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August 1, 1998
News
- Mark your calendars. I’ll be speaking at the PC
Clubhouse’s 10th Anniversary meeting this Friday night, August 7 at
Meiklejohn Hall at Cal State Hayward. The meeting starts at 7:30 p.m. For directions and
more information, head over to my User’s Group page and look for info on PC
Clubhouse, or just head over to their web site at www.pcc.org.
- When oh when are the problems related to using computers on
the Internet going to end? Last week it was the CIH BIOS virus, and this week it’s
the e-mail attachment security hole. Here’s the basic problem: some researchers in
Finland discovered that if you receive an e-mail message with an attached file whose name
is longer than 255 characters, it’s possible to cause a crash on your computer which
then opens up a security hole. And once that security hole has been opened, a virus or
other nasty bit of computer code could run in the background and do virtually anything to
your computer, including wiping out the contents of your hard disk. Now, this isn’t
the first time there’s been a problem with e-mail file attachments causing problems.
In fact, as a general rule, if you receive an attachment in an e-mail from someone you
don’t know, I would tread with extreme caution and probably delete the whole message
(or certainly the attachment). Usually, attachments can only cause a problem if you open
them because at that point, you’re essentially running an application—and that
application may be designed to lots of bad things. In fact, even detaching attached files
hasn’t typically been a problem—that is, until now. With this new potential
security hole—and I want to emphasize that there haven’t been any reports of it
being exploited for bad purposes yet—simply detaching the file or in some cases, just
downloading the mail can cause the problem to occur. So, in a worst case scenario, just
sending and receiving your e-mail could open you up to a potential security problem.
Luckily, not everyone is affected, only users of Outlook Express 4.0 for the PC (and some
early versions for the Mac), Outlook 98 for the PC (Outlook 97 is not affected), and
Netscape Communicator/Messenger 4.0/4.5 for the PC. If you use Eudora or another e-mail
client, then you’re safe. This is not a virus issue, by the way, so anti-virus tools
don’t help. Instead, you need to get an updated version of your e-mail package.
Microsoft has already released a patch for Outlook 98 and a temporary patch for Outlook
Express 4.0, although the first patch they released does not fix a related problem that
the company apparently discovered on their own. Still, the Outlook Express patch available
now is better than nothing (and is automatically available to you if you’re running
Windows 98 and use the Windows Update feature). Unfortunately, Netscape apparently
won’t have a fix for a few weeks, which I find incredible, although they do offer
instructions on their site on how to avoid the problem. I have links to all the relevant
places on Microsoft’s and Netscape’s sites on my This Week’s Links page, so
check them out.
- Intel has apparently selected August 24 as the launch date
for the new 450 MHz Pentium II processor, as well as the new 128K L2 cache-enhanced 300
and 333 MHz Celeron A processors. Look for new systems that feature these chips in stores
on that day—just in time for school.
- Toshiba will be debuting a new line of Pentium II-based
notebooks on Monday called the Satellite 4000 series that will start under $2,000,
according to published reports I read. The 233 MHz PII-equipped Satellite 4005CDS will
include a 12.1" dual-scan display, a 4.1GB drive, a 56K modem, and a CD-ROM drive.
- Speaking of computers to expect, Apple is apparently planning
to announce some Power Mac "speed bump" systems around the 12th of
August. The new Power Mac G3 systems will feature the faster 333 and 366 MHz PowerPC 750,
or G3, processors and will debut in systems that start around $2,600. Along with the new
systems you can expect to see price cuts on the existing 233, 266 and 300 MHz systems,
with 233 MHz G3s expected to drop down around the $1,400 price range.
- In other Mac news, Microsoft has released a Mac Office 98
patch that fixes the problem with being able to see unwanted data at the bottom of a file.
This problem—which could bring in random data from files that had already been
deleted—originally appeared and was fixed in Office 95 for the PC, but managed to
make its way into the Mac version of Office. You can find a link on my This Week’s
Links page.
- Looking for a really big hard drive? How does 10 GB sound?
Well, Western Digital’s new Caviar AC310100 10.1 GB drive, may just fit the bill. The
new drive, which is expected to retail around $340, includes support for the UltraDMA
standard for transfers up to 33 Mbytes/sec, as well as the company’s Data LifeGuard
technology, which detects, isolates and fixes hard drive problems before any data is
destroyed. The LifeGuard technology is based on the SMART standard for hard drive
diagnostics. The one issue to be aware of with this and any other hard drive over 8.4 GB
is that many PCs cannot properly work with drives over this size without a BIOS upgrade,
or special software that allows your system to work with large drives. Western Digital
offers a free download of the EZ-Drive drive overlay software if your BIOS cannot be
upgraded.
- America Online has officially released version 4.0 of its
software, which has been available in beta form for several months now. AOL subscribers
can get the update by typing in the keyword "upgrade." The new version of the
software integrates Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 4.01 browser, and offers enhanced
e-mail functions and a revised user interface. The e-mail, in particular, is greatly
enhanced, and now lets you attach multiple files to a message, offers built-in
spell-checking and more.
- If you’ve started to investigate USB devices you’ll
probably soon come to the realization that you need a USB hub, which is kind of like a
multiple outlet strip for USB devices. Here’s the problem, while USB was advertised
as being daisy-chainable, most devices don’t include an additional connector for
hooking up other devices. As a result, as soon as you fill up the available USB connectors
you have on your PC, you need a way to get other devices attached. That’s exactly
what a USB hub does. It takes up one of your PC’s USB ports, but then offers you
typically four or more additional connectors to which you can attach devices. Most, though
not all, USBs are powered, which means they can also supply power to devices plugged into
them—another potential issue with USB devices. Several companies offer products like
this, but the latest entrant is a company called Entrega, which offers 4- and 7-port hubs
for PCs and will be making USB hubs for iMacs as well. Entegra’s 4-port model lists
for $79 and the 7-port model is $129.
- Want to add audio to your web site, but don’t want to
force visitors to download and install additional plug-in applications? Then you may want
to check Lernout & Hauspie’s Audio Café, a new $29 package that works along with
FrontPage 97 and 98 on the PC to let you create audio files that can be played without any
external player, but simply via Java (which all the major browsers support). So with Audio
Café you could add a variety of audio snippets to your web site and anyone who visits the
site with a Java-capable browser will be able to hear them, without having to worry about
an external application, such as RealAudio. You can find out more at the Lernout &
Hauspie site at www.lhs.com.
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