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April 3, 1999
News
- Lots of information on time changes this week. First of all, don’t forget to move
the clock on your computers forward an hour sometime today or tomorrow. And most
importantly, don’t forget that starting next week, "O’Donnell on
Computers" moves to a new time. The show will run from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. every
Saturday afternoon from April 10 onwards.
- I’ve got a copy of L&H Voice Express Professional speech recognition software
to give away, along with some Microsoft paraphernalia.
- The biggest news of the week had to be the Melissa virus, which actually first hit a
week ago Friday, but really made its mark over the weekend and during this past week. In
case you haven’t heard about it, Melissa is a Microsoft Word Macro Virus that comes
via an e-mail attachment. You can only get the virus if you open the attachment and click
yes to run the macros built into the document. Many people did, however, because unlike
most viruses, Melissa was often received via e-mail from a friendly source, such as a
co-worker or friend. In fact, one of the most devastating aspects of Melissa is that it
has now broken down the trust you could normally give to e-mail attachments from people
you know. Thanks to Melissa, its many current variants and others still to come, all
e-mail attachments need to be treated as suspect. And once again, it bears repeating, if
you get an e-mail with an attachment from someone you don’t know, just delete it. In
addition, to avoid these types of problems in the future, get anti-virus software and make
sure the virus definitions are up to date.
- I found several interesting tidbits about upcoming Windows 98 updates this week. First
of all, as has been reported elsewhere, there will be a new Windows 98 2nd
edition, that’s due out around June on retail shelves and is expected to be in new
computers, as of the fall. Windows 98 2nd edition, or OSR1 as it will also be
known as, will replace the existing, original Windows 98 release and will cost the same as
the current version. In addition, there will be an upgrade CD for existing Windows 98
customers at a reduced cost, although Microsoft has not released a price or date for that
upgrade. Finally, just to confuse matters further, there will also be a Windows 98 Service
Pack 1 that will be downloadable and will be free and will have most of what’s in
Windows 98 2nd edition, but not necessarily all. Most importantly, the free
Service Pack will not include Internet Connection Sharing, which looks to be the only
really important new feature in the release. Internet Connection Sharing basically builds
a proxy server directly into Windows 98 for sharing a single Internet connection over a
home network. There are other products that provide this service—including WinGate
and WinProxy, but with Windows 98 2nd edition, it will also be a feature of the
operating system. There are apparently a few other features that may not be in the free
Service Pack, such as support for Device Bay hardware, but the details are not clear yet.
- In other Microsoft OS news, the company announced that it’s releasing yet another
Y2K fix for Windows 95 on April 12. The previous fix brought the OS into compliance with a
few minor issues, but this new fix will address even those. So, look for it on the
Microsoft web site as of a week from Monday. In addition, the company also says that it
expects to ship Windows 2000 by October of this year and that Office 2000 will be shipping
later this month.
- If you’re interested doing digital video editing on your PC and maybe putting some
of your video creations on a web site, you’ll want to check out Dazzle
Multimedia’s Dazzle Digital Video Creator, or DVC, products. The company offers both
parallel and USB port-based video editing systems that let you digitize existing analog
video and convert it to MPEG 1 format, edit it on your PC, and then either keep it in
digital form, or send it back out to be recorded on a traditional VCR. The price for the
standard version of both systems, which includes the external box and the necessary
software for Windows-based PCs, is $249. In addition, the new Internet Editions of the
Dazzle DVC, which list for $299 in both parallel and USB formats, add one very important
feature: the ability to save your audio and/or video creations directly in streaming
RealAudio/RealVideo format and publish them directly to your web site.
- Adobe this week unveiled version 4.0 of its Acrobat Reader software. Acrobat is used to
view PDF (Portable Document Format) files, both on the web and on disk. The new version
adds support for PostScript Level 3, the most recent PDF file format (1.3), and offers
better printing on both Postscript and PCL-based printers. Acrobat Reader 4, which will be
on the CD accompanying my upcoming book, "Personal Computer Secrets," is
available now for Macs and PCs.
- Agfa has a new entry in the digital camera market. The $799 ePhoto CL50 is a 1.3
Megapixel, or 1.3 million pixel, camera that includes a 3x zoom and comes standard with an
8 MB SmartMedia card. In addition, the photo offers a special PhotoGenie mode that the
company claims can provide resolution of nearly 2 million pixels (1,600 x 1,200).
- Everyone is jumping on the Free PC bandwagon. This past week three more companies
announced deals whereby signing up for Internet service or registering on an auction gives
them the equivalent of about a $500 PC. NuAuction claims they’ll give away 12,000 PCs
to people who register free of charge for their auction site. Two others—Gobi and
DirectWeb—require you to sign up for several years of ISP service with them in order
to qualify for the free PC. You can find links to all these sites from my This Week’s
Links page.
- Finally, Intel this week confirmed that low-cost systems based on its forthcoming 810
chipset are expected later this month. The 810, which has been codenamed Whitney, is the
first Intel chipset to incorporate a 3D graphics controller. As a result, systems that use
the chipset won’t require a separate video card—which will reduce their overall
cost—and they’ll basically get about the equivalent of the Intel i740 chip for
"free." Again, look for it in low-cost systems later this month.
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