don’t see anything important
to you, you can stop here, but if there
is something important, you’ll want to
go into your Shell account and read it
using Pine. The e-mail program Pine
is documented in the manual that
came to you when you set up your
cpcug.org account, and there is also
online documentation. I won’t go
through the entire process of explaining Pine here.
All the messages filtered with our
program are stored in a Pine folder
called FilteredMessages. If you want
to read your messages, simply go into
Pine, open up the folder list, and
select FilteredMessages. In this folder
you’ll be able to find all your spam. If
there’s something important, you can
read and reply to it. If there isn’t, you
can delete each message.
Your Personalized Filters
In addition to the 2500+ list of
known spammers, you can create
your own personalized list of e-mail
addresses that you want filtered. This
is what the file myfilters is for.You can
use two programs to add and remove
entries from this file: Addfilt and
Remfilt.
Addfilt
Addfilt is the program that lets you
add personal entries to your filters.
No one else will use these filters, just
you, and your cpcug.org account.
To add entries using this program,
log into your Shell account and exit
from the menu. Then type
addfilt <Enter>
You’ll get a quick message that says:
Address to be filtered:
Go ahead and type in the new address you want filtered from your
inbox and press <Enter>.
It doesn’t make any difference
whether it’s uppercase or lowercase.
You’ll get a message confirming that
the address you typed in was added
to your personal list of filters. Now
you no longer have to worry about
mail from that address cluttering up
your incoming mail, it will be automatically moved to your
FilteredMessages folder discussed
earlier in this article.
Remfilt
Remfilt will remove entries from
your personalized filter list. To remove
an entry from your personalized filter
list, log into your Shell account, exit
the menu, and type
remfilt <Enter>
You’ll get a prompt that says,
Enter the e-mail address you wish to
remove:
Type in the e-mail address that you
wish to remove from your personalized list, and press <Enter>.
The system will then respond that
the address you have entered has
been removed from your personalized
filtering list. It’s that easy.
Tips and Tricks
The filtering system we’ve developed is extremely flexible, and what
we’ve officially documented is only
the most basic functionality. Now I’m
going to show you a few quick “things
to try.”If you don’t feel comfortable
using a Unix Shell, you may want to
avoid using these options, but if you
are a savvy Shell user, they’ll help you
get the most out of the system.
Viewing your myfilters file
You can see your current list of
personalized e-mail addresses to be
filtered from your Shell account. Log
in to your Shell account, exit from the
main menu, and type
more myfilters <Enter>
All the entries in your personalized
filter file will then be displayed, a
screen at a time. If you’ve got more
than one screen of entries, you can go
to the next page by pressing the space
bar.
You’ll notice that the first entry in
your myfilters file says
this line intentionally left blank
The purpose of this line is to prevent
all e-mail from being filtered. If your
myfilters file is empty, all mail gets
filtered, and this solves that problem.
Filtering without e-mail
addresses
While your personalized filtering
file is intended to be used for e-mail
addresses and domain names, you
can actually filter on almost any set of
characters. Let’s say you get a lot of
spam regarding adult material. One of
the “favorite”phrases used in the
subject lines of these messages is
“must be 21 .” To add the phrase
“must be 21”to your filter, type in the
phrase instead of the e-mail address
when running addfilt. When you do
this, any incoming message that has
the phrase “must be 21”in the header
will be filtered to your
FilteredMessages folder. This type of
filtering can be extremely effective in
reducing spam; however by using this
option, you also increase the risk of
overfiltering your messages.
Viewing who has been filtered
An additional command is the
command Viewfilt. This program,
available in your Shell account, will
show you whose messages have been
filtered, and what the subject is. This
is an easy way to scan through what’s
been filtered.
Manually editing your myfilters
file
If you haven’t guessed by now, your
personalized filters file, called
myfilters, is a “straight ASCII”file, and
can be edited with any text editor in
your Shell account. If you wish, you
can edit this file manually, as opposed
to using the Addfilt and Remfilt programs available to you.
Warning! It is extremely important
that there be no “blank”lines in your
myfilters file, or any lines that just
contain spaces. When that happens,
all e-mail is filtered. While the Addfilt
program prevents you from making
this mistake, if you manually edit the
file, you might cause this problem.
Pico is an easy-to-use text editor
that is useful for editing this file. To
edit your current personalized filter
list, log into your Shell account, exit
from the menu, and type
pico myfilters <Enter>
Pico is a fairly straightforward, fullscreen text editor. Commonly used
commands can be found at the
bottom, and there’s online help available by pressing <Ctrl>-<g>. (Hold
down the Control key on your keyboard and press the letter “g”).
When you are done editing your
list, you can save your current file by
pressing <Ctrl>-<x>. If you’ve modified the list, it will ask you
Save modified buffer . . .
Go ahead and press <y> if you want
to save it, or <n> if you don’t. If you
choose to save, it will come up with a
prompt, giving you the name of the
file. Press enter again, and your
changes will be saved.
That’s all there is to it.You now
know how to use mail filtering on
your cpcug.org account.
Scott Mohnkern is President of Millkern
Communications, Inc., and can be reached at
[email protected]. Sign up for his
Capital PC User Group class on Searching
the Internet for the information you need.
And check out his Web page at
http://www.cpcug.org/user/mohnkern.
Get on the
INTERNET
with CPCUG!
Special
LOW RATES
available to
CPCUG
members
For information and
application forms,
call
Millkern
Communications,
Inc.
at
301-738-0097
Next
Class
February 28, 1998
See page 59
27
28
Introduction to
the Benefits of
Shell Accounts
by Bob Mills
H
ere’s a “pop-quiz”for users of cpcug.org, CPCUG’s
private Internet domain: 1. How many of you have a
Shell account available for your use? Answer: Each and
every one of you! 2. Why should you care? Answer:
Shells offer extra benefits. Extra benefits, at no extra
cost, mean extra value for you, the cpcug.org user.
Think of these Shell benefits as
supplementing the functions provided by your TIA or your dynamic
PPP account. About 90 percent of
cpcug.org users have TIA accounts,
the remainder have dynamic PPP
accounts. But all cpcug.org users also
have Shell accounts. That’s why they
are called “TIA with Shell”accounts
and “dynamic PPP with Shell”accounts.
In the early days of the Internet,
Shell accounts were the only option
in cyberspace. Their importance has
since diminished because Shells
generally cannot handle “graphics,”at
least not without a great deal of extra
effort.
By “graphics,”I mean anything in
addition to simple text. Pictures and
animation, of course, are graphics. So
are fancy fonts, and colors other than
plain black and white. With the introduction and recent explosive growth
of the Internet’s World Wide Web,
graphical access to the Internet has
become the norm. Today’s users require “graphical software”that accommodates the increasingly fancy
graphics appearing on Web sites.
Netscape and Microsoft’s Internet
Explorer are well-known examples of
such graphical software known as
Web “browsers.”
Graphical software must be
installed on your computer. Internet
service providers (ISPs), such as
Millkern, provide installation disks in
an attempt to make the installation
procedure as easy as possible. Such
disks provide e-mail and newsreader
programs, as well as a Web browser.
Backup for E-Mail
Software
Although Shell accounts no longer
play the central function they once
did, consider some of their remaining
benefits. The first I’ll mention is that
Shell software can serve as backup for
some of the graphical software installed on your computer, especially
for e-mail and newsreader programs.
Let me focus my discussion on
e-mail. Much of the discussion below,
however, applies to newsreader programs as well. Unfortunately, something occasionally might go wrong
with the graphical software on your
computer. While the problem is being
corrected, you may want to read or
send e-mail. That’s the time to recall
you have a Shell program for e-mail
called “Pine”ready for use as a
backup. Pine and other Shell software
reside on the host computer located
at Beltsville, Maryland—not on your
computer. That makes things simpler
for you.
The only software you need on
your computer to run Pine is a
communications program such as
Procomm. Generally, you will find
Shell software to be robust and dependable. Not much goes wrong with
it unless the entire cpcug.org server
goes down at Beltsville, and that
doesn’t happen very frequently.
Generally, you also will find that Shell
software such as Pine has fewer fancy
“bells and whistles”than the software
included in graphical installation
packages. But then, simple, easy pro-
29
grams are probably good for backup
software.
Shell Account Login
Procedures for signing into your
Shell account are given in detail in the
documentation provided by Millkern.
So let me review the steps here only
briefly.
First, set the parameters of your
communications program to the following, which are the default settings
for many such programs:
No parity
8 bits
1 stop bit
Terminal type = VT100 or VT102
Set the communications program
to dial the same DIGEX dial-in phone
number you selected for your graphical software. For example, if it is a
local call, you can use (301) 220-1555.
After dialing and connecting, the
system will expect a four-step sign-in
procedure from you. The first two
steps tell the machine to connect you
to the cpcug.org private domain. The
last two steps connect you to your
individual account. Remember, the
system is case sensitive. Do not use
uppercase letters.
Step 1
When the system asks,
access login:
you type
cpcug<Enter>
Step 2
When the system asks,“password:”
you just enter a blank. That is, you
simply press <Enter>.
Step 3
You will now be connected to the
cpcug.org private domain. The system
will ask once again “login.”This time
you type your individual userid.
My userid is “bmills,”so I would
type
bmills<enter>
30
Step 4
The system asks for your confidential password. Type your password
and press <Enter>.
You have now accessed your Shell
account.You will see a welcome message, and a note about any e-mail you
may have. After pressing <Enter>
several times, you will see the
CPCUG Main Menu.
To launch the Pine e-mail program,
for example, select the first item on
the CPCUG Main Menu, which is “M
- Mail.”Pine’s Main Menu is now
displayed. Press “C - Compose
Message”to compose and send a new
e-mail message. Press “I - Folder
Index”to see a list of any e-mail that
has arrived and awaits your attention.
Pine has lots of helpful menus, and it
shouldn’t take you long to be able to
use its basic functions.
Unix Utilities (and
Games)
Consider now a second benefit of
having a Shell account.Your Shell
account offers you a number of extra
Internet tools, or utilities, called “Unix
commands.”
True, some Unix commands are
intended for the experts. Scott
Mohnkern, system administrator for
the cpcug.org and millkern.com
Internet domains, accomplishes much
of his magic in keeping things functioning using Unix commands.
However, there are many Unix commands designed for use by you and
me, the ordinary users. I’ve listed a
few in the box on the facing page.
First I need to show you how to get
the “Unix prompt”displayed on your
computer screen. It’s simple. Perform
the same four-step sign-in procedure
described above. When the CPCUG
Main Menu is displayed, select “S Unix Shell.”Or just press <Enter> to
get the same results.You must have
the Unix prompt displayed to type
any Unix command.
There are hundreds of Unix commands available to you, all because
you have a Shell account. There is
even an on-line Unix manual. Type
“man”followed by the command
about which you want information.
For example, type “man cal”to learn
about the “cal”command. To learn
more about the online manual itself,
type “man man.”If you see
“—more—”displayed on a man page,
press the spacebar on your keyboard.
The displayed page will scroll up to
enable you to read “more”of the page.
The problem with the online Unix
manual is that you have to know the
name of the command to ask for
information about it. To discover additional Unix commands that you may
find useful, or at least interesting, get
your hands on a Unix book. There are
many to choose from. Two of my favorites are A Student’s Guide to Unix
by Harley Hah, and Unix For Dummies
by John R. Levine and Margaret
Levine Young.
There is one more command that
should be listed here. Type “fortune”
to display a random selection from a
database of adages I hope you find
amusing. Two examples are
“Experience is what causes a person
to make new mistakes instead of old
ones”and “Any small object that is
accidentally dropped will hide under
a larger object.”<g>
Shell Programs
Closely related to Unix commands
are Shell programs that can be
launched at the Unix prompt. We’ve
already discussed one such program:
Pine, the Shell e-mail program.
Instead of opening Pine from the
CPCUG Main Menu, you can type
“pine”after the Unix prompt to get
the same results.
Mail filtering
Another example of a practical use
of the Shell prompt is for spam filtering. Scott Mohnkern and Rick Cook
(with lots of help from others) recently developed Mailfilt, a program
that cpcug.org users can elect to utilize for filtering unwanted, junk
e-mail. It’s important to understand
the details of this program before
deciding to use it, so please read
Scott’s article in this issue of the
Monitor or go to the following Web
address for more information:
http://www.cpcug.org/mailfilt
This mail filtering utility does require
a Shell account.
Examples of Unix Commands for
Beginners on cpcug.org
What you type—
What you get—
finger Mills
Information about everyone having an account on cpcug.org named Mills, including
first and last names, userids, and date/time
user was logged into his/her account
Information about accountholder having the
userid bmills
The last three times user with userid bmills
was logged into his account
An easy way to change your password if you
have a TIA account. The system will ask for
your old password, then ask (twice) for
your new password. Don’t forget this new
password, or you won’t be able to log in
again without Millkern’s help. Sorry,
“passwd” only works for TIA accounts, not
dynamic PPP accounts.
A list of userids of users currently logged into
the cpcug.org domain
Almost the same information as above (This
list is usually a long one that passes across
your screen quickly; however, most communications programs provide a means to
scroll back and read the list slowly.)
A list of e-mail messages waiting for you
Type “upload” or “download” to transfer files
between your computer and the home directory of your Shell account. This is used
in conjunction with your communications
program. Consult your communications
program’s documentation for details. If you
learn how to utilize “upload,” for example,
you can store files on the host computer
instead of taking the space to store them
on your computer
The current date and time
Current date and time in Greenwich mean
time
A game of Hangman!
A calendar for the current month
A calendar for the year 1999
A calendar for February 1998
finger bmills
last bmills -3
passwd
w
who
from
upload (download)
date
date -u
hangman
cal
cal 1999
cal 2 1998
Telnet
I want to mention one more program that can be launched at the
Unix prompt, requiring a Shell account. It is called “Telnet,”and it lets
you log into your Shell account from
a remote location. Suppose you are
visiting your brother in Madison,
Wisconsin, and he has an Internet
account there.You want to check your
e-mail on cpcug.org, but you don’t
want to pay for a long distance phone
call to your usual dial-in number in
the Washington, DC, area. If your
brother has a Shell account at his
end, or has something called a “Telnet
server”on his computer, you can use
Telnet to connect to your account via
the Internet instead of via long distance phone lines.
Let’s assume your brother has a
Shell account. From his Unix prompt,
you type
telnet cpcug.org
That will connect you to the
cpcug.org private Internet domain.
You then will need to type your
userid and confidential password,
steps 3 and 4 of the four-step sign-in
procedure described earlier. There is
no need for steps 1 and 2 because
Telnet has already connected to the
cpcug.org private domain. When the
CPCUG Main Menu is displayed, you
launch Pine and can read your
e-mail.
Content Access for
Visually Impaired Users
Some people with visual impairments are able to use devices that read
aloud the text displayed on computer
screens. However, such devices don’t
work well with graphical software. As a
result, some visually impaired persons
are regular users of Shell accounts.
Compatibility With
Older Computers
There are users with older computers who are unable to run the graphical installation software distributed
by ISPs. Their machines have 386 or
older chips with little (by today’s
standards) RAM or hard disk space.
These machines may not be running
Windows. Although these folks don’t
have graphical access, they can access
the Internet via Shell accounts.
Conclusion
There are probably additional benefits of Shell accounts that experienced Internet users will want to add
to my list. However, I’ve tried to keep
this article simple and brief, hoping
to target the less experienced users.
They then can join other cpcug.org
users in benefitting from the added
value of their Shell.
Bob Mills, of Millkern Communications,
teaches a CPCUG class on installing Internet
Explorer for your cpcug.org account. He may
be reached at [email protected].
31
Delivering
Training Over
the Web
by Russ Williams
I
n the early days of the World Wide Web, organizations were
paying a lot of attention to developing an eye-catching online
presence. Many companies did so without giving much thought
to how the Web could be incorporated as a key part of their operating strategies. As time has passed, however, organizations
began to understand the benefits of integrating mission critical
applications with Web sites. One way organizations are using the Web to
accomplish their missions more efficiently is through the delivery of
training via the Web, commonly referred to as Web-based Training
(WBT).
Imagine arriving at work one day
to discover that the human resources
manager has called in sick with a
terrible cold. She has informed you
that a key recruit will be in today for
an interview, and expects you to
handle the interview in her absence.
What if you have been out of interviewing for a while and find yourself
unsure how best to approach the
interview. With a WBT interviewing
32
module, you could open a brief
course on your desktop, review effective interviewing techniques, and
then proceed to interview the candidate confidently.
More often than not, Human
Resources will have someone to conduct the interview. However, a WBT
program’s instant accessibility can
help you out of a potential problem
situation.
The advantages of delivering training via the Web versus traditional
methods include—
• Reaching a geographically
dispersed group of employees with
a consistent training program.
• Enabling employees to access a
training program “just-in-time,”
training when they want, and, if
allowed, from where they want
• Instant updating of information,
allowing delivery of accurate and
up-to-date information
There are, however, potential pitfalls and problems you may
encounter when considering WBT.
Some traditional training programs
are not appropriate for delivery over
the Web. A course must be thoughtfully designed and developed for
delivery over the Web—one cannot
simply toss training materials online
and expect miracles. Instructional
design issues are a factor when developing a training program for delivery
online, and employee access to the
Web can be a limitation if not all employees are online. Despite these
limitations, it may be argued that the
many benefits of WBT outweigh the
disadvantages.
WBT development may take advantage of the multimedia capabilities
of the Web to produce an engaging
and interactive training program. The
judicious use of audio and video
within a training program may add an
interesting dimension, creating an
effective experience for participating
employees. Employees may move
through the training program at their
own pace, increasing the likelihood
that employees will fully grasp the
concepts and ideas presented before
advancing. Self-paced instruction
decreases the likelihood of employee
frustration, therefore improving office
morale.
The benefits of WBT are greater for
geographically dispersed organizations due to savings realized on travel
and hotel expenses. A company operating only in one particular area or
region, however, may also reap the
benefits of delivering a training program online if the training program
represents skills that are utilized by a
large number of employees.
WBT is not appropriate for every
organization; however, those companies that can utilize WBT may find
that it becomes a significant part of
their Web site and an integral piece of
their operating strategy.
Russ Williams graduated with an MBA, but
his interests are in using the Web to improve
business practices. He currently works with a
startup firm delivering Web-based training
solutions. He may be reached at
[email protected]
Last Chance
To Order ,
Entertainment 98
Books
is
Thursday,
January 15.
For more
information,
see
Inside Back Cover.
HOW YOU CAN HELP AT A LOCAL SCHOOL
1. Learn more about what others are doing by visiting the U.S. Tech Corps Web site (http://www.ustc.org) or
learn specific ways you can help by contacting your Tech Corps coordinator.
Maryland: http://www.inform.umd.edu/tc-md; Carol Hyatt, [email protected]
DC: http://www.cgcs.org/tc-dc; Mark Root, [email protected]
Virginia: Erik Bullen, [email protected]
2. Share success stories. If you have been helping a school already, you may have a success story that
could help others. Success stories can result in some good publicity for schools and their volunteers.
Please get in touch with the Tech Corps contacts to let them know what you’ve been doing.
3. If you already have a connection with a nearby school through your children, grandchildren, or
neighbors but have not yet offered your help, you will probably want to start by talking with the principal to find out about the unmet needs at the school and to learn what’s already been done with
technology.
4. Don’t expect overnight results. Be patient and work to build the trust of the school staff. Good communication will be critical to your success! Remember that technology often makes those new to it
very uncomfortable. One of your major objectives should be to build the confidence of staff members
new to technology.
—Carol Hyatt
33
Taking Your
Web Site to the
Next Level:
Some Simple Approaches
To Upgrading From
“Brochureware” to
Interactivity
by Tony Byrne
Y
our organization simply had to have a Web site. So you
taught yourself Hypertext Markup Language (HTML),
found a good hosting company, registered your domain
name, and posted several pages. It may not offer streaming
video and access to internal databases for your association’s members or company’s remote sales force, but a
nontransactional site is, however, a worthy accomplishment.
It’s fashionable in the Internet
business to sneer about “brochureware,”but content is still king, and
laying out your Web site intuitively
and attractively is a true art.
Nevertheless, the Internet is a
uniquely interactive medium, and
34
static pages—no matter how compelling the content—do not leverage
the full potential of the Web.
This article outlines several simple
ways you can apply some tried-andtrue “CGI”applications to your site
and offers a critical review of how
they can best be used. The goal is for
your visitors to get more value from
their tour through your site, and for
you to begin forging closer relationships with your customers or constituents.
The examples in this article use
freely available scripts written in Perl,
the most common Internet scripting
language. (See sidebar for reference
URLs and additional discussion.)
Mail Forms
Mail forms take data from a form
that a visitor has filled out and send
that information to you (or someone
else) as an e-mail message. Mail
forms allow for more structured feedback, such as qualifying sales leads or
surveying your visitors, using a consistent set of questions and response
options.
An easy but powerful mail-form
script is Matt Wright’s “formmail.pl”
(see sidebar). It allows you to send
the form input to multiple e-mail
addresses.You can set a preconfigured
response page (that the user will see
after submitting the script) or use the
script to build a dynamic response
page using some of the user’s inputs,
such as “Thank you, Jill Smith, for your
feedback on our Customer Service
policies,”where the words in italics
were provided by the visitor via your
form.
Another similar script,“cgiemail,”
allows you to place user form inputs
into a preformatted text file template
that is then e-mailed to a specified
address. This enables you to place
user-supplied form responses within
a proper letter that can be sent to a
third party via e-mail. For example,
Resources for Interactive Web Site Development
Interactivity can be provided in a variety of ways,
but on a shared Unix server, the easiest approach
is to use common gateway interface (CGI) scripts
written in Perl. You’ll need access to a CGI-BIN
directory and the ability to change file permissions
(your hosting company or system administrator can
help). The “readme” files accompanying good Perl
scripts are really meant to be read.
If you host on a Windows NT server, you can still
use Perl (though your scripts may require some
tweaking), but a couple of newer tools offer potentially more promising results.
Microsoft promotes Active Server Pages (ASP),
which use Visual Basic code in conjunction with the
Microsoft Web server Internet Information Server.
This approach is especially good for database
access (the subject of another article—but if you
want to see an example, visit http://www.bot.org/
directory.html).
Cold Fusion (http://www.allaire.com), a heralded
commercial package, is a less powerful but more
accessible set of extended tags that enable the
rapid development of the kind of applications mentioned in this article, for use on an NT Web server.
Matt’s Script Archive
http://worldwidemart.com/scripts/
Over the past 3 years Matt Wright has steadily
built the definitive collection of useful, well-documented CGI scripts. Matt, by the way, has just entered his teen years. (Who says Perl isn’t kidstuff?)
my company has helped several associations set up forms that their members fill in to complete letters on specific issues that are then e-mailed
directly to policymakers.
Of course, your visitors don’t care
which script you use—what matters is
the form interface and clarity of the
output page they receive. For forms,
use tables instead of preformatted
courier type to control layout and line
up input boxes. Try background colors
in table header cells to set apart logical groupings of form elements
(http://www.raxco.com/evaluate.html, for
an example). Then be sure that the
output or response page has the same
navigational elements (including a
link to your home page) as all your
other pages so that users can still find
Selena Sol’s Script Archive
http://selena.mcp.com/Scripts/
You’ll find brilliant and very practical stuff here,
though the CGI scripts written in Perl could be
better documented. Also visit
http://www.sidestreets.com/info/sssa/. It’s a forum
where you can glean essential bits of advice.
Selena Sol’s specialty is the use of simple, delimited ASCII data files suitable for a shared server
environment where there is no access to a real
database server.
CGI Resources
http://cgi-resources.com
This is a comprehensive, annotated list of CGI
scripts.
Interactivity With Java and JavaScript
You probably hear a lot about JavaScript (and its
cousin, VBScript), which is typically coded into an
HTML page and executed in the visitor’s browser,
thereby offering a potentially faster and easier alternative to the CGI-based applications noted above.
These are useful tools, and fairly easy to learn, but
only 50 to 60 percent of the visitors hitting your site
will be using browsers supporting JavaScript.
Full-strength compiled Java applets (see
http://gamelan.com for a treasure trove of free examples) can light up your site, but suffer from the
same browser limitation. Server-based CGI, by
contrast, will work for all your visitors.
their way around—there’s nothing
more frustrating than a dead end.
Forums and Chat
Online forums featuring threaded
discussions harken to the BBS roots of
the early public Internet and remain
popular today because they allow
visitors to participate in online conversations at their own convenience.
But, like all Web applications, online
forums are better suited to some situations than others.
Not surprisingly, people tend to be
more open and energetic on forums
within private password-protected
areas. My experience with membersonly association forums is that participants more readily express them-
selves when they know that only
other members will be reading their
messages. Of course, there is a place
for public discussion groups, but
asking your visitors to “register”before
entering should help keep their postings more coherent and polite.
Matt Wright offers a very serviceable conferencing application called
“WWWBoard”that is quite easy to
install and customize. (See sidebar.)
Forums are generally superior to
real-time “chat”areas, which on the
Web tend to become either uninhabited or too crowded and disjointed for
meaningful interchange. Chat can be
useful in limited circumstances, such
as defined, prescheduled events.
Need to arrange a board meeting
with members from 10 different
35
cities? An online chat session could
save you a bundle in telephone company fees, but be sure to designate a
moderator to play traffic cop. Note
that chat scripts can be more complex
to install and run, and are frequently
more finicky, than the other applications mentioned here.
Surveys
“I wish I knew more about my
visitors”is a common lament among
webmasters. A Web server generates
log files, but at best these paint a
picture of your colorful visitors in
only very broad strokes. One way to
get more information about who is
visiting, why they have come, and
how they found your site is through a
survey form.
You can have the survey data
e-mailed to you using one of the
formmail scripts above, but a better
option is to use Selena Sol’s forms
processor script (see sidebar) to
output all the survey entries to a flat
ASCII file.You can analyze this file
later using a desktop spreadsheet or
database program. A good forms
processor will also forward visitors to
specific pages on your site based on
their responses.
Surveys can serve a variety of purposes, from providing detailed feedback about what your site does well
and poorly, to telling you what interests your constituency, to capturing
demographic information about potential customers.
However, people often expect
something in return for the time and
effort they expend taking your survey.
One proven incentive is an online
sweepstakes (see http://www.
smithfieldhams.com/survey.html for an
example), an approach that will
surely elevate your survey return rate,
though it will also skew your data
somewhat. While your visitors are
answering questions, don’t forget to
ask them to join your e-mail list
(“What e-mail list?”Read on . . . )
Mailing Lists
Tony Byrne is lead developer at the
Interactive Development Corporation
(http://www.idev.com) in Silver
Spring, Maryland.The company has
implemented the examples used in this
article for several of its clients. Tony may
be reached at [email protected].
Next
It is for good reason that e-mail
remains the “killer app”of the
Internet: It reaches users’desktops
directly, it’s easy to use, and it doesn’t
depend on a proprietary client program or plug-in. At a time when
36
various “push”technologies are being
overhyped, e-mail remains the most
powerful tool you can wield to build
relationships with your Web site visitors.
Use your site to build up annotated
lists of e-mail addresses of people
who have asked to hear from you. In
this age of personalization, however,
it is critical to enable people to sign
up for specific lists on topics that suit
them, and to avoid sending them
messages on subjects that aren’t of
interest.
One approach to managing this is
to gather data through a survey, then
send mailings to targeted segments
among those who checked that they
wanted to join your list. For example,
just before Mother’s Day online
florists can send a special message to
men between 18 and 36 on their
mailing lists, informing them of a
special flowers sale. Older men might
get a different message, and women
on the mailing list might receive yet a
third variant.
As a simpler alternative, you can
use Solena Sol’s “Maillist”script to set
up one-way mailing lists that visitors
can join through your Web site. The
program comes with an administrative interface that enables you to
send out mass e-mailings to a given
subscriber list directly from the Web
site—no fuss, no muss, but less targeted.
This review of interactive CGI applications is not meant to be exhaustive (a longer discussion could include online quizzes, schedulers,
games, dynamic pages based on user
preferences, and so forth). The key is
to adapt these proven approaches to
your specific needs.
Let me know how it goes!
Creating WWW Pages
cpcug.org
Dial-Up
Access Numbers
(301) 220-1555
Washington, DC, Metro
(301) 549-1752
(301) 778-5254
(703) 207-0191
Northern Virginia
(410) 792-4115
Baltimore, Maryland
(410) 296-0479
Baltimore, Maryland
(301) 220-0258
Berwyn, Maryland
(301) 414-0091
Frederick, Maryland
(301) 714-2010
Hagerstown, Maryland
(410) 819-8570
Easton/Kent Island/
Centreville, Maryland
(Hands On)
Class
January 17, 1998
(410) 758-2515
Chestertown, Maryland
See page 59 for course description
What’s Wrong
With Today’s
Computers:
And What the Future Holds
by Michael W. Focke
Hardware
The central processing unit
(CPU) is too slow
DEC’s Alpha runs at 500 MHz.
Why can’t we have something in that
range?
By late 1998 to early 1999, Pentium
II CPUs of the 333-, 350-, 400-, and
450-MHz speeds and 400- and 450MHz CPUs of the Deschutes generation will be available. By 1999, a new
600-MHz CPU code named Merced
will be available. It will run current
programs at least as well as current
CPUs. But it will run recompiled programs faster once compilers have
been built that will optimize the code
generated for this new 64-bit CPU
architecture.
Intel and Hewlett Packard have
decided that trying to optimize the
execution of code on the chip takes
too much chip space and slows things
down. They believe optimization
done by the compiler to be better.
(But will that happen?) There is speculation that there will be a 2-Mbyte
and 4-Mbyte secondary cache on the
Merced CPU module. Price? An estimated $5000 early in production! By
the year 2000, the projected speeds in
a new CPU design code named
Flagstaff will be 1000 MHz.
AMD will respond with its own
versions to try to keep pace. For the
short term, AMD plans to change
manufacturing technology to the
0.25-micron size and produce 300MHz versions of its chips very early in
1998.
The talk is that Cyrix (and thus
IBM) will drop out of the high-end
CPU market. Perhaps they will focus
on trying to produce an all-in-one
chip at a low price for their new
parent, National Semiconductor.
The level-2 cache runs at only
half the level-1 cache speed
Between 15 and 20 percent of
memory accesses are done through
the level-2 cache.Yet getting something from the level-2 cache always
takes two clock cycles per byte. We
need this access to be faster because
today’s architecture costs us 10 percent of our productive CPU cycles.
By late 1998, Pentium II and
Deschutes CPUs will allow level-2
cache access at one clock cycle per
byte.
The path between the CPU and
the level-2 cache is not error
checked
I’ll bet you didn’t know that! And
as CPU speeds get faster, the margin
for error gets smaller— you could
lose a bit without ever knowing it.
This path will be error checked in
late 1998 designs.
Access to main memory is too
slow, affecting program
execution and input/output
(I/O) speeds
That fast CPU you paid so much
for is hobbled by the 15 to 20 cycles
required to get 4 bytes of data. It has
nothing to do while it waits.
Faster main memory access was
supposed to be provided in two major
steps. The current architecture was
supposed to be extended via a new
chipset to support 100-MHz synchronous dynamic random access
memory (SDRAM), 50 percent faster
than the 66 MHz we have now. Then
there was to be a radical change in
the memory used, one that would
37
require both new chipsets and a new
untested memory type.
There are problems with both
steps. SDRAM from different manufacturers has been found to be built to
different performance characteristics
because of the way that the memory
manufacturers implemented the specification. This is already causing problems in our current generation of
SDRAM-using motherboards.
Memory from manufacturer A will
work in motherboard Z and not in Y
while memory from manufacturer B
works perfectly in motherboard Y and
not in Z. This only gets more difficult
as the speeds get higher.
Rambus has a patent on a type of
54-pin DRAM memory that promises
doubling and tripling of memory
access speeds. Intel has endorsed the
use of that design. But major memory
manufacturers don’t like the idea of
paying Rambus a small percentage of
the cost of each chip produced for the
right to use the Rambus design. The
memory manufacturers tried to create
a new memory design (SLDRAM),
using different technology that would
be just as fast and owned by the manufacturers. There have been reports
that this initiative has failed.
How this will all work out is still
very unclear. The only thing we can be
certain of is that memory access
speeds will double before mid-1999.
The PCI bus is too slow for the
video demands of games and
3-D uses
Games today demand fast CPUs,
and they can produce enough video
that the other peripherals can’t get
access to the peripheral component
interface (PCI) bus.
As I write this in early August, Intel
is scheduled to bring out a 440LX
chipset for the Pentium II on August
26 that supports an accelerated
graphics port (AGP) providing up to
four times the speed of the current
PCI bus. The AGP will require a totally new video card design. AMD has
promised to bring a similar capability
to socket-7 motherboards.
The dirty little secret is that first
implementations will be less than
impressive. First benchmarks are very
disappointing, with little to no improvement in typical applications.
38
The hard drive is too slow
Access speed is the time it takes to
move the heads from where they are
to the data location. It’s mostly a
matter of physics: how fast you can
accelerate the heads, how far they
have to go across the disk platter, and
how fast you can stop them. Another
component in the equation is the
little bit of time spent waiting for the
data you want to rotate into the
proper position under the heads.
Nothing startling will happen to
shorten access times even though 400
percent increases in density will
shorten the distance the heads have
to move to get to the data.
Rotation speed is how fast the disk
drive is spinning. Average rotation
speeds are 5000 rpm or so. Small
computer system interface (SCSI)
drives come up to 10,000 rpm, but
they are expensive. Engineering faster
rotation speeds is expensive, so rotation speeds may creep up only to
7200 rpm. As data are stored more
densely, it becomes more difficult to
read it at higher speeds because the
time the heads are over the data decreases.
Transfer rates measure how fast you
can get the data across the interface
into memory where the CPU can use
it. Compared with CPU speeds, transfer rates for average-priced disk drives
have hardly improved at all in the
past 3 years. First Quantum and then
Seagate came out in 1997 with ultra
direct memory access (Ultra-DMA)
drives, with transfer rates doubling to
33 Mbytes/sec from the speed of the
previous generation of enhanced
integrated drive electronics (EIDE).
Unfortunately, doubling the transfer
rate only helps increase overall I/O
speed by 10 percent, due to the slowness of the other components.
Increasingly widespread use of
DMA drives for EIDE or ultra-DMA
hard drive I/O will allow the drives to
use only 10 percent of the available
CPU cycles during I/O, just like SCSI.
EIDE drives using processor
input/output (PIO) use 80 to 90 percent of the available CPU cycles
during I/O.
These drives are available today for
many motherboards and many operating systems.You should use them if
you can.
There will even be EIDE drives that
support command queuing, the ability of a drive to accept multiple commands and to optimize the seek path
so that the total time for all I/O is
optimized. Micropolis has announced
drives with this previously SCSI-only
capability.
SCSI will cease to have any great
advantages for most workstation,
home, or office use. SCSI will still
have advantages in server and multiuser system use. New generations of
SCSI will allow 20-, 40-, and 80Mbyte/sec transfer rates, up from the
original 10 Mbyte/sec that most current SCSI II fast users enjoy today.
The floppy is too small
The 1.44-Mbyte floppy was fine
when the hard disk was 20 Mbytes,
and a software package came on two
floppies. But it’s awfully small now
that average hard drives are a hundred times bigger.
Already computer manufacturers
are packaging some machines with
120-Mbyte floppies (LS120) that boot,
read, and write from LS120 floppies.
These drives also read, write, and
boot from our legacy 1.44 floppies.
The CD-ROM is too small, and
if you buy digital versatile disks
(DVDs), they can’t record
Already, software packages and
games take two or three CDs worth of
storage. The DVD CD is bigger, but
you can’t get one that will record.
Already, there are DVDs available
in read-only format that store 4.7
Gbytes, 7 times as much as a traditional CD. Future versions will store
8.5 Gbytes on a side with a special
dual power technique. Later in 1998
there will be writable DVD versions
available (DVD-RAM), but, for technical reasons, they will record only
about 2.3 Gbytes. They will be available as soon as the copyright protection issues get worked out. Right now
it is the movie producers and music
publishers who won’t allow writable
DVD. They know that you can make a
DVD copy of a movie or song that is
every bit as good as the original.
The good news is DVD drives read
conventional CDs. But don’t jump
into DVD too soon. They are available
now, cost $100 to make, and sell for
$600. But the one you can buy today
might not be the one you want 2
years from now—there are many
formats to go through before the true
standard emerges.
The fan is too loud
The machine sits in your office and
it makes as loud a background noise
when you haven’t used it for a half
hour as when you are using it. Studies
show this background noise is tiring
to humans. And why does the fan run
as fast in the winter as it does in the
summer?
Power supply fans are larger in the
ATX design and thus can run slower
and still move the same volume of air.
There will be connections between
the motherboard and the power
supply that will allow the BIOS to
regulate the speed of the powersupply fan according to the need for
cooling.
The CPU cooling fan can fail, and
you learn about the problem too late.
You bought an $800 CPU chip, but a
cheap $3 fan to save money. The fan
quits, and the CPU chip fries itself.
Already you can buy a CPU cooling
fan that has three wires. Two provide
power. The third sends a signal showing how fast the fan is turning. This
third wire connects to a pin on the
motherboard that is monitored by the
basic input/output system (BIOS) on
an Intel TX chipset motherboard.
When there is no fan-turning signal,
an alarm can be sounded by the
BIOS, and the software can be told to
shut down the machine gracefully. (In
the corporate world, a message can be
sent to the help desk to order a new
fan, and the CPU can be put in slow
mode to consume less energy and
produce less heat until the fan is replaced).
The ISA cards make Plug and
Play, Plug and Pray
Industry standard architecture
(ISA) cards were never designed to be
self-configuring, and they make the
software’s job of trying to determine
automatically what is in your computer almost impossible.
ISA cards will be gradually discontinued. They were a holdover from the
AT legacy and will no longer be
needed. By 1999, there will be no ISA
slots in the PCs we buy.
Add more devices, run out of
Interrupt Requests (IRQs)
Add two modems, use two IRQs.
Add two printers, use two IRQs. IRQs
were few enough in the AT days. With
today’s multitasking, multiperipheral
systems, we need a way of attaching
peripherals that makes better use of
the few IRQs we have.
As the universal serial bus (USB)
replaces separate controllers, cards,
and ports, there will be less need for
IRQs. The USB will allow the monitor,
keyboard, mouse, joystick, flight simulator console, modem, phone,
camera, scanner, printers, speakers,
and so forth, to be connected to one
port using one IRQ. There are already
USB motherboards, several dozen
USB-enabled peripherals, and a USBsupporting operating system
(Windows 95 OSR2.1). Windows 98
will support USB devices.
By the end of 1998, there will be
several hundred USB peripherals,
including some only available in USB
versions. USB will also be used to
enable portable computers to easily
connect to external peripherals such
as speakers or display projectors.
Short of expensive SCSI, there is no
good way to connect things outside
the case.
Want to bring a tape drive from one
machine to another? You have two
choices. SCSI is awfully expensive.
And the parallel port is an awful
kludge.
All the external devices will hook to
a single USB cable—fast, simple,
elegant. No need to use the relatively
slow parallel port. Some day there
will be no parallel port..
There isn’t a good way of extending
Plug and Play outside the case.
Configure a peripheral like a CD or
tape drive outside the case on the
cheaper parallel port, and there is no
way of detecting it with Plug and
Play.
USB allows you to extend Plug and
Play outside the case.
I can’t power down down to
save energy and then start right
up again
Or better still, why can’t the machine shut itself down when it is ob-
vious I’m not using it, so that it saves
energy. And then why can’t it immediately spring back to life (reliably)
when something happens indicating
it needs to wake up (keyboard activity, modem activity, and so forth). I’d
like it to slow to less than 10 percent
power use except when it processes
local area network (LAN) data that
come in overnight and when I’m
using it.
Powering down is largely a BIOS
function and one that will receive
increasing attention. The amount of
power consumed by computers on a
hot day has made it imperative, from
a national energy use point of view,
that something be done to provide
reliable slowdown capability. How
many minutes during the day do you
actually use your machine? Maybe 10
percent? Yet most machines consume
the same amount of electricity
whether idle or in use. How many
power generating plants do we have
to build to power that wasted capacity?
Microsoft, Intel, and Toshiba combined to design the advanced configuration power interface (ACPI), which
is an interface between the CPU,
BIOS, chipset, and operating system.
The specification document is more
than 300 pages and provides capabilities so that a fax program can tell the
operating system to ask the BIOS if it
supports an ACPI level that will allow
the machine to go into suspended
mode (and to make sure the CPU
does also). Oh, but wake up in less
than a second when a fax call comes
in on the modem.
I can’t suspend operations and
then turn the computer on to
just where I left off
I’d like my desktop computer to
power down and then boot in 5 seconds with things on my screen just as
they were before I powered down.
Microsoft and Intel have collaborated to provide an instant-on capability to save the current state of the
machine on power down and restore
it on power up. This becomes available in Windows 98.
I can’t tell when I receive e-mail
when the machine is in
suspended mode
Wouldn’t it be nice to have a light
on your case to tell you that you have
e-mail, or voice mail?
39
You will and your software will
learn how to use it.
Software
I can’t tell when the LAN fails
without looking at the back of
the computer
Different operating systems
require different drivers
Yep, they will bring the LAN activity lights to the front of the chassis.
The cable clutter looks a mess
Look at the ugly backside of the
machine. Do we really need the seven
cables that are hanging out of mine?
When I have USB, the nine cables
coming out of the back of my home
machine will be reduced to two:
power in and USB.
The motherboard mounts with
those silly plastic things that
never fit
The current motherboards use
plastic standoffs to attach to the case.
But a new generation of
motherboards (NLX) will use slide-in
motherboards that will allow you to
slide a motherboard into the case
without removing cables from attachment points, or even removing peripheral cards from their sockets. A
riser card mounting scheme will
allow you to remove a few screws,
and then the riser card into which all
the other cards are mounted.Then all
you’ll need to do is slide the motherboard out the back. For more information, go to the Web pages at
http://www.teleport.com/~nlx.
There is no easy way to find out
what operating system or driver
updates you need
I have multiple cards and devices in
my machine, and I spend a ridiculous
amount of time looking for updates.
If you have six devices, you must call
six sites. Each downloads differently,
and then has to be uncompressed
and installed. And each does things
differently, not to mention that you
have to go to the operating system
support site and then the office suite
site as well. Why not one source?
With the beta of Windows 98,
Microsoft has provided a passwordprotected Web site where a browser is
all you need to gain access to an
Active-X applet that will examine
your configuration and tell you what
updates you don’t have, offer to
download them for you (with your
approval), and install them (with
backup of current drivers/modules for
recovery purposes).
Summary
Next
Before You Build
or Buy
Your Next PC
Seminar
Saturday
March 21, 1998
See Training section
of the Monitor
for more information
40
Why does a driver for NT have to
arrive 6 months late? Why does the
Windows 95 driver come out first?
Windows 98 supports a new driver
design (and thousands of new devices). This design will allow a driver
to be developed in half the time, and
the same driver will support Windows
98 and Windows NT.
The pace of innovation will not
slow.Very little of what we have
talked about applies to upgraders.You
will be so much better off updating
everything at once and not trying to
reutilize components. The fancy machine we buy today will be worth
little in a very few years; but, fortunately, for most of us, our current
machine will still run the new software for the next few years.
Group. He may be found on the MIX in the
Hardware and Help Conferences.
“Before
You Buy
a
Computer”
Handout
An 80-page collection of
the slides used at the
December 6, 1997,
Before You Build
or Buy
Free
Saturday
Seminar
$10.00,
you pick up handout at
CPCUG HQ
at 51 Monroe Street,
Plaza East 2,
Rockville, Maryland,
20850
between
10AM AND 3PM
Mondays through Fridays
$15.00,
handout
mailed to your
home or office
VISA and MasterCard
accepted
Mike Focke is the Product Manager for a
secure Unix-like Operating System produced
by Wang. He frequently writes about buying
and hardware topics for the Capital PC User
Call
(301) 762-9372
How To
Maintain Your
PC
And What You Need To Do It
by Michael W. Focke
O
k. You have your PC home from the store. What
do you need to do, other than use it? Here are
some tips for some preventative actions that you
can take that will help your machine run longer
and more reliably.
Inside the case
In electronics, the major enemy of
reliability is heat. Heat breaks down
components. Over time they lose
their effectiveness and gradual unreliability can result. A series of articles
appeared recently in the more technical trade press recently describing
how heat breaks down capacitors,
which, after a year or so, lose their
ability to regulate the quality of power
flowing though a computer. The machine may run fine for a year, but
some time down the way, all sorts of
unexplainable crashes will start to
happen. In addition to buying a quality motherboard (the main electronic
logic board in your computer is called
a motherboard or mainboard), you
can help by keeping the computer
cool.
Locate it where the air can flow
into and out of the unit easily. Most
older computers, and even many new
ones, take in air from the front, draw
air over the components inside the
computer, suck air through the power
supply, and exhaust air out the back
of the computer (ATX motherboards
exhaust to the side). Keep your computer far enough away from any obstacles like walls or books on the desk
so that the air coming out of the
power supply is not slowed down.
Keep things away from the front of
the computer case so you won’t block
the inlets.
Ok, you do that—what next? Well,
that machine is sitting there 8 hours a
day sucking air in across the components and pushing it out the back.
And those components have rough
surfaces. The air has a little bit of dust
in it. Guess what! Your computer is
acting like an air filter. Dust is getting
trapped on those rough surfaces and
there is a gradual dust buildup. Dust
is an insulator, so any heat that is
trying to escape can’t get out of the
component through the dust.
Every year (or more often if the
environment is a dirty one) on a nice
rainy day when it is humid so there is
no static electricity around, turn off
the power (but keep the power cable
connected because it provides a
ground) and open up the case of the
computer (usually done by removing
some screws at the edge of the back
of the case, but each case is different).
The first thing to do is to look at
the wide cables and make sure they
aren’t blocking the airflow. Without
disconnecting them, rearrange them
so that air can have easy passage
through the system and into the
power supply. Make sure they don’t
block airflow across things that get
hot, like the central processing unit
(CPU) and hard drives.
Clean the heatsink and the
heatsink fan. They sit on top of the
CPU and keep that expensive part
cool (well, it was expensive when you
41
bought it even if the price dropped
$100 the next week). If a heatsink gets
clogged with dirt, the air doesn’t flow
across the surfaces and cool them
effectively. Take a 1-inch or so paintbrush and brush the fan blades and
heatsink underneath to loosen the
dust. Stick your head in there and
puff on them both and blow the dust
away.
If the heatsink fan has been noisy
or is 3 years old, replace it. A good
one (defined as one with good bearings—ball bearings) costs only $7 or
so. Cool processors run reliably. Hot
ones cause all sorts of unexplained
hangs and crashes.
Next, clean the power supply (usually a shiny chrome box on the right
rear or top rear of the case). It has
holes through which the air is pulled.
If they are blocked, less air will flow.
Clean the holes. Use the paintbrush. I
often just use my fingers.
The intake is done, now how about
the outflow side? There is usually a
grill over the outflow port on the back
of the computer case. See if you can
get the paintbrush in there and brush
the fan blades. Keeping them clean
will help the fan balance, put less
strain on the bearings within the fan,
and increase airflow. A warning! The
only place inside the computer that is
dangerous to human beings is inside
the power supply. You can safely
touch anywhere else, even with the
power on. But inside the power
supply there are items that are dangerous even with the power off. So try
to clean the fan without opening the
power supply, unless you know what
you are doing.
If you have a 5.25-inch floppy drive,
the top of the drive has probably collected dust because it isn’t sealed as
well as are 3.5-inch drives. Dust gets
sucked in through the floppy insertion slot and gets caught on the
mechanism. See if you can get at the
top of the floppy drive and clean it off.
Now that you have the worst spots
cleaned, get your face inside the case
and blow out the dust bunnies. Get in
there and huff and puff until they are
all over your table instead of all over
the insides of your computer.
Press all the connectors on all the
wires down snugly so that you are
sure that none of them worked loose
while you were in there, button the
thing back up, and you are done with
42
You’d be amazed how much dust
and debris gets in between those keys
on your keyboard. Unplug the keyboard, pick it up, turn it over, and
shake it. Bang it around a bit until the
debris stops falling. Turn it back over
and wash the outside with 409 or
some such cleaner. Let it dry a while
before turning the machine on or
plugging it in.
recommendation when you look for
one. (At MEI, they range in price from
$8.98 to $24.98, with most around
$12.)
The tape drive is your lifeline, make
sure you can use it after the cleaning.
Also, make sure you can use it from
your emergency boot diskette.
One Windows 95 utility I recommend is Seagate’s Backup Exec 2.0,
which allows you to create a DOS
version of the tape software so you
can do a restore after an FDISK and
FORMAT, without having to reload
Windows 95 onto your hard drive
first.
Floppies
Hard Disk Drive
Every 6 months or so, depending
on usage, clean the heads on your
floppy drive. This is more important
on a 5.25-inch drive than on a 3.5inch drive for reasons previously explained. Use a floppy cleaning kit that
includes a slightly abrasive pad and
some solvent. Don’t overdo this, you
could wear out the head. (MEI part
No. 057133 for $1.39 works for the
5.25 drive; part No. 057125 for $1.39
for the 3.5 drive.)
Maintain your hard disk? Wait a
minute, that is a sealed unit, you can’t
do anything to it! Well, you cleaned it
off when you were inside the computer case by blowing dust off its
surfaces. Now you need to take some
software maintenance steps to be
assured that the file system on the
drive is, and remains, in tip top shape.
A well maintained file system gives
you faster access to your files, makes
it easier to recover from system
crashes, and, if you have a crash,
makes it more likely that your data
can be recovered.
Let’s begin by making a backup.
Because I will be suggesting some
major fooling around with the file
system, it’s best to have a backup. The
next step is to be sure there are no
viruses. Get the latest update for the
virus identification files your antivirus
software uses from your antivirus
supplier. (I sure hope you have something other than the Microsoft product here. Norton and McAfee and the
others update your protection
monthly (if not daily), and I don’t see
anything like that coming from
Microsoft.) Place the update files on
your antivirus recovery floppy and
boot from the floppy to run the antivirus scan and clean. Hopefully,
everything is virus free. If not, probably the antivirus product you selected
can clean things up for you.
Here I’m assuming you have
Windows 95. (If you don’t, use the
equivalent utilities for your file
system.) Begin by checking the file
system structure on all your partitions. Run ScanDisk from
Start/Programs/Accessories/System
the components inside the case.
Everything else we’ll do from the
outside.
Keyboard
Mouse
Clean your mouse. Pick it up and
open the access hatch that allows you
to remove the ball. Remember, it has
traveled many miles and has had a
chance to pick up a lot of debris. Look
at the inside, look at the rollers, brush
it out, and use a solvent and swab on
the rollers. Clean the ball and
mousepad with some detergent and
lots of water. Let it dry before use.
(MEI part No. 611863 for $2.49 is a
mouse cleaning kit.)
Consider replacing the mousepad
every once in a while. It gathers oils
and dust over the years.
Tape Drive
Most tape drives like to be cleaned
every N hours of use. Of course, the N
depends on the model of the tape
drive and the manufacturer’s recommendation. Get a head cleaning kit
and use it every so many hours of use.
Tape drive cleaning kits are specific to
the type of tape drive you have, so
know your tape drive manufacturer’s
Tools/ScanDisk against all your partitions (Or use Norton’s Disk Doctor if
you have that.) Pick the “Advanced
Options”button and allow this utility
to make copies of any cross-linked
files or lost file fragments. Choose the
“Thorough”option that allows a surface test (read/write and compare).
The surface test will refresh all the
bits on your drive, assuring that they
are all freshly written.
Once we know that the file
system’s pointers are all correct and
the surface has been checked, collect
all the pieces of the files so that they
are contiguous by running
Start/Programs/Accessories/System
Tools/Disk Defragmenter (or Norton’s
equivalent program called Speed
Disk). Defrag each drive, and the
pieces of your files will be collected so
that they are contiguous. All the free
space will be squeezed into one big
free space area. By doing this, when
you read a file, you go to the beginning of the file and start reading, you
don’t have to move the heads all over
the drive collecting little parts. And,
when you want to write a file, you will
get an unfragmented file space into
which to write it. Disk Defragmenter
is a good program to run every week
or so. Because the first thing it does is
check the disk structure (it won’t even
run if things are already in disarray), it
assures you that your structure is
good, and it rearranges your files for
maximum efficiency.
Now run Norton’s “Image,”if you
have it, to make an image of the boot
sector, file allocation table (FAT), and
directory structure on the disk in
another location so that, if the original is damaged, Norton can look for
the image and perhaps rebuild the
original.You might not get all the files
back, but you’ll get most of them.
Without it, you could be in big trouble.
recovery disk prepared by Windows
95 that enables you to access your C
drive and your CD. The emergency
recovery disk should have FDISK and
FORMAT on it. Make it by using
Start/Settings/Control Panel/AddRemove Programs/, pressing the
startup disk tab, and then pressing
the “Create Startup Disk”button.You
have to add in manually the CD drivers and MSCDEX, and alter your
AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS
files to refer to them. Unfortunately, I
can’t tell you exactly how to do it
because each CD is different. Look in
the manual that came with your CD
or sound card. Or, perhaps you can
adapt the existing commands in your
hard disk’s AUTOEXEC.BAT and
CONFIG.SYS files to the floppy environment. Test it. Make a copy.
You should have an emergency
recovery disk created by your tape
backup program that enables you to
access the hard drive and the tape
drive. Make sure you have two copies
and that you have tested them.
You may also have an antivirus
emergency recovery disk and one
built by Norton’s Utilities.
Follow safe computing practices—
and happy computing.
Vendor Note
Before
You Build
or Buy
Your
Next
PC
Seminar
Saturday,
March 21, 1998
9AM to 1:30PM
Registration:
8:30AM
MEI is a long-time mail-order
house whose phone number is 1-800634-3478. It is one source among
many for the items I referenced in this
article.
Mike Focke is the Product Manager for a
secure Unix-like Operating System produced
by Wang. He frequently writes about buying
and hardware topics for CPCUG. He may be
found on the MIX in the Hardware and Help
Conferences.
CMOS
Back up your CMOS settings using
CMOS26.ZIP or one of the other
CMOS save and restore utilities from
the Capital PC User Group electronic
bulletin board, the MIX. Should your
battery go bad, you’ll be able to restore the settings from the backup
floppy.
Create an emergency disk and test
it.You should have an emergency
Next
README .DOC
FREE!
Handout,
80 pages,
$10
All are welcome
Lipsett
Amphitheater
Clinical Center
Building 10
National Institutes of
Health
Bethesda, Maryland
43
Rich’s Ramblings
by Rich Schinnell
I
have been working on learning to install Microsoft Windows NT 4.0,
server edition. Microsoft sent the Capital PC User Group a copy to
use for training and evaluation. I must have been too much of a DOS
person with too many built-in prejudices—otherwise I would have
started learning NT sooner. That’s one of the traits of a self-taught
person, we sometimes cling to our real knowledgebase, where we feel
comfortable. There isn’t anything wrong with that. We just keep plugging
away and then then suddenly the new stuff becomes understandable,
and we wonder why it took so long. Our new understanding often arrives like a bolt of lightning—all the once-confusing concepts start falling
into place. Whatever we were working on becomes much easier and
less frustrating.
Windows NT
Some of you who upgraded to
Windows 95 from Windows 3.1 are
starting to feel that way now.
I started out a DOS person and
then became a Windows 3.1 user.
Now I am more familiar with
Windows 95. At each stage of my
knowledge level, it took a bit longer
to grasp the concepts, but once I got
over the hump, it was a piece of
cake.<G>
That’s the real way to learn something, just keep plugging away and
trying different methods and procedures. I think that I have a pretty
good grasp of Windows NT now. I
installed it on a Pentium 133 with 16
Mbytes of RAM, and it worked quite
well, once I learned a few points on
setting up the network protocols and
such. I have a Novell 3.12 network,
and now it coexists with my NT 4.0
network.
With 3.1-Gbyte hard drives for
about $200, I think that the minimum
size hard disk should be around 2.1
44
Gbytes. That is the limit for a DOS file
allocation table (FAT) system. (Of
course, the minimum file allocation is
32,000 bytes, if you partition it all as
one drive letter.) It’s a terrible waste
of space.
I have been opting for the 32-bit
FAT system, called NTFS in Windows
NT, HPFS in OS/2, and 32-bit FAT in
Windows 95 OSR2 version. OSR2 is
the version that is only supposed to
be installed on new computer systems
by original equipment manufacturers
(OEM). It can be purchased by people
who buy new systems from many of
the vendors or suppliers. Or it can be
obtained by attending one of the
many computer shows in the area
where you can buy it for around $65.
With the announcement that
Windows 98 will be delayed and
arrive later than expected in 1998,
sales of the OSR2 version of Windows
95 might be spurred. People who buy
the huge new hard disks should not
have to put up with 32,000-byte cluster sizes. I recommend that you opt
for either Windows NT 4.0 worksta-
tion (only if you have really generic
hardware) or OSR2 of Windows 95.
Both support the 32-bit file system
that ends up with either 4000-byte
clusters, or, in the case of NT, 512byte clusters. This way your hard disk
size limitations are not set at 2.1
Gbyte by using the DOS FAT system.
With such huge hard disks, it is
now more apparent than ever that
you need backup, backup, and more
backup. Invest in a good tape backup
system or at least copy your critical
files to floppies so that I don’t hear
you whining when your hard disk
crashes.<G>
Another valuable and neat feature
in Windows NT is that you can give
everyone in your household a personal userid and password. Also, you
can restrict access to certain areas and
options. And you can let them install
their software the way they want it.
NT 4.0 Workstation requires a login,
and you as the administrator can do
all kinds of neat things with security.
As the NT administrator, you can see
what others using the computer do,
but not vice versa. Of course, this all
depends on proper setup by the administrator and selection of an administrator's password that can’t be
guessed.
.
ThinkQuest
At the Capital PC User Group
Saturday seminar on the 20th of
September I was impressed with the
nationwide program that Carol Hyatt
wrote about in the September
Monitor. During ThinkQuest students
form teams with students from other
schools and develop an idea for a Web
page that would be innovative and
provide a tool for learning. The top
winning students receive $25,000 per
student in scholarships, and the
teachers get up to $5,000. And their
schools get money also. The idea
seems to be quite sound.
Hopefully some of you will be
available to help the teachers who are
advising the students. Many teachers
are not Hypertext Markup Language
(HTML) experts. HTML is the language or procedure for creating
WWW pages. Mentors are needed.
We all know that many of the students are way ahead of the teachers
on Internet-related subjects. Unless
some of us volunteer to work with the
teachers/coaches, some may be overwhelmed. If you’re willing to be available for consultation on creating Web
pages and such, send e-mail to Carol
Hyatt to sign up. Her e-mail address
is [email protected]. I volunteered, now it’s your turn.
and consumes 10 watts. Equivalent
Intel, AMD, and Cyrix chips run at
lower voltages but use up to 15 to 18
watts. This lower power consumption
should prove a boon for laptops,
where power is at a premium.
From the literature received with
the system and the public relations
types, the WinChip series is designed
for low-end desktop machines (below
$1000) and laptops (below $2000). It
is not designed for high-end graphic
workstations or professional desktop
publishers because the WinChip lacks
the floating point unit (FPU) power of
its competitors. For most of us regular
people, that should not be a big issue.
From my understanding of the architecture, the chip is more competitive
due to its larger (64-kbyte) level-1
cache. The level-1 cache in the competition’s products is usually no more
than 32 kbytes.
Now on to the good stuff.<G>
IDT WinChip
I received the computer all set up
with Windows 95 on Wednesday,
October 8. I unpacked it and set it up
in my home computer room with all
the other adult toys. <G>
This is what I received:
• Holco Shuttle 565 motherboard—
socket 7 with 200-MHz WinChip
• Intel 440 TX chip set
• Award 4.5x bios (dated September
19, 1997)
• 512-kbyte level-1 cache
• 32-Mbyte EDO DRAM, 60-ns
• Diamond Stealth 3D 2000 (S3
Virge) video card with 2-Mbyte
EDO DRAM, driver 4.03.00.3211
• Western Digital Caviar 1.6-Gbyte
IDE hard disk
• Samsung 24✕ CD-ROM
• ESS 1768 PNP sound card
• 1.44-Mbyte floppy
• Baby AT case with 230-watt power
supply
• Windows 95 OSR2 installed on the
hard drive, using FAT 32.
It was completely set up and ready
to run as soon as I plugged in my
monitor, keyboard, speakers, and
mouse.
“OK, so what’s new, Rich?”
This is a question I seem to get
quite often, as I usually am on the
bleeding edge of many of the new
systems, software, and gadgets.
So, what is new? I was recently
asked by one of the vendor representatives that I met at COMDEX in
Atlanta whether I would be willing to
evaluate a new chipset for a “cheaper
and better”computer central processing unit (CPU). Well, what do you
think? <G> What would your answer
have been?
After much e-mail correspondence
and sending in a nondisclosure agreement, I was let in on what it was all
about. I thought I was getting in on
something a couple of generations
ahead of where we are right now.
Well, it is not that new. It is a product
by Centaur Technology Inc. called the
IDT WinChip C6 CPU. Another Intel
clone chip, I thought.
Have you seen the physical size of
some of the chips on the market
today? Some are almost 3 inches
square. I have a Pentium Pro 200 and
it’s huge. This WinChip C6 200-MHz
CPU is really quite small compared
with the Pentium 200-MHz MMX and
equivalent AMD and Cyrix chips. It
looks similar in size to a regular 486
chip. The WinChip runs at 3.52 volts
Getting Started
result would only be a bunch of numbers. I’d rather work on the computer,
and, of course, do a little playing. <G>
I decided to install some of my
normal applications software such as
Corel WordPerfect Suite 8, Microsoft
Office 97, Internet Dial-Up, Netscape
Communicator, Microsoft Internet
Explorer, and my mail client, Eudora
Pro. All I could throw at it installed
without a hitch, and each application
appeared to work as well as on my
Pentium Pro 200.
With a fast processor, the biggest
bottlenecks in most computers occur
in three areas: hard disk access times,
graphic adapter speed, and the user.
The WinChip is one fast processor.
After all the software I normally use
was installed, I wanted to check out
how the system would react to new
devices, so I then installed an Intel
PCI Ethernet card without any pain
(translation: aggravation); it worked
perfectly. I also installed a Iomega
ATAPI/IDE 100-Mbyte removable
drive. Easy. That’s one of the things I
like about Windows 95, it recognizes
them easily and installs needed
drivers with a minimum of aggravation. But Windows NT 4.0? That’s
another story as far as compatibility
and device installation.
The company that put this system
together for IDT was thoughtful
enough to copy all the Windows 95
files to a WIN95 subdirectory on the
hard disk to save me the work of
inserting the Windows 95 CD-ROM
into the CD-ROM drive. Great
option, it sure makes it easier to
change system options and install
new devices. (What they did was to
copy all the files from the Microsoft
Windows 95 CD-ROM\WIN95 directory into a subdirectory on the hard
disk with the name \WIN95). Great
little trick. When it asks for the
Testing
I thought about running benchmark tests of the IDT WinChip C6 200
versus the Pentium Pro 200 or my
Pentium 90, but decided that the
45
Windows CD-ROM, I only have to
change the location box to the
C:\WIN95 directory instead of finding
and inserting the Windows 95 CDROM.
All my tests showed the WinChip
to be comparable to my Pentium Pro
200 machine; and it’s noticeably
faster than my Pentium 90 or 133.
I ran database and communications programs along with word
processing and Internet clients. I did
not benchmark them, but the
WinChip 200’s time was almost identical in re-indexing a huge dBASE III
file. For almost everything I ran, I
could not tell the difference between
my Pentium Pro 200 and the WinChip
200. I know that there has to be some
mathematical speed difference, but
the main uses of the FPU are, in my
estimation and experience, functions
that not many of us require. I reformatted WordPerfect and Microsoft
Word documents and did all the little
things that I normally do and I could
not see any noticeable differences
between the WinChip and the
Pentium Pro 200.
I turned the power off and
removed the fan assembly from the
top of the chip. I placed my hand on
the chip—it was cool to the touch. I
then turned the power on, but it got
too hot to touch in about 5 seconds. I
highly recommend that you not try to
run this chip without the fan connected because the chip could be
damaged beyond repair. This is one
thing that has always bothered me
about CPU fans, they should have
some kind of connection to the BIOS
that prevents booting without fan
operation.
WinChip sells below $150, it will be
well worth choosing the IDT
WinChip C6 200-MHz CPU for nonFPU-intensive use. As a small business consultant, I would not hesitate
to recommend to my clients the purchase of computers using the
WinChip C6 200-MHz.
Additional Information
Rich Schinnell is the First Vice President of
the 5000-member Capital PC User Group.
Having retired from the U.S. Navy and Vitro
Corporation, he is now consulting for small
businesses. Rich has been writing a monthly
advice and product review column for the
Capital PC User Group’s award winning
Monitor magazine since the 1980s. He has
his own Web page at:
http://www.cpcug.org/user/schinnel and
can be e-mailed at [email protected]. For
those who are Internet challenged, he responds to phone calls every evening from 6PM
to 9PM at (301) 949-9292. He enjoys helping
users with their problems, even though it is
similar to conducting brain surgery over the
telephone. He does not have any financial
interest in or own stock in Intel, AMD, Cyrix,
or IDT.
I could probably impress many of
you by using the Ziff-Davis Winbench
or Winstone benchmarking program
scores, but what would that prove?
Benchmarks and technical information can be found on the World Wide
Web at—
http://www.sysdoc.pair.com/
More information from Centaur
Technology (the chip designers) can
be obtained at—
http://www.winchip.com
Conclusion
This chip compares quite favorably
with its competitors, except in the
FPU area, and it’s superior in power
consumption and size.
With the price of the Intel Pentium
200-MHz MMX at around $250, if the
At CPCUG’s March 9
General Meeting
Centaur Technology
presents the
IDT WinChip
Help Support and Expand CPCUG’s Vital Programs
The Capital PC User Group, recognized by
IRS as a charitable and educational foundation tax exempt under Section 501(c)(3),
encourages financial contributions of its
members. Contributions may be tax deductible. Please mail your most generous gift to
the Capital PC User Group, Plaza East Two,
51 Monroe Street, Rockville, MD 20850-2421.
Make your check payable to “CPCUG.”
You might also want to consider a contribution of appreciated securities or remember
the Capital PC User Group in your will or
trusts. There are often tax advantages avail-
46
able by planning your current and future
giving. To discuss planned giving opportunities, please contact CPCUG President Lillian
Milliner by calling (301) 762-9372 or by
writing to Lillian at CPCUG headquarters.
The Capital PC User Group’s vital programs
are needed now more than ever, with computer technology used increasingly in so
many endeavors.Your generous financial
support is critical to our success. All of us
with the Capital PC User Group appreciate
your consideration.
Gene’s Scene
by Gene Gould
Upgrading to Windows 95
L
ast February I put together a new computer equipped with an
AMD/K5-PR133 processor, 32 Mbytes of EDO RAM, and new sound,
video, and SCSI cards. I moved the hard drives, the floppies, and
the CD-Rom drive from my 486. This kept me entertained for about a
month, but lately it has been rather dull around the Gould Data Center.
Other than an increasingly sick monitor, there has been no excitement,
no crashing Windows or other forms of exotic entertainment.
Staring into the face of an Internet
issue of the Monitor, I was forced into
a soul-searching look at my computing environment. I was still dragging
my feet in upgrading to Windows 95.
On an even more antiquarian note, I
had not signed up for the Internet. It
seemed the time had arrived to take
the giant step forward.
Despite the fact that Mike Focke
had advised me to wait for Windows
98, I decided that I could no longer
forego the adrenalin rush of inserting
a CD disk labeled “Windows 95
Upgrade”into the CD-ROM drive,
clicking OK, and seeing what happened. I wish to state that I had no
fear of Windows 95. I had used it on
other’s machines and recommend
this approach if you have a friend
who will let you give it a try.
I hadn’t made the step because I
liked Windows 3.11. It was as comfortable as an old shoe, and it did
everything I needed, except the new
software was straining it—there were
no 360-degree views in Encarta, and
other missing elements as well. It
seemed that if I was going to “surf the
Web,”it made sense to install
Windows 95, get it organized and
running properly, and then jump into
the World Wide Web.
Whether you decide to follow this
route, or wait for Windows 98, I have
a few words of advice that I believe
valid in either case.You cannot install
Windows 95 on a drive with less than
adequate free space. Installation instructions specify that a normal installation of Windows 95 requires 40
to 45 Mbytes of hard drive to install
and 50 to 55 Mbytes free if existing
files are to be backed up. I believe this
is true only if you start with a clean
hard drive that has nothing on it but
DOS and Windows 3.x. Don’t even
think about installing it without the
backup and the ability to return from
whence you came. The truth is, if you
do not have something close to 100
Mbytes free, you will very likely experience problems. In the August 1997
Monitor, Paul Shapiro reported in his
Microletter column “Installing
Windows 95 . . . Again”that after
freeing enough space for an installation, he installed the abbreviated
version option over Windows 3.1, and
the result was 93 Mbytes of hard disk
space consumed. I installed the standard installation option over
Windows 3.11, and the result was 86
Mbytes of hard disk space consumed.
This is 7 Mbytes less than his abbreviated version, but substantially more
than the 50 to 55 Mbytes claimed.
How can this be? The size of your
Windows directory and subdirectories is affected by what and how
much is installed on your hard drive.
As an example, if you are running
large word processors like
WordPerfect or Works, unless you
have stripped down your fonts files,
(see my article “Fonts, Fonts, Fonts”
in the September Monitor) you can
easily have over 3 Mbytes of fonts
alone. Deleting programs that did
not include an install shield was not
easy in Windows 3x. Generally, a
number of .DLL files (dynamic link
library) and .INI (initiate) files were
left behind. For those unfamiliar with
the dynamic link library, it is a system
from which programs can “borrow”
when they want to carry out a
common task. The .INI files tell
Windows how to start and run a
program. Because removing
Windows programs with these files
scattered around the directories is
difficult, making it difficult if not
impossible to remove everything, the
size of Windows tends to creep
upward.
Software developers started including an “install shield”with an
uninstall file to permit complete
removal. This is not 100 percent foolproof, and special uninstall software
such as Uninstall and CleanSweep
became popular choices to solve the
problem. These programs need to
monitor the installation to do a good
job in removing it.
47
With Windows 95, and don’t expect
it to get any easier in Windows 98, it
is more difficult to remove programs
because of shortcuts and additional
linkage. In the Windows 95 Control
Panel there is a tool called
“Add/Remove Programs.”For this
feature to function properly, the program must have been installed in
Windows 95. Because this tool is
available in Windows 95, why do you
need utilities such as CleanSweep?
CleanSweep and similar utilities provide a number of other useful features
such as the ability to find duplicate
files, to find redundant .DLL files, and
to move programs to different drives.
To insure future happiness, you would
be well advised to delete all applications programs possible from the hard
drive prior to the installation of
Windows 95. In other words, make
backup files of your data and delete
the applications. I uninstalled all of
my games and most of my applications.
I moved everything but Windows
3.11, DOS, the SCSI software, the
communications and fax software,
and the video and sound software to
the D drive, which is a separate 255Mbyte drive. This included Microsoft
Works, Quicken, Family Tree for
Windows, and a few other things.
As it turned out, I should have
gone ahead and uninstalled everything because most of my programs
were Windows 95 compatible and
sent me a message to reinstall them
so that they could change to 32-bit
processing. Stripping out the hard
drive, thereby reducing the size of the
Windows directory and subdirectories
prior to installation makes installation
easier. My oldest son told me,“If you
had any sense, you would have formatted the C drive, installed DOS,
then Windows 3.1, then Windows 95
and gotten rid of all of the garbage
lying around.”Kids never listen to
parents, so why should parents listen
to kids? But he was right. I should
have done it. However, using my
approach I got close to that objective
but still have a lot of lost .DLLs and
.INIs to clean up.
By reinstalling everything that
wasn’t uninstalled, every piece of
software installed on the machine has
been monitored by the Windows 95
shield and, in addition, CleanSweep,
which I purchased for the great ad-
48
venture. I have ordered a new modem
because my trusty 14.4-bit/sec Hayes
Optima 144 will not handle the
Internet. I will be uninstalling my
existing communications and fax
software and replacing it with new so
I can test the Win95 Uninstall
Software feature and see if it leaves
anything.
Many times I have asked the question,“Do you like Windows 95 better
than Windows 3.1?” I never
worshipped DOS, but I got along well
with it and still do. I used a graphic
terminate and stay resident (TSR)
menu called POP Menu to load programs because I never felt compelled
to invoke a C:\> when it wasn’t necessary. A couple of my old DOS
games needed batch files to start
unless you didn’t mind telling them
the level of detail, the kind of color,
and the fact that you were using a joy
stick each time, but other than that,
writing batch files to load programs is
not one of my favorite pastimes.
Would I return to a 286/12 with an
EGA monitor running DOS 3.3 on a
40-Mbyte hard drive with a total of
640 kbytes of RAM memory? You’ve
got to be kidding! I liked Windows 3.1
and Windows for Workgroups 3.11
slightly better. I have locked it up with
big games occasionally, but I locked it
up in DOS a lot more often. Of
course, I never tried to have three or
four major applications open and
running at the same time with 8
Mbytes of RAM, so that may account
for it.
I didn’t have a problem installing
the Windows 95 upgrade nor should
you as long as you have enough free
space. I believe the best advice is: If
you are using DOS and it does what
you need it to do, why change?
Sooner or later, you will be forced to
Windows of some variety, but you can
still maintain a multiple boot configuration if you wish. The same applies
to Windows 3.x. If it does what you
want it to do, why change?
Do I like Windows 95? I’ve used it
for a couple of weeks, and am getting
familiar with it. It does things faster,
and I believe even my inkjet printer
seems to run faster. I spent a half day
playing with the Windows Explorer,
Taskbar Properties, and Start Menu
Programs.
Installation of Windows 95 over
Windows 3.11 left all of my previous
Program Groups intact. Under
Windows 95 many of these were no
longer useful, so I set up some new
folders, moved some applications
from one folder to another, and
deleted some of the folders from the
Start Menu. I now have a Start Folder
that feels comfortable, and some
shortcut icons on the startup screen.
I’ve reorganized the applications on
my drives and reserved a 250-Mbyte
partition entirely for Internet
browsers and associated software. In
the process of moving some applications from one drive to another, I
learned that unless you do it correctly,
Windows 95 performs a copy instead
of a move. As a consequence, I had a
couple of duplicated program folders
of entire programs to remove. We call
this “learning.”
This is an Internet issue, so what
about the Internet? If you need help,
the Capital PC User Group Training
Department provides training classes
on a variety of Internet-related subjects. I discovered an Internet simulator program for $12.95 that covers
both Microsoft Internet Explorer and
Netscape. It does not require an
actual connection. It is published by
DDC Publishing and appears a good
choice for beginners.
For those who prefer books, the
bookstores have shelves full of books
on the Internet. I checked out a copy
of The Complete Idiot’s Guide to the
Internet for Windows from of our local
library. I do not recommend it for a
beginner. The organization and treatment appear confused to me.
It has become standard practice to
suggest Web sites in columns on
computing. If you have not seen the
Wallace and Grommet claymation
cartoons from England, try
http://www.aardman.com. Must go
now, I have a date at http://
www.universalstudios.com/tv/xena.
Gene Gould, a member of the Capital PC
User Group since April 1993, retired
from the Boeing Company in 1991. He
was the manager in charge of office
leasing and facilities management of
leased offices for Boeing Computer
Services in the eastern half of the United
States from 1979 until his retirement.
. . . dedicated to the dissemination
and exchange of information mostly
for users of IBM PC-compatible personal computers
Microletter 105
by Paul Shapiro
S
ometimes we have to take many steps backward before we can
take a step forward with our computers. The “big”500-Mbyte drive
that I didn’t know what to do with 4 years ago is a case in point. It
appeared to have so much space it only seemed logical to divide it into
four partitions so that the cluster size (2048 bytes) would be smaller and
the contents of each (about 128 Mbytes) could relatively easily be backed
up, each to a separate quarter-inch formatted (“QIC”) tape. It was a good
idea at the time.
Resizing the Primary
Partition
But with the passage of time and
the acquisition of new applications
requiring use of the C:\Windows
directory (with either Windows 3.1 or
95), I just ran out of space. It was not
enough to move everything not
needed for Windows to the D, E, or F
partitions, even when there was still
space there. So what’s new?
What I thought was new was a
gigabyte (or more) drive supplementing the 500-Mbyte drive. Having the
space to load the new applications
was nice, but they wouldn’t install
because of Windows’appetite for
grabbing/requiring at least a minimum of C drive space. With time,
what constitutes a “minimum”of
space was subjected to an inflationary
increase with the increased size of
programs.
The solution seemed simple, particularly with Partition Magic 2.0. I
would just enlarge the C partition to
the full capacity of the 500-Mbyte
drive after moving the other stuff to
the new second drive. I emptied out
the partitions adjacent to the C partition, then tried to expand the C parti-
tion to a larger size. Partition Magic
politely said “No.”I could not expand
the primary partition above the existing 128-Mbyte maximum allowed.
The C drive had about a megabyte of
free space.
Then I read the manual scrupulously (if all else fails, and it did, that’s
what we do). The best I could come
up with was that you needed a little
work space in that primary partition
before you could expand its size.
What completely threw me was the
statement in the manual that “You
may be able to expand the partition
by a small amount (1 Mbyte or less),
then expand the partition a second
time once the first operation has
completed.”
One megabyte or less!
I struggled over a 6-week period to
make around 3 Mbytes free, and it
didn’t work. I was beside myself. All
that space on the second drive, and I
could not add a small new Windows
application.
A query on the MIX, Capital PC
User Group’s electronic bulletin
board, resulted in a response to the
effect that Partition Magic version 3.0
could handle it; the material quoted
from its manual was exactly what I
had read in the PM 2.0 manual that
would not work. So much for that.
I even consulted with one of the
feedback gurus at PC Magazine’s Web
Site. She said that she was not very
familiar with Partition Magic, and
then proved it by stating that it was
her belief that you could not enlarge
the size of a primary partition.
Of course, by now I know that
failure at one Web site does not preclude a success at another. Except this
time I went directly to Partition
Magic’s Web page. And wouldn’t you
know, foremost among one of the
frequently asked questions (FAQ’s)
was the problem I had encountered.
From the response I learned that if
I wanted to increase my 128-Mbyte
partition to 256 Mbytes with a 4000byte cluster size, I would need 8
Mbytes of free space. Not one or two
or three; and once there I would need
41 Mbytes free to increase the partition size again.
So enlightened, I temporarily shuffled enough space to the second
drive, and increased the primary C
partition to 256 Mbytes. With over 128
Mbytes now free in the new partition
after restoring the temporarily removed files, I was able to upsize to an
8000-byte cluster size because I then
had over 41 Mbytes free, the required
amount. If I had wanted to go to
16,000- or 32,000-byte clusters, I
would have needed 205 or 564
Mbytes, respectively. Of course, the
objective was to increase the partition
size despite the undesirable expansion of cluster size, a needed tradeoff.
How long will it take for Windows
to grab the rest of the 500-Mbyte
drive even though I only add applications to a different physical drive?
49
Not Content With the
Content Advisor
That expresses my opinion a bit
mildly. Until I tried to install the
browser Microsoft Internet Explorer
3.02 (MSIE 3.02), I had never heard of
a “Content Advisor.”Now I know it’s a
way to control access to Internet sites
based on content. Don’t ever (well,
not this year or next) let anyone tell
you that using the Internet is all
peaches and cream. Let me tell you
why.
I started the browser. Thanks to my
external modem lights I could tell that
the home page was loading, the
normal expectation. Nothing showed
on the screen. Not normal. The
modem lights flashed, the usual loading status descriptive messages periodically updated, and then there was
only an empty screen. My mind was a
blank.
It was impossible for me to display
a Web page anywhere except by accessing one on the local hard drive. It
became a thorn in my side. Am I
taking things too seriously? A
window would pop up in Windows 95
telling me that the Content Advisor
configuration information was missing, someone may have been tampering with it, and I might want to check
the settings. (See figure 1.) I was the
only one who could possibly have
“tampered,”and I knew I had not,
could not.
How could the settings be
checked? The Help file wasn’t of
much use because it told me that if a
supervisor password had not been set
up for me, I should create one. And if
one had been set up, use it. Was one
set up for me at installation? How
would I set one up?
Checking with the usual sources for
help was not rewarding. I found a
newsgroup for MSIE, searched on
about 1500 messages, found one case
where my unsolved problem was
described exactly, in a call for help.
Two weeks later I saw two other
almost similar pleas. And since then,
based on a tip from MetroMUG SIG
Chair Alta Oben, I found references
out of sight in newsgroups on the
subject via the site at
http://dejanews.com. Well, if not references, here were other people as
puzzled as I who wanted answers.
50
Figure 1. First warning message I received in trying to use MSIE 3.02.
The first person had said that he
had used the MSIE View command to
look at the options menu, but when it
all seemed foreign to him, he just
dropped the search. I picked up
where he left off, looked at a few
menus (I didn’t keep notes because I
didn’t know where I was going), and,
perhaps after peeking at the Security
Tab and an Advanced Option,
changed something. A new window
popped up (see figure 2) telling me
that Content Advisor would not allow
me to go further, unless I got someone to type in the supervisor password (the administrators of cpcug.org
also did not know what was going on
at this time). There was an “OK”
button. I clicked on it, and I was out
of there.
Back to the “home page,”such as it
was. I clicked reload, for no particular
reason, and surprise of surprises, after
the usual light flickerings and status
messages, up came the page. What
had I done?
I tried another home page. The
figure 2 warning message came up. I
ignored its admonition that it was
impossible for me to see the site
without the supervisor password,
clicked ok, and I could see the page.
As I bounced from one page to another, I found that I was clicking the
“OK”button many times, just to load
one page!
Imagine then my feeling when
someone with the same problem
called to ask me how to solve it. After
all, I am on CPCUG’s Internet
Figure 2. Second warning message from MSIE Content Advisor.
Support Team and am supposed to
know the answers to such things. It
was enough to drive me back to my
keyboard.
Which was where I was going to
end this column (and leave us all
hanging), for lack of further knowledge. But the further knowledge has
been forthcoming. The trick is to turn
off the Content Advisor by means of
the MSIE 3.02 View option choices.
Click on the Security tab, and then
the Disable Ratings button does it (if
you remember to click “OK”). Now
the browser works as it should have
in the first place.
But what if I wanted to use the
ratings to preclude small fry from
looking where no small fry ever
should? I cannot speak for whether
the system works, but there is information out there on the objectives of
such a control system. Check out the
home page of the Recreational
Software Advisory Council at http://
www.rasc.org/rating_description.html.
At that site there are definitions of
ratings and categories. MSIE allows
you to change the acceptable levels of
these.
The catch is that this effort requires
mass site acceptance. When I
checked, about 35,000 sites had registered, a small number considering
how many Web sites there are. And
how many among us have even heard
of this effort in a meaningful way?
By deleting the file RATINGS.POL
in the Windows 95 Windows\System
directory and then being able to
change the Content Advisor password to something of my own, a new
RATINGS.POL (policy) file was created automatically. I then enabled the
ratings and tried browsing. It didn’t
take long for me to discover that I
had to type in a password (the one I
created worked fine) to access the
sites I wanted. I don’t need this kind
of delayed access, so I went back to
the Disable Ratings button.
You might say that now I really am
content with the Content Advisor. We
no longer get in each other’s way.
Paul Shapiro is the Capital PC User Group’s
(CPCUG’s) Director of Volunteers, is a
member of the CPCUG Internet Support
Team, and teaches a computer class here and
there. Contact him at Internet e-mail address
[email protected].
Next
Internet Primer
Class
March 29, 1998
See page 59
Potential
TV-Focused
Multimedia
Group
Meets
7:30PM
Second
Tuesdays
at
Montgomery Community
Television Studios
7548 Standish Place
Rockville, Maryland
Focus: Integration of computers and television, conversion to digital TV, and
preparation of television
products, including CDROMs.
Contact: Stan Doore,
(301) 572-4939 or
[email protected]
Capital PC User Group Meeting Locations
1800 M
BAH
CIC
CPCUG HQ
Darby
ENFOLINC
LW
1800 M Street, NW, South Tower,
Third Floor, Waugh A, Washington, DC
(For building admittance, call
(202) 694-5051.)
Booz-Allen & Hamilton,
Hamilton Building, 8283 Greensboro
Drive, Tysons Corner,Virginia
Computer Instruction Corporation,
Crystal Plaza One, Suite 1111, 2001
Route 1, Jefferson Davis Highway,
Crystal City, Arlington,Virginia (Call
(703) 486-2222 or [email protected])
CPCUG Headquarters,
51 Monroe St., Plaza East Two,
Rockville, Maryland, (301) 762-9372
Darby Digital Communications,
1412A Duke St., Alexandria,
Virginia, (703) 548-1512
ENFOLINC, Inc., 6551 Loisdale
Court, Suite 500, Springfield,Virginia
Leisure World, Olney, Maryland,
Clubhouse I
MCT
METEC
NIH—Lipsett
NIH—Masur
RCC
UMBC
WGas
Montgomery Community Television,
7548 Standish Place, Rockville,
Maryland
Modern Educational Technology
Center, 58 West Gude Drive,
Rockville, Maryland
National Institutes of Health,
Lipsett Amphitheater, Building 10,
9000 Rockville Pike, Bethesda,
Maryland
National Institutes of Health, Masur
Auditorium, Building 10, 9000
Rockville Pike, Bethesda, Maryland
Reston Community Center, 2310
Colts Neck Road, Reston,Virginia
University of Maryland, Baltimore
County, University Center/Bookstore,
Third Floor, Ballroom Lounge
Washington Gas Auditorium, 6801
Industrial Road, Springfield,Virginia
51
Product Reviews
Coordinated by Richard Biffl
Internet Utilities 97
reviewed by Philip Norton
Starfish Software’s Internet Utilities 97
is a fully integrated collection of Internet
Utilities designed specifically to help you
navigate the Internet. It combines over 25
powerful utilities on one easy-to-use
graphical control center. Some of the
tools are especially interesting.
The first issue I considered when reviewing this package was the needs test.
Some of the tools are useful and a few are
even fun. But I found that I really didn’t
need the majority of these tools. This
doesn’t mean you shouldn’t get it, but it
depends on the type of Internet user you
are.
I am a frequent e-mail user who usually browses the Web several times a
week for information for work or personal interest. I never enter chat rooms or
spend hours browsing obscure Web sites.
So, if you are like me and use the Internet
less than 10 hours a month, you probably
don’t need this package. If you’re a major
Internet user, read on.
The software package consists of a
single CD with no user manual.
Everything is on the CD. Installation is a
snap and you certainly do not need a
manual for that, but I still like having a
hard-copy manual that I can pick up and
read in addition to the online information.
I installed the software without a hitch
and it loaded just fine. The tool has a very
attractive, easy-to-use interface.
However, when I tried to run Microsoft
Office applications later, I no longer had
enough memory (my machine has 16
Mbytes of RAM).
It turns out that the program loads by
default a series of monitoring programs
that eat up quite a bit of memory. I tried
several methods of freeing memory, but
my applications did not run perfectly
until I uninstalled Internet Utilities 97.
This information is provided to give you a
warning in case you have similar prob-
If You’d Like To Become a Reviewer
The Monitor frequently receives hardware, software, and books for
review. Members interested in writing a review can find a list of available
products in Bulletin 13 on the MIX BBS, (301) 738-9060, or on the
Monitor Web pages at http://www.cpcug.org/user/monitor/bul13.html. For
more information, contact the Review Coordinator, Richard Biffl, at (301)
927-8753, [email protected], or in the MONITOR Conference on
the MIX.
52
lems. Every machine is configured differently, and this may have been caused by
something unique to my machine. Just be
aware that the program does seem to eat
chunks of memory.
Internet Utilities 97 contains over 25
Internet utilities. Some of the major utilities include QuickMarks, the Internet
Meter, QuickRoute, QuickZip, Internet
Clock, and Quickftp. All of these tools are
compatible with Netscape Navigator and
Microsoft Internet Explorer.
The heart of Internet Utilities 97 is the
QuickMarks tool, a central bookmark
depository that uses tabs and folders to
organize sites. QuickMarks also consolidates bookmarks from other browsers,
including Netscape’s Navigator and
Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. QuickMarks
stores your bookmarks and favorites in a
single secure location.You can create
QuickMarks that point to specific files on
a file transfer protocol (FTP) site and
download them instantly. With the
“QuickMark It”button you can add,
delete, sort, and distribute an unlimited
number of bookmarks in your collection.
The premise is that if you are a serious
Internet user, you need more than a
browser to keep track of your bookmarks.
If you have an elaborate collection of Web
sites and you need a better way to track
them, this tool provides a good bookmark
storage and management system. In
addition, it will alert you with a detailed
notification when a Web site is updated.
Internet Meter helps to manage your
online time. Its histogram helps to identify communication bottlenecks, whether
from your service provider or your computer. It can also provide a quick tracer
that finds the cause of slow connections.
It will log Internet activity by time, day,
week, or month, and print usage reports
for specific time periods.
QuickRoute will graphically display the
data that go from your computer to a
specified destination and give you contact
information by site, including host name,
IP address, and reply time. This can help
pinpoint exactly where Internet performance problems reside so that you can
optimize performance. Beside helping to
diagnose network connectivity and performance problems, this utility gives you
access to information about servers,
domains, and specific users.
Internet Utilities allows you to conserve disk space with QuickZip, which
seamlessly integrates one-step compression and decompression using a format
compatible with the industry’s ZIP
format. QuickZip’s drag and drop saves
transfer time as well as disk space by
decreasing file size. In addition, it creates
self-extracting files.
Quickftp manages file transfers and
monitors FTP sites.
If you’re a serious Internet user,
Internet Utilities 97 provides some interesting tools that can be of use to you and
worth examining. Starfish Software provides a 30-day money-back guarantee.
Internet Utilities 97
• Requirements: Windows 95 or NT, 386,
8 Mbytes of RAM for Windows 95 (16
Mbytes with Windows NT), 5-Mbyte
hard disk, CD-ROM drive, Internet
access.
• Source: Starfish Software, (888)
782-7347, (888) STARFISH,
http://www.starfishsoftware.com.
• Price: $29.95; upgrade, $19.95.
Philip Norton is a software engineer living in
Herndon, Virginia.
Norton Omniform
2.0
reviewed by Lou Miller
OmniForm 2.0 by Caere Corporation is
an excellent Windows 95/NT program
that will convert your paper forms to
electronic forms. We tested the program
by converting a 9-page insurance questionnaire into an OmniForm document.
This questionnaire contained hundreds of
data elements and could easily have
taken weeks of effort to build using other
tools. Our Management Information
Services department, which prefers
COBOL and text-based terminals,
begged off the job, claiming the resources
required to convert the form were not
worth the benefits we would reap. We
saw an opportunity to prove the tools
available on the PC platform could be
effective and efficient.
Building the form
You don’t just wake up in the morning
and say,“Today I am going to take this
paper form and put it into my computer,”
even if you are using PC-based technology. It’s not that simple, but there are
certain well-defined steps to follow to
accomplish this task:
1 Scan the form. Place the paper form in a
scanner and use scanner software to
create an electronic copy.
2. Clean up the form. The scanner image is
never perfect.You must correct it.
3. Work on the data elements. Build and
define fields; tie the form to an underlying database engine.
Step 1: Scan the form
OmniForm software drives scanners,
interprets the scanned image, and converts it into editable text and data fields.
OmniForm uses optical character recognition (OCR), the world’s best according
to Caere, and Caere’s “Logical Form
Recognition”technology to accomplish
these tasks. If you have never used this
type of software, you are in for a treat.
The scanner sends the computer a
string of bits that represents whether a
particular spot on a page is colored or
blank. OCR technology takes this information and identifies the text and graphic
elements. When OCR technology is
finished, you have a page that can be
edited as text rather than as a bit map.
The Logical Form Recognition technology takes this a step further: It defines
and creates data fields. It identifies different types of form objects and fields automatically. It will create tables and check
boxes. It can even insert calculations
automatically.
When we were finished scanning the
9-page insurance form, we had an
OmniForm file complete with data fields.
From start to finish, this process took
about 2 hours.
If you do not have a scanner,
OmniForm can still work for you. Fax the
form to your fax software, save the form
as a .TIFF or .PCX file, and OmniForm
will use that as a basis for the form.
OmniForm form edit tools also allow you
to build a form from scratch.
Step 2. Clean up the form
No scanning software is perfect. The
number of errors generated is dependent
on the quality of the source. It took quite
a long time to clean up the 9-page insurance form, probably more than a day, but
the text on the original was small and the
background of the form was colored.
Error: Words are misspelled.
Misspellings occur from three causes.
OmniForm could not interpret the bit
map data as a letter or other form object.
OmniForm will misinterpret a letter and
place a wrong letter on the form. Or the
input was in error. All these errors must
be cleaned up. OmniForm provides a
spellchecker to help with this process.
Error: Data fields are created improperly.
When OmniForm sees a line, it usually
assumes it is a data entry field. The insurance form had subsections set off by
lines. Each time OmniForm created data
entry fields for the title of the subsection
and the line above the subsection title.
OmniForm will also create date entry
fields of the wrong type. For instance, it
can make a field that is a check box a
regular text field.
OmniForm provides a good set of tools
to work with data fields. All data fields
can be highlighted, listed, deleted, and
added. The remarkable feature of
OmniForm is the astonishing accuracy of
its data field creation software, and not
the few errors it generated.
Error: Objects are not lined up.
Omniform provides tools for aligning
objects. The alignment tools are align left,
right, top, bottom, center horizontally,
and center vertically. The sizes of objects
can be made uniform by selecting a group
of similar objects and adjusting the size
one time for the group.
However, one tool is missing—
OmniForm cannot adjust the horizontal
or vertical spacing of objects. In figure 1
there are many boxes. OmniForm has no
tool to even out the spacing automatically
between the boxes in each vertical
column.You must adjust the spacing
manually.
Step 3: Work on the data elements
When OmniForm finishes creating the
form, it gives the data elements generic
names: Checkbox107, Table6, Filltext23. If
your only purpose is to be able to print
the form, then there is no requirement to
change these names. However, if you
intend to store and retrieve the data
entered with the form, then the generic
names should be changed to names that
better reflect the content of the fields.
This step was the most time consuming of all, and we decided to finish the
process only for the first two pages of the
form. These were the two pages the company had the most control over. These
two pages contained well over 100 data
items.
OmniForm supports logical fields,
comb fields (filters to force the dashes in
social security numbers or the parentheses in phone numbers), and general
53
purpose fields. Fields can be typed (general, numerical, alphabetical, and so
forth), read-only, default filled, picked
from a list, or kept within a certain value
range. A number of fields can be grouped
so that only one field may be selected. A
help message can be created for each
field. OmniForm provides complete control over the form’s tab order.
You cannot make a field conditionally
fillable. For example: If you have designed
a form that has the field “Play Sports
Yes/No,”you cannot have a second set of
fields that specify the sport (Baseball,
Football, Tennis) conditional upon a true
value being entered in the first field.
Default values are inserted by creating
a calculation that returns the value to be
entered. OmniForm supports basic mathematical, text, time, date, and statistical
functions as well as an “if”statement.
The form is now finished and ready for
use.
Using the form
The OmniForm product can be used in
design mode or fill mode. As soon as you
are finished designing the form, you can
hit the Fill button and start entering data.
OmniForm will automatically create a
database for the form and save the data
you enter. Once the data are entered,
OmniForm provides tools to search and
select records from the database.
OmniForm will export and import data
from ODBC-compliant databases.
Omniform will also allow you to share
forms with other users and mail others
copies of forms and data.You can, of
course, print the form, and it will look like
the original.
However, there are some real limitations. OmniForm will not allow multiple
users to use the same database simultaneously. OmniForm lets you share a form,
but when you do, you only see a copy of
the underlying database.You cannot save
your changes back to the original database.
Not all OmniForm users need own a
copy of the full OmniForm program.
Caere also markets an OmniForm Filler
program with no design capabilities. It can
only be used to view and fill forms. The
cost for OmniForm direct from Caere is
$149, and the cost for one filler license is
$79.You can buy these products locally for
$159.99 and $91, respectively. Multiple
license packs are also available. The local
price for a 10-license pack is $559.99, and
a 20-license pack is $901.99.
Other features
OmniForm supports object linking and
embedding (OLE) automation and other
design tools not mentioned in this review.
Summary
We liked this product. It was easy to
work with and did what it said it would.
It’s very capable. Its major limitation is
lack of multiuser support.
We will continue to investigate
OmniForm but will probably not be using
it for the insurance form. The Omniform
version of the form is ready to go but the
current plan for the insurance form is to
collect the data across the Internet.
OmniForm makes an Internet product as
well, but it needs a database connection. If
we have to write the database connection
Figure 1. Screen from Norton OmniForm 2.0.
54
anyway, there is no need to use
OmniForm. We will input the data directly
into the database connection tool. The
forms will no longer look like the insurance company’s forms, but we will be
collecting the data in a multiuser capable
database.
Norton Omniform 2.0
• Requirements: Windows 95 or NT 3.51,
8 Mbytes of RAM (12 Mbytes with
Windows NT), 10-Mbyte hard disk
• Source: Caere Corporation, 100 Cooper
Court, Los Gatos, CA 95030, (800) 2237346, (408) 395-7000, fax (800) 4373299, http://www.caere.com/.
• Price: $149.
Lou Miller is a system/financial analyst with
a large local corporation.
Treasure
MathStorm!
reviewed by Ranjit S. Sahai
with help from Amar
The Learning Company (TLC) makes
one of the best lines of educational software for kids. I first became aware of its
Reader Rabbit line when we bought
Reader Rabbit 1 for my son Amar when
he asked for it at a software store. Another
popular line by TLC is its Treasure
Mountain series.
Treasure MathStorm! belongs to the
latter series and is designed to sharpen
the math skills of youngsters between the
ages of six (grade 1) and eight (grade 3). It
is a fun game, as my 6-year-old son will
attest, and has become his favorite educational game. The key skills a child learns
in this game are basic math, time measurement, and money counting.
The game setting is interesting. The
Master of Mischief has created a permanent winter storm at Treasure Mountain
with his invention called Weather-Goo. By
freezing everything on the mountain he
has gained access across frozen barriers
and guards to the castle that holds treasures. As a Super Seeker, you are tasked
with catching and incarcerating the
Master of Mischief by hunting for treasure
and uncovering the crown with the magical power to melt the winter storm.You
are aided in your journey by elves who
help by giving you tips, tools, and money
when you answer their math questions
correctly.
On starting the game you are
presented with the Club Sign-In banner
where you sign in, or select your name
from a list if you’re playing again after a
break. On signing in and pressing the
Start Game button, you are transported to
the Treasure Mountain’s first floor. The
mountain has three floors with the castle
being on the topmost floor.
As you skate over the mountain, your
game plan is to catch elves with your net.
When you catch an elf, you get a math
problem. If you answer the problem correctly, you earn 10 cents. As you travel you
must be careful not to be hit by floating
snow bullies. If one hits you, you will fall
and lose 10 cents. There is a navigation
pane on the lower left corner of the screen
where the Super Seeker can click an appropriate button to scoop elves with the
net, to duck from the snow bullies, and to
move around the mountain.
You use the money you accumulate to
buy tools and nets from the store. There
are several rooms you can choose to enter.
The elves keep their clocks in the Time
Igloo where the digital timer has been
reset by the storm. The timekeeper elf
needs your help in determining the correct time based on clues he gives you. If
you correctly set the clock, you are rewarded with ice picks to climb to the next
level.
The Gold Room houses the royal scale
that has been thrown off balance by the
storm.You must help Equality, the gold
princess, balance the scales by placing
pieces of equal weight on each pan of the
scale. On successfully helping to balance
the scales you are rewarded with catapult
pieces to jump to the next level.
The Crystal Cave contains crystals in
groups of ones, tens, and hundreds. The
elves have lost count of the crystals. If you
help count them correctly, you are rewarded with ladders for your ascent to the
topmost level.
After you collect treasures from under
the snowballs on the mountain, you bring
them to the treasure chest in the castle.
Depending on the number of prizes you
have won from the elves, based on your
treasure collection, you move up in rank
from trainee (0 points) to champion (450
points).
Treasure MathStorm! is a welldesigned educational game your child is
sure to have days of fun with while practicing his or her math. The manual accompanying the software is also first rate.
Treasure MathStorm!
• Requirements: Windows 3.1 (with DOS
5), 486DX2/66, 8 Mbytes of RAM, 2✕
CD-ROM drive, 256-color VGA, audio,
mouse.
• Source: The Learning Company, 6493
Kaiser Drive, Freemont, CA 94555,
(800) 852-2255,
http://www.learningco.com/.
• Price: $29.95.
Ranjit is an engineer, programmer, and
writer. He serves as the Vice President of
Alpha Corporation, a consulting engineering
firm based in Sterling, Virginia. He welcomes
comments at his e-mail address,
[email protected].
Book Review
Introducing
Microsoft
FrontPage97
by Kerry A. Lehto and W. Brett Polonsky
Reviewed by Valentin V. Tepordei
It’s hard to turn around these days
without hearing or reading somewhere
the words “Internet”or “World Wide Web.”
Despite the fact that most of us learned
about the Internet in the last 3 or 4 years,
the system is much older than that—it
has been around for almost 30 years. It
started out in the late 1960s as a U.S.
government communications network,
and was used initially by government
research and defense organizations and
universities.
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, similar systems started to be used by research
organizations around the world. Scientists
working at CERN, the European Particle
Physics Laboratory located in Geneva,
Switzerland, were some of the first major
contributors to the enhancement of the
Internet. They designed the transmission
control protocol/Internet protocol
(TCP/IP) to share hypertext information
and called it http, for hypertext transmission protocol. The same CERN scientists
released later the Hypertext Markup
Language (HTML) and the World Wide
Web concept, mainly a documentdistribution application.
The first Web browser with a graphi-
55
cal user interface, Mosaic, was released in
the United States in 1994 by the National
Center for Superconducting Applications.
Netscape Navigator, a second-generation
browser and the most successful commercial Web browser to date, was
launched later that same year. It was
followed a year later by the release of
Microsoft Internet Explorer. Today the
Internet is a huge world-wide network of
computers consisting of thousands of
large and small networks that can communicate with each other because all use
the same communication standards.
As the Internet expanded and became
an unprecedented success, being used by
more and more businesses as well as
individuals, the need for special tools
designed to create and manage Web
pages and Web sites became obvious.
FrontPage is one of those tools. It was
produced initially by a startup company,
Vermeer Technologies, Inc., that was later
acquired by Microsoft.
Introducing Microsoft FrontPage97 is an
in-depth, one-stop shop for learning the
ins and outs of FrontPage, the software
created for those who want to put Web
technology to work quickly by authoring
Web pages and managing Web servers.
Microsoft FrontPage software is supposed
to make it easy to establish a presence on
the World Wide Web or create a Web site
for an intranet to be used within an organization.
FrontPage was designed as a client and
server product that fits seamlessly into
the Microsoft Office suite of applications.
It allows the user to develop an entire
Web site and connect it to other servers.
All of the necessary programming goes
on behind the scenes in FrontPage, so
you don’t have to be an HTML whiz to
create a Web site.
The first section of the book,“The
Beginning Stages,”introduces the reader
to the FrontPage software, describes the
Internet, the World Wide Web, and the
latest additions, the intranets, and explains what you can do using FrontPage.
The seamless integration with Microsoft
Office suite and its benefits are also described. Some of the subjects covered in
this section include guidelines for planning and organizing a good Web site,
56
some suggestions regarding the content
of the Web site, how to organize the
server that will be the “home”of your Web
site, and, finally, security issues related to
your site.
The second section of the book,
“Creating and Managing Your Site,”tells
you everything you need to know about
creating and administering your Web site
using FrontPage Explorer. In addition to
Web authoring capabilities, FrontPage
includes the Explorer, which gives you
graphical Outline view, Link view, and
Summary views of your Web site and
allows you to organize and manipulate
the site. The Explorer is the framework of
the FrontPage client software, giving you
access to its tools: the Editor, the To Do
List, the templates, and the wizards. This
section of the book describes how to use
these tools and create or manipulate your
site elements. Web site management,
including passwords, access privileges,
and encryption are covered in detail.
The third section of the book,“Page
Construction,”describes the FrontPage
Editor and how to use it to create and
edit Web pages. Included are in-depth
descriptions of elements and procedures
you can use in the Editor to make greatlooking Web pages with colored text,
tables, frames, bookmarks with links to
other sites, and special formatting. The
user will find that the Editor is as easy to
use as a word processor and it displays
pages in WYSIWYG (what you see is
what you get) format. An entire chapter
in this section is dedicated to “Working
With Images”and instructs the user in
creating and including interactive images
and animation in Web pages. The last
chapter of this section is dedicated to
WebBots, easy-to-use drop-in programs
that automatically add functions to your
Web site, such as search, data collection
forms, and registration forms, without
any need of programming.
The last section of the book,“The
Server End,”tells you how to use servers
with FrontPage software. One of the
modules, the Personal Web Server, allows
you to test Web pages and run them on
an intranet on your local network. The
second module, FrontPage Server
Extensions, enables you to link your site
to a wide range of Internet servers using
platforms such as Windows NT and Unix.
The book also includes shortcuts, tips,
and warnings that provide additional
information on the functions described in
a particular section of the book. A fullcolor eight-page insert shows typical
screens of the different FrontPage modules and keyboard shortcuts. There is also
a glossary describing Internet-related
technical terms used in the book.
Introducing Microsoft FrontPage97 is
designed for beginners as well as ad-
vanced FrontPage users. The book complements the product’s on-screen help
with in-depth instructions and scenarios
about how to design and produce highquality home pages.
Introducing Microsoft FrontPage97.
by Kerry A. Lehto and W. Brett Polonsky,
ISBN 1-57231-571-7, 279 pp.
• Source: Microsoft Press
• Price: $24.99.
Valentin V. Tepordei is a scientist with a
Federal Government agency in Northern
Virginia. He can be reached by Internet at
[email protected].
Larry
McGoldrick’s
Internet
Topics
This monthly class will cover
whatever Larry learned
during the previous month.
The content will change
each month and will be designed to help users get the
most from the services provided with their Internet
connections.
Attend each month and
keep up with the rapidly
changing Internet scene!
Degree of Difficulty:
Moderately high—not for
beginners.
Class Limit: 40
First Class:
Tuesday, January 27, 1998
See page 60 for more
information.
Professional Consulting Services
Your Ad
Could Be
Here!
David Thomas Agro
Certified Public Accountant
former Internal Revenue Agent
Master of Science in Accounting/Taxation
Federal and Multi-State Income Tax
Estate / Employment / Gift Tax
Individual and Business Returns
Financial and Retirement Planning
Forensic Accounting / 28 Years Experience
TTY 301 891-2986
VOICE 301 270-4966 FAX 301 270-5896
Advertising Rates
1 Insertion––$70; 12 Insertions––$700
50 percent discount to Capital PC User Group members placing insertion
orders for 3 or more months. Membership number and payment must accompany order.
Ad size: Final ads, including box, are 3.5 by 2 inches. Copy can be a business
card.
Limitations: Advertising is restricted to professional personal computer and
related consulting services. No products can be offered.
Deadline: First of the month preceding the month of publication.
Call Lynne Sturtz at (301) 762-9372 for more information.
57
Training
Tech Rating Codes:
★
For the beginner, no experience necessary and no prerequisites.
★★
Assumes some basic familiarity with the subject but is not a
technical course.
★★★
Assumes that the student is
somewhat familiar with the
subject and will discuss some
technical material.
★★★★
Assumes that the student is
competent in the material and
will be technical.
NR
No rating. A general overview
course.
Hardware
Dates
3/21/98 (Saturday)
7/18/98 (Saturday)
11/21/98 (Saturday)
Build Your Own PC
Course #2500
Prerequisite: Completion of the “Before You
Build or Buy Your Next PC” Seminar. No
soldering or prior hardware experience is
required.
Description: You will bring your components to the workshop and you will build
your Pentium under the watchful eyes of
hardware experts.
NOTE: Do not use the registration form for
this class. Registration for this workshop is
done at the “Before You Build or Buy Your
Next PC” Seminar.
Instructor: Contact Chip Dodge, (703) 4257038
Course #2100
Rate: $75
Prerequisite: No hardware experience
required.
Dates
1/10/98 (Saturday)
4/25/98 (Saturday)
8/22/98 (Saturday)
12/19/98 (Saturday)
Description: This seminar is for those who
are ready to build or to buy their next PC.
You will learn about memory, monitors,
CPUs, and BIOS. There will be extensive
discussion about pricing and vendor
issues.Vendors will be present to answer
your questions.
NOTE: You must attend this seminar to register for the “Build Your Own PC”Workshop
because you will be assigned your mentor at
this seminar.
Registration: 8:30–9:00AM
Location: NIH Lipsett
Instructor: Contact Chip Dodge, (703) 4257038
Rate: Free (Optional $10 for handout)
Instructor: Richard Washington,
(202) 708-2885 (D), (301) 649-3562 (E/W)
Technical Rating Code: ★
Rate: $35
Location: CPCUG HQ
Before You Build Or Buy Your
Next PC
58
Times
9:00AM–1:30PM
9:00AM–1:30PM
9:00AM–1:30PM
Dates
1/18/98 (Sunday)
2/15/98 (Sunday)
3/15/98 (Sunday)
4/19/98 (Sunday)
5/17/98 (Sunday)
6/21/98 (Sunday)
7/19/98 (Sunday)
8/16/98 (Sunday)
9/20/98 (Sunday)
10/18/98 (Sunday)
11/15/98 (Sunday)
12/20/98 (Sunday)
Times
3:30PM–5:30PM
3:30PM–5:30PM
3:30PM–5:30PM
3:30PM–5:30PM
3:30PM–5:30PM
3:30PM–5:30PM
3:30PM–5:30PM
3:30PM–5:30PM
3:30PM–5:30PM
3:30PM–5:30PM
3:30PM–5:30PM
3:30PM–5:30PM
Communications
Communicating With the “MIX”
(CPCUG’s BBS)
Course #4225
Times
8:00AM–5:00PM
8:00AM–5:00PM
8:00AM–5:00PM
8:00AM–5:00PM
Operating Systems
A DOS Primer
Course #3000
Prerequisite: This is a hands-on class for
people with some keyboard experience.
No prior knowledge of DOS is required.
Description: The basic DOS commands will
be covered including creating directories,
copying, deleting, and backing up.
Prerequisite: Basic familiarity with a PC
keyboard and some basic knowledge of
data communications is required.You
should have your modem attached and
your communications software installed
on your PC before attending this class so
that you can immediately apply what you
learn in class. (There will be homework!)
Description: This class steps you through
logging onto the MIX, handling messages,
and uploading and downloading files.
Prior registration for this class is recommended.
Location: CPCUG HQ
Instructor: Fred Holmes, (703) 560-5234
(E/W), (703) 841-3441 (D)
Prior registration for this class is required.
Location: CPCUG HQ
Rate: Free
Dates
1/3/98 (Saturday)
3/7/98 (Saturday)
5/2/98 (Saturday)
Times
1:00–4:00PM
1:00–4:00PM
1:00–4:00PM
Internet
Internet Primer
Course #4405
Description: If you need answers to any of
the following questions, this Internet
Primer is for you. What is the Internet?
What can I do with Internet access? Are all
Internet accounts alike? How do I pick an
Internet provider? What’s a Web browser?
What computer hardware and software do
I need to use the Internet? In this class you
will learn“what”can be done, rather than
“how”it is done. Some people say that the
Internet isn’t good for much. Others say it’s
the ultimate. After you’ve taken this class,
you’ll be better able to decide if you want
to give it a try and how to go about it.
Objectives—By the end of the class, you will
be able to—
and that you’d like to learn enough about
Unix to interact happily with your Internet
provider in general, and cpcug.org in
particular.
9/19/98 (Saturday)
10/17/98 (Saturday)
11/21/98 (Saturday)
Description:You will learn how similar
Unix is to DOS, and just what the particular differences are that might trip you up.
Topics include basic commands, pipes,
redirection, file protections, Shells, aliases,
editors, and mailers.
Searching the Internet
Location: CPCUG HQ
Instructor: Neal Grotenstein, (301) 8716232
Technical Rating Code: ★★
Rate: $20
Date
2/28/98 (Saturday)
Time
9:00AM–NOON
Installing and Using Windows
95 Microsoft Internet Explorer
Software for Graphical Internet
Access Via cpcug.org
• Give a general description of the
Internet and identify reasons you might
like to use it.
• Contrast services provided by an
e-mail only service, an online service
such as AOL, and an Internet service
provider so you can decide if any of
them are for you.
• Identify questions you might ask when
talking to Internet providers.
• Know if you would prefer to use textbased or graphical-based software to
interface with the Internet.
• Contrast features and service level
requirements of e-mail packages such
as Eudora, Pine, and Juno.
• Recognize differences among Internet
features such as e-mail, Web browsing,
and file transfer.
Description: New users on CPCUG’s
Internet domain, cpcug.org, receive MSIE
installation disks for graphical access to
the Internet if they run Windows 95.
Current cpcug.org users can download
free Windows 95 MSIE installation software. The installation and use of this
software will be demonstrated for Web
browsing, e-mail, and newsgroups.
Copies of MSIE installation disks for
Windows 95, along with documentation,
will be available at the class.
Location: CPCUG HQ
Location: CPCUG HQ
Instructor: Bob Mills, (301) 738-0097
Rate: $35
Times
1:00–4:00PM
1:00–4:00PM
1:00–4:00PM
1:00–4:00PM
Course #4420
Prerequisite: This course assumes that
you’ve dealt in some way with a PC before
Course #4465
Prerequisite: Experience in using the
Internet, including a World Wide Web
browser (preferably Internet Explorer or
Netscape Navigator), is presumed.
Familiarity with boolean searches is
useful, but not necessary.
Description: As the Internet grows, locating the information that you want is becoming increasingly difficult. If you’ve had
problems finding the information you
need on the Internet, this course is for
you. This course will demonstrate using
several search engines on the Internet,
examining their similarities and differences. We will also discuss advanced
search options that are available for many
of the engines. The World Wide Web,
shareware archives, Usenet news, and
e-mail address searches will all be covered.
Class Limit: 20
Prerequisite: Experience in using
Windows 95 is assumed. Experience in
using a modem and communications
program is desirable, but not required.
Class Limit: 20
Instructor: Paul Shapiro, (301) 770-7899
Dates
3/29/98 (Sunday)
5/31/98 (Sunday)
8/30/98 (Sunday)
11/29/98 (Sunday)
Course #4455
1:00PM–4:00PM
1:00PM–4:00PM
1:00PM–4:00PM
Location: CPCUG HQ
Instructor: Scott Mohnkern, (301) 7380097, [email protected]
Rate: $30
Dates
2/14/98 (Saturday)
3/14/98 (Saturday)
4/11/98 (Saturday)
5/9/98 (Saturday)
6/13/98 (Saturday)
7/11/98 (Saturday)
8/8/98 (Saturday)
9/12/98 (Saturday)
10/10/98 (Saturday)
11/14/98 (Saturday)
12/12/98 (Saturday)
.
Times
1:00PM–4:00PM
1:00PM–4:00PM
1:00PM–4:00PM
1:00PM–4:00PM
1:00PM–4:00PM
1:00PM–4:00PM
1:00PM–4:00PM
1:00PM–4:00PM
1:00PM–4:00PM
1:00PM–4:00PM
1:00PM–4:00PM
Creating World Wide Web
Pages (Hands-On Version)
Rate: $35
Course #4480
Dates
1/17/98 (Saturday)
2/21/98 (Saturday)
3/21/98 (Saturday)
4/18/98 (Saturday)
5/16/98 (Saturday)
6/20/98 (Saturday)
7/18/98 (Saturday)
8/15/98 (Saturday)
Times
1:00PM–4:00PM
1:00PM–4:00PM
1:00PM–4:00PM
1:00PM–4:00PM
1:00PM–4:00PM
1:00PM–4:00PM
1:00PM–4:00PM
1:00PM–4:00PM
Prerequisite: Familiarity with Windows and
the World Wide Web.
Description: This is a hands-on version of
our popular 4482 course. It is an introductory class for people who want
to learn how to create attractive World
Wide Web pages. During the class, students will create multiple Web pages for
59
their own Web sites, complete with hypertext links and images, and learn Hypertext
Markup Language (HTML) coding and
techniques needed to create even more
complex Web pages. Bring a floppy disk to
take your Web pages home with you.
NOTE: This course is not an introduction to
the Internet or World Wide Web.
Class Limit: 12
Location: CPCUG HQ
Instructor: Dave Hennessey, (301) 6521569, [email protected]
Rate: $45
Date
1/17/98 (Saturday)
2/14/98 (Saturday)
3/28/98 (Saturday)
Time
9:00AM–NOON
9:00AM–NOON
9:00AM–NOON
Larry McGoldrick’s Internet
Topics
COURSE #4600
Who should attend: Intermediate- and
advanced-level Internet users.
Degree of difficulty: Moderately high. Not
for beginners.
Description: This monthly class will cover,
among other things, whatever Larry
learned during the previous month. The
content will change from month
to month and will be designed to help
users get the most from the services
provided with their Internet connections.
Come early and come often.
Typical topics will be—
• How to use your browser like a pro—
not just for Web pages, but for everything available
• How to use FTP like a pro—finding and
getting information
• Streaming audio and video
• Advanced browser configuration and
plug-ins
• Telnet, e-mail, newsreaders, . . .
• Internet utilities and diagnostics—ping,
traceroute, nslookup . . .
Send suggestions for desired topics to
[email protected]. Don’t even think about
telephoning him—this is an Internet class.
Location: CPCUG HQ
Instructor: Larry McGoldrick, CPCUG
Director of Internet Services and
Webmaster, larrym@cpcug,.org
Rate: $35
Rate: $35
Dates
1/27/98 (Tuesday)
2/24/98 (Tuesday)
3/24/98 (Tuesday)
4/28/98 (Tuesday)
5/26/98 (Tuesday)
6/23/98 (Tuesday)
7/28/98 (Tuesday)
9/22/98 (Tuesday)
10/27/98 (Tuesday)
11/24/98 (Tuesday)
Times
7:00PM–10:00PM
7:00PM–10:00PM
7:00PM–10:00PM
7:00PM–10:00PM
7:00PM–10:00PM
7:00PM–10:00PM
7:00PM–10:00PM
7:00PM–10:00PM
7:00PM–10:00PM
7:00PM–10:00PM
NOTE—Advance registration is highly
recommended. Class size will be limited
to 40 participants. Walk-ins will be allowed only if there is room (that is, if
there are fewer than 40 previously registered). Advance registration (confirmed) is
desirable. Potential walk-ins may call the
Training Registration desk at CPCUG HQ,
(301) 762-5216, on the day of class to see
whether there is space left. Under no
circumstances will there be more than 41
people in the room.
Pretty Good Privacy (PGP)
Course #4700
Prerequisite: Familiarity with any one of
the commercially available e-mail packages (such as Eudora) and reasonable
familiarity with Windows.
Description: Would you like to learn how
to secure your e-mail on the Internet so it
can’t be intercepted and read? Would it be
helpful to be sure that a message you
receive is indeed from whom it says it is
(and is not a forgery)? PGP (pretty good
privacy) is a freeware encryption program
that protects the privacy of e-mail and
confirms the identity of the sender. This
course will cover the use of the new PGP
version 5.0 freeware (available from the
MIT Web site). It will include teaching
basic terminology (public key, private key,
fingerprint, and so forth) and how to use
PGP for authentication and encryption.
Participants will be shown how to install
the software and the steps involved in
using it to send authenticated and/or
encrypted messages via Internet e-mail.
Location: CPCUG HQ
Class Limit: 40
60
Instructor: Fred Atkinson (301) 977–3778,
[email protected]
Date
1/24/98 (Saturday)
Time
1:00PM-4:00PM
Handout Available
“Using the MIX:
A Callers Guide”
BY
MICHAEL KANE
This 60-page manual is available
on the MIX in WordPerfect,
Word, and ASCII formats.
Can’t find it on the MIX?
Pick up a printed copy at the
CPCUG HQ office between 10AM
and 3PM weekdays for $5 or send
$8 to MIX Guide, Capital PC
User Group, 51 Monroe Street.,
PE2, Rockville, MD 20850.
Free Saturday Seminars
January 17, 1998
February 21, 1998
March 21, 1998
April 18, 1998
May 16, 1998
June 20, 1998
July 18, 1998
August 15, 1998
September 19, 1998
October 17, 1998
November 21, 1998
December 19, 1998
Topics: To be determined
Location: National Institutes of
Health, Lipsett Amphitheater
(west on Center Drive from
Rockville Pike [Wisconsin Avenue]
to the Clinical Center, Building 10,
at West Drive), 9000 Rockville
Pike, Bethesda, MD
All Saturday seminars are free and
open to the public.
http://www.cpcug.org/user/comm/
free-sem.html
Registration and Information
Training Registration Form
Location Codes
• CPCUG HQ = Irving W. Samuels Meeting Room, Plaza East
Two, 51 Monroe Street, Rockville, MD. Parking in the building is
free in the evenings and on weekends.
• ENFOLINC= 6551 Loisdale Court, Suite 500, Springfield,VA.
Parking is free.
• Lipsett = Lipsett Amphitheater, NIH, Clinical Center, Building
10, 9000 Rockville Plaza, Bethesda, MD. Parking is free under the
building.
• METEC = Modern Educational Technology Center, Inc., 58 West
Gude Drive, Rockville, MD. Parking is free adjacent to the building.
(Not for the “Build Your Own PC” Workshop
or Free Saturday Seminars)
Registration
To assure your place in a class, register at least 6 days prior to the class.
For weekend classes, registration ends at 2PM on the Friday prior to the
class. To register, fill out the Training Registration Form or appropriate
coupon and send it, with your check, to 51 Monroe Street, Plaza East
Two, Rockville, MD 20850. Phone registration will only be accepted
when paying with VISA or MasterCard.You are considered registered
when payment has been received. Classes are subject to cancellation
one week prior to the class date. Saturday seminars, Sunday seminars,
and prebuild seminars (at NIH Lipsett Amphitheater) do not require preregistration; just show up. They are open to the public and free of charge.
There may be an optional handout available for reproduction costs.
Guidelines
For more information about a specific class, call the instructor. Do
not call instructors for class registration. Anyone not there at the
actual start time for a hands-on course will not be admitted to the
class. Unless specific arrangements are made 48 hours in advance
regarding inability to attend,“no shows”will forfeit the course fee. To
be rescheduled into another class, contact Training at (301) 593-0531
or (301) 762-9372.
Notice of Class Cancellation
We cannot always notify registrants of class cancellations. Please
check the NOTICE Conference on the MIX or check the Training
phone message, (301) 762-5216, for any changes in scheduling.
Course name:
______________________________________________
Course number: ____________ Class date: __________
Fee amount enclosed:
Member number:
______________________________________________
Name:
______________________________________________
Street address:
______________________________________________
City:
______________________________________________
State: ______________________ ZIP: ______________
Daytime phone:
______________________________________________
Evening/Weekend phone:
______________________________________________
Please send the fee and the registration form to—
Capital PC User Group, Inc.
Registrar, Education and Training
51 Monroe Street, Plaza East Two
Rockville, MD 20850
Training phone (301) 593-0531 or (301) 762-5216
FAX (301) 762-9375
Don’t See the Class You Want?
When you don’t see the class you want to take, call the Training Registrar
Harold Motin anyway at (301) 593-0531 or (301) 762-5216!
Sometimes the class you want may have been scheduled after the Monitor
went to press, so don’t be hesitant about calling to inquire.
Other times a class may not be planned in the desired subject, but the
Training Department needs your input in planning new classes for 1998.
61
compiled by Barbara Conn
Access (MS)
• Arlington,VA: Computer Instruction
Corporation, Crystal Plaza One, Suite
1111, 2001 Route 1, Jefferson Davis
Highway (Building access: On
Sundays, visitors to the building must
use the outside phone to call Kastle
Systems for entrance and to use the
elevators; the password is “Access
Users Group.”)
• Free parking: On the street at meters.
• Metro: Close.
• URL—http://www.cpcug.org/user/
comm/sig-supp.html#access
• Contact—Rick Shaddock, d: (703)
486-2222, [email protected], or ACCESS
Conference (83) on the MIX
Call Rick Shaddock at (703) 486-2222
for meeting dates, times, and locations.
Alpha Four and Five
Database
• Jan.–Oct.—Monthly, fourth Sunday,
4:30-6:30
• Nov. & Dec.—Second Sunday,
4:30–6:30
• CPCUG HQ
comm/sig-supp.html#alpha
• Contact—Steve Workings, d/e/w: (301)
933-3832, [email protected].
JANUARY 25
FEBRUARY 22
MARCH 22
The Alpha Four and Five Database SIG
frequently has planned presentations or
training sessions, but we also have several
meetings a year reserved entirely for
member questions and immediate group
problem solving.
Where To Go Online for Alpha
Database Information
The most comprehensive source for
just-released Alpha Four and Alpha Five
database information continues to be the
CompuServe Information Service (GO
ALPHAFORUM). This is an official
technical support area for Alpha Software
Corporation. As a CPCUG member, you
also have a local source of support in the
MIX. Just post your Alpha software
questions in the ALPHA4 Conference, and
our own SIG members will provide
prompt and helpful information. A good
starting point on the World Wide Web is
Alpha Software’s site at
http://www.alphasoftware.com. Be sure to
check the links to the Web pages of the
Alpha database user groups in Boston
and New York.
How To Start a SIG
Want to form a new SIG within the Capital PC User Group? Call First
Vice President Rich Schinnell at (301) 949-9292 or send him e-mail at
[email protected]. He’ll give you the information you need to get
started—then it’s up to you!
62
Help Wanted
Our SIG leaders are seeking a
volunteer Pagemaster or assistant to help
us create and maintain our own Web
page in the cpcug.org domain.
AutoCAD
• Monthly, first Tuesday, 7:30
• CPCUG HQ
autocad/
• Contact—David Drazin, e/w: (301)
279-7593
JANUARY 6
FEBRUARY 3
MARCH 3
Baltimore
• Monthly, first Wednesday, 6:30
• University of Maryland, Baltimore
County (UMBC, which is southwest of
Baltimore, near Catonsville),
University Center/Bookstore, Third
Floor, Ballroom Lounge
• From I-95: Exit on I-195/Route 166
north toward Catonsville. Once on
Route 166, move to right and take first
exit (on right) to UMBC. If possible,
park in the two-tier parking lot
straight ahead.
• From I-695 (Beltway): Take the 12C
Wilkens Avenue exit south toward
Catonsville. Turn at first left, Walker
Avenue. At the stop sign, turn right
onto Loop Road. Locate the two-tier
parking lot.
• From two-tier parking lot: Use the
walkway that passes the 10-story
Administration Building to the
courtyard. The University Center/
Bookstore is on the left.
• Taped message: (410) 455-2790
comm/sig-supp.html#balt
• Contacts—Bill Lutz, d/e/w: (410) 2569403, [email protected]; Robert
Pettigrew, d/e/w: (410) 358-5840,
[email protected]
JANUARY 7
FEBRUARY 4
MARCH 4
E-Mail Announcement List
To receive a monthly e-mail notice of
meetings, send an e-mail request to
[email protected].
Beginners
• Monthly, third Sunday, 12:30
• CPCUG HQ
beginner/
• Contact—Les Le Vine, d/e/w: (301)
652-2532, [email protected];
Paul Shapiro, d: (301) 770-7899,
[email protected]
JANUARY 18
FEBRUARY 15
MARCH 15
cles to Les Le Vine at the next SIG meeting.
Clipper
• Monthly, fourth Thursday (except
Tuesday in November and no meeting
in December), 7:00
• CPCUG HQ
comm/sig-supp.html#clip
• Contacts—Naseem Saab, (703) 8605022, [email protected]; Jim
Fauntleroy, [email protected]
The Washington Area Clipper Users
Group (WACUG) has become the Clipper
SIG of the Capital PC User Group. Clipper
is a DOS-based compiler for DBase. The
mission of the Clipper SIG is (1) to form a
presence for Clipper programmers in the
Washington, DC, area, (2) to help its
members learn about new technologies,
(3) to help those with Clipper experience
make the transition to future products and
languages, and (4) to help newcomers to
the Clipper world appreciate and learn
about the power of the language.
7:00
The Beginners SIG is the place for a
newcomer to the world of computers to
find help. We try to take the mystery out
of using a computer. Plain, down-to-earth
language is spoken at our gatherings.
We cover topics as elementary as how
to turn your computer on and off, how to
get started writing a letter on your
computer, what’s the difference between a
floppy and a hard drive. Just ask us and
we’ll make it easy for you to understand.
Not sure what questions to ask? We’ll
even help you ask the right questions!
Some meetings start with planned
discussion topics and then move into
Q&A. Others are designated as strictly
Q&A to deal with the many questions
generated by beginning computer users.
If you know anyone new to using a
computer or planning to buy one who
might like to join us for a friendly Sunday
afternoon get-together once a month
talking about computers, please invite
him, her, or them to our next Beginners
SIG meeting.
By the way, you don’t have to be a
computer beginner to join us. We don’t
check your “Computer IQ”at the door.
Is there something you’d like the SIG to
discuss at its next SIG meeting? Call Les
Le Vine at (301) 652-2532.
7:30
9:00
QUESTIONS/DISCUSSION; JOB
ANNOUNCEMENTS (job openings
and jobs wanted). Bring your
technical questions, from the
most basic to the most
challenging, or share a tip or
trick.
MAIN PRESENTATION.
SOCIAL GATHERING AT LOCAL
RESTAURANT.
Our SIG’s newsletter,“The Beginners
SIG,”is available at General Meetings and
at CPCUG HQ. Give your ideas for arti-
JANUARY 1—NO MEETING
FEBRUARY 5
DEVELOPING N-TIER APPLICATIONS
Austin Amyanyou
MARCH 5
If you know of other Delphi developers,
please let them know about our meetings.
We have presentations, technical
discussions, contests, door prizes, leads,
and fun.
meetings, send an e-mail request to Dick
Maley at [email protected].
Electronic Publishing
• Monthly, first Wednesday, 7:30
• CPCUG HQ
comm/sig-supp.html#e-pub
• Contact—Mary Brosnan, d/e/w: (703)
207-0477, [email protected]
JANUARY 22
FEBRUARY 26
MARCH 26
JANUARY 7
FEBRUARY 4
MARCH 4
Consultants
October Meeting
Need a Clipper consultant? Our
Assistant SIG Chair, Jim Fauntleroy, maintains a list of Clipper SIG members who
are available to do Clipper and other
programming work. For the latest update
to this list or to be included, send e-mail
to Jim at [email protected].
To be put on the monthly mailing list
for all meeting announcements, send an
e-mail request to Naseem Saab at
[email protected] or Jim Fauntleroy at
[email protected].
Delphi
Newsletter
Thursday, 11:30AM (odd months at
Tysons II Eatery in Virginia; even
months at Montgomery Mall Eatery in
Maryland)
delphi/
• Contacts—Dick Maley, d: (202) 7363929, e/w: (301) 840-1554,
[email protected]; Rick
Rogers, d: (301) 816-0772, rick@
fenestra.com
• Monthly (except July), first Thursday,
7:00
• CPCUG HQ
• Luncheon meetings—usually third
At our October meeting, Bob DiIorio
gave us a mind-boggling demonstration
of the features for photo enhancement
and manipulation available in the new
Adobe Photoshop 4.0 upgrade .
Framework
• Bimonthly, even months, third
Thursday, 7:30
• CPCUG HQ
framework/
• Contact—Bill Redisch, d: (301) 2866203, e/w: (301) 279-7929,
[email protected]
FEBRUARY 19
FRAMEWORK IV AND
AND WINDOWS 95
V UNDER DOS, OS/2,
63
APRIL 16
FRAMEWORK IV AND V UNDER DOS, OS/2,
AND WINDOWS 95
We are a small group whose members
still use the versatile DOS-based
Framework (FW) integrated software. Our
meetings usually start with questions,
problems, discoveries, tips, and techniques
brought by participants—we never seem
to run out of interesting topics to discuss
(frequently not just about FW). Often we
move into a discussion about how best to
use FW in conjunction with other
(modern) applications and operating
systems, including programs for the
Internet.
Newly released FW V, as well as FW IV,
is often run under DOS, Windows 95,
and/or OS/2, with features compared for
those SIG members still using FW III.
There are still things that good old
Framework can do better, or more easily,
than the newer GUI programs. We learn
something useful each session!
October Meeting
The meeting started with a discussion
trying to solve a member's problem. His
copy of FW would not reliably run on his
new Gateway 2000 Pentium 233 computer
under Windows 95. He experiences repeated lockups. Many troubleshooting
suggestions were made, such as finding
shareware to "slow the system down" for
testing, and booting from a floppy with
"real DOS" to see if the problem is related
to Windows 95 as opposed to the
Gateway basic system. Stay tuned.
We went onto the Internet and tried
the http://www.framework.com Web site,
but could not find any help there. Also, it
seems that there are no newsgroups devoted to FW.
Next, it was demonstrated how two (or
more) sessions of FW can be run under
Windows 95 (or OS/2) via a batch file that
duplicates some of FW's small auxiliary
files. For example, if FW is occupied
downloading files from a BBS, another
session can be run concurrently.
Finally, we went back to last meeting's
discussion of telecomm problems on the
MIX. It was demonstrated how ANSI.SYS
is needed in the DOS session running FW
in an emulation mode to display color
graphics from the MIX, instead of the
gibberish ANSI commands. ANSI.SYS can
be loaded through Properties in Windows
95 or the DOS settings in OS/2.
GeoWorks
comm/sig-supp.html#geo
64
• Contact—Herb Fredricksen, d/e/w:
(301) 840-2056, fax: (301) 840-5251,
12-B Linda Court, Gaithersburg, MD
20877
HTML
• Monthly (except August), fourth
Monday, 7:30
• CPCUG HQ
• URL—http://www.cpcug.org/user/html/
• Contact—Walt Houser, d: (202) 2738012, e/w: (301) 299-0593,
[email protected]
7:30
8:00
Q&A
PRESENTATION
JANUARY 26
FEBRUARY 23
MARCH 23
The HTML (Hypertext Markup
Language) SIG discusses the creation of
Web pages and the use of the World Wide
Web to collect and disseminate
information. Specific topics of interest to
the group include elements of Web page
design, HTML editors and other tools for
Web publishing, common gateway
interface (CGI) scripts, PERL, interaction
with databases and textbases, graphics
and images on the Web, Web security,
standard versus nonstandard documenttype definition (DTD) for Web pages, Java,
JavaScript, Netscape frames and plug-ins,
and Shockwave.
The SIG is for those who have taken
two or more of the HTML classes offered
by CPCUG, or who have equivalent
knowledge and skills. Discussions and
presentations are oriented toward
experienced Web page developers. The
skill levels of those attending range from
seasoned Webmasters to novices. If you
have a question or see a neat technique
on the Web, please join us.
Future Meetings
Topics of upcoming meetings in the
planning stages include dynamic HTML,
Real Audio, designing Web sites for the
technologically challenged, and the topics
in SIG Chair Walt Houser’s new classes
(see Web page addresses at the end of this
report).
To receive one or two e-mail notices of
meetings each month, send e-mail to
subscribe htmlsig-l
E-Mail Discussion List
To join CPCUG’s HTML discussion list,
send e-mail to [email protected]
containing the line
subscribe htmlsigd-l
SIG Member Web Pages of Interest
“Creating Web Pages: A CPCUG
Beginner’s Guide to HTML”by Walt
Houser at http://www.cpcug.org/user/
houser/html/training/index.html
“A Novice’s Hands-On Introduction to
the Internet”by Walt Houser at
http://www.cpcug.org/user/houser/html/
windows/index.html
“Advanced HTML: Enliven Your Web
Pages”by Walt Houser at http://www.
cpcug.org/user/houser/html/training/
advanced.html
“Writing CGI Scripts for the Web”by
Walt Houser at http://www.cpcug.org/
user/houser/
“Basics of PERL for Web Programming”
by Walt Houser at http://www.
cpcug.org/user/houser/
“Searching Cyberspace”by Kushal
Khan at http://www.cpcug.org/scifair
Internet
• Monthly, usually second Thursday, 7:00
• Washington Gas Auditorium, 6801
Industrial Road, Springfield,VA
(Occasional meetings may be
elsewhere and will be noted)
internet/
• Contact—Gabe Goldberg, d/e/w: (703)
7:00
7:50
8:00
9:00
Q&A (INCLUDES A 7:15 RAFFLE)
ANNOUNCEMENTS
PRESENTATION
RAFFLES
JANUARY 8, 1998—THURSDAY
USING THE INTERNET TO CREATE
NEIGHBORHOOD NETS AND NURTURE
PHYSICAL COMMUNITIES
Jim Buie, Journalist
Around the country and the world,
individuals and neighborhoods are using
the Internet to create “neighborhood nets”
and nurture physical communities. While
still in their infancy, these networks serve
multiple purposes: introducing and
bonding neighbors, creating action to solve
problems, publicizing neighborhood
resources within and beyond
neighborhood boundaries, and attracting
businesses, customers, and residents to the
neighborhood. Jim recently wrote an article
for The Washington Post Outlook section,
“Neighborhood Watch Meets World Wide
Web Over the Backyard Fence,”and is
writing a book on the subject.
Speaker: Jim is a seasoned writer,
reporter, and editor for newspapers,
newsletters, magazines, and association
publications, on a variety of topics
including public relations, communications
development, teaching, and long-distance
learning. He’s been on the Internet two
hours a day since 1993.
He thinks of himself as a“netpreneur,”
specializing in creating e-mail newsletters,
Web publications, customized online
courses, and“virtual communities”
designed to enhance real community.
Some of these are still in their relatively
early stages—inching along as there is time
and money to develop them. He believes
computer-mediated communication will
have a revolutionary impact upon society
over the next decade.
His current projects include—
• “Last Acts: Care & Caring at the End of
Life”for the Robert Wood Johnson
Foundation, http://www.lastacts.org
• “Takoma Park Virtual Community,“ an
e-mail newsletter to 500 local
residents, helping to mobilize the
neighborhood to fight crime and
develop home businesses,
http://www.us.net/indc/takoma.htm
• “Virtual Family: How Families Use the
Internet To Enhance Long-Distance
Relationships,”
http://www.us.net/indc/virtual.htm
• “Internet Democrats: An Online
Community Seeking a More
Participatory Democracy,”
http://www.us.net/indc/indem.htm
• Netpower: Online course on the digital
revolution and how to use the internet
for social change,
http://www.us.net/indc/netpower.htm
For the past 4 years, Jim has been a fulltime freelance writer and editor
specializing in health care and technology
issues. He also teaches journalism as an
adjunct professor for the Institute for
Experiential Learning.
February 12
CONSUMER VIEW AND BACKEND TECHNOLOGY
OF COMMERCIAL WEB SITES
Raj Khera, President, GovCon, Inc.
For better or worse, the Internet is
becoming increasingly commercialized.
We’ve passed the stage where Net
commerce consists exclusively of Web site
advertising, and are seeing many Web sites
devoted to conducting interactive business
(for example, http://www.amazon.com for
selling books) or to supporting and
supplementing fundamental business
operation (for example, http://
www.fedex.com for tracking packages). This
presentation will explore the outside and
inside—back end and front end—of
commercial sites, explain how consumers
can use them most effectively (for example,
accept or reject cookies? sign guest
books?), explore their business goals, and
explain some behind-the-scenes
technologies used to build them.
Speaker: Khera Communications, Inc.,
was founded by Dheeraj (Raj) Khera to
provide high-end Web site development
services for commercial, government, and
nonprofit organizations. Clients include
Kodak Digital Processing, the Smithsonian
Institution, the U.S. Department of
Agriculture, Group 1 Software, the
American Public Welfare Association, and
many other small and large organizations.
Mr. Khera wrote a monthly business
communications column, syndicated in
business publications from coast-to-coast.
Articles from this column now constitute
part of Khera Communications’Business
Resource Center, one of the most popular
small business Web sites
http://www.kcilink.com/brc.
In 1995, he helped launch a Web site for
government contracting companies. This
site, GovCon (http://www.govcon.com), is
now one of the most widely used sites for
companies looking for lucrative business
opportunities and ways to win government
contracts. Advertisers on GovCon include
KPMG Peat Marwick, Sprint, Price
Waterhouse, Riggs Bank, Holland and
Knight, and many other companies.
GovCon now also has a MarketPlace from
which users can purchase various
business-related products online. These
Web sites have been ranked by magazines
such as Newsweek, BYTE, PC Week, Success,
PC Computing, and others as two of the
best business Web sites.
Mr. Khera holds B.S. and M.S. degrees in
electrical engineering from the University
of Maryland, College Park.
March 12
April 9
May 14—tentative
THINGS PEOPLE DO TO SCREW UP THEIR WEB
SITES
Catherine Buzzell
Meeting Day Change
Internet SIG new regular meeting day
is Thursday, starting January 1998.
Meeting Notes
Internet SIG meetings begin with a
general question/answer dialog. This is an
opportunity to discuss Internet triumphs
achieved, information/resource treasures
found, or mysteries to be resolved.
Internet novices are most welcome. We
encourage grizzled Internauts to help
novices gain expertise by answering their
questions in complete sentences
consisting primarily of English words
understood by all.
Raffles
Donated raffle prizes are an Internet
SIG meeting tradition. At least one prize
will be awarded to someone at the SIG
meeting by 7:15PM. The remaining prizes
will be raffled off at meeting end. At each
gathering, Millkern Communications, Inc.
(http://www.millkern.com), administrator of
the CPCUG Internet domain cpcug.org,
donates 3 months of access to cpcug.org
Internet service. The winner can either
extend an existing account or establish a
new account.
At recent meetings other prizes have
included 2 hours of free in-shop PC
consulting/support from Advanced
Computer Creations (ACC;
http://www.acctoday.com) of Laurel,
Maryland, and gifts from Microsoft
(http://www.microsoft.com), including a full
version of Microsoft Office97. Other
frequently offered prizes include related
books from O’Reilly & Associates, Inc.
(http://www.ora.com). Another raffle prize
being offered is a subscription to Internet
World magazine, donated by Interactive
Development Corporation
(http://www.idev.com/).
Comfort
The Washington Gas auditorium is
often surprisingly cold. If you’re sensitive
to chilly surroundings, dress warmly or in
layers, or bring a sweater or a companion.
Transportation
From Pentagon City Metrorail stop: Val
Tepordei will pick up and deliver up to
three people from and to the Metrorail.
Contact him by e-mail at vtepordei@
hotmail.com or by phone at (703) 648-7728
(office) or (703) 685-0425 (home, for lastminute cancellations or requests). Make
sure that Val confirms your reservation—he can only transport three
passengers. Please, if you ask Val for a
ride, ensure that you’re at Metro to meet
him on time!
From northwest Washington, DC, near the
University of the District of Columbia at the
Van Ness Metrorail stop: Harold Goldstein
drives to most Internet SIG meetings from
the University of the District of Columbia.
To arrange a ride, send him e-mail
([email protected]) or call him at (202)
966-9091.
65
After-Meeting Dinners
After meetings, dedicated Internauts
seek a late dinner. Join us for a friendly
meal and personal networking! After
meetings in Springfield, we dine at one of
several nearby restaurants. After Bethesda
meetings, we dine at Foong Lin at 7710
Norfolk Avenue.
We’re adding some planning and
organization to the dinners—Keith
Bennett has offered to collect names,
count noses, and call for reservations, so
that SIG members can dine together at a
large table. Contact Keith via e-mail
(preferred) at [email protected] or by
phone at (301) 871-7696 before 3PM on
meeting day. We’ll also survey the SIG
meeting for additional diners, and Keith
will call the restaurant at about 8PM, just
before the main presentation begins.
Watch for last-minute e-mail notices
sent to the Internet SIG mailing list
regarding weather-related changes and
cancellations. These will be accurate and
may supersede information printed in
CPCUG’s magazine, the Monitor, or
posted elsewhere. If you attend Internet
SIG meetings, it’s worth subscribing to be
sure of getting all the late-breaking news.
The Internet SIG e-mail distribution list,
hosted by America Online, allows selfservice registration and subscription
maintenance. To subscribe to Internet SIG
mailings, send e-mail to
subscribe netsig-l
You will receive a simple request to
confirm your subscription. After
confirmation, you will receive a few
e-mail notes each month regarding
Internet SIG business. The list does not
allow subscriber postings.
Direct questions about the Internet SIG
mailing list to Clark Edwards via e-mail at
[email protected].
Potential E-Mail Discussion List
I’m considering creating a second
mailing list for discussion of Internet
topics, especially those related to the
Washington, DC, area. Please let me know
if you’d be interested in joining and
participating in such a list, so I’ll have an
idea of its potential value. Reply to
[email protected].
Investment
• Monthly (except August), third
Wednesday, 7:30
66
• Workshop, FastTrack Mutual Fund
Database Software, quarterly, fifth
Thursday, 7:00
• CPCUG HQ
invest/
• Contacts—Andy Thompson, d/e/w:
(301) 270-6790; John Matthews, d/e/w:
(301) 589-7612; Ferd Hassler, d/e/w:
(301) 718-6253; Harley Wilbur, d: (301)
6:45
7:30
8:00
9:30
FASTTRACK SOFTWARE DISCUSSION
Q&A; INVESTMENT TIPS AND
TRICKS; ANNOUNCEMENTS
PRESENTATION
“MARKET WATCH” DISCUSSION
WITH DOMINICK DEMARCO,
HARLEY WILBUR, AND OTHERS
JANUARY 21
JANUARY 29
FASTTRACK MUTUAL FUND DATABASE
SOFTWARE WORKSHOP
FEBRUARY 18
MARCH 18
Our Web Pages
Investment SIG’s Web page creator and
pagekeeper, Harry Rood, demonstrated
our Web pages at a recent CPCUG
General Meeting. Have you visited our
Investment SIG Web pages? Do you visit
regularly? If not, you should. In his book,
Making Money Online, Dr. Paul B. Farrell,
CEO and Editor-in-Chief of Wall Street
News, an Internet broadcaster, states,
“One of the best meta-lists for serious
investors is InvestSIG, a special interest
group of the Capital PC User Group . . .
InvestSIG’s Web site appears to be the
work of a sophisticated investment club,
complete with mention of their monthly
seminars (on subjects such as Investments
in the Pacific Rim, Gold Futures RollForward Strategies, and seminars on
Telescan and Reuters Money Network).
This is one of the best meta-lists, with a
solid collection of links . . . The list is very
professional. Bookmark it!”
FastTrack Group Seminars
Occasionally the FastTrack Group holds
a hands-on “Introduction to FastTrack
Software”seminar for our SIG’s novice
FastTrack users. At these seminars we are
able to take advantage of CPCUG’s
hands-on equipment. With two students
per machine, we can accommodate 12
participants. For more information,
contact Ferd Hassler, (301) 718-6253.
E-Mail or Postcard Meeting Notices
To receive notices by e-mail or postcard
the weekend before each meeting, call
John Matthews, (301) 589-7612, with your
name and e-mail or snail mail address.
You will receive information about the
topic of the main presentation, the
presenter, and the FastTrack meeting at
6:45PM.
Leisure World
• Monthly, second Wednesday, 3:00
• Olney, MD: Leisure World, Clubhouse
I (check bulletin board)
comm/sig-supp.html#lw
• Contact—Roy Rosfeld, d/e/w: (301)
598-2825
JANUARY 14
FEBRUARY 11
MARCH 11
Our computer center has six PCs and six
Macs, and our members meet to learn
more about a wide variety of subjects.
Recent gatherings have included presentations and discussions of Quicken,
WordPerfect, Buying or Upgrading,
Maryland’s Sailor Services, DOS
Directories, and Windows 95.
MetroMUG
(formerly Multimedia)
• Monthly, usually third Tuesday, 7:30
• Booz-Allen & Hamilton, Hamilton
Building, 8283 Greensboro Drive,
Tysons Corner,VA
• URL—http://www.fitechnology.com/
fit/mmug/ and
http://www.cpcug.org/user/multimedia/
• Contacts—Alta Oben, d: (703) 8475820, e: (703) 938-5831, [email protected];
Marie Pinho, [email protected]
7:30
8:00
Q&A; ANNOUNCEMENTS
PRESENTATION
JANUARY 20
SUCCESSFUL LOCAL MULTIMEDIA
John Redmon, Redmon Group
CPCUG’s multimedia SIG, MetroMUG,
will begin 1998 with a meeting you won’t
want to miss. John Redmon, head of a
very successful local multimedia company,
will be the main speaker. He will tell of
his experiences in developing multimedia
projects for local sites—Discovery
Channel, White House CD-ROMs, and
touchscreen information kiosks for
George Mason University. Besides showing us examples of the company’s work,
John will share with us some smart development strategies.
Speaker: John and his company, the
Redmon Group, were featured on the
cover of the October 1997 issue of Video
and Multimedia Producer Magazine and
have won many national and local
awards. This past year, the company was
named Alexandria,Virginia, Small
Business of the Year. The Redmon Group,
Inc., is a thriving multimediadevelopment company that, according to
the October article, has projected 1997
revenue of $2 million, debt-free.
The OS/2 SIG’s mail list processor,
hosted by CPCUG member Pete Norloff
and the OS/2 Shareware BBS, is used for
SIG business only. Traffic on this list is
limited to OS/2 SIG meeting
announcements and (occasionally) other
items deemed (by the SIG officers) to be
of general interest to our members.
To add your name to the mailing list:
Send e-mail to OS2SIG@
listserv.os2bbs.com with subject
MetroMUG is the SIG created by the
merger of the Metropolitan Multimedia
Users Group and the CPCUG Multimedia
SIG. Many of our members use Macs or
Macs and PCs.
MetroMUG SIG meetings, send e-mail to
subscribe mmsig-l
(one word only).You will receive a
confirmation message.
Paradox
• Monthly, second Tuesday, 7:30
• CPCUG HQ
paradox/
• Contact—Robert Clemenzi, d: (703)
827-2365, e: (703) 791-5747,
[email protected]
JANUARY 13
FEBRUARY 10
MARCH 10
To join CPCUG’s multimedia
discussion list, send e-mail to
subscribe mmsigd-l
OS/2
•
•
•
•
Monthly, second Wednesday, 7:00
CPCUG HQ (no Virginia meetings)
URL—http://www.os2bbs.com/os2sig/
Contacts—Richard Price, d/e/w: (202)
462-3047,
[email protected]; Patrick
Zilliacus, e/w: (301) 384-0972,
[email protected]; Kirby
Thornton, [email protected]
7:00
8:00
9:00
GENERAL Q&A;
ANNOUNCEMENTS; PRODUCT
NEWS; SIG NEWS
PRESENTATION
RAFFLES
JANUARY 14
FEBRUARY 11
MARCH 11
Peachtree
Project Management SIG meetings, send
e-mail to [email protected] containing the
line
subscribe pmsig-l
Reston
• Monthly, third Wednesday, 7:30
• Reston Community Center, Hunters
Woods Village Center, 2310 Colts Neck
Road, Reston,VA
• URL—http://www.shirenet.com/
restonsig
• Contacts—Jane Benson, e/w: (703)
715-1032, fax: (703) 715-8455,
[email protected]; Sharon Kennedy,
e/w: (703) 715-9452
• Monthly, third Thursday
• Odd months: 7:30PM, CPCUG HQ
• Even months: 6PM, Darby Digital
Communications, 1412A Duke Street,
Alexandria,VA, (703) 548-1512
• URL—http://www.cpcug.org/user/ peach/
• Contacts—Norman Risch, d: (301)
681-8088, e/w: (301) 754-0735,
[email protected]; Ruben
Worrell, d: (703) 276-3000, e/w pager:
(202) 490-0166, [email protected]
7:30
JANUARY 15
FEBRUARY 19
MARCH 19
MARCH 18
Project Management
• Monthly, third Monday, 7:00
• CPCUG HQ
comm/sig-supp.html#pm
• Contacts—Ruben Worrell, d: (703)
276-3000, e/w pager: (202) 490-0166,
[email protected]; Bruce Cottom, e/w:
(301) 869-5690, [email protected]
7:00
7:30
The 6PM to 7PM OS/2 Beginners sessions have been discontinued.
Participants are encouraged to bring a
copy of Microsoft Project 4 For Windows
Step by Step from Microsoft Press to all
meetings. Presentations begin at 7:30PM,
but there is also a question and answer
and discussion period from 7:00 to 7:30PM.
Please share this information with all
interested friends and colleagues.
subscribe
FEBRUARY 17
MARCH 17
FEBRUARY 16
MARCH 16
Q&A AND DISCUSSION
PRESENTATION
JANUARY 19
8:00
9:00
OPEN FORUM AND GENERAL
INFORMATION
VENDOR PRESENTATION
Q&A; SOFTWARE DRAWING
(WHEN AVAILABLE)
JANUARY 21
MULTIMEDIA CONFERENCING
February 18
NETSCAPE 4.XX
meetings, send e-mail to
[email protected] with the words
“Reston SIG Notice”in the subject line.
Seniors
• Monthly, first Saturday, 9:30AM to
NOON
• CPCUG HQ
comm/sig-supp.html#sr
• Contacts—Jack Carlson, Chair, e/w:
(301) 474-7091, [email protected]; Jack
Hepburn, Co-Chair, d/e/w: (301) 460-
67
1168, [email protected]; Jack
Hunter, Steering Committee, (202)
362-0306; Margaret Gurley, Hospitality
Committee, (703) 533-3186; Les Le
Vine, Newsletter, (301) 652-2532
JANUARY 3
FEBRUARY 7
MARCH 7
The Seniors SIG is for everyone, of all
ages, from beginner to expert, and we
welcome both CPCUG members and
visitors. At our SIG meetings we discuss
current computer trends and problem
areas encountered by our attendees. We
want to choose our subjects far enough in
advance so you will know what to expect
at each meeting. To do this, you, the
members, have to tell us what subjects
you want to have presented.You tell us
what you want to know more about, and
we will find someone who will enlighten
us on the subject. Be sure to log onto the
MIX, read the messages in the SENIORS
Conference (89), and join in the
discussion of topics to be covered at future
meetings.
Because of the interest expressed in the
MIX at our meetings, we start each
meeting with a brief discussion of its use.
Next, Bob Mills of Millkern
Communications demonstrates some facet
of the Internet or Internet connectivity in
an“Internet Minutes”segment. In addition,
we spend at least 10 minutes of each
meeting responding to and discussing
attendee questions—here’s an opportunity
to get your questions answered. Help in
solving computer-related problems is
available both from the members of our
SIG and via the MIX.
When you attend Seniors SIG meetings,
be sure to bring a blank 3.5-inch highdensity diskette. Someone might have
found a shareware or freeware program of
interest to you. This rather informal group
has loads of information to share among
its users helping users. Don’t be
shy—volunteer to participate in the
organization and get to know officers and
members.You can bring a friend(s) when
you attend our meetings at 9:30AM on the
first Saturday of each month. The door to
the CPCUG meeting room will be propped
open after about 8:30AM.You are invited to
visit with fellow earlybirds before the
meeting begins, or to take advantage of
CPCUG’s library of computer-related
books.
Door Prizes
At most meetings, we have a door prize
to give away!
68
Newsletter
Les Le Vine started a Seniors SIG
newsletter. Help him develop subjects to
write about. The first edition “hit the
street”after the February 1997 meeting.
Distribution is easy—Les hands them out
at meetings. He is willing to create and
produce the newsletter, but needs your
help in generating ideas for articles. Call
him at (301) 652-2532.
November Meeting
Our November meeting was very successful. We had about 35 attendees, one of
our better showings. Jack Carlson opened
the meeting by welcoming new attendees.
Then Sam Stiles gave us a brief orientation about volunteering to staff a CPCUG
membership booth at a trade show. He
explained how you can get into the shows
free for very little volunteer time. He
recommended joining the VOLUNTEER
Conference (75) on the MIX to see what is
available. Come along and help.
Bob Mills, of Millkern
Communications, Inc., gave us a briefing
about improvements and changes on the
cpcug.org Internet domain. Gerhard
Postpischil gave an interesting presentation on communicating on the MIX. He
was very informal and allowed attendees
to break in and ask questions.
Jack Carlson closed the meeting with a
reminder about
, CPCUG selling
Entertainment 98 books.
October Meeting
Our October meeting was very interesting. We had about 25 attendees. Jack
Carlson opened the meeting by welcoming first timers, then he demonstrated the
MIX. It is sometimes a little difficult to
answer some specific questions because
there are so many different modems and
modem communications programs.
Tom Throop, who designed and developed the software program Bridge Baron,
gave us an informative presentation of
this program. Our attendees expressed a
great deal of interest. Thanks, Tom.
September Meeting
Jack Carlson opened the meeting by
welcoming new attendees. Jack Hunter
and his grandson Mickie gave us an excellent demonstration of Kidz Online
(http://www.kidzonline.org). If we don’t
watch out, we seniors are going to be left
way behind. Good show, Mickie.
We had about 25 people. It is great to
see so many happy faces at our Saturday
morning meetings. I know it is tough
getting up and traveling to the meetings
so early. But I can’t think of a better thing
to do on the first Saturday of the month.
Shareware
• CPCUG HQ
• URL—http://www.cpcug.org/user/share/
• Contact—Rich Schinnell, e/w (301)
Meetings are suspended until a new
SIG Chair is found. If you are interested in
becoming Shareware SIG Chair, please
contact First Vice President Rich Schinnell
at [email protected].
Statistics
• Monthly, usually second Wednesday,
12:30
• New meeting location (starting
January 1998)—Washington, DC: 1800
M Street, NW, South Tower, Third
Floor, Waugh A—call (202) 694-5051 to
arrange entrance to the building
• URL—http://www.econ.ag.gov/sigstat/
• Contact—Charles Hallahan, e/w: (703)
JANUARY 14—First meeting at 1800 M Street,
NW, location
LOGXACT FOR WINDOWS
Charles Hallahan
FEBRUARY 11
DERIVE FOR WINDOWS
Charles Hallahan
MARCH 11
ACTIVSTATS (FROM DATA DESK) DEMO
[Charles Hallahan
ActivStats is a comprehensive
multimedia introduction to statistics that
is available with Data Desk. More than
225 activities show you how to use
statistics with real-world videos, illustrate
basic concepts with hands-on interactive
animations, teach you to use the methods
with the award-winning Data Desk
statistics program (included on the
CD-ROM), and let you discover how
random events behave by experimenting
for yourself in specially designed
computer-based experiments.
APRIL 8
AUTOBOX: AUTOMATIC FORECASTING
PACKAGE
Charles Hallahan
MAY 13
SAS ANALYST
Charles Hallahan
JUNE 10
NEUROSHELL EASY PREDICTOR/EASY
CLASSIFIER
Charles Hallahan
Our Web Pages
The SIGSTAT page (found at
http://www.econ.ag.gov/sigstat and at the
CPCUG members/SIGs pages at
http://www.cpcug.org) contains an
extensive set of links to Web pages of
interest to statisticians. Each month we’ll
look at some sites relevant to that
month’s demo.
meetings, send e-mail to Charles
Hallahan, [email protected].
Virginia
• Monthly, third Monday, 7:00
• Washington Gas Auditorium, 6801
Industrial Road, Springfield,VA
• URL—http://www.digizen.net/members/
lgarcia/vasig
• Contact—Luis Garcia, d: (301) 4571451, e/w: (703) 425-6902,
[email protected]
7:00
8:00
9:00
OPEN FORUM AND GENERAL
INFORMATION (INCLUDES EARLYBIRD
DRAWING)
PRESENTATION
Q&A; SOFTWARE DRAWING
JANUARY 19
FEBRUARY 16
MARCH 16
•
•
•
•
Monthly, third Tuesday, 7:30
CPCUG HQ
URL—http://www.cpcug.org/user/vb/
Contact—Ruben Worrell, d: (703) 2763000, e/w pager: (202) 490-0166,
[email protected]
JANUARY 20
FEBRUARY 17
MARCH 17
The Visual Basic SIG does a lot of
Q&A, which is great for beginners and
advanced users alike. Occasionally
someone will bring a project and/or
problem on diskette. These turn into
excellent learning sessions for everyone.
We discuss coding,Visual Basic news, and
other issues that arise. Periodically we
invite vendors to discuss and demonstrate
the latest VB-related products. The Visual
Basic SIG is not just for Visual Basic; we
also support those using the Microsoft
Office product line who want to delve
into automation with Visual Basic for
Applications.
New Meeting Day and Location
Visual Basic SIG now meets at CPCUG
HQ in Rockville, Maryland, on the third
Tuesday of each month.
The Virginia SIG chapter was
successfully reborn on March 17, 1997.
The SIG meets at Washington Gas in
Springfield,Virginia, on the third Monday
of each month. The planned format for
meetings is a Q&A session at 7:00PM
followed by the main presentation at 8PM.
Suggested topics for future meetings
include genealogical software from the
user’s perspective, and children’s
educational and game software.
If you’d like more information or would
like to participate in the planning and
administration of this SIG, please contact
CPCUG Virginia Vice President Luis
Garcia, (301) 457-1451 (d), (703) 425-6902
(e/w), or [email protected]. Or contact
the CPCUG office at (301) 762-9372 on
weekdays between 10AM and 3PM.
Virginia SIG meetings, send e-mail to
subscribe virginiasig-l
Visual Basic
If you have suggestions for future
topics, or would like to make a
presentation, e-mail Pat McVeigh at
[email protected].
To join CPCUG’s Windows discussion
list, send e-mail to [email protected]
containing the line
subscribe windowsigd-l
WordPerfect
• Monthly, second Thursday, 7:30
• CPCUG HQ
comm/sig-supp.html#wp
• Contacts—Les Le Vine, d/e/w: (301)
652-2532, [email protected];
Ken Martinsson, d: (301) 540-2775,
[email protected]
JANUARY 8
Q&A (first half of meeting)
EACH ONE BRING A TIP, HINT, OR TRICK
FEBRUARY 12
HOW TO CREATE A NEWSLETTER
Les Le Vine
MARCH 12
WORDPERFECT 8
Susan Kousek
Susan will show us some of the exciting features of WordPerfect’s newest
release, WordPerfect Suite 8.
Speaker: Susan Kousek has been a
computer consultant since 1995, currently
providing training in WordPerfect,
PowerPoint, and Windows. She also does
technical writing.
To join CPCUG’s Visual Basic
discussion list, send e-mail to
APRIL 9
TEMPLATES (tentative—volunteer needed!)
E-mail is sent to those on our mailing
list. Remember—even if you have no
Internet provider or online service, you
can send and receive e-mail via MIXNET
on the MIX.
subscribe vbsig-l
Windows
• Monthly, fourth Wednesday, 7:30
• CPCUG HQ
windows/
• Contact—Pat McVeigh, d: (301) 8817900, e/w: (301) 963-7304,
[email protected]
JANUARY 28
FEBRUARY 25
MARCH 25
MAY 14
EACH ONE TEACH ONE
Meeting Notes
How do you move a Bookmark? How
do you change the background color of
Reveal Codes? How do you put in a soft
hyphen? How do you upgrade to the new
Corel WordPerfect 8.0? The answers to
these and other WordPerfect questions are
answered at our SIG meetings.
The WordPerfect SIG covers topics for
the beginning and advanced users, with
DOS, Windows 3.1, and Windows 95.
operating systems. If you’re still using
WordPerfect 5.1, you can benefit from
69
No one’s home surfing the Net tonight!
CPCUG WordPerfect SIG Chair Les Le Vine
and local Corel WordPerfect representative
Barbara Semple coordinating the evening’s
SIG activities.
The big screen at CPCUG
HQ allows attendees to
enjoy and benefit fully from
our content-filled
WordPerfect SIG
presentations.
Mary Van Engelen.
70
Clifford Porter.
Les receiving award certificate from
CPCUG President and WordPerfect
SIG founder Lillian Milliner.
WordPerfect SIG members know how to party. And it wouldn’t be a party at CPCUG HQ without Clifford’s
scrumptious cookies!
joining us as well. One of our members
will be the expert you’ve been seeking to
answer your questions.
October Meeting
On October 9 we partied in style. More
than 50 WordPerfect SIG members celebrated the fourth anniversary of the creation of our WordPerfect SIG with
Barbara Semple, Corel’s local WordPerfect
representative. [Photos by Rich Schinnell.]
Volunteer(s) Needed
Do you know WordPerfect? Would you
like to make a presentation for our
friendly group? We need volunteers for
future meetings. Also, do you have any
WordPerfect tips or hints you’d like to
share?
Newsletter
We have now distributed several issues
of our newsletter,“The WordPerfect Sig.”It
is available at CPCUG HQ. See your name
in print by sending your ideas for articles
and contributions to Les Le Vine, Editor, at
[email protected].❖
Barbara Conn, CPCUG Director of Corporate
Communications, CPCUG Monitor Editor,
and Technical Communicator at Beacon
Writing Services Corporation, provider of
writing, editorial, and production services for
communicators, can be reached at
[email protected] or on the MIX in the
MONITOR Conference (45).
Where To Find Updates for All CPCUG Events
Web Pages
CPCUG Weekly E-Mail Calendar
See the CPCUG Corporate
Communications Internet home page
at http://www.cpcug.org/user/comm/.
See also the Web sites of the individual SIGs.
To receive the weekly e-mail calendar of all CPCUG activities including
general and special interest group
meetings (with the most up-to-date
information available on meeting
topics), classes, seminars, workshops,
builds, volunteer events, and irregular
special activities, send e-mail to
[email protected] containing the line—
The MIX, NOTICE Conference (47)
Weekly activities summaries
Activities reminders
Meeting information updates
Internet Newsgroups
subscribe cpcug-l
CPCUG.NEWS
DC.GENERAL
MD.GENERAL
VA.GENERAL
MD.MONT
MD.PG
BALT.GENERAL
COMP.ORG.USER-GROUPS.MEETINGS
No subject line entry required.
The calendar will arrive each Friday
or Saturday and contain CPCUG
events for 9 days, from Saturday
through the following Sunday. It will
be similar to the weekly “Capital PC
User Events”messages posted in
Internet Newsgroups. (It will consist of
standard lower ASCII characters only.)
Your name and e-mail address will
be hidden from view. The distribution
list does not allow subscriber posting.
To unsubscribe, send e-mail to the
above address with the message—
signoff cpcug-l
No subject line entry required.
To subscribe online to this and other
CPCUG announcement and discussion lists, go to—
http://www.cpcug.org/list
71
Users Helping Users: HELPLINE DIRECTORY
Compiled by Elliott Fein
This helpline listing is for use by
CPCUG members only! The volunteers
will provide assistance on their stated
subjects during the times and days they
have listed. Please be prepared to give the
Helpline volunteer your membership
number; membership has its privileges!
Please do not ask for assistance outside of
the stated times. If you reach a telephone
answering machine, leave a message, as
MEMBER
PHONE
DAYS
many people screen calls or otherwise
prioritize their time. Some volunteers
have provided e-mail addresses so that
you can contact them if you have trouble
getting in touch via telephone.
If you have a modem, you can use the
MIX to get help with a problem. There are
conferences on specific subjects, or you
can use the HELP conference.You can
usually reach a large number of friendly
helpers on a MIX conference. Also, a copy
of this Helpline listing, updated occasion-
TIME
E-MAIL
ACCESS
Walter Clark
John Scott
DTP Conference
Alta Oben
[email protected]
ROOTS Conference
(301) 527-1041 Tue.–Th. 7:00p–9:00p [email protected]
[email protected]
MIX
All
24 hours
ALPHA FIVE (WINDOWS)
Steve Workings
(301) 933-3832 All
ALPHA4 Conference MIX
All
9:00a–Mn
24 hours
ALPHA FOUR
Guy Durant
(202) 575-0414
(202) 575-0414
Steve Workings
(301) 933-3832
ALPHA4 Conference MIX
All
All
All
All
8:00a–11:00a
9:00p–Mn
9:00a–Mn
24 hours
AMI PRO
Robert Simanski
(703) 708-6967 Mon–Fri 7:00p–10:00p
(703) 708-6967 Sat–Sun 10:00a–10:00p
[email protected]
WORDS Conference MIX
All
24 hours
ANNOUNCEMENTS
Jeff Levitan
(202) 606-2876 Mon–Fri 7:30a–4:00p
(301) 924-1968 Mon–Fri 5:00p–10:00p
(301) 924-1968 Sat–Sun Reasonable
APL LANGUAGE
Frank Ditto
Murray Spencer
(304) 725-3283 All
Nn–Mn
[email protected]
[email protected]
(301) 340-2943 Sat–Sun 2:00p–9:00p [email protected]
ASSEMBLY LANGUAGE
Rainer McCown
ADV Conference
CODE Conference
(410) 730-2575
(410) 730-0379
MIX
MIX
Mon–Fri
Mon–Fri
All
All
10:00a–4:00p
6:00p–10:00p
24 hours
24 hours
AT&T PC6300
Donald Palomaki
ATT Conference
(703) 351-8731 Mon–Fri 9:00a–5:00p
(703) 455-9262 All
6:00p–9:00p CIS: 74534,2651
MIX
All
24 hours
Rich Schinnell
BASIC Conference
(301) 365-9569
(301) 365-9569
(301) 949-9292
MIX
Mon–Fri
Sat–Sun
All
All
11:00p–5:00a
11:00a–9:00p [email protected]
6:00p–9:00p
24 hours
72
TIME
E-MAIL
(301) 949-9292 All
MIX
All
(703) 938-5831 Mon–Fri 6:00p–10:00p
(703) 938-5831 Sat–Sun 9:00a–10:00p [email protected]
MIX
All
24 hours
Chip Dodge
(703) 425-7038 All
HW Conference
MIX
All
VENEXP Conference MIX
All
Reasonable
24 hours
24 hours
BUYING DECISIONS
Mike Focke
Jeff Levitan
8:00p–10:00p
7:30a–4:00p
5:00p–10:00p
Reasonable
Robert Simanski
7:00p–10:00p
10:00a–10:00p
[email protected]
Randy Steer
(202) 745-5932 Mon–Fri 8:00p–Mn
(202) 745-5932 Sat–Sun 11:00a–Mn [email protected]
DISK Conference
MIX
All
24 hours
GRAPHIC Conf.
MIX
All
24 hours
HW Conference
MIX
All
24 hours
VENEXP Conference MIX
All
24 hours
(703) 620-2776
(202) 606-2876
(301) 924-1968
(301) 924-1968
(703) 708-6967
(703) 708-6967
All
Mon–Fri
Mon–Fri
Sat–Sun
Mon–Fri
Sat–Sun
C LANGUAGE
Wayne Dernoncourt
[email protected]
Bruce Kriebel
(703) 524-6694 Mon–Fri 6:00p–9:00p
(703) 524-6694 Sat–Sun 10:00a–4:00p
C Conference
MIX
All
24 hours
C++
Keith Bennett
(301) 871-7696 All
C Conference
MIX
All
8:00a–9:00p
[email protected]
24 hours
CAD
David Drazin
(301) 279-7593 All
7:00p–9:00p
(703) 922-6113 All
MIX
All
9:00a–10:00p CIS: 71553,3150
24 hours
CLIPPER
John McDermott
XBASE Conference
COMMUNICATIONS
Rich Schinnell
COMM Conference
(410) 730-2575
(410) 730-0379
(301) 949-9292
MIX
Mon–Fri
Mon–Fri
All
All
10:00a–4:00p
6:00p–10:00p
6:00p–9:00p
24 hours
COMMUNICATIONS—BBS SYSTEMS
Rich Schinnell
SYSOP Conference
BASIC LANGUAGE—QB 4+
Rich Schinnell
BASIC Conference
DAYS
BUILD YOUR OWN
Rainer McCown
BASIC LANGUAGE
Hasan Diwan
PHONE
BROTHER’S KEEPER
(703) 690-6027 All
8:00a–7:00p
(202) 686-3373 Mon–Fri 8:30a–7:00p
ADOBE PAGEMAKER
Lisa Conners
MEMBER
ally, can be found on the MIX in the
CPCUG files area, as HELPLINE.TXT.
If you would like to volunteer your
services in any area, please contact Elliott
Fein on the MIX (VOL conference), or on
the Internet at [email protected], providing your membership number, subject(s), phone number and/or e-mail
address, days, and times. If you have no
modem, write to 5 Carter Court, Rockville,
MD 20852-1005. If you have no postage
stamp, call Elliott at (301) 762-6261.
(301) 949-9292 All
MIX
All
6:00p–9:00p
24 hours
6:00p–9:00p
24 hours
MEMBER
PHONE
DAYS
TIME
E-MAIL
COMMUNICATIONS—MODEMS
Hasan Diwan
Rich Schinnell
COMM Conference
(301) 365-9569
(301) 365-9569
(301) 949-9292
MIX
Mon–Fri
Sat–Sun
All
All
MEMBER
Jesse Roth
ROOTS Conference
Jeff Levitan
Rich Schinnell
Erwin Schmerling
Mon–Fri
Sat–Sun
Mon–Fri
Mon–Fri
Sat–Sun
All
Mon–Fri
TIME
E-MAIL
11:00p–5:00a
7:30a–4:00p
5:00p–10:00p
Reasonable
6:00p–9:00p
7:00p–9:30p
(301) 460-8437 All
MIX
All
8:00p–11:00p
24 hours
(202) 575-0414 All
(202) 575-0414 All
MIX
All
8:00a–11:00a
9:00p–Mn
24 hours
FOXPRO
Guy Durant
(301) 365-9569
(301) 365-9569
(202) 606-2876
(301) 924-1968
(301) 924-1968
(301) 949-9292
(301) 587-1283
DAYS
FAMILY EDGE
11:00p–5:00a
6:00p–9:00p
24 hours
COMPUTING—GENERAL
Hasan Diwan
PHONE
FOX Conference
FRAMEWORK
Bill Redisch
FRAMEWK
Conference
(301) 279-7929 Mon–Th 7:00p–11:00p [email protected]
MIX
All
24 hours
GEOWORKS
DBASE—GENERAL
Rich Schinnell
XBASE Conference
Herb Fredricksen
(301) 949-9292 All
MIX
All
6:00p–9:00p
24 hours
Jeff Levitan
(703) 556-0458 Tue–Fri
MIX
All
7:00p–9:00p
24 hours
(202) 575-0414
(202) 575-0414
(703) 524-6694
(703) 524-6694
MIX
8:00a–11:00a
9:00p–Mn
6:00p–9:00p
10:00a–4:00p
24 hours
2:00p–11:00p
(202) 606-2876
(301) 924-1968
(301) 924-1968
(703) 708-6967
(703) 708-6967
Mon–Fri
Mon–Fri
Sat–Sun
Mon–Fri
Sat–Sun
MIX
All
7:30a–4:00p
5:00p–10:00p
Reasonable
7:00p–10:00p
10:00a–10:00p
[email protected]
24 hours
(703) 620-2776
(202) 606-2876
(301) 924-1968
(301) 924-1968
(301) 949-9292
(301) 593-3505
(301) 593-3505
MIX
All
Mon–Fri
Mon–Fri
Sat–Sun
All
Mon–Fri
Sat–Sun
All
8:00p–10:00p
7:30a–4:00p
5:00p–10:00p
Reasonable
6:00p–9:00p
Evenings
Reasonable
24 hours
GRAPHICS
DBASE III PLUS
Paula Stein
XBASE Conference
(301) 840-2056 All
Robert Simanski
DBASE IV
Guy Durant
Bruce Kriebel
XBASE Conference
All
All
Mon–Fri
Sat–Sun
All
GRAPHIC Conf.
HARD DISKS
Mike Focke
Jeff Levitan
DELPHI/PASCAL
Richard Maley
(301) 840-1554 Mon–Fri 9:00a–5:00p
[email protected]
Rich Schinnell
Doug Wagner
DESKTOP PUBLISHING
Mary Brosnan
Robert Simanski
DTP Conference
(703) 207-0477 All
Reasonable
(703) 207-0479 FAX
(703) 708-6967 Mon–Fri 7:00p–10:00p
(703) 708-6967 Sat–Sun 10:00a–10:00p
[email protected]
MIX
All
24 hours
DISABLE—HARDWARE/SOFTWARE FOR BLIND
Lloyd Rasmussen
DISABLE Conf.
(301) 946-8345 Mon–Fri 7:00p–10:00p
(301) 946-8345 Sat–Sun 10:00a–10:00p
MIX
All
24 hours
Matt Pecori
Rich Schinnell
Erwin Schmerling
Paul Shapiro
DOS Conference
(301) 949-3268 Mon–Fri 7:30p–10:30p
(301) 949-3268 Sat–Sun Nn–10:30p [email protected]
[email protected]
(301) 949-9292 All
6:00p–9:00p
(301) 587-1283 Mon–Fri 7:00p–9:30p
(301) 770-9512 All
MIX
All
24 hours
Rich Schinnell
Henry Winokur
DOS Conference
(202) 606-2876
(301) 924-1968
(301) 924-1968
(301) 949-9292
(301) 320-2104
MIX
Mon–Fri
Mon–Fri
Sat–Sun
All
All
All
7:30a–4:00p
5:00p–10:00p
Reasonable
6:00p–9:00p
Reasonable [email protected]
24 hours
ENABLE
David Littlefield
Steve Workings
HW Conference
[email protected]
8:00p–10:00p
7:30a–4:00p
5:00p–10:00p
Reasonable
6:00p–9:00p
7:00p–10:00p
10:00a–10:00p
[email protected]
(301) 593-3505 Mon–Fri Evenings
(301) 933-3832 All
9:00a–Mn
MIX
All
24 hours
All
Mon–Fri
Mon–Fri
Sat–Sun
All
Mon–Fri
Sat–Sun
HYPERTEXT MARKUP LANGUAGE (HTML)
Harold Goldstein
Walt Houser
(202) 966-9091 All
(301) 299-0593 All
7:00p–10:00p [email protected]
IBM BASEBAND
DOS 6.0
Jeff Levitan
Wayne Dernoncourt
Mike Focke
(703) 620-2776
Jeff Levitan
(202) 606-2876
(301) 924-1968
(301) 924-1968
Rich Schinnell
(301) 949-9292
Robert Simanski
(703) 708-6967
(703) 708-6967
Doug Wagner
DOS
Arnie Kuzmack
DISK Conference
HARDWARE—GENERAL
(202) 723-9527 Mon–Fri 6:00p–10:00p
EXCEL
Diane Cohen
(703) 841-9360 All
Mark Pankin
(703) 524-0937 All
SPREAD Conference MIX
All
Reasonable
Reasonable
24 hours
Jim Laughlin
HW Conference
NETS Conference
(703) 241-0110 All
MIX
All
MIX
All
24 hours
24 hours
INTERNET—NOT CPCUG.ORG
Hasan Diwan
(301) 365-9569 Mon–Fri 11:00p–5:00a
INTERNET—ADVANCED
Hasan Diwan
Harold Goldstein
Matt Pecori
John Scott
(301) 365-9569 Mon–Fri 11:00p–5:00a
(202) 966-9091 All
[email protected]
(202) 686-3373 Mon–Fri 8:30a–7:00p [email protected]
INTERNET—BASICS—NOT CPCUG.ORG
Harold Goldstein
(202) 966-9091 All
Reasonable
[email protected]
73
MEMBER
PHONE
DAYS
TIME
E-MAIL
(301) 365-9569
(301) 365-9569
(301) 670-6349
(301) 423-4526
Mon–Fri
Sat–Sun
All
Mon–Sat
11:00p–5:00a
Reasonable
(301) 261-8981
(410) 266-6959
(301) 949-9292
(301) 770-9512
(703) 708-6967
(703) 708-6967
All
All
All
All
Mon–Fri
Sat–Sun
10:00a–10:00p
10:00a–10:00p
6:00p–9:00p
7:00p–10:00p
10:00a–10:00p
[email protected]
INTERNET—BASICS
Hasan Diwan
Mark Gollub
Peggy Ireland
Bill Lathom
(DC Metro)
in Annapolis
Rich Schinnell
Paul Shapiro
Robert Simanski
(301) 279-0134 All
Reasonable
[email protected]
Roland deWit
(703) 524-6694 Mon–Fri 6:00p–9:00p
(703) 524-6694 Sat–Sun 10:00a–4:00p
Wayne Dernoncourt
David Chessler
MIX Conference
E-MAIL
LOTUS 1-2-3
All
Mon–Fri
Mon–Fri
Sat–Sun
All
(301) 299-4697 Mo, Tu,
We, Fr
7:00p–9:00p
(301) 229-3984 All
MIX
All
7:00p–10:00p
24 hours
MONITOR SELECTION
Doug Wagner
GRAPHICS
Conference
HW Conference
(301) 593-3505 Mon–Fri Evenings
MIX
MIX
All
All
24 hours
24 hours
MULTIMEDIA CONFERENCING
Jim Laughlin
LAN Conference
[email protected]
(703) 841-9360
(202) 606-2876
(301) 924-1968
(301) 924-1968
TIME
(703) 453-6843 Mon–Fri 8:00a–5:00p
NETWORK CONCEPTS
LAN
Diane Cohen
Jeff Levitan
DAYS
MIX, USING THE
Jim Splear
K-EDIT
Bruce Kriebel
PHONE
MICROSOFT OFFICE 97
ISO-9000
Edward H. Jentsch
MEMBER
Reasonable
7:30a–4:00p
5:00p–10:00p
Reasonable
24 hours
(703) 241-0110 All
MIX
All
24 hours
NETWORKS—LANTASTIC ETHERNET
Rich Schinnell
LAN Conference
(301) 949-9292 All
MIX
All
6:00p–9:00p
24 hours
NETWORKS—NOVELL
Jim Laughlin
John Scott
LAN Conference
(703) 241-0110 All
MIX
All
24 hours
LOTUS 1-2-3 2.01
Mark Pankin
(703) 524-0937 All
All
Reasonable
24 hours
NORTON UTILITIES
7:30a–4:00p
5:00p–10:00p
Reasonable
7:00p–10:00p
10:00a–10:00p
[email protected]
Randy Steer
Jeff Levitan
(202) 606-2876
(301) 924-1968
(301) 924-1968
(202) 745-5932
(202) 745-5932
(301) 946-1196
Mon–Fri
Mon–Fri
Sat–Sun
Mon–Fri
Sat–Sun
All
7:30a–4:00p
5:00p–10:00p
Reasonable
8:00p–Mn
11:00a–Mn [email protected]
10:00a–8:00p
(301) 949-3268
(301) 949-3268
Henry Winokur
(301) 320-2104
Donald Wulfinghoff (301) 946-1196
NOVICE Conference MIX
Mon–Fri
Sat–Sun
All
All
All
7:30p–10:30p
Nn–10:30p [email protected]
10:00a–8:00p
24 hours
LOTUS ORGANIZER
Jeff Levitan
Robert Simanski
(202) 606-2876
(301) 924-1968
(301) 924-1968
(703) 708-6967
(703) 708-6967
Mon–Fri
Mon–Fri
Sat–Sun
Mon–Fri
Sat–Sun
M LANGUAGE
Bill DeRoche
Donald Wulfinghoff
NOVICE
Arnie Kuzmack
MACINTOSH—DOS DATA EXCHANGE
Mark Pankin
MAC Conference
(703) 524-0937 All
MIX
All
Reasonable
24 hours
ORACLE
John Scott
Michael Shunfenthal (703) 866-9729 Mon–Fri 7:30p–9:30p
MANAGING YOUR MONEY
David Littlefield
(202) 723-9527 Mon–Fri 6:00p–10:00p
Mark Pankin
(703) 524-0937 All
Reasonable
MONEY Conference MIX
All
24 hours
MEDICAL COMPUTING
Bill DeRoche
MEMORY MANAGEMENT
Doug Wagner
Henry Winokur
DOS Conference
(301) 593-3505
(301) 593-3505
(301) 320-2104
MIX
Mon–Fri
Sat–Sun
All
All
Evenings
Reasonable
Reasonable
24 hours
METASTOCK PROFESSIONAL
Harley Wilbur
(301) 949-8131 All
INVEST Conference MIX
All
Reasonable
24 hours
OS/2
Keith Bennett
Shmuel Metz
(301) 871-7696
(703) 256-4764
(703) 256-4764
(703) 256-4764
C. Patrick Zilliacus
(301) 384-0972
OS2APP Conference MIX
OS2GEN Conference MIX
OS2TECH Conf.
MIX
All
Mon–Th
Sat
Sun
Sat–Sun
All
All
All
6:00p–9:00p
Sunset–9:00p
Noon–9:00p
24 hours
24 hours
24 hours
PARADOX
Walter Clark
Larry Lynn
PARADOX
Conference
(703) 690-6027 All
(301) 585-2300 All
8:00a–7:00p
Reasonable
MIX
24 hours
All
CIS: 71401, 1374
PARADOX FOR DOS
MICROSOFT INTERNET INFORMATION SERVER
Jim Kay
(301) 206-3261 All
Ron Hicks
(703) 516-0323 All
Reasonable
Reasonable
PASCAL LANGUAGE
Rainer McCown
74
(410) 730-2575 Mon–Fri 10:00a–4:00p
(410) 730-0379 Mon–Fri 6:00p–10:00p
[email protected]
MEMBER
PHONE
DAYS
TIME
E-MAIL
PASCAL LANGUAGE—IBM
Paula Stein
7:00p–9:00p
PEACH Conference
DAYS
Mark Pankin
(703) 524-0937 All
Sam Penner
(301) 468-1210 All
All
(301) 365-9569 Mon–Fri 11:00p–5:00a
TIME
E-MAIL
(301) 754-0735 Mon–Fri 6:00p–9:00p
(301) 754-0735 Sat–Sun Reasonable [email protected]
MIX
All
24 hours
Reasonable
Reasonable
24 hours
[email protected]
QUICK BASIC
Mark Pankin
BASIC Conference
PEACHTREE
Norman Risch
PHONE
QUATTRO PRO
(703) 556-0458 Tue–Fri
PASCAL LANGUAGE—TURBO PASCAL
Hasan Diwan
MEMBER
(703) 524-0937 All
MIX
All
Reasonable
24 hours
QUICK BASIC 4.5
Paul Shapiro
BASIC Conference
(301) 770-9512 All
MIX
All
9:00a–9:00p
24 hours
[email protected]
PERSONAL EDITOR II
Rich Schinnell
C. Patrick Zilliacus
QUICKBOOKS (DOS & WINDOWS)
(301) 949-9292 All
6:00p–9:00p
(301) 384-0972 Sat–Sun Nn–9:00p
Mark Gollub
Haytham Najjar
PIBTERM
David Chessler
(301) 229-3984 All
(301) 670-6349 All
Reasonable
(301) 962-6700 Mon–Fri 9:00a–5:00p
[email protected]
[email protected]
7:00p–10:00p
QUICKEN (DOS & WINDOWS)
PL/I
Shmuel Metz
(703) 256-4764 Mon–Th 6:00p–9:00p
(703) 256-4764 Sat
Sunset–9:00p
(703) 256-4764 Sun
Donald Palomaki
BASIC Conference
(301) 295-4793
(301) 585-1162
(301) 585-1162
(301) 585-1162
(703) 351-8731
(703) 455-9262
Mon–Fri
Mon–Th
Sat
Sun
Mon–Fri
All
MIX
All
11:00a–3:00p
7:00p–10:00p
5:00p–10:00p
10:00a–10:[email protected]
9:00a–5:00p
6:00p–9:00p CIS: 74534,2651
[email protected]
24 hours
Mon–Fri
Mon–Fri
Sat–Sun
All
All
All
7:30a–4:00p
5:00p–10:00p
Reasonable
6:00p–9:00p
24 hours
PRINTERS—GENERAL
Jeff Levitan
Rich Schinnell
Henry Winokur
HW Conference
(202) 606-2876
(301) 924-1968
(301) 924-1968
(301) 949-9292
(301) 320-2104
MIX
PRINTERS—HP LASERJET
Jeff Levitan
Rich Schinnell
HW Conference
(202) 606-2876
(301) 924-1968
(301) 924-1968
(301) 949-9292
MIX
Mon–Fri
Mon–Fri
Sat–Sun
All
All
7:30a–4:00p
5:00p–10:00p
Reasonable
6:00p–9:00p
24 hours
(301) 946-1196 All
Donald Wulfinghoff (301) 946-1196 All
All
(301) 770-9512 All
MIX
All
Harley Wilbur
Ken Goosens
SYSOP Conference
[email protected]
[email protected]
(301) 504-0626 Mon–Fri 10:00a–5:00p
(301) 299-2943 All
9:00p–11:00p
(703) 978-4339 All
MIX
All
6:00p–9:00p
24 hours
REXX PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE
Keith Bennett
Bruce Kriebel
Shmuel Metz
ADV Conference
OS2TECH
Conference
REXX Conference
David Chessler
(301) 871-7696
(703) 524-6694
(703) 524-6694
(703) 256-4764
(703) 256-4764
(703) 256-4764
MIX
All
Mon–Fri
Sat–Sun
Mon–Th
Sat
Sun
All
6:00p–9:00p
10:00a–4:00p
6:00p–9:00p
Sunset–9:00p
24 hours
MIX
MIX
All
All
24 hours
24 hours
(703) 620-2776
(301) 593-3505
(301) 593-3505
MIX
All
Mon–Fri
Sat–Sun
All
8:00p–10:00p
Evenings
Reasonable
24 hours
(301) 229-3984 All
7:00p–10:00p
SYSTEM DESIGN
Rich Schinnell
ADV Conference
10:00a–8:00p
24 hours
(301) 949-9292 All
MIX
All
6:00p–9:00p
24 hours
TELEMAGIC (DOS & WINDOWS)
Reasonable
[email protected]
Blair Reischer
(202) 429-2714 All
Reasonable
[email protected]
TROUBLESHOOTING—GENERAL
9:00a–9:00p
24 hours
[email protected]
QEDIT
Robert Simanski
[email protected]
SLMR
10:00a–8:00p
QBASIC (IN MS-DOS)
Paul Shapiro
BASIC Conference
Reasonable
9:00a–5:00p
Reasonable
Reasonable
RBBS-PC
HW Conference
PVCS VERSION MANAGER 5.2
(301) 279-0134 All
Earl Gershenow
Mike Focke
Doug Wagner
PROFESSIONAL WRITE
Edward H. Jentsch
All
Mon–Fri
Sat–Sun
All
SCSI
PROFESSIONAL FILE
Donald Wulfinghoff
Sam Penner
(301) 670-6349
(301) 962-6700
(301) 460-6798
(301) 468-1210
R&R RELATIONAL REPWRITER
POWER BASIC
Allen Hirsh
Mark Gollub
Haytham Najjar
(703) 708-6967 Mon–Fri 7:00p–10:00p
(703) 708-6967 Sat–Sun 10:00a–10:00p
[email protected]
(301) 949-8131 All
Reasonable
Wayne Dernoncourt
Hasan Diwan
(301) 365-9569
(301) 365-9569
Jeff Levitan
(202) 606-2876
(301) 924-1968
(301) 924-1968
Rich Schinnell
(301) 949-9292
Robert Simanski
(703) 708-6967
(703) 708-6967
Henry Winokur
HELP Conference
HW Conference
Mon–Fri
Sat–Sun
Mon–Fri
Mon–Fri
Sat–Sun
All
Mon–Fri
Sat–Sun
(301) 320-2104 All
MIX
All
MIX
All
[email protected]
11:00p–5:00a
7:30a–4:00p
5:00p–10:00p
Reasonable
6:00p–9:00p
7:00p–10:00p
10:00a–10:00p
[email protected]
24 hours
24 hours
75
MEMBER
PHONE
DAYS
TIME
E-MAIL
UNIX
Hasan Diwan
PHONE
DAYS
TIME
E-MAIL
8:00a–8:00p
Reasonable
[email protected]
WORD FOR WINDOWS 97
(301) 365-9569 Mon–Fri 11:00p–5:00a
UTILITIES
Rich Schinnell
Erwin Schmerling
MEMBER
George McLennan
Henry Winokur
(703) 354-9839 All
(301) 320-2104 All
WORD MS (DOS & WINDOWS)
(301) 949-9292 All
6:00p–9:00p
(301) 587-1283 Mon–Fri 7:00p–9:30p
Richard Chused
(202) 662-9067 Mon–Fri 9:00a–5:00p
[email protected]
All
24 hours
(301) 365-9569 Mon–Fri 11:00p–5:00a
MIX
All
24 hours
WORDPERFECT
WINDOWS
Hasan Diwan
WIN Conference
WINDOWS 3.1
Guy Durant
Jeff Levitan
Nancy Rea
Henry Winokur
WIN Conference
(202) 575-0414
(202) 575-0414
(202) 606-2876
(301) 924-1968
(301) 924-1968
(301) 217-1123
(301) 963-9001
(301) 963-9001
(301) 963-9001
(301) 320-2104
MIX
All
All
Mon–Fri
Mon–Fri
Sat–Sun
Mon–Fri
Mon–Fri
Mon–Fri
Sat–Sun
All
All
8:00a–11:00a
9:00p–Mn
7:30a–4:00p
5:00p–10:00p
Reasonable
7:30a–5:00p
7:30a–5:00p
6:00p–9:30p
10:00a–9:30p
24 hours
(301) 365-9569
(301) 365-9569
(301) 206-3261
(301) 217-1123
(301) 963-9001
(301) 963-9001
(301) 963-9001
(301) 949-9292
(703) 708-6967
(703) 708-6967
Mon–Fri
Sat–Sun
All
Mon–Fri
Mon–Fri
Mon–Fri
Sat–Sun
All
Mon–Fri
Sat–Sun
11:00p–5:00a
7:30a–5:00p
7:30a–5:00p
6:00p–9:30p
10:00a–9:30p
6:00p–9:00p
7:00p–10:00p
10:00a–10:00p
[email protected]
24 hours
WINDOWS 95
Hasan Diwan
Jim Kay
Nancy Rea
Rich Schinnell
Robert Simanski
Henry Winokur
WIN95 Conference
(301) 320-2104 All
MIX
All
WINDOWS NT
Jim Kay
John Scott
(301) 206-3261 All
Reasonable
(202) 686-3373 Mon–Fri 8:30a–7:00p
[email protected]
[email protected]
WINFAX PRO
Mark Pankin
Howard Weeks
COMM Conference
WIN Conference
(703) 524-0937
(301) 924-0400
MIX
MIX
All
Mon–Fri
All
All
Reasonable
2:00p–6:00p
24 hours
24 hours
WORD 6.0/7.0 FOR WINDOWS
Edward H. Jentsch
Nancy Rea
(301) 279-0134
(301) 217-1123
(301) 963-9001
(301) 963-9001
(301) 963-9001
Arnie Kuzmack
Matt Pecori
Alan Scher
WP Conference
(301) 949-3268 Mon–Fri 7:30p–10:30p
(301) 949-3268 Sat–Sun Nn–10:30p [email protected]
[email protected]
(301) 657-8862 Mon–Fri 7:00p–9:00p
MIX
All
24 hours
WORDPERFECT (5.XX & 6.0 DOS)
Wayne Dernoncourt
[email protected]
Hasan Diwan
(301) 365-9569 Mon–Fri 11:00p–5:00a
WORDPERFECT (6.0 & 7.0)
Nancy Rea
(301) 217-1123
(301) 963-9001
(301) 963-9001
(301) 963-9001
Mon–Fri
Mon–Fri
Mon–Fri
Sat–Sun
7:30a–5:00p
7:30a–5:00p
6:00p–9:30p
10:00a–9:30p
WORDPERFECT (DOS & WINDOWS)
Jeff Levitan
Howard Weeks
WIN Conference
WP Conference
(202) 606-2876
(301) 924-1968
(301) 924-1968
(301) 924-0400
MIX
MIX
Mon–Fri
Mon–Fri
Sat–Sun
Mon–Fri
All
All
7:30a–4:00p
5:00p–10:00p
Reaonable
2:00p–6:00p
24 hours
24 hours
WORDPERFECT 5+
Rich Schinnell
WP Conference
(301) 949-9292 All
MIX
All
6:00p–9:00p
24 hours
WORDSTAR
Steve Workings
(301) 933-3832 All
All
9:00a–Mn
24 hours
WORLD WIDE WEB
Hasan Diwan
Harold Goldstein
Walt Houser
(301) 365-9569
(301) 365-9569
(202) 966-9091
(301) 299-0593
Mon–Fri
Sat–Sun
All
All
11:00p–5:00a
WORLD WIDE WEB CONTENT DEVELOPMENT
Harold Goldstein
(202) 966-9091 All
Reasonable
XYWRITE
All
Mon–Fri
Mon–Fri
Mon–Fri
Sat–Sun
7:30a–5:00p
7:30a–5:00p
6:00p–9:30p
10:00a–9:30p
David Lawsky
(202) 364-1944 All
Reasonable
Erwin Schmerling
(301) 587-1283 Mon–Fri 7:00p–9:30p
All
24 hours
ThinkQuest!
http://www.advanced.org/ThinkQuest/
76
[email protected]
Member Information eXchange (MIX) Electronic Bulletin Board System
The Member Information eXchange (MIX) is CPCUG’s bulletin board system. Set your comm program for
8 data bits, no parity, 1 stop bit, and call (301) 738-9060 (metro area), (301) 220-0543 (Maryland, non-metro), or
(703) 319-0069 (Virginia, non-metro). Multiple family members can use their family’s CPCUG membership
number to register on the MIX under their own names. To join a conference on the MIX, enter J at the menu.
Special Interest Conferences
Name
_____
Num
_____
Description
___________
ACCESS
ADV
ALPHA4
ASTRO
ATT
BASIC
83
4
5
6
7
9
MicroSoft Access DBMS
Advanced users/programmers
Alpha Four data base
PC applications in astronomy
AT&T PC 6300 and related machines
BASIC programming language
BBS
C
CD-ROM
CODE
COMDEX
COMM
10
14
15
16
84
17
Bulletin Board Listings and Info
C/Unix
CD-ROMs for PCs
Source code repair shop
COMDEX info
Communications
CONSULT
DELPHI
DISABLE
DISK
18
85
20
21
DOS
DTP
EDUC
FLAME
FOX
22
23
24
82
26
PC consultants information exchange
Delphi Discussion
Use of PCs by disabled people
Hard disks; opticals; floppies;
controllers
MS-DOS; DR DOS; etc.
Desktop publishing on the PC
Computers in education
Anything goes in FLAME!
FoxPro; FoxPlus; FoxBase; etc.
FRAMEWK 27 Framework integrated software
package
FUTURE
28 Future of personal computers
GAMES
29 Games
GARDEN 86 Home and Garden
GRAPHIC
HAM
HTML
HW
INVEST
LAN
30
31
95
33
34
35
LAPTOP
LAW
MAC
MEDICAL
MONEY
NETDEV
NETS
36
37
38
39
44
94
46
NUMBER
OOPS
OS2APP
Graphics
Computers in amateur radio
Web page development
Hardware
Investments
Local area networks
Laptop PCs
Laws/regulations affecting PCs
Apple Macintosh
Medical applications
Financial applications such as Quicken
Internet development
Internet; CapAccess and other
public networks
51 PC applications in number theory
53 Object Oriented Programming
Systems
54 Technical discussion of OS/2
applications
OS2GEN
55 General discussion of OS/2
operating system
OS2TECH
56 Technical discussion of OS/2
operating system
PARADOX
PEACH
PHOTO
PRETEEN
REALEST
57
58
87
60
61
REXX
63 REXX Programming Language
Paradox data base package
Peachtree accounting software
Photography & Computers
For Kids under 13
Real estate discussion
ROOTS
64 Use of PCs in genealogy
SCHOLAR 65 For writers; researchers; scholars;
journalists; humanists; others beyond
the mechanics of word processing
SENIORS 89 For Senior Citizens
SHARE
66 Shareware
Special Interest Conferences (continued)
Moderator(s)
____________
Name
_____
Rick Shaddock
Jack Fong
Steve Workings
Walter Nissen
Donald Palomaki
Ray Metler
Donald Palomaki
Mike Focke
Fran Horvath
Fran Horvath
Fran Horvath
Rod Wright
Fred Holmes
Gerhard Postpischil
David Chessler
Walter White
Lloyd Rasmussen
Mike Focke
Doug Wagner
David Chessler
Jelks Cabaniss
Ross Lenet
None
David Crooks
Patrick Finucane
Wayne Dernoncourt
Bill Redisch
Joe Gilvary
Bill Larkins
KC Shore
Lynne Sturtz
Gerhard Postpischil
Rick White
Bill Lathom
Jack Fong
Warren Sanborn
Stanley Naudus
Susan Ellsworth
Bob Morrison
Seth Greenstein
Bob Morrison
Bill DeRoche
Gene Gould
Walt White
Bill Lathom
Henry Noble
Arnie Kuzmack
Jack Fong
SPREAD
SQL
67 All the various spreadsheet programs
68 SQL and RDBMS
STAT
SYSOPS
TEENS
TRAVEL
UNIX
WIN
WIN95
WINNT
69
70
71
88
73
77
90
78
WORDS
79 Word processing
WP
80 WordPerfect
XBASE
XFIRE
81 dBASE and Related
41 Debate on many topics
Patrick Zilliacus
Rod Wright
Herb Tyson
Herb Tyson
Patrick Zilliacus
Rod Wright
Rod Wright
Herb Tyson
Patrick Zilliacus
Mark Kantrowitz
Norman Risch
Mike Stein
Stan Doore
Larry McGoldrick
Gerhard Postpischil
Kurt Germann
George Archer
David Chessler
Fred Holmes
Jack Carlson
Larry McGoldrick
Num
_____
Description
___________
Statistics
BBS in General
13 and Up
Travel Discussion
Unix, Linux, etc.
Windows
Windows 95
Windows NT
Moderator(s)
____________
Bill Landau
Alok Nigam
Walter White
Doug Wagner
Michael Kane
Gregory Oshel
Gene Gould
Alan McConnell
Larry McGoldrick
Jeff Peters
Susan Ellsworth
Charles Kelly
Robert Oshel
Bob Morrison
Bob Morrison
Robert Oshel
Jelks Cabaniss
Patrick Zilliacus
CPCUG Service Conferences
Name
_____
Num
____
Description
___________
BUYING
13
Buying Group
CPCUG
19
MEMBER
40
General comments &
suggestions re CPCUG
Membership questions/complaints
MIX
42
Comments on this MIX system
MONITOR 45
Monitor comments and suggestions
NOTICE
47
TRAIN
72
Notices of CPCUG activities (see also
NOTICEG for non-CPCUG activities)
Information about CPCUG training
seminars
VOL
75
Volunteers
WATSON
76
CPCUG’s Watson voice response
system
Moderator(s)
___________
Chip Dodge
George McLennan
Lillian Milliner
Rich Schinnell
Terrence Miller
Randy Steer
Lynne Sturtz
Michael Kane
Bill Feidt
Rich Schinnell
Barbara Conn
Michael Kane
Richard Biffl
Rich Schinnell
Joel Jacobson
Greg Smith
Lynne Sturtz
Fred Holmes
Sondra Katz
Fran Horvath
General Interest Conferences
Name
_____
Num Description
_____ ___________
ADS
1
ADSC
2
ADSGEN
3
BALT
8
HELP
32
MIXNET
150
NOTICEG 48
NOVA
NOVICE
REFER
5
49
62
VENEXP
74
Computer related ads,
NON-commercial
Computer related ads,
commercial
Non-computer related ads
Baltimore SIG
Help
Internet E-mail
General Notices
Northern Virginia SIG
Help for Novices
Requests for referrals for paid
assistance
Experience with local and
mail order vendors
Moderator(s)
____________
Patrick Zilliacus
Wayne Dernoncourt
Wayne Dernoncourt
Patrick Zilliacus
Wayne Dernoncourt
Bill Lutz
Mike Focke
SYSOP
Gabriel Goldberg
Fred Holmes
Charles Kelly
Bill Landau
Chris De Francisci
Patrick Zilliacus
Sysop: Rene Thirion Co-Sysops: Michael Kane, Kevin Arnold, Bill Feidt, Rich Schinnell, and Larry McGoldrick
77
Directions to CPCUG HQ Meeting Room and Office
51 Monroe Street
Plaza East Two
Rockville, MD 20850-2421
(301) 762-9372
By Metrorail
Take the Red Line to the Rockville station.
Before 6:30PM on weekdays, go left via the
west exit, up two floors to the B level, and
across the enclosed walkway toward
Rockville Center, over Hungerford
Drive/Rockville Pike (Route 355). Go into
the first entrance to the building on the
left (51 Monroe Street) and bear left.
On weekends, and after 6:30PM on weekdays, go left to the west exit, up one flight
to the street level, then diagonally left to the
traffic signal at the corner of Monroe Street
and Rockville Pike. Walk up Monroe Street
one-half block (toward the Judicial Center).
51 Monroe will be on your right, with a red
canopy over the sidewalk at the entrance to
the building. If the doors to the building are
not open, call 018 on the phone to the right
(or look for CPCUG on the directory by the
phone). If someone is already there, you
will be buzzed in. Take an elevator up to the
Plaza (Lobby) level. Go left after exiting the
elevator, go through the glass door, and
proceed down the corridor. Plaza East Two
is past the rest rooms and near the end of
the corridor on the left.
By Auto
Driving north on I-270, be sure to be in
the right-hand local lanes. Take Exit 5,
marked Rockville Town Center-Potomac,
for Falls Road, Route 189. Stay in the right-hand lane of the exit ramp so that you drive east on Maryland Avenue. At the third
traffic light, turn right on Fleet Street. Turn left at the next traffic light, onto Monroe Street. Go 2 blocks and take the second right
(still Monroe St.). Enter the garage by the red awning with 51 Monroe written on it.
From (Route 355) the north (Gaithersburg area)—Go toward Rockville on Route 355. Go past Hechinger’s. Near the Rockville
Metro Station, get into the right lane. Turn right (west) onto Monroe Street. 51 Monroe Street is immediately on your right (the
high-rise building with a red awning over the entranceway). The parking garage is under the building to the right of the entrance.
From (Route 355) the south—Go north on Rockville Pike toward Rockville Center. Bear left onto Route 28 (follow signs for Route
270). Go one block on Route 28 toward the west. Turn right (north) onto Monroe Street. (There is a Potomac Valley Bank on the left
side at the corner.) Go one block to the stop sign. Proceed on Monroe Street to the right around the corner. 51 Monroe Street is
immediately on your left (highrise building with the red awning over the entranceway). The parking garage is under the building to
the right of the entrance.
Parking fees are collected until midnight on weekdays and from 3:00 to 11:00PM on Saturdays. Bring your parking ticket with you to the
office to get it stamped. Otherwise, you will have to pay the hourly rate when you leave the garage. If the doors to the building are not
open, call 018 on the phone to the right (or look for CPCUG on the directory by the phone). If someone is already there, you’ll be
buzzed in. Take an elevator up to the Plaza (Lobby) level. Go left after exiting the elevator, go through the glass door, and then proceed
down the corridor. Plaza East Two is past the rest rooms and near the end of the corridor on the left.
78
Directions to NIH
CPCUG General Meetings Are Held in the Masur Auditorium
and FREE Saturday Seminars Are Held in the Lipsett Amphitheater
of the National Institutes of Health (NIH)
By Auto
Take the Wisconsin Avenue
south exit off the Beltway. Go
south on Wisconsin Avenue
(Rockville Pike) about one mile.
Turn right at the third light onto
Wilson Drive. Go to the stop
sign and turn right onto Center
Drive. Follow Center Drive as it
curves around to the left. Turn
left onto Memorial Drive and
then immediately right into the
entrance to the garage.
By Metrorail to NIH
Take the Red Line to the
Medical Center stop. Building 10
is approximately four blocks
across the NIH campus.
(See map.)
Directions to Washington Gas
Some Virginia SIG meetings, including Internet and Virginia,
are held at Washington Gas at 6801 Industrial Road,
Springfield,VA. Industrial Road is in the Shirley Industrial Park.
It intersects Backlick Road between the Beltway and Edsall
Road.
I-395
Take Exit 2, Edsall Road (Route 648) West
Turn left on Backlick Road (Route 617)
After approximately 0.7 mile, turn left on
Industrial Road
Enter Washington Gas parking lot on right
after passing sign with white lettering on
black background,“Payment Depository”
Beltway
Outer
Loop
(South)
Take Exit 5, Braddock Road (Route 620) East
After approximately 1.8 miles, turn right on
Backlick Road (Route 617)
After approximately 0.7 mile, turn left on
Industrial Road
Enter Washington Gas parking lot on right
after passing sign with white lettering on
black background,“Payment Depository”
FROM
DC
Take the 14th Street Bridge
Continue with I-395 directions
Beltway
Inner
Loop (North)
Take I-395 North
Continue with I-395 directions
79
Send To:
Membership Form
Notes for Newcomers
Plaza East Two
51 Monroe Street
The Capital PC User Group, Inc., a support
organization for users of personal computers,
was established in 1982. Although the group
serves primarily the Washington, DC, metropolitan area, members are located all over the world.
Name
The Capital PC User Group provides a forum
for the exchange of information and experience
by PC users. Activities include a telephone
helpline, e-mail, a monthly meeting, a shareware software library, educational seminars, a
monthly magazine, the MIX electronic bulletin
board system (BBS), and Special Interest Groups
(SIGs) for areas of specialized interest. Annual
dues are $42; for two years, dues are $78; for
three years, $110. International dues are $60 a
year. Of this, $5 is for a subscription to the
Monitor.
Address
City/State/ZIP
Telephone (Evening)
Telephone (Day)
Member Number
❑ New Membership
❑ 1 year—$42
❑ Renewal
❑ 2 years—$78
❑ Change of Address
❑ 3 years—$110
(Outside the U.S., dues are $60 per year)
❑ VISA ❑ MasterCard
Charge fees to my:
Card Number
Expiration Date
Signature (required for credit cards):
List my name in membership directory? ❑ Yes
❑ No
Name and address information from membership directory may be
made available to computer-related businesses as approved by the
Editor. Most often the list is released to vendors desiring to announce
their General Meeting presentations. If you do not wish to be included in the directory, mark the appropriate box above.
❑ List my company name in bold in the membership directory. (I
have inserted my company name in the first address line on this
form. I have also checked the “Yes”box above for listing in the
membership directory.)—$10
Note—If paying by credit card, the Membership Form may be faxed to
(301) 762-9375.
80
For General Meeting information, call (301)
762-9372, Monday through Friday, 10AM to 3PM.
General Meetings are held on the second
Monday of each month (except December, first
Monday) in the Masur Auditorium, on the first
floor of the Clinical Center (Building 10), at the
National Institutes of Health (NIH). The main
entrance is on Center Drive; an underground
parking garage is located off Memorial Drive.
The format for each meeting is:
6:15PM: Membership information and
registration, and Monitor sales
7:00PM: SIG presentation or general
Q&A.
Index of Advertisers
David Thomas Agro . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Cyber Exchange . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Hamilton Programs. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Millkern Communications, Inc. . . . . . . . .
README .DOC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Technology Advancement Group, Inc. . .
TeraTech . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Video Labs Corporation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
To become a member, please fill out the membership form and send it, along with a check for
your dues, to Capital PC User Group, Plaza
East Two, 51 Monroe Street, Rockville, MD
20850-2421. Please be patient.Your membership
starts with the first magazine mailed to you. It
may take 4–6 weeks before you are included on
the mailing list or receive your membership
card.
57
19
57
28
43
1
C4
57
8:00PM: General Meeting main
presentation. All other activities
close.
9:15PM: “Late Night.” After meetings,
SIG representatives are available
to discuss SIG activities. Others
may be available to answer the
questions of computer novices.
The locations will be announced
during the meeting.
ENTERTAINMENT® ’98 Order Form
___ Virginia/Washington, DC Edition $35.00
___ Maryland/Washington, DC Edition $35.00
___ Baltimore North Edition $35.00
___ Baltimore South Edition $35.00
___ Richmond Edition $30.00
___ VA Beach/Norfolk Edition $35.00
Please send me _____ Entertainment ’98 Books at $35.00 each plus $3.50 shipping and handling charge for a total of $ __________ .
Enclosed is my check, money order or credit card (VISA or MasterCard) for $ __________ .
Ship Book(s) to: (No P.O. Boxes please)
(Make check payable to CPCUG)
NAME _____________________________
MAIL TO:
ADDRESS __________________________
CITY __________ ST _____ ZIP ________
Plaza East 2
DAY PHONE (______) ________________
51 Monroe Street
MEMBER NUMBER __________________
Rockville, MD 20850 • (301) 762-9372
Credit card orders may be faxed to (301) 762-9375.
To order by Credit Card: VISA MC
Name (as it appears on card)
____________________________________
Card Number _______________________
Expiration Date ______________________
Signature ___________________________
MON1297
ext. 1230
Capital PC User Group
51 Monroe Street
Plaza East Two
Periodicals Postage
paid
at Rockville, MD

Monitor • December 1997 - Capital Personal Computer User Group

Transcription

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