What You Need to Know about All Things PC
Volume 3 Number 26Click 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, December 28, 2000 - Vol. 3 No. 26 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Table of Contents ** 01. Letter from the Publisher ** 02. Link Problems with Hotmail and AOL (by Dan Butler) ** 03. Our Next TNPC Store Project (by T.J. Lee) ** 04. Just Who Are These Guys Anyway? (by TNPC Staff) ** 05. Follow-up to Fonduc Review in TNPC #3.24 (by Al Gordon) ** 06. Newsworthy - a potpourri of current events and other interesting stuff ** 07. We Get Mail ** 01. Letter from the Publisher Welcome to the final issue of TNPC to be published this millennium! The year 2000 sees the close of the second millennium and the next TNPC will be issue #1 of Volume 4, coming out in the second week of the third millennium. Sixty-five issues of our newsletter have gone out since we started TNPC 30 months ago. Hard to believe we've been publishing that long and we thank all of you who continue to support our efforts. We know that many of you have a short work week and are gearing up for New Year's celebrations so we've put together a short issue to close out the year. We'll hit on some topics that readers have written us about during the year and talk about some of the upcoming things you'll be seeing in TNPC in the months to come. Al Gordon will be taking a look at some current developments in the handheld computer market. Next issue will see the first in a series of articles on handheld computers, one of the fastest growing segments of the computer hardware industry, and how these remarkable gadgets can enhance your productivity. The art of being a virtual employee is something we at TNPC are well familiar with and we'll share some of the good, the bad, and the ugly facts of dealing with the virtual reality of telecommuting in the coming months. One of the biggest challenges facing the telecommuter is the lack of an IS department staff to pop in and fix any computer problems you're having. That's where a book like our "Absolute Beginner's Guide to PC Upgrades" can be a lifesaver when you have to fix it yourself. Another topic we'll be following in the next year will be the continued shift in the Internet's "everything is free" mentality to an "everything has a fee" stance in the wake of the continuing meltdown of Internet stocks. And much more to come in 2001 on one of TNPC's key themes: using a PC productively! As always, reader support is what keeps TNPC free, so PLEASE help us and pass a copy of TNPC on to co-workers and friends (no spam please!) and remember to always say "I saw it in TNPC!" http://www.TheNakedPC.com/refer/ +++------------------------- sponsor -------------------------+++ PHOTON-MICRO LIGHTS! Our Photon Micro-Lights continue to be a best seller beyond our wildest expectations! Reader comments pour in: "I bought 3 [and] am now ordering 4 more and the Accessory Kit to give away as gifts" "Liked the first 2, and decided to get 6 more" "very bright - they're GREAT!" Micro-Lights are the BRIGHTEST flashlights for their size in the WORLD. Reliable, incredibly bright light for any situation. These LED marvels produce light in your choice of Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Turquoise, Blue, or White. Order one today, you won't be disappointed! http://www.TheNakedPC.com/t/326/tr.cgi?sponsor1 +++------------------------- sponsor -------------------------+++ ** 02. Link Problems with Hotmail and AOL (by Dan Butler) In any issue of TNPC you're likely to find a number of links to other Web sites. For most of our readers it's a simple click in their email reader to pop up the linked page in their browser. But for Hotmail and some AOL users this is not such a simple procedure. Hotmail is a free email address service hosted by Microsoft wherein you use your browser to read your email, which is stored on a Web server. When you click a link in an email message Hotmail displays the called page within a framed page so you're still basically at the Hotmail site. Some pages aren't parsed out properly by Hotmail for whatever reason and you get a "Cannot display this page" error instead of the linked page. The same error occurs when a link is "redirected" as most of the links in TNPC are. What's a redirected link? Well, I'm glad you asked. When you click on a link in TNPC your browser makes a quick stop at the TNPC site then your browser is redirected to the actual destination page. This redirection lets us count up how many "clicks" a given link in TNPC receives. We compile this information so we can judge the relative popularity of a given link and that lets us know what topics are important to you, our readers. We don't have a solution for the glitch in Hotmail that causes the error. Some readers report that refreshing the TNPC issue before clicking on a link solves the problem but that's a less than perfect workaround at best. AOL users have similar problems with links when reading email and the only viable solution email newsletters have found so far is to provide a link designed with the HTML code necessary for AOL to figure out the link address. But this way of link coding adds to the bulk of the newsletter and we can't see the usefulness of having multiple links every time we mention a URL in TNPC. So until we come up with a single "fix all" solution we suggest that if you're having trouble with the hyperlinks in TNPC (or just prefer to read the issue online) go here: http://www.TheNakedPC.com/backissues/v3i26.html The above link should be clickable in AOL. We'll post a version of the current newsletter to the TNPC Web site just before we send the issue so those of you who want to can read the issue online in your favorite browser and all the links should work without a hitch. +++------------------------- sponsor -------------------------+++ ************************************************************** MAKE YOUR ________ SELL! SAY WHAT? Make your SITE Sell! Make your PRICE Sell! Make your WORDS Sell! Make your KNOWLEDGE Sell! Everything you need to make you a successful business person. Not so sure? Read the customer testimonials and get more details on these great products at: http://www.TheNakedPC.com/t/326/tr.cgi?sponsor2 ************************************************************** +++------------------------- sponsor -------------------------+++ ** 03. Our Next TNPC Store Project (by T.J. Lee) The patronage you, our readers, have given the TNPC store continues to exceed our wildest expectations. I now know far more about shipping packages around the world than I ever thought I would and I've got boxes of Micro-Lights stacked around my desk like cordwood. Thanks to all of you who have helped support TNPC this year by frequenting the TNPC Store and by using our Amazon links and such. We really appreciate it! Our next project that will be handled through the TNPC Store is currently in development and we're anxious to see what type of response it will get. You may be aware that Dan, Lee, and myself authored a book entitled, "The Unofficial Guide to PCs." This book was our effort to pen the book that should have come with every computer sold, but didn't. In this book we covered how to buy a PC, then how to assemble, configure, and customize it, how to stay ahead of the hardware and software "feature creep" game, disaster planning and recovery, plus good habits for disaster prevention, dealing with common applications, managing peripherals, even using the Internet... It's a book that has gotten critical acclaim and was doing very well when the publisher rather suddenly up and sold the series title, "The Unofficial Guide" to another publisher. They didn't sell our book just the main series title. So overnight we were a book without a title, so to speak. Our publisher didn't have another series in which to host our book and just let it go out of print. You can imagine our joy. Not! We've had a huge number of requests to sell people copies of this book... as if we had a few pallets in the garage. Unfortunately authors have to buy their own copies just like everyone else (aside from a dozen or so complimentary copies they get when the book is first printed). Amazon shows this book as a 4 to 6 week delivery but we don't think they can get copies. We know we can't. Well, we decided not to let this book fade away. After some wrangling we've taken back the rights to this book. We're going to re-title it (maybe "The Naked Guide to PCs?") put the text and graphics on a CD-ROM and sell it as a digital book in the TNPC Store. We'll let you know as soon as it's available! You can reach T.J. Lee at: mailto:tj_lee@TheNakedPC.com +++------------------------- sponsor -------------------------+++ Get UCmore Today - It's FREE Cut through Web clutter with UCmore, the FREE "anti-search" tool! Want to find more of what you're looking for and have it be hassle-free? Download UCmore and watch it make your life simpler by categorizing related site information into easy-to-understand, clickable links, right in your browser window! Slaughterhouse's Pick of the Day and what users have described as "the best download in a year." Download the LATEST UCmore version for Internet Explorer today! http://www.TheNakedPC.com/t/326/tr.cgi?sponsor3 +++------------------------- sponsor -------------------------+++ ** 04. Just Who Are These Guys Anyway? (by TNPC Staff) Our first issue of TNPC went out to 267 readers. This issue is going out to just over 60,000. Given that growth curve we wanted to take a moment and introduce ourselves again. If you'll go to the TNPC main page you'll find three of our smiling faces (T.J., Dan, and Lee) near the bottom of the page. http://www.TheNakedPC.com TNPC is published by Lee Hudspeth and T.J. (Jim) Lee. Lee and Jim met way back in the dawning of the computer age at an Excel user's group meeting and got together to found PRIME Consulting Group, Inc. PRIME Consulting Group is a consulting firm that primarily develops software; from simple sets of VBA macros to automate Office applications to large complex development projects involving teams of coders. PRIME Consulting Group is a virtual corporation with offices in southern and central California and human resources on the West Coast, the East Coast, and various states in between. You can find out more about Lee's and Jim's literary endeavors at this page on the TNPC site: http://www.TheNakedPC.com/t/326/tr.cgi?who1 You can view a complete list of PRIME Consulting Group's Office add-in products at: http://www.TheNakedPC.com/t/326/tr.cgi?pcgsfwt Of course, if you need a Visual Basic or VBA project written be sure to give PCG a thought. Just send email to: mailto:inquiry@primeconsulting.com TNPC's Editor-in-Chief is Dan Butler, founder and owner of PlanB Group in Texas. Dan is a Webmaster by trade with a focus on marketing and usability. If you have an interest in putting your business on the net, are looking for ideas for increasing your Web site's usability, or just want to keep up with some of the issues we run into as we grow TNPC and increase our marketing then please sign up for the periodic email Dan will be sending along these lines. The first issue is scheduled to go out early next year. Find out more here: http://www.TheNakedPC.com/t/326/tr.cgi?who2 Al Gordon is the Senior Contributing Editor at TNPC. Al is a long-time journalist and public affairs professional. He heads up Gordon Communications, a Boston-area wordsmithing company, and is a political and strategic consultant as a principal of Mary Fifield Associates. http://www.TheNakedPC.com/t/326/tr.cgi?who3 We all fell in with each other in the salad days of CompuServe where we were mutually involved with exotic software like PackRat and lurked on the various forums trying to solve problems. Since that time we've worked together on various and sundry projects including hardcopy newsletters, beta tests, writing books and magazine articles, developing Web sites, and of course launching TNPC. We have done all of this in a virtual environment and do not have face-to-face meetings; in fact aside from T.J. and Lee, most of us have never actually met each other in the flesh. Well, Dan and Lee did meet face to face at an airport once upon a time while Lee had a stopover but that's about it. You can bet that this has spurred us to develop efficient ways of working in a virtual environment across multiple time zones and long distances. +++-----------------------------------------------------------+++ WANT TO GET YOUR WORD OUT? Classified ads in The Naked PC can be yours for ridiculously low prices. Get your message out to over 60,000 TNPC subscribers. http://www.TheNakedPC.com/tnpcadvertising.html?v3i26 +++-----------------------------------------------------------+++ ** 05. Follow-up to Fonduc Review in TNPC #3.24 (by Al Gordon) An alert reader, Mark Levinson, admonished me that my review of Funduc Software's Search and Replace utility failed to warn that S&R is designed for ASCII formatted files and should NOT be used with Word, other Office, or any other files with proprietary binary formatting, lest file corruption occur. (It will, however, work with RTF.) Fonduc offers a freeware macro, Word Search and Replace for dealing with Microsoft Word's binary files. http://www.funduc.com/word_sr.htm I managed to get away with using S&R in my testing with Word documents, a phenomenon that Fonduc attributed to sheer dumb luck. Don't do it again, was is the advice from tech support. You can reach Al Gordon at: mailto:al@TheNakedPC.com ** 06. Newsworthy - a potpourri of current events and interesting stuff *-* Microsoft has an update out for Access 2000 SR-1 called "The Access 2000 and SQL Server 2000 Readiness Update" that helps migrate Access databases to SQL Server 2000. http://www.TheNakedPC.com/t/326/tr.cgi?news1 *-* Do you know where your car is parked? Right now? Soon you'll be able to track your car right from your Web browser. If Junior says he's going to the library you'll be able to check. But if you drive a company car the boss can check to see where you went for lunch. GeoSpatial Technologies, based in Santa Ana, Calif., plans to begin selling the vehicle-tracking device, called GlobalTrax, next fall. It will cost $150 for installation and $50 to $70 in monthly fees. http://www.TheNakedPC.com/t/326/tr.cgi?news2 *-* Get the jump on the post-Christmas sales at the new Amazon Outlet site where Amazon will sell deeply discounted and overstocked items. http://www.TheNakedPC.com/t/326/tr.cgi?news3 *-* Steve Gibson has released his free "LeakTest" program. LeakTest is used to check your firewall's vulnerability and can be found here: http://www.TheNakedPC.com/t/326/tr.cgi?news4 Get more Newsworthy bits on the TNPC Web site: http://www.thenakedpc.com/newsworthy/ Have you come across something newsworthy? Drop us a line: mailto:hottips@TheNakedPC.com ** 07. We Get Mail TNPCer Barbara G. writes, "I read your Featured Product, Bookmarklets, in TNPC #3.25 with interest. I went to the site you mentioned and although I have IE 5.5 the bookmarklet page tells me I am using IE 4. I thought that odd but when I tried to run the first bookmarklet I wanted to test I got a message 'This version of this bookmarklet requires a different browser.' Trying to add the bookmarklet as a Favorite got me 'You are adding a favourite that may not be safe' warning." Barbara consulted with the folks over at bookmarklets.com and received the following response that we thought we would share with you in case any of our other readers had problems on the Bookmarklets site: "Dear Barbara, The [different browser problem was] most likely caused by your seeing a version of the page, which had been cached by a proxy server (a "middleman") after being seen by a Netscape [browser] (the "different browser" message is supposed to prevent IE users from installing Netscape bookmarklets, and vice versa). Proxy caching, and the fact that page reports IE5 as IE4, are known problems with our site and will be fixed in the next release, early next year. Until then, it's likely that if you revisit the site later then the proxy will have flushed its copy, so you'll get a fresh copy intended for IE. If that doesn't work, you can force the proxy to request a fresh page by putting a meaningless query string (like "?123") at the end of the URL, so for example, you would go to http://www.bookmarklets.com/tools/data/index.phtml?123 As for the IE5 safety warning... in the case of the bookmarklets at bookmarklets.com the bookmarklet is safe. Since these things operate on the current page, it is conceivable that a bookmarklet could [be written that would] try to steal data from the page or alter the page in some malicious way (though, I've never seen one developed that actually does this). There is more about the safety of bookmarklets at http://www.bookmarklets.com/about/safety.html I apologize for the multiple confusions; these problems should go away with the next release of the site." Be sure to stop by the Letters to the Editor page for more: http://www.TheNakedPC.com/letters/index.html +++----------------------- classifieds -----------------------+++ **NEED INK? SAVE 40-70% OVER RETAIL!** High Quality Inkjet Printer Cartridges, JetPaks, Refill Kits. Super Prices! Your Satisfaction IS Guaranteed. * FREE Printer Utilities! * MaxPatch Ink Supplies http://www.TheNakedPC.com/t/326/tr.cgi?class1 +++-----------------------------------------------------------+++ pcReminder is FREE! NEVER FORGET AGAIN! Let FREE pcReminder send you a reminder via email. Birthdays, anniversaries, appointments, you name it! One-time events, recurring items, let you computer do the remind you automatically and for FREE. Send reminders to yourself or family, friends, business Associates - to any email address. http://www.TheNakedPC.com/t/326/tr.cgi?class2 +++-----------------------------------------------------------+++ >> ********** FIND out THE TRUTH about ANYONE ********** Background Investigations, Criminal Records, Vehicle Ownership, Military Records, Business Directories, Adoption Resources If you're looking to find them or find out about them this is the tool you can't do without! http://www.TheNakedPC.com/t/326/tr.cgi?class3 +++-----------------------------------------------------------+++ SEARCHCACTUS.COM - WE PAY YOU TO SEARCH THE WEB! Earn money while you search the Web using our search engine. We'll pay you $2.00 to signup with our unique service and then pay you more each time you click on advertiser links while searching the Web using our search engine. (Currently, SearchCactus.com only accepts U.S. and Canadian members.) http://www.TheNakedPC.com/t/326/tr.cgi?class4 +++-----------------------------------------------------------+++ DISCLAIMER Personal computers are individual machines with performance that can vary with components, software, and operator ability. The Naked PC is not responsible for the manner in which the information presented is used or interpreted. Also, although we work hard to provide you with accurate Internet links in The Naked PC, we are not responsible for Internet links herein that represent sites owned and operated by third parties. We are not responsible for the content, accuracy, performance, or availability of any such third-party sites. Warranty does not extend to acts of foreign governments, overly long third acts, or acting out in class. REDISTRIBUTION POLICY We encourage you to forward this newsletter to your friends, associates, and colleagues for their review and enjoyment. However, please do so only by sending it in full, thereby keeping the copyright and subscription information intact. We do request that, once they've reviewed an issue or two, they subscribe independently rather than continue to receive issues from you. This helps TNPC grow and prosper, thereby funding its continued publication. Also, if you wish to post this newsletter to a newsgroup or electronic discussion group, you may do so if you preserve the copyright and subscription information. Thanks. SUBSCRIPTION SERVICES To subscribe or unsubscribe, surf on over to: http://www.TheNakedPC.com/subscribe.html To make comments or suggestions, surf on over to: http://www.TheNakedPC.com/tnpfeedback.html or send email directly to: mailto:tnpc@TheNakedPC.com Get back issues from our Mailbot by sending email to: mailto:mailbot@TheNakedPC.com WEB BULLETIN BOARD Check out our 24x7 Web bulletin board. If you've got a technical question about PC issues, or suggestions of your own, this is the place to hang out: http://www.PRIMEConsulting.com/annoyanceboard/ ADVERTISING To advertise in TNPC go to: http://www.TheNakedPC.com/tnpcadvertising.html Mail services provided by Blue Horizon Enterprises, one of the very few "Mom and Pop" operations left on the Web: http://www.bhorizon.com Copyright (c) 2000, PRIME Consulting Group, Inc. and Dan Butler. All Rights Reserved. The Naked PC is a trademark of PRIME Consulting Group, Inc. ISSN: 1522-4422 TNPC Hot Tips:
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