What You Need to Know about All Things PC
Volume 2 Number 20Click here to return to the back issues page.Click here to return to the main newsletter page.
The Naked PC - http://www.TheNakedPC.com What You Need to Know about All Things PC Publisher: Lee Hudspeth and T.J. Lee Editor in Chief: Dan Butler Contributing Editor: Al Gordon This issue is for Thursday, September 30, 1999 - Vol. 2 No. 20 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Table of Contents ** 01. Letter from the Publisher ** 02. Tech Support Revisited (by Al Gordon) ** 03. The Virtual Office: Part 2 (by T.J. Lee) ** 04. My Sister-in-Law's First PC Purchase: Case Study Using "The Unofficial Guide to PCs" - Part 2 (by Lee Hudspeth) ** 05. Software Bargains and Free Stuff (by Dan Butler) ** 06. Featured Product Recommendation - Acer CD ReWriter ** 07. Featured Book - "The Mythical Man-Month" by Frederick P. Brooks Jr. ** 08. Featured Web Site - Tim Higgins' Sharing Your Internet Connection ** 09. Newsworthy - a potpourri of current events and interesting stuff ** 10. We Get Mail - Comments and Tips from TNPC Readers ** 01. Letter from the Publisher Lots to do, lots to see in this exciting issue of TNPC (I can't wait for the movie version. Think they could get Harrison Ford to play Dan?). Anyway, from tech support to purchasing that first PC to becoming virtual, we touch on it all in this issue. Dan's journey into Linux land will take a brief hiatus until next time. We'd like to let our newsletter readers know that in the October 1999 issue of PC/Computing magazine (page 154) you'll find the third annual "Undocumented Internet Secrets" feature to which Lee Hudspeth and T. J. Lee contributed. Lee and T.J. have been contributing to this annual feature for the last three years, last year helping to win the coveted 1999 National Magazine Award (the first time any Ziff-Davis publication ever won this award). You'll find the article on the Ziff-Davis Web site at: http://www.zdnet.com/pccomp/stories/all/0,6605,2324841,00.html You can also check out this page on the PRIME Consulting site where you'll find links to all the articles the gang at PRIME Consulting Group has written. http://www.PRIMEConsulting.com/articles/index.html?v2i20 Meanwhile T.J. would like to thank Fresno residents John W., Marian R., and John D. (John's over in Madera), for welcoming him to the Central Valley and making him feel at home. He'd organize a barbeque but he's not sure his grill survived the move. Kudos to TNPCers Tim B., Jerry S., and of course, Andrew H., who displayed not only a dogged thoroughness in reading every last line of TNPC #2.19 but are wise in the way of rock trivia and know what it means to "go to eleven." Keep Tap'n, guys. As always, reader support is what keeps TNPC free, so please pass a copy of TNPC on to co-workers and friends (no spam please!) and always say "I saw it in TNPC!" +++------------------------- sponsor -------------------------+++ >> Search Engines Taking you Nowhere? STOP Wasting Time --- on searches that GO nowhere! Confidential --> Classified --> Top Secret --> For Your Eyes Only http://www.zcat.com/t/index.shtml ********** Who have you been trying to find? ********** +++------------------------- sponsor -------------------------+++ ** 02. Tech Support Revisited (by Al Gordon) As noted in this space before, the quality -- or lack thereof -- of tech support is to me one of the major irritants of modern computing. Last week, however, no less than Microsoft provided a truly strange twist to the tale. I was installing the latest version of the Encarta encyclopedia - - ordinarily one of the easiest software installations possible. And, indeed, easy it was in Windows 98. But when I installed it on my Windows NT4 Workstation partition, it crashed every time I tried to run it. I went through the usual: uninstall, reinstall, try again. Crash. Start up Windows cleanly, bypassing the Startup group applications. Crash. Go to the Microsoft Web site. Look for Knowledge Base articles that might relate to the problem. Nothing found. It was time to call Microsoft tech support. Call. Wait on hold. Get connected to a friendly person, who then turns out to be simply the person plugging your product number into the computer to start the service process running. Back on hold. Tech support person picks up the phone. I explain the problem and that it involves an installation on NT4. Tech support person observes that he doesn't know much about NT, but if I tell him what the error is, perhaps a Windows 98 analog can be found. We repeat all the steps that I had already tried. They still don't work. The technician asks if he can put me on hold, then disappears for a few minutes. This is always a bad sign. It means he is running out of ideas and is frantically searching his database to see if he can find something halfway relevant. He comes back on the phone and determines that the sequence leading to the crash is related to the point at which Encarta invokes Shockwave. I uninstall Shockwave and then reinstall it. Encarta still crashes. The technician then puts me on hold. As long-time users of tech support know, this is now past the bad sign stage, and has gone all the way up to "ominous." It means the technician is now entirely clueless about what to do next, and is consulting with a supervisor. At this point in the process, I typically want to start screaming at the silent phone: why don't you just put the person you're consulting on the line? What I actually do is immediately start pressing him when he gets back on the phone to "escalate" the case to higher level tech support. Traditionally, it is necessary to mess around on the long distance telephone line for another 15 minutes or so before the technician finally surrenders. He escalates it. Microsoft promises a return call within three business days. I get one in two days. Unfortunately, I'm not home. The message on my answering machine promises a return phone call later that afternoon. Four days later, I'm still waiting. I call back. The friendly voice that answers the phone this time after yet another wait on hold can't find my record. The original technician gave me the wrong case number. She refers me to a support technician. I am, of course, back at entry-level support. I try to minimize my temper tantrum, and firmly demand the escalation team. Naturally, the person who is supposed to be handling the case isn't there. They promise me a call back "within the hour." Three hours later, the phone rings. And here's where it all takes a REALLY strange twist. It turns out to be the person who was supposed to a call back four days ago. He apologizes. Yes: an apology. No fancy excuses - - just that he had to go into a meeting and just plain forgot to call back. I can identify with that. We go through the Encarta problem. It turns out to be one of those things that you couldn't duplicate in a million years if you tried. First off, Shockwave was updated just after Encarta shipped. If you happened, as I did, to have installed the new Shockwave and then install Encarta, the respective installation programs result in a totally corrupted Shockwave. Reinstallation alone won't fix it, you have to physically delete the Shockwave files for your hard drive, then reinstall. I do all that. And it still crashes. The technician then walks me through a very impressive set of diagnostic utilities that are bundled with the software. They help determine that some DLLs haven't been properly registered, and he helped me correct that. We have ignition. We have liftoff. But wait, there's more. The supervisor in that department sends me an email apologizing for all the problems. I message him back to say that so long as the program is now running, I am pleased -- except for the phone bill. He replies: send us the phone bill, and we'll reimburse you. He provides me with his mailing address at Microsoft. I am stunned. Thanks for the offer, but it makes a much better story to be able to go around saying that Microsoft owes me money. You can reach Al Gordon at: mailto:algordon@TheNakedPC.com +++------------------------- sponsor -------------------------+++ "The Unofficial Guide to PCs" What readers are saying, "I bought TUGPCs and three days later I finished it. It is without a doubt the best book I have read on computers ever." Get the computer book from the guys that bring you TNPC. An incredible value on Amazon at only $12.59! http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0789717972/tnpcnewsletter/ +++-----------------------------------------------------------+++ ** 03. The Virtual Office: Part 2 (by T.J. Lee) I received an awful lot of email on the Virtual Office article in TNPC #2.19. What was interesting is that I heard from both management as well as employees with everyone wanting to know more about how to go virtual. No one is quite sure where to start. TNPCer Rebecca Rachmany is the manager of TECH-TAV Documentation Ltd., a virtual company of about 15 that has been in business 10 years. Rebecca has graciously shared her experience in managing a virtual company which may give employers in our readership some insight on the whys and hows of starting a virtual program of their own. "There are two basic reasons why the company I manage, TECH-TAV Documentation Ltd., went virtual: 1. Finance. 2. Competitive employment market. (1. Finance) Technical writing has a relatively low profit margin, therefore we needed to find a way to do it with minimal overhead. We've been around longer than most of our competitors, primarily because of our low (almost zero) overhead costs. (2. Competitive employment market) In Israel, as in the US, it is increasingly difficult to find high-quality white collar workers. By allowing my staff to work at home, I have an incredibly low staff turnover rate. Also I can hire people who aren't looking for full-time jobs, or who are looking to work odd hours. Once you have the motivation, you need the tools. There are four elements I attribute to our company's "virtual" success: 1. Enlightened management. 2. Measurements. 3. Motivated workers. 4. Technology. (1. Enlightened Management) I'll never forget the look of shock and horror on my colleague's face when I explained that I typically see my workers once every six month or so. He said "I could never do that." This is the key: if you are afraid to work this way, the problem starts with you, not with your employees. If you are the kind of manager who needs to visit your workers' cubicles several times a day to make sure they are working, you cannot go virtual. Incidentally, if you are this type of manager, your employees aren't very productive, and they don't like you much, either. You need to explore your fears and understand what it is that bothers you about the virtual office. Next you need to know whether the type of work you are doing can actually be done off-line. If your workers are telling you it can be, ask them to write a short proposal on how they think it will work (note how quickly you can offload your problems to someone else when you are the boss). You will quickly see if their analysis is correct. Furthermore, realize that you can be "partially virtual." Most of my staff members do on-site visits once or twice a week. The major concern of the traditional boss is loss of control, and this is a real concern. The "enlightened" manager, however, *wants* to offload control and responsibility to his or her workers, and is only too happy to have them do the thinking for themselves. It is true that you will have less control and responsibility if your workers are telecommuting. I believe it is a good thing to give more control and responsibility to workers. I believe it boosts productivity and makes everyone happier. Of course, you still need to do the job of making sure things are on track, coordinating efforts, and setting team goals. Another real concern is the fear that your workers aren't going to do anything while they are gone from the office. This is why I consider Measurement as a major success factor in going virtual. (2. Measurement) My company writes technical and user manuals, and I personally have been in the technical writing field for a decade. It takes one quick glance for me to tell whether someone is doing their job. It is easy for me to compare someone's timesheet to their output and know if they are doing well. As a manager, you probably have some way of telling whether your people are getting the job done. Even if it's not a formal measure, you probably know who is doing what and how well. If your only measure of productivity is the worker's timecard, then you aren't doing your job as a manager. Now that you can measure your worker's productivity, you may have to take some steps to formalize that measurement or adapt it for remote working. Once you have a measurement you feel comfortable with, simply make it clear to the worker what is expected of her and how it is being measured, and you are ready to send her off to work at home. (3. Motivated workers.) For many, just the idea that you trust them enough to have them working at home is great motivation. For others, you may need to tie incentives to productivity in order to ensure that they are getting the job done. Working from home is not for everyone. Recently, we had to drop a worker because he simply could not manage to get his kids out of his office during his "working" hours. The pressures of working at home are great, and the temptation to do other things first is always looming. It is not a big risk to let someone work at home on a trial basis. Set goals and a time limit. If it doesn't work out, haul them back in to the office. (4. Technology.) I purposely put this last. The virtual office has existed for at least a century, to my knowledge. Clothing factories used to drop off piecework at the homes of stay-at-home mothers who would sew the pieces together and receive payment on a per-item basis. There is nothing new about the idea of working at home. Once you have decided to do it, it's simple enough to give a worker a remote login to your network, a high-speed Internet connection, or whatever other connectivity service she requires." In future issues we'll look at going virtual from an employee's perspective. You can reach T.J. Lee at: mailto:tj_lee@TheNakedPC.com ** 04. My Sister-in-Law's First PC Purchase: Case Study Using "The Unofficial Guide to PCs" - Part 2 (by Lee Hudspeth) In the previous issue we left Marie with no PC, three quotes, and some open questions. * Thursday, Sept. 16 -- She wanted to pursue a discount program she had heard was sponsored by her university and Dell, so she got a quote from Dell's Connection Education Channel. We reviewed the quote together (it was an OptiPlex GX1), compared it to what was available to me as a non-education buyer via an Internet purchase, and the configuration options were too restrictive. We quickly dropped the idea. Furthermore, the sales rep was unhelpful, didn't know his channel's terms and options very well, and we weren't in the mood to do Dell's job for them. We could both hear the clock ticking so I prompted her to write down her remaining questions. I agreed to call her back in one hour. * One hour later -- She doesn't have a distinct set of questions. Instead she expresses her main concern: she feels she doesn't have enough direct, personal experience with the components to make an informed decision. We review her requirements, the TUGPC checklists, and all of our previous discussions. She has faith in our work to date, and the components list is okay. More probing reveals her underlying concern: since she doesn't have the time to get up to speed herself on the care and feeding of a PC (just needs to use it as a tool, period) she'll have to rely on resources other than herself. So we dramatically increase the weight of her "support infrastructure" requirement. We list her available resources, and rank them in terms of their proximity and practicality, especially should a hardware problem arise: 1. The PC seller (could be either local or remote) 2. University computer lab personnel (local) 3. Me (remote, as in thousands of miles away; in spite of being far removed, I am "in the PC business" and co-author of the book she's using successfully as her guidebook on this adventure) 4. Fellow students and friends (local) Studying this list, she realizes it's crucial that she have local -- meaning a neighborhood drive away at most -- support personnel standing behind her PC. While it's true that Dell offers next day and even same-day on site service (same-day for an incremental fee above the quoted price), she wants to consistently deal with the same technicians and owners over the long haul. Bravo, I tell her, you've made your decision: the local clone shop. (Sidebar: Marie momentarily considers an Apple PowerPC G4 which is literally just coming to market in a week or so. She gets a quote from the Apple Store that is as close to her Wintel PC component list as possible. It prices out at $2,500 (including shipping), which is 40% above the average of the Wintel PC quotes. Without going off on a significant Apple vs. Wintel PC tangent -- an entire article series unto itself -- suffice it to say that we were hard-pressed to justify the Apple G4's price premium. Furthermore, of the two local retailers she visited that sold Apple computers, in both cases their sales staff were rude and uninformative. Curiously, she was told by the Apple Store and one local retailer that she can't buy a G3 -- the G4's predecessor -- at a price below that of the G4. I admit that neither of us really followed up on this. Perhaps it was a mistake, or a common occurrence in the world of "Apple economics." Drop me a line if this makes any sense to you.) * Tuesday, Sept. 21 -- Marie buys the PC from her local mom and pop clone shop. It's due for installation at her place on Friday the 24th at 2:00 PM. * Friday, Sept. 24 -- 2:10 PM and the technician is a no-show. When she calls the shop they apologize and say they're short some parts due to the Taiwan earthquake and won't have her system ready until Monday. They don't make it clear why they didn't call her. When she tells me this, we agree that it wasn't very cool for them to not call her earlier in the day. I'm not making excuses here, but Marie's time is so precious right now that she takes the position that since they promised to do the install on Monday, and the alleged difficulty was an "act of God," she's going to hang in there. Still, this is strike 1. * Monday, Sept. 27 -- 1:00 PM brings a smiling, courteous technician who has her PC set up in less than an hour. At my insistence, she had gotten them to agree that one of the things they'd provide for a $50 on-site setup would be getting her connected to the Internet via her ISP. Sadly, the technician only has a 6' phone cable, so they're unable to complete the Internet setup (she has an AT&T WorldNet CD in hand). As I write this, I'm getting angrier. My sister-in-law had to -- in spite of her crushing study load, a three-day delay in the system install, and having paid an incremental $50 setup fee -- go out to Radio Shack and get the 20' cable herself. I don't know why the technician didn't have one in his kit bag (I carry these around by the dozen in my kit bag whenever I go to a client's office for a hardware visit), or why he didn't offer to go get one! Grrrr. Oh, and they forgot to include the internal Iomega Zip 100 drive; they hastily agree to install it for her Monday, at her place and at a time that's convenient for her. Hmmm, are the above goofs strike 2 for this particular clone shop? Let me know what you think. If you're interested in the tome Marie's using as her handbook, it's our "The Unofficial Guide to PCs": http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0789717972/tnpcnewsletter/ You can reach Lee Hudspeth at: mailto:leehudspeth@TheNakedPC.com ** 05. Software Bargains and Free Stuff (by Dan Butler) First an absolute freebie and nice upgrade on a product we mentioned way back in TNPC #1.3. Programmer's File Editor better known as PFE is a text editor with muscle for Windows. Get your free copy from: http://www.lancs.ac.uk/people/cpaap/pfe/ The next two choices are free after rebates. Usually these are only good for the USA and possibly Canada. Check the conditions before ordering. On a side note we'd welcome pointers to good software vendors outside the USA so drop us a line. First up is Print Artist Platinum 4.0. Here is a publishing package for the masses. Tons of graphics, photos, and layouts. Give your creative juices a spin: http://www.beyond.com/AF23174/PKMM101416/prod.htm For the budding world traveler in your home try a free copy of "Where In The World Is Carmen Sandiego?". Plenty of geographical fun in a game that both the parents and the children can play together: http://www.beyond.com/AF23174/PKIN989396/prod.htm If you know of software or hardware bargains that would interest TNPC readers, send them in to: mailto:bargains@TheNakedPC.com ** 06. Featured Product Recommendation - Acer CD ReWriter A few weeks ago our esteemed colleague and TNPCer Mike Craven mentioned that he had just finished researching the market for rewritable CD (CD-RW) drives and associated software. ("CD-RW" represents "CD-ReWritable," and these drives read from, and write to -- repeatedly -- CD discs.) He was totally stoked about his new drive, the Acer CD ReWriter (CRW4432A). Here are its high points: * Write 4x/Rewrite 4x/Read 32x (screaming!) * connects to your E-IDE/ATAPI bus (easy installation!) * 5.25" form factor * 120ms typical access time * flash memory for firmware updating (cool!) * bundled feature-packed software * reads/plays all CD formats * writes to standard CD-R and CR-RW formats (latter is 650MB, 74 minutes) Mike was shopping at Micro Center in Southern California and the price on this drive has been dropping like a lead balloon. I bought one at $199, $30 *below* the price he paid for his two weeks ago... is there any end in sight!? Plus, Micro Center is offering its own $30 mail-in rebate (ends September 30) so my net price was $169. WOW! So, what's the buzz with CD-RW drives? According to a recent "PC Computing" magazine report, the Iomega Zip 100 owned 75% market share of February 1999 U.S. sales of removable storage devices. Look for that to change, quickly. With these low prices and high feature points, we predict CD-RW drives are going to outpace the Iomega Zip. A current mail-order street price for an Iomega Zip 100 drive is $99, and a Zip 250 is $139. Yes, those prices are temptingly low, even when compared to the featured Acer CD-RW price. But remember, the CD is a vastly more prevalent device (and format) than a Zip cartridge, a CD holds between 3 (650/250) and 6.5 times (650/100) more data, and you can't listen to a Zip cartridge at your PC or in your car stereo. Also, cartridges cost more: pre-formatted cartridges run about $12 each (100MB) and $18 each (250MB); rewritable CDs cost about $4 each; recordable (once only) CDs cost about $2 each. Here's an installation tip for this or any additional IDE drive. Well before you're ready to actually do the installation, open your PC's chassis and examine the 40-pin IDE cable for the IDE channel you're putting the drive on. A 40-pin IDE cable is the flat gray cable that connects your motherboard to any hard disk, CD, or other drive on your IDE bus. The motherboard diagram in your user's manual will indicate which port is IDE1 and which is IDE2, and It's typically marked on the motherboard surface, too. In my case, I left my standard CD-ROM drive as the master device on IDE2 and installed the CD-RW as the slave device on IDE2. If the target IDE channel's cable is a one-drive cable, as mine was, you'll need to replace it with a two-drive ("Y" or "splitter") type cable, available for about $6 at any electronics parts store. (I forgot to check the cable in advance, so had to do a last-minute scramble for this part.) The Acer drive's installation instructions are satisfactory, and I had no difficulties whatsoever on boot-up. This is a must-have drive, folks. http://www.acerperipherals.com/ps_storage/ps_st_4432a.htm (We just checked and you can get this same deal at Amazon.com -- USA only -- by following this link: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00000JBPS/tnpcnewsletter The Amazon page did not say if they were extending the $30 rebate period so be sure to check carefully before ordering, although even the pre-rebate price of $199 is a great bargain. -- Ed.) To make use of the recording capabilities of your CD-RW drive you'll need some special software. These utilities allow you to: format CDs to receive data, send data to them as if they were hard disks, add data to them, erase them, and set them up so that they can be successfully read by any standard CD-ROM drive. There are plenty of CD-R/CD-RW utilities to choose from, but if you buy the Acer CD ReWriter you get the best utilities bundled right in with the drive: Adaptec Easy CD Creator and Adaptec DirectCD. Adaptec Easy CD Creator (along with its sidekick CD Copier) lets you make audio CDs and data CDs, copy CDs, and print disc inserts/labels. (All the usual caveats about preserving intellectual property rights apply.) Adaptec DirectCD is the interface to your CD-RW drive should you want to use it like a floppy, removable, or hard drive. It lets you set up a CD-R or CD-RW disc so any software application that can read from or write to a drive letter can read/write to it, and provides an interface for saving files to that CD. Any disc recorded using DirectCD can be read by any other PC with a CD-RW drive using DirectCD, and can also be read by any PC with a standard CD-ROM drive by using Adaptec's freely downloadable UDF reader. (UDF stands for Universal Disk Format. According to Adaptec it is "a new file system with support for the current generation of CDs such as CD-RW, DVD-ROM and DVD-Video.") UDF Readers (free): http://www.adaptec.com/products/overview/udfreaders.html Adaptec Easy CD Creator patch: http://www.adaptec.com/support/upgrade/ecdc.html Adaptec DirectCD patch: http://www.adaptec.com/support/files/dcd.html ACER CD-RW firmware flash upgrade: http://www.acerperipherals.com/ss_download/ss_st_dl.htm Coming soon, an in-depth review and recommendation of Veritas Backup Exec Desktop Edition 4.2. It has revolutionized the way we do data backups. If you just can't wait, click here: http://support.veritas.com/menu_ddproduct_BEDSKTOPEDT.htm All things considered, buying a CD-RW drive was an easy decision for me, how about you? If you're a rewritable CD enthusiast, I'd like to hear from you. You can reach Lee Hudspeth at: mailto:leehudspeth@TheNakedPC.com ** 07. Featured Book - "The Mythical Man-Month" by Frederick P. Brooks Jr. If you are interested in a definitive exposition on the wild and wooly subject of large-scale, complex software project management, search no further. Brooks' "The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering Anniversary Edition" will revolutionize your thinking about these types of projects. If you think that your three or four-person development team isn't "large" and therefore won't benefit from Brooks' methodology, not so. His observations and techniques are wonderfully scalable. In fact, his techniques provide tremendous benefits regardless of the size of your coding shop. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0201835959/tnpcnewsletter ** 08. Featured Web Site - Tim Higgins' Sharing Your Internet Connection This site is the place to go for insight, inspiration, instruction, and information on sharing a single Internet connection between two or more networked computers. Dial-up, DSL, ISDN, no matter how you're connecting you'll find help here. TNPCer Ken S. gave us the hot tip about this great site. There's information on cable modems, installing TCP/IP protocols, security and more. http://www.timhiggins.com/ppd/sharing.htm +++-----------------------------------------------------------+++ WANT TO GET YOUR WORD OUT? Classified ads in The Naked PC can be yours for the ridiculously low price of $30 per issue. Get your message out to over 38,000 TNPC subscribers. http://www.TheNakedPC.com/tnpcadvertising.html?v2i20 +++-----------------------------------------------------------+++ ** 09. Newsworthy - a potpourri of current events and interesting stuff *-* It's 9:00 AM, does your boss know what you're typing? He very well might. Investigator, a computer monitoring program produced by WinWhatWhere performs some impressive monitoring of any and all user actions on their computer. What applications are run, every word uttered in every chat room, in fact every keystroke you type on your keyboard. The single user version is $99 and the 10 user spy pack is $495. It's becoming a very scary workplace. http://www.winwhatwhere.com *-* A new virus called Suppl.doc is floating around (most notably on the alt.sex newsgroups). This is similar to the Worm.ExploreZip trojan/virus in how it replicates. The new wrinkle is that it quietly adds a file attachment to all outgoing email on the infected machine. If a recipient opens that attachment they become infected. Seven days after infection the trojan begins to destroy files with the extension of .doc, .xls, .txt, .rtf, .dbf, .zip, .arj, and .rar. For the umpteenth time be careful about opening email extensions! http://www.infoworld.com/cgi-bin/ displayStory.pl?990920.ensuppl.htm (Beware: this URL may wrap in your email reader) *-* Speaking of being aware, beware of an email that purports to come from Microsoft and invites users to download an attached Microsoft Year 2000 Counter. It's a hoax and contains a data- eating Trojan horse attachment. http://www.wired.com/news/news/technology/story/21823.html *-* And be sure to check the Annoyance Update page regularly: http://www.PRIMEConsulting.com/annoyances/officeupdate.html ** 10. We Get Mail - Comments and Tips from TNPC Readers We heard from two TNPCers, Jessica W. and Peter F., that were concerned about our recommendation of the JamCam by Kidboard in TNPC #2.18. They had read a number of negative reviews posted about JamCam and they thought we were trying to pull a fast one. First things first. You aren't going to get a photo quality digital camera for $30. That should be obvious. Some of the unhappy owners of the JamCam may have purchased it at the original price of $79.99 which we agree would be a very poor deal. But at $30 the expectation level has to be different. Our recommendation is based on the product description, the sample photos we've seen taken with this camera, and (very important) the software included in the package deal. We're talking about a 1.0 product that has been massively discounted to make way for the 2.0 version. Yes there are better digital cameras out there but not any we've seen for 30 samolians! We feel that the software included with this package alone would cost you most of the $30 on its own. Yes, there are complaints about trying to print images with the JamCam 1.0 (which at this resolution is a joke indeed) but we emphasized that the output is suitable for only email and Web pages where it would work fine. And primarily we recommended using this relatively inexpensive product to see if a digital camera is something you would want to pursue at all. See if you are a digital camera person before shelling out several hundred bucks for a higher resolution camera. 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