January 19, 2002

Dear TNPC,

Enjoy your online newsletter. I appreciate the real world evaluation and application it provides. Not so much technical as what really happens.

Jim's article about training organizations on software use was timely. I work for a non-profit and we are finally going to create an IT advisory group. Currently the organization is proceeding the way the IT person wants to proceed rather than what the staff need or what the service to the client is suggesting. In many cases there is no evaluation about decisions improving productivity, rather what is the latest, greatest or limited by the understanding of IT. Jim's three evaluation points are a tool to help organizations stay away from purchasing the latest. For example if you use these criteria, then there has to be a clear understanding on how it will improve productivity. If it does then how is this productivity going to be implemented, integrated and evaluated. From this the organization can create training plans. If there is no clear gain, there is no need.

My observation around the current failure to integrate software in the agency I work for is the lack of knowledge about productivity gains of those who drag their feet. They truly believe it is more productive to avoid the software and use older methods, than to learn the new more productive software. For example I talked with a co-worker who was laughing about another co-worker who was so excited she had created a tracking sheet in Excel.

Our agency has a management information system which could track this information if it were used. My co-worker said "wait until I show her how easy it would have been if she had used [the management information system]. Which shows, I believe, how people have to experience the productivity before they will accept the change. They need to experience how it is going to lessen their work load.

Best regards,

James S.

January 19, 2002

Dear TNPC,

This week I received an unsolicited e-mail. It is from CardScan.Net AccuCard Service. The e-mail prominently displays an image of my business card, and invites me to update my business contact information. My first reaction - who are these guys, and how did they get a copy of my business card?

Turns out that they are the same people that sell those cool little scanners for reading business cards into your contacts program. Somehow they dupe the buyers of these machines into sending images of the card, along with the full contact information, to their database.

Then they take it upon themselves to e-mail all those contacts and ask them whether their information is still current.

Are these people morons, or what? Who among us would NOT be offended by receiving an e-mail image of our own business card in this manner? I think their product is cool, and have often been tempted as I walked through the aisles of Office Depot. But after this stunt, it will be a cold day in hell before I ever buy a product from this company.

Best regards,

Nigel

January 18, 2002

Dear TNPC,

I have also recently installed a BEFSR41 router, and in general completely agree with your review, with one exception.

I am running Windows XP Pro and following the Linksys directions for connecting with a static IP, I was unable to see the ISP from my computer even though the router could. A call to Linksys eventually solver the problem.

They left out some of the XP instructions for configuring DNS setting on my/your PC. I did spend 51 minutes on hold until a tech came on line (Saturday afternoon - a busy time.) and I had to ask to speak to a supervisor before the problem was properly diagnosed and solved. I am sure that subsequent documentation will fix this problem. Elapsed time was a little over an hour. Thank goodness for cordless phones and headsets.

George

January 18, 2002

Dear TNPC,

I've seen lots of recommendations for pop-up ad blockers and such, but why should we even NEED this type of program? Why isn't anyone screaming about how you can't somehow turn them off in your web browser (well, there's at least one screaming about it now)? Is there a web browser that won't allow the pop-up ads to work? Or is this a capability that all web browser makers got together and decided to put in? Or is it something that all web browsers are inherently capable of doing? Will it eventually get so bad that an arm reaches out of my monitor and slaps me to get my attention? How much will slap blockers cost?

I just don't understand how everyone complains about X10 and other companies that use pop-up-around-under-over ads but they don't complain about the web browser that's letting it happen in the first place. And apparently it has become perfectly acceptable to pay as much as $30-40 for a program that blocks ads. But hey, now that it's acceptable for a company to require everyone to 'activate' their operating system, why not?

Regards,

Bill

January 17, 2002

Dear TNPC,

Everyone is in this ""Big Microsoft = Evil Empire" mode. I admit that some of Microsoft's Heavy Handedness was probably a little out of line. But where would we be without Microsoft. Can you see a world of computers that Steve jobs controls. Internet only served by AOL. Databases controlled by Steve Ellison. That is only a couple of examples. Microsoft helped get these companies where they are and now they say Bad Microsoft. AOL didn't benefit form it's icon on the desktop of every windows 95 installation?

I do believe that Microsoft could have done things differently, but hindsight is 20/20. People should start taking a closer look at the companies lambasting Microsoft when you can see them doing the same things Microsoft did and worse in some cases. They are smaller so they fall under the radar screens. Microsoft did those things to get where they are, and these other companies are doing the same thing to try and get where Microsoft is. Let's look at the playing field equally.

Regards,

Dale Schermerhorn

December 13, 2001

Dear TNPC,

I've been using F-Prot for some time and am very happy with it. It's free and has free upgrades of virus lists almost weekly -- and you only need download the lists (just a minute of work with my cable modem).

But the really big plus is that this program runs in DOS. That was a life saver a few weeks ago when my son downloaded a virus that locked up Windows very thoroughly. With a Window-based anti-virus program, we would have had to reformat the HD and re-install Windows, losing all his school work, etc., etc.

Instead I created an emergency disk from my computer (he hadn't created one) and used that to start up his computer. Since we didn't know what driver was needed to run his CD drive, we again would have been up the creek had we been using some large, Windows-based anti-virus program.

Instead, I created four floppy disks with all the F-Prot files on them and transferred them to his HD. We then ran F-Prot and it hunted down the virus

and neutralized it, AND told us what the virus was, so we could next go to the Net and download a small DOS program to hunt down any files that had bits of the virus in it (as it turned out, this was overkill, but was reassuring since we then knew everything was clean).

After all this, his Windows 98 ran without any modifications. In other words, we spent about a half hour juggling floppies instead of a day or two reformatting his drive and reinstalling Windows and all the programs he uses. Plus, we saved his homework and taught him why he might want to have an emergency disk, quite downloading weird (and possibly virus containing) junk from the Net, and why he should run F-Prot from time to time.

ONE SIDE NOTE: He THOUGHT he was safe from viruses because he was running an anti-virus program from one of the major suppliers. The catch was that he had not updated it for some time. Since that program run in Windows, it was totally worthless during this whole ordeal and he has since deleted it.

-- Duncan Long