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December 6, 1997
News
Giveaway: 3 copies of Norton Utilities; 1 Microsoft Gift
Certificate
Here’s a good, inexpensive holiday gift idea. How would
you like a color printer for under $100? Well, Lexmark is offering a 600 dpi model that
works with Windows 95 and 3.1 that—after a mail-in rebate—will cost end users
just $99. The Lexmark 1000 Color Jet Printer offers print speeds of up to 3.5 ppm for
B&W and 1.5 ppm for color. For more info, check out the Lexmark web site, or my site.
One of the greatest things about the Internet is that it
offers access to resources and archives that were previously not available to most people
or were very hard to get to. Every other day, it seems, more and more great information
resources are starting to become available through new sites. The latest of these is the
Accunet/AP, that’s Associated Press, Photo Archive which is now available on the
‘net at http://ap.accuweather.com (or you can just go to my site and click on
Today’s Links). You can do some limited demo searches for free, but if you want
access to their complete online archive, which offers over 400,000 historical as well as
freshly minted news-related photos, you’ll have to pay for the privilege. As a
result, they’re targeting schools and libraries, who could provide access to a wide
community of users. On the site, they’ve got everything from a portrait of Abraham
Lincoln done in 1844 to photos from this week’s or even today’s news. Press
materials for the site claim that they’re adding 800 photos a day, so it’s quite
a resource. Prices for the service range from $495 per computer per year for elementary
schools to $1,995 per computer per year for libraries. If you’re a teacher or
librarian or know someone who is, you’ll want to check this out.
Microsoft has released a new slightly tweaked version of
their Internet Explorer browser. Version 4.01, which is now available on the MS web site,
incorporates several small security hole fixes that have been released over the last month
or so, and adds some accessibility features for users with handicaps. Specifically it has
the ability to force all web pages to display in fixed fonts and fixed font sizes, which
makes them easier to read by screen-reading applications used by visually-impaired people.
Some non-handicapped users may also find this feature attractive, so if you want to check
it out, you’ll need to download the new version. Microsoft is saying that existing
users do not need to download 4.01 and they’re offering a combination fix for all the
previous security holes in a single, small downloadable upgrade. So, you can decide which
ever one you want to go with.
Starting sometime next year, AOL users will be send and
receive fancier e-mail messages and have better support for sending and receiving
attachments as part of a deal consummated this week between Microsoft and AOL. Within the
first half of ’98 AOL users will be getting Microsoft’s Outlook Express e-mail
client as part of the standard AOL software package. The e-mail client, which is included
as part of IE 4.0, incorporates support for multimedia attachments and Dynamic HTML,
including the ability to send and receive messages in HTML form.
Serious PC hackers have sometimes been able to tweak more
performance out of their existing CPUs through a process known as overclocking, where you
force the CPU to run faster than the chip’s manufacturer has designated. Well, Intel
has apparently decided they don’t like this practice and are now preventing their
Pentium MMX and Pentium II chips from being overclocked by physically altering the chips.
This doesn’t preclude overclocking the system bus—which runs at 66 MHz in most
PCs, but I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone. If you want to find out more, check out
the Tom’s Hardware Guide site, which I’ve got a link to on the Troubleshooting
Resources Page.
If you want to run multiple operating systems on your
PC—an idea that’s no longer as difficult or obscure as it first
sounds—you’ll want to check out the new version of System Commander Deluxe from
V Communications. With System Commander installed, your computer boots into a simple boot
manager application—similar to what you see when Windows 95 crashes and presents you
options such as Safe Mode, Command Prompt, etc on your next reboot.—from which you
can select any OS that you’ve installed. The beauty of System Commander is that it
creates completely separate areas on your hard disk for the different OSes, so that
installing one won’t interfere with any of the others you have installed. In addition
to the features of the previous regular version of System Commander, the new version,
which retails for around $80, adds an OS Wizard that can walk you through the process of
preparing your hard disk for a installing a new OS and can even automatically create new
partitions for the new OS, without harming any of your existing files. So, if you’ve
been wanting to try Windows NT or even something like Linux, or need to keep a Windows 3.1
installation on your Windows 95 machine, System Commander Deluxe gives you a viable
option.
At long last, modem makers are close to finishing a 56K Modem
standard, which is to be dubbed V.PCM. A preliminary version of the standard is expected
to be ratified at a meeting of the ITU (International Telecommunications Union) in January
and final ratification of the finished standard should be done in February. What this
means is, once they’ve been upgraded to the new standard, today’s competing x2
and K56Flex-based modems will finally be able to talk to each other. Also, you want have
to worry about which type of 56K modem your ISP supports—everything will just work
together, as existing 28.8 and 33.6 modems do. Modem makers were apparently motivated to
finish the standard because sales of 56K modems have been relatively slow because
consumers have been waiting for the standards battle to be settled. Existing 56K modems
and other 33.6 modems that are upgradeable to 56K should see the upgrades to the official
standard in late February or early March. Similar, new modems that support the new V.PCM
standard should show up around the same time.
In the mean time, Mac PowerBook users can pick up a Supra
K56Flex modem that works with Mac’s PC Card slots. Available sometime this month from
Diamond, Supra’s parent company, for $170, the modem is upgradeable to the new
standard.
Want to find out if your PC and applications are year-2000
compliant? It turns out the problem affects a lot more than just mainframes—lots of
computers have BIOSes that don’t roll over to the new century properly, some
applications won’t work right and there’s bound to be even more problems. Well,
there’s a shareware utility I saw featured at PC World Online that claims to offers
the ability to check your system for Year 2000, or Y2K, compliance. You can download it
via a link I’ve put on my "This Week’s Links" Page.
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