What You Need to Know about All Things PC
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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, May 9, 2002 - Vol. 5 No. 10 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Table of Contents ** 01. Letter from the Publisher ** 02. Short Subjects (by Al Gordon) ** 03. Mining for Data Gold Using Microsoft Excel: Part 2 (by Lee Hudspeth) ** 04. Fighting Spam: Part 5 (by Dan Butler) ** 05. Featured Products - More Kensington Input Devices (by Al Gordon) ** 06. Featured Web Site - Atomica (reviewed by Lee Hudspeth) ** 07. Featured Drawing - Operating Systems ** 08. Newsworthy - a potpourri of current events and interesting stuff ** 01. Letter from the Publisher Kle z just keeps on keepin' on. Since we mentioned Kle z in our prior issue (pub. date April 25), Norton has quarantined 25 instances of Klez-laden emails on Lee's production PC. That's almost two "attacks" per day on this one PC. We're hoping you all took our advice and updated your anti-virus package. CONGRATULATIONS to TNPCer JoAnn W. who won our previous drawing. This issue we are giving away another of our Photon Micro- Lights. The question this issue is, "What operating system do you use?" It's fun and easy to enter, see the related Featured Drawing article. Today's content... Al covers several topics, ranging from Adobe clarifications to third-party PDF tools to Roxio Easy CD Creator. Lee has more to say about useful tricks when analyzing data in Excel. Dan continues his examination of spam, focusing on tricks spammers use for getting your email address. Jim's out ill this issue, so send good thoughts his way. Reader support is what keeps The Naked PC free. To this end you can help us by passing a copy on to co-workers and friends (no spam please). We even make it easy to refer people to The Naked PC... check out our Refer page: http://www.TheNakedPC.com/refer/ +++------------------------- sponsor -------------------------+++ >> "How Many Ways Will You Use These Amazing Devices?" They're incredibly handy. When we first saw these amazing little devices we thought, "these will look cool hanging on my key ring." Then we started using them. WOW - every day we find more uses. How many will you find? http://www.TheNakedPC.com/t/a/tr.cgi?swisstech +++------------------------- sponsor -------------------------+++ ** 02. Short Subjects (by Al Gordon) -- An alert TNPCer and fellow ThumbsPlus enthusiast wrote to point out that Cerious Software will knock five bucks off the $25 upgrade fee I cited for Version 5 if you upgrade via Internet download and forego getting a CD in the mail. T+ 5 is a good deal at either price. -- In a major attack of brain fade, I totally scrambled the terminology for the components of Adobe Acrobat in the last issue. Distiller, as I noted, is the full-blown virtual printer driver that creates .pdf files with all the bells and whistles. The secondary "printer" driver, which supports the most commonly used options, is called "PDFWriter." It is not, as I wrote, called "PDF Maker"--that's the package of macros for Microsoft Office. While I am on the subject, a spokesperson for Adobe wanted me to be sure that I made it clear to one and all that when I wrote that "Your layouts and formatting show up on other PCs exactly as they do on yours" I meant PC in the GENERIC sense, encompassing Macs, Linux workstations, Unix platforms, and multiple other devices that people use as their personal computers. Fair enough: cross platform compatibility is most definitely a major strength of Acrobat. -- And also on the Acrobat front, I was buried in reader email recommending various "Acrobat Lite" solutions--lower cost alternatives to the $250 Acrobat bundle. One often mentioned was Adobe's own online Create PDF service. It is a good solution if you are not a heavy user of Acrobat, but at $9.95 per month, that price can add up over time. https://createpdf.adobe.com There also are a number of third-party solutions, which I put to the test using a variety of sample documents and looking both at screen resolution and printouts. All of the products tested displayed flaws: fonts that didn't get converted correctly or graphics that appeared fuzzy. However, no one product failed all the tests and, indeed, on each test documents the "winners" and "losers" columns were different. Also note that the above- mentioned PDFWriter component of Acrobat also displayed flaws; only Distiller was basically bulletproof. Moreover, the most expensive of the alternatives was less than half the price of Acrobat. The products, in order of price: pdf995, free if you don't mind your browser popping up with ads, $9.95 for peace and quiet. pdf995 made font errors on the order of displaying a bold font as regular or giving a fuzzy rendition of an italic onscreen. But at that price, it is tough to gripe. http://www.TheNakedPC.com/t/510/tr.cgi?al1 pdfFactory, $49.95, and pdfFactory Pro, $99.95, from FinePrint Software (the difference between the two versions is that Pro includes security capabilities such as encrypting or copy- protecting .pdf files). The utility produced decent results and has the ability to automate the process of combining multiple documents into one .pdf. But it was totally befuddled by some Bitstream fonts in one test document and wouldn't render them. http://www.TheNakedPC.com/t/510/tr.cgi?al2 JawsPDF, $120, from Global Graphics. The price buys you a macro package for Microsoft Word, allowing Jaws to approach Acrobat in ease of use. I saw no problems with font reproduction, but there were artifacts and fuzziness in its rendition of some Web graphics. http://www.TheNakedPC.com/t/510/tr.cgi?al3 Switching gears away from the world of PDF files... -- Roxio Easy CD Creator 5 Platinum, reviewed here when originally released, has been updated to 5.1. The update resolves most of the glitches I had been seeing under Windows XP, and is a Must Download for XP users. http://www.TheNakedPC.com/t/510/tr.cgi?al4 One feature of ECDC 5 that I didn't mention in the original review is worth a mention now: its "MP3 Project" capability. While users always could put MP3s on data CDs, the MP3 Project feature automatically builds a play list (in the standard .m3u format) of the MPEGs and adds it to the CD along with an autoplay applet. By default the play list arranges songs in the order in which you added them, but you can re-arrange the list however you want. The end result is that you have MP3s on a CD that, when inserted in a CD drive, will automatically launch your default music player and start running the play list. I came to appreciate this when I was creating MPEGs to transfer to digital audio jukeboxes (the units with built-in hard drives that hold 5-20 GB of music) and to compare the sound of MP3s at various quality settings. My hard drive quickly was overrun. Transferring them to CD-R turned out to be the smart alternative. (c) 2002, Al Gordon You can reach Al Gordon at: mailto:al@TheNakedPC.com +++------------------------- sponsor -------------------------+++ "You Can Laugh At Money Worries - If You Follow This Simple Plan" Do you sometimes have more month than money? Ever wonder how to dig out of the hole of debt? Maybe someone you know is struggling. In today's uncertain times with tens of thousands being laid off, this is one step you can take now to make your future more certain. This proven multimedia course will show you everything you need. http://www.TheNakedPC.com/t/a/tr.cgi?financial +++------------------------- sponsor -------------------------+++ ** 03. Mining for Data Gold Using Microsoft Excel: Part 2 (by Lee Hudspeth) Everyone has their favorite bag of tricks in any given domain. Here are some tricks I've been using lately in an Excel project. If you missed Part 1, go here: http://www.TheNakedPC.com/t/510/tr.cgi?lee1 * To print a PivotTable report with row and column labels repeated on each page: click anywhere inside the PivotTable report, File, Page Setup, click the Sheet tab, clear the "Rows to repeat at top" and "Columns to repeat at left" check boxes, OK, on the PivotTable toolbar click PivotTable, Table Options, and select the "Set print titles" check box, OK, now File, Print Preview (or just Print). * To quickly determine how many unique values are in a given series: say you have a bunch of customer ID numbers in column A with a field header of "CustomerID". Create a PivotTable on just that field in the Row section plus the Count of CustomerID in the Data section, and once the report has been created select all the values in the report's CustomerID column, set the statistics tray to the Count function, and there's your answer on the status bar. * Viewing the detail data behind a field value inside a PivotTable report: simply double-click on any field value and Excel automatically creates a new worksheet containing all the data that's "behind" that value. Folks, this is *really* cool. * Keeping track of printed reports: whenever you generate a printed report of Excel information, always include these values somewhere in the header/footer area: filename [upper left], date/time [lower left], and "Page x of y" [lower right]. I often include a very short description if there was a special data sort or extract [upper right]. Personally, I always put these values in the same place (see the square brackets above) but of course you can choose where to put them. Just be sure to put them in *somewhere*! I wish I had a dollar for every time I walked into a client's conference room to encounter reams of unstapled and unordered Excel printouts with no identifying info in the margins, just the raw data. * Hiding/unhiding columns: it may seem simple, but it works... hiding columns saves you time by keeping the clutter out of sight while you're entering or analyzing data. Remember that you can select multiple non-contiguous columns: click the first column to be hidden, press and hold Ctrl, click the next column to be hidden, repeat until all the desired non-contiguous columns are selected then right-click on any one of the selected columns and choose Hide. To quickly unhide all hidden columns in a worksheet, click the square "select all" box that's to the left of column A's header and above row 1's header (the entire worksheet is now selected), right-click on any column and choose Unhide. * For quick, error-free range insertions: when you need to copy a range from one area to another, you don't have to manually count and then insert a bunch of new rows (or columns) to exactly match the size of the incoming data. Instead, copy the source data, go to the target area, position the active cell where you want the data to be inserted, choose Insert, select Copied Cells, select "Shift cells down" when prompted, then click OK. This shifts the cells *below* the active cell down as many rows as needed to insert the pasted data; no data is lost. Use the "Shift cells right" mode when inserting a vertical range. * Auditing: in our books and other articles, Jim and I have written extensively about how to audit Excel workbooks. I'll just barely skim the surface here to encourage you to turn on the Auditing toolbar and let it visually show you the relationships that formula-laden cells have to each other. It's stunning and informative. To turn on the Auditing toolbar in Excel 2000 and prior versions: Tools, Customize, Toolbars, check Auditing, Close. Oddly, in Excel 2000 and prior, Auditing doesn't appear in the pop-up menu list of toolbars when you right-click on any toolbar. In Excel XP it appears as "Formula Auditing" so just right-click on any toolbar and choose it to render it visible. Activate a cell containing a formula and just click all the buttons on the toolbar to get a feel for how powerful this feature is. You can reach Lee Hudspeth at: mailto:LeeHudspeth@TheNakedPC.com +++------------------------- sponsor -------------------------+++ Give a MICRO-LIGHT gift for MOTHER'S DAY! Micro-Lights are highly reliable with an incredibly bright light useful for any situation. This AMAZING flashlight is the size and weight of a quarter, easy to clip to your key chain, carry it in your purse or pocket and you won't know it's there. INSTANT LIGHT IN EMERGENCIES right at your fingertips, going up/down stairs, unlocking your car at night, unobtrusively check on sleeping kids at night... unlimited uses. The flashlight that's always there when you need it! Mothers everywhere will appreciate this THOUGHTFUL GIFT. http://www.TheNakedPC.com/t/a/tr.cgi?pocketflashlight +++------------------------- sponsor -------------------------+++ ** 04. Fighting Spam: Part 5 (by Dan Butler) So how do spammers get your email address even if you don't respond to their email? They use a simple trick, and your email reader may help them do it. First I want to draw a line between two types of spam. One type tries to get you to respond in order to create a list of known good addresses. The other type doesn't care if the addresses on their list are good are bad. They just want some of the people who receive their email to purchase a product. Consider a spam email coming to you. The spammer has used a dictionary attack and wants to know if the email has been delivered to a valid address or not. The spammer can include some code that retrieves a graphic file from the web. At the end of this bit of code they put your email address. Your email reader retrieves that graphic and a line is added to the log file at the Web site that houses the graphic. In this case the line in the log file includes your email address. Let's use an example. Assume our graphic file is called 1.gif and further assume that your email address is someone@example.com. The code that retrieves the graphic will look similar to this: src="1.gif?someone@example.com" It's actually a little more complex than that but you get the idea. A simple program can then extract the email addresses from the log file. The spammer then sells the list of addresses to other spammers as "known good addresses." Be sure to read the first article in this series to learn about log files and what they tell people about you and your Internet browsing. You'll find a link to the other articles here: http://www.TheNakedPC.com/t/510/tr.cgi?dan1 It's not just spammers who use techniques like this. Legitimate emails will be coded the same way. I receive emails from Levenger as I'm interested in pens and paper. In their case they appear to be coding their offers to see which ones people respond to. A worthy pursuit in my opinion and one that I advocated to companies I consult with. Properly done it can save a them money. Hopefully some of the savings will be passed on to their customers. The trouble with the emails Levenger sends me? Their whole message is graphics with codes back to the Web site. The email readers I use, Pegasus and Pine, do not retrieve graphics from the Web. So when Levenger sends me an email it shows up as a blank page. I've written them about it in the past but received no response. You can see a picture of what an email from them looks like to me here: http://www.TheNakedPC.com/t/510/tr.cgi?dan2 Some email readers--Outlook, Outlook Express, and Netscape for Instance--automatically retrieve graphics from the Web. So even if you don't open the email but just let it show up in "Preview" mode the codes will be sent. Eudora can work either way depending on whether you use the "Microsoft viewer" or not. It's one of the options. You should find similar options in any decent mail reader out there these days. I choose to use Pegasus and Pine for my email because I like the price: free. And I prefer programs that have my best interests in mind, as opposed to programs that expose me until I tell them otherwise. Next issue I'll discuss what spam is--and isn't. Until then remember you can find a link to the other articles in this series here: http://www.TheNakedPC.com/t/510/tr.cgi?dan3 You can reach Dan Butler at: mailto:danbutler@TheNakedPC.com ** 05. Featured Products - More Kensington Input Devices (by Al Gordon) Pointing devices that can be used in either hand--as regularly noted in this space--are not easy to find. And if your device of choice is a trackball, the pickings are even more slim. With one notable exception: Kensington Technology Group. Their Expert Mouse ("Turbo Mouse" for Macs) long has been the leading symmetrical trackball design and is recommended regularly by ergonomics experts. http://www.TheNakedPC.com/t/510/tr.cgi?fprod1 The product has been around for years and has gone through some evolution. Expert/Turbo Mouse originally had two buttons; now it has four. Kensington also introduced a "Pro" version--a scroll wheel and six programmable "direct launch" buttons to start up programs or access Web Sites. Most recently, a wireless version of the Pro has joined the fleet. Street prices range from $95 for a standard Expert Mouse for PCs to $118 for a Turbo Mouse Pro Wireless for the Mac. (Mac users get stuck paying about $10 more for each model.) For this review, I looked at a standard USB Expert Mouse and the Pro Wireless. Pictures are up on my supplemental page: http://www.TheNakedPC.com/t/510/tr.cgi?fprod2 Both were solidly constructed, with a layout that allows users to manipulate the ball and click the buttons without straining or stretching. The Pro Wireless comes with a wrist rest, but the Expert does not. (I recommend getting one as a user's wrist tends otherwise to rest on the device's bottom edge.) Kensington's MouseWorks software allows users to re-map the functions of the buttons on the devices, and to set sensitivity levels and acceleration rates. Trackballs are often the tool of choice for computer drafting software, so users need to be able to set it to allow fine control over cursor movement. Regular users, meanwhile, can crank up the acceleration so that they don't have to do a lot of movement with the ball. The long-time hallmark of Expert Mice has been the heavy duty stainless steel bearings on which the ball sits. This made for a substantially more accurate device as compared with the plastic mechanisms used by competitors. However, the advent of optical technology raises the question of whether this really is the best approach any longer. A Kensington spokesperson said that optical versions are planned, but none are imminent. In whatever evolution, Kensington remains the top choice for trackball users. I noted in a previous article on input devices that Microsoft was planning a Wireless Desktop keyboard-mouse bundle. It is now on the market, aggressively priced at under $65. For details, see my supplemental page: http://www.TheNakedPC.com/t/510/tr.cgi?fprod3 (c) 2002, Al Gordon You can reach Al Gordon at: mailto:al@TheNakedPC.com ** 06. Featured Web Site - Atomica (reviewed by Lee Hudspeth) Atomica is an interesting portal for context-sensitive information searches. Thanks to TNPCer PN for pointing me to this site. When you enter your query and click the "Answer" button, the software intelligently parses your query and offers you a number of smart choices. If you enter a single word, say "quark", you'll see a dictionary definition and etymology. Other navigation options for refining your inquiry are "Did You Mean?", "Dictionary", "Encyclopedia", "Translations", and "Web Search". The latter pulls up the popular Google user interface. If you enter a query that Atomica determines is geographical in nature, for example "Antarctica", you'll see additional context-relevant options including some previously mentioned plus "Maps", "Stats", "Geography", "Quotes About", and "Local Links". As the context of your query changes, so do the navigation/refinement options that Atomica's Web pages present. You can download a version of Atomica Personal (free for individual use) that claims to integrate into all browsers and most Windows programs and offers a point-to-a-word+Alt+click interface for the quick retrieval of relevant info in a popup window. (Note: we haven't tested this client-side tool yet.) http://www.TheNakedPC.com/t/510/tr.cgi?fsite ** 07. Featured Drawing - Operating Systems If you've never entered a The Naked PC drawing before, here's how it works. You go to a Web page on our site, answer one survey question (today's is "What operating system do you use?"), and type in your email address. To encourage folks to participate, we conduct a drawing from the email addresses of each survey's participants and we give away something really useful. Now, obviously we already have your email address or you wouldn't be reading this, but this drawing for prizes will only include those folks who answer this issue's question (entering a prior drawing doesn't count for this one). We'll only use the email addresses we collect for the purpose of notifying who won the prize, nothing else. Before our next issue is published, we'll pick one entered name at random. The winner gets one Photon Micro-Light II pocket flashlight--a $19.95 value absolutely free. And the winner picks the color of her/his choice. But you have to enter to win. http://www.TheNakedPC.com/t/510/tr.cgi?fdrawing ** 08. Newsworthy - a potpourri of current events and interesting stuff *-* Can Microsoft simply do something simply? Maybe so. The firm's Microsoft TV division has announced a dramatically scaled- down approach to interactive program guide software being requested by cable providers for their set-top boxes. http://www.TheNakedPC.com/t/510/tr.cgi?news1 *-* EBay may acquire PayPal, the leading online payment service that now sports some 16 million users. http://www.TheNakedPC.com/t/510/tr.cgi?news2 Have you come across something newsworthy? Drop us a line: mailto:hottips@TheNakedPC.com **PLEASE SUPPORT THE NAKED PC BY VISITING OUR ADVERTISERS** +++----------------------- classifieds -----------------------+++ Put Microsoft Office to Work for You If you use Microsoft Office 97, 2000 or XP, you need a PRIME for Office Utilities CD. From the Publishers of The Naked PC newsletter, on one CD you get PRIME for Word, PRIME for Excel, and the amazingly useful PRIME DocLauncher for Office utilities. 100s of features, plus a free ebook! http://www.TheNakedPC.com/t/a/tr.cgi?pcgcd3 +++-----------------------------------------------------------+++ PROTECT Your PRIVACY with Anonymizer! Sign up and use our proxy server to stay 100% anonymous! Convenient and effective privacy protection -- no one can see where you surf. Blocks Cookies, Java, JavaScript, and other tracking methods. Cookie Encryption - lets you safely access and use Web sites that require cookies. URL Encryption - encrypts your page requests so your ISP can't log them. http://www.TheNakedPC.com/t/a/tr.cgi?anon +++-----------------------------------------------------------+++ >> "Find out What THEY KNOW ABOUT YOU!" Background Investigations, Criminal Records, Vehicle Ownership, Military Records, Business Directories, Adoption Resources. 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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. 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 The Naked PC 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 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 The Naked PC 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) 2002, 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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