What You Need to Know about All Things PC
Volume 4 Number 14Click 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, July 12, 2001 - Vol. 4 No. 14 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Table of Contents ** 01. Letter from the Publisher ** 02. Getting a Handle on Buying a Handheld (by Al Gordon) ** 03. Multi-Booting: Field Notes on Windows 2000, Windows NT, and Windows 98 (by Lee Hudspeth) ** 04. Roxio Sounds Off (by Al Gordon) ** 05. Featured Product - Naviscope by Naviscope Software ** 06. Featured Book - "The Mythical Man-Month" by Frederick P. Brooks Jr. ** 07. Featured Web Site - Dead People Server ** 08. Newsworthy - a potpourri of current events and interesting stuff ** 09. We Get Mail ** 01. Letter from the Publisher HELLO! Reader support is what keeps The Naked PC free, so PLEASE help us and pass a copy on to co-workers and friends (no spam please!) and remember to always say "I saw it in The Naked PC!" We even make it easy to refer people to The Naked PC... check out our Refer page: http://www.TheNakedPC.com/refer/ In other exciting news, we've been deluged with orders for our new product, PRIME for Office Utilities CD, and the discs are ready to be pressed as soon as we tie up some loose ends dealing with the artwork (of all things). This means you can still get the introductory pricing on these great utilities from PRIME Consulting Group, Inc. (publisher of TNPC). http://www.TheNakedPC.com/t/a/tr.cgi?pcgcd3 Meanwhile, Al checks in with advice on shopping for hand-held PDAs. He also has a follow-up article on Roxio's Easy CD Creator software where he's gets the straight scoop right from the source. Lee has a treasure trove of information from the consulting lab on multi-boot issues involving Windows 2000, Windows NT, and Windows 98. Dan and Jim are probably doing something important but no one knows what for sure. By the way, did you know that it's National Get A Friend To Subscribe to The Naked PC Newsletter Month? It's not really, but it sure should be. Please do your part to further our dream of taking over the known world. Oh, and if you have a Web site please consider adding an icon to your site that proclaims your support for TNPC. On this page you'll find our animated and static banners along with HTML code you just cut and paste to add the banners to your site. http://www.thenakedpc.com/horde.html So now you know. +++------------------------- sponsor -------------------------+++ PRIME for Office Utilities CD If you use Microsoft Office, and by that we mean Office 97, Office 2000, or Office XP, then you need to read this! From the Publishers of The Naked PC newsletter come the ultimate utility sets for Office. On one CD you get PRIME for Word, PRIME for Excel, and the amazingly useful PRIME DocLauncher for Office utilities. Hundreds of features! For one low price you get the utilities plus our ebook "How To Save Time with Office" that will show you how to use each utility to unlock the true potential of your Office applications. Order now and get our introductory discount price! http://www.TheNakedPC.com/t/a/tr.cgi?pcgcd3 +++------------------------- sponsor -------------------------+++ ** 02. Getting a Handle on Buying a Handheld (by Al Gordon) According to the time-honored wisdom, it is an ill wind that blows nobody good. So it is with the tech industry slump, which has led to sharp price reductions in most products, including personal digital assistants (PDAs). Combine that with a flurry of new products making their way to the market, and it is time for a new look at the world of handhelds. Over the next few issues, I will be doing a series of pieces on new PDAs, peripherals, and software. Much of the focus will be on the Pocket PC world, primarily because there has been a major uptick in action there since I last looked at it a year ago. But things are also happening in the Palm OS universe. BUT FIRST: TNPC publisher, Lee Hudspeth, has asked an excellent question, "How does one decide what handheld makes sense for whom in today's very confusing and cluttered marketplace?" Adds Lee, "I personally would not want to sink $200-$400 into a PDA and find it completely obsolete in a year." Obsolescence is a chronic issue with things high-tech, of course. You can be assured that whenever you buy a new PC, for example, there will be something more powerful and cheaper on the market the moment you hand over your credit card number. However, you also have the relative assurance that the PC, its software, and its peripherals probably are going to be comparable with both predecessor and successor units. That's not necessarily the case with PDAs. Depending on what you choose, you could be stuck with dead end technology. A year ago, getting a Palm OS unit from Palm, Inc. was a no- brainer solution. But Palm's health is now in question. For its last fiscal year, Palm recorded a net loss of $356.5 million compared with a net income of $45.9 million for fiscal 2000. It faces growing competition from other manufacturers who have licensed the Palm OS, notably Handspring, Inc. and consumer giant Sony Corp. While software generally can be used across the Palm OS lineup, hardware accessories usually are unique to a particular Palm OS PDA device. Plus, Palm itself has been notorious for allowing little peripheral interchange across its product lineup and, ironically, a recent move toward commonality so far has done little except make a great deal of existing hardware accessories obsolete. And then--inevitably--there are the folks from Redmond. Pocket PC handhelds using Microsoft's Windows CE 3.0 operating system were rolled out early in 2000. Reliable data on market share for Pocket PC devices is hard to come by, but estimating from several published reports, it would appear that Pocket PCs represent 15- 20% of all PDAs and perhaps as much as 40% of new PDA sales. http://www.TheNakedPC.com/t/414/tr.cgi?al1 Both are sharp increases over pre-2000 levels. More to the point, they are at that familiar cusp where Microsoft initiatives either flop (the multiple incarnations of MSN, for example) or pick up momentum and crush the opposition (as happened with Internet Explorer). It's not quite that simple, though. According to Ashley Walker of Handango (www.handango.com), a leading vendor of products for handhelds, "When Handango launched into the Pocket PC software realm, we had approximately 30 pieces of software and now we have over 800, that is a 2500% increase in a little over a year. The Pocket PC platform has demonstrated an average monthly growth rate of over 20% for Pocket PC software sales at Handango during Q1 2001." But... and this is a very big "but," those are not necessarily conquest sales. Walker sees "steady growth" in Palm software sales, also. Market analysts agree that at least some of the Pocket PC growth is coming from the corporate market and represents new customers rather than a migration away from Palm. So where does that leave you as a potential buyer? Whatever you buy, you are certainly good to go for one to two years. In that time, the odds are substantially higher that you will drop the unit and break it before it becomes orphaned in the marketplace. (That's not whimsy, by the way. The Achilles Heel of handhelds is the glass in their screens, which will break when dropped and will cost $100 to get repaired. It happens sooner or later, and makes a PDA one of the few consumer electronic devices for which an extended warranty actually makes sense.) For now, buy a handheld the way you should buy any high-tech equipment: figure out what you want to do, what features you need to do it, and what your budget can handle, then buy accordingly. If all you want is an electronic phonebook and calendar, a basic Palm OS device such as the Palm m100 or Handspring Visor will meet your needs for $150 or less. Palm m100 Handheld: http://www.TheNakedPC.com/t/414/tr.cgi?al2 Handspring Visor (Graphite): http://www.TheNakedPC.com/t/414/tr.cgi?al3 If on the other hand you are looking for the closest approximation of a PC than you can hold in your hand and your wallet is fat, a Pocket PC is for you. But you will pay $500 or more. Most of the action in PDAs, though, is in the $250-$400 range. That price buys you a choice of either platform. The rule of thumb here is easy: if you want simple get Palm; if you need multi-tasking get the Pocket PC. The two platforms are not fungible. The more functions you try to put on a Palm OS device, the less satisfactory the performance will be. Pocket PC will do more, but at the typical Microsoft price of needing the periodic reboot ("reset" in PDA lingo). Price differences are also tied to various special features-- memory, USB connections, thinness, and color screens. The latter two are especially pricey. For example, one of the current best buys in PDAs is the $249 Handspring Visor Platinum, which boasts 8 MB of memory, a fast processor, and USB, but a monochrome LCD screen: http://www.TheNakedPC.com/t/414/tr.cgi?al4 The Visor Prism, which I also like (see TNPC #4.03), is essentially the same unit but with a color screen and that takes the price up to $399: http://www.TheNakedPC.com/t/414/tr.cgi?al5 Similarly the slimline monochrome Visor Edge also is $399. Slim, incidentally, is a Palm OS specialty. Nothing in the Pocket PC world is as small as the Edge: http://www.TheNakedPC.com/t/414/tr.cgi?al6 Similarly the Compaq iPAQ, the BMW of PDAs, is $599 in a color bundle: http://www.TheNakedPC.com/t/414/tr.cgi?al7 If you go with monochrome the Compaq iPAQ drops in price to $349: http://www.TheNakedPC.com/t/414/tr.cgi?al8 The Visor and iPAQ families have impressed me in testing because of category-leading performance and also expandability. The Springboard module technology for Visors has caught on (see TNPC #4.05), and it means that the PDA's lifespan and capabilities are not frozen. The same holds with the expansion pack technology from Compaq. I'll have more on that next time. You can reach Al Gordon at: mailto:al@TheNakedPC.com +++------------------------- sponsor -------------------------+++ "The Book That Should Have Come with Your Computer" "This book should come with every PC - it has become MY BIBLE." "I find information in this book that I can't find anywhere else." These are just a few of the comments we've received on this book. The hard copy version went OUT OF PRINT over a series title issue with the publisher, but WE BROUGHT IT BACK in this book-on-a-CD-ROM searchable PDF format! Written by the same guys who bring you this newsletter, T.J. Lee, Lee Hudspeth, and Dan Butler tell you what every computer user needs to know. If you use computers you need this book! Check it out! http://www.TheNakedPC.com/t/a/tr.cgi?tugpc2 +++------------------------- sponsor -------------------------+++ ** 03. Multi-Booting: Field Notes on Windows 2000, Windows NT, and Windows 98 (by Lee Hudspeth) Over the past two months I have installed and uninstalled Windows 2000 in a Win98/Win2000 multi-boot mode at least a dozen times. I'm not a masochist, it was just something that had to be done for a consulting project my firm was working on. During the finger-tapping period of abject boredom that quickly sets in during this type of cycling, I began taking notes on the rough edges inherent in this operation and the procedures necessary to smooth them out. Here are my field notes on this tedious task. * How to install Internet Connection Sharing (ICS) on a client PC. I share a broadband connection so every time I set up a new version of the operating system I have to get ICS working. You can quickly get up to speed on ICS with the Microsoft Knowledge Base (MSKB) article "Description of the Microsoft Browser Connection Setup Wizard": http://www.TheNakedPC.com/t/414/tr.cgi?lee1 For a Windows 98 client -- If you don't have the floppy that you were prompted to create when you installed ICS on the host PC (or if you never made one), that's okay. Just put these two files on a floppy: Icsclset.exe and Icsrm.txt (you can rename it to Readme.txt if you want). They both reside in the host's C:\Windows\System folder. For a Windows 2000 client -- See "ICS for Win2000 - Client Setup" at: http://www.TheNakedPC.com/t/414/tr.cgi?lee2 When you finish the steps, just fire up your Web browser, answer the Internet Connection Wizard's few questions (pointing your connection to the LAN in all cases), and you'll be connected in seconds! * How to remove Windows 2000 from a dual-boot installation with Windows 95/98 and leave Windows 95/98 as the bootable operating system. If you've ever tried to dump Windows 2000 from a dual-boot system these notes will come in very handy. The distilled steps are as follows: 1. Boot from a Win98 startup floppy (with verified CD-ROM support of course since you'll need to access the CD drive). 2. From the floppy's prompt, run the sys c: command and verify "System transferred". 3. Remove the floppy and reboot normally into Win98. Now it's possible to begin removing files as described in the related MSKB articles. Helpful MSKB articles: "How to Manually Remove Windows 2000 and Restore Windows 95/98" http://www.TheNakedPC.com/t/414/tr.cgi?lee3 The above article doesn't list bootsect.dos (Hidden) in the list of files to manually remove from the boot drive's root folder, but I found it necessary to remove it from my dual-boot PC when eliminating Win2000 (scenario: Win98 on first primary partition, Win2000 on the second). "Removing Windows NT from a Windows 95/98 Dual-Boot Installation": http://www.TheNakedPC.com/t/414/tr.cgi?lee4 "WINNT /D Does Not Delete System Files": http://www.TheNakedPC.com/t/414/tr.cgi?lee5 The above article includes the ATTRIB switches; helpful if you use MS-DOS commands to remove files. * Follow a good operating system upgrade checklist. See "T.J. Lee and Lee Hudspeth's Absolute Beginner's Guide to PC Upgrades" pp. 409-417. http://www.TheNakedPC.com/t/414/tr.cgi?lee6 * How to install Windows 98 on a PC with no operating system. This next MSKB article can save you a lot of wheel spinning. "How to Install Windows 98 on a Computer with No Operating System": http://www.TheNakedPC.com/t/414/tr.cgi?lee7 * How to install Windows 2000 into a second partition on a PC that boots Windows 95/98 AND how to set up various multi-boot scenarios. First see "T.J. Lee and Lee Hudspeth's Absolute Beginner's Guide to PC Upgrades" pp. 418+. PowerQuest's FAQ uses a slightly different series of PartitionMagic-centric steps. See PowerQuest's "Link Page for Common Multi-Boot Scenarios" at: http://www.TheNakedPC.com/t/414/tr.cgi?lee8 See the BootMagic User's Guide pp. 25+, the section entitled "Operating System-Specific Installation Issues" for some helpful tips on various multi-boot installation configurations. * How to create setup boot diskettes for Windows 2000. See "How to Create Setup Boot Disks for Windows 2000" at: http://www.TheNakedPC.com/t/414/tr.cgi?lee9 Note the critical paragraph at the end of the article, "If you are booted into Windows 9x you will need to run the 32-bit version of this utility called makebt32.exe. If you are in DOS, or booted with a Windows 98 Startup Floppy that has access to the CDROM, you can use the 16-bit version called makeboot.exe." In my tests, when booted into Win98, the makebt32 command does nothing (briefly flashes an MS-DOS screen), and only the makeboot.exe version seems to work. When I attempted to setup Windows 2000 via the setup boot diskettes I got this error message, "Inf file txtsetup.sif is corrupt or missing. Setup cannot continue. Press any key to exit." I have yet to figure out the problem here. * How to get a Windows 2000 PC to be accessible on a peer-to-peer network. First make sure that the NetBEUI protocol is installed. Next, enable the Windows 2000 PC's Guest account, which is disabled by default. For the steps see "Network Clients Prompted for Password Connecting to Share on Windows 2000": http://www.TheNakedPC.com/t/414/tr.cgi?lee10 Next, right-click the drive or device you want to share, choose Properties, Sharing, and add a new share name (other than the existing default share TNPC Hot Tips:
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