CompuNotes Notes from The Cutting Edge of Personal Computing October 30, 1997 Issue 105 +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+= To subscribe, send an e-mail to listserv@peach.ease.lsoft.com SUBSCRIBE COMPUNOTES-L FirstName LastName To unsubscribe, send an e-mail to listserv@peach.ease.lsoft.com SIGNOFF COMPUNOTES-L For Contact and Other Information See Bottom of Publication! +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+= CONTENTS My Notes: 1=> Kid's Sites on the Web, mailto:pgrote@i1.net 2=> This Issue's Winner! News: 3-> News of the Week, mailto:pgrote@i1.net Columns: 4=> The Search for Intelligent Life on the Internet, Part II Is Netscape really the Anti-Microsoft? Commentary By Doug Reed, Associate Editor, mailto:dr2web@sprynet.com Reviews: 5=> Product: Web Designer's Guide to Style Sheets by Steven Mulder, book/web creation Reviewed By: Doug Reed, mailto:dr2web@sprynet.com 6=> Product: i.Share 2.5, software/networking Reviewed By: Doug Reed, mailto:dr2web@sprynet.com 7=> Product: Pegasus Mail for Windows:How to make your e-mail fly, book/networking Reviewed By: Danny Williams, mailto:danny@packet.net 8=> Product: Great Battles of Alexander, games/strategy Reviewed By: Doug Reed, mailto:dr2web@sprynet.com --- BEGIN ISSUE 1=> Kid's Sites on the Web!, mailto:pgrote@i1.net Well, after 6 long months of development I have finally finished the booklet KID'S SITES ON THE WEB! Just in time for a stocking stuffer for your kids or students, this booklet contains over 500 websites categorized by grade levels! Each grade level is categorized by topics such as FUN or REFERENCE. This unique booklet comes with an accompanying floppy disk with bookmarks that you can load into Netscape or Explorer! You can instantly visit the sites that interest you! All links are guaranteed 100% functional and you can update your links at any time with a quick visit to our website! Every month we'll post a new bookmark file with new and updates links! KID'S SITES ON THE WEB makes a perfect Christmas gift! KID'S SITES ON THE WEB makes a great reward for students who perform well! KID'S SITES ON THE WEB is the perfect way to spend time with your child! To order KID'S SITES ON THE WEB, send a check/money order for $7.50 to: B440 1315 Woodgate Dr. St. Louis, MO 63122 We'll send your copies of KID'S SITES ON THE WEB immediatley! <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> Free Laptop Newsletter from NotebookMall.com * Cool notebook ideas, news summary, links to resources * Great deals on used and refurbished notebooks To subscribe, mailto:newsletter@NotebookMall.com For more info: http://NotebookMall.com <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> 2=> Winner! This week's winner: steve@adserve.com. 3=> News and Game Bits, mailto:pgrote@i1.net or mailto:dr2web@sprynet.com PG: Job security . . . http://www.news.com/News/Item/0,4,15590,00.html PG: Duh, Another Example of the Internet Like Real Life http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/content/zdnn/1025/175656.html PG: Nice to See Someone is Trying to SAVE Resources http://www.abcnews.com/sections/scitech/opera/index.html PG: Finally, A Decent Microsoft Article :-) http://www.abcnews.com/sections/scitech/moody25/index.html DR: Sanford Wallace win the Ig-Nobel award for Communication! (DO NOT confuse the Ig-Nobel awards with the Nobel awards!) http://www.eecs.harvard.edu/ig_nobel/ 4=> The Search for Intelligent Life on the Internet, Part II Is Netscape really the Anti-Microsoft? Commentary By Doug Reed, Associate Editor, mailto:dr2web@sprynet.com I have to laugh. People who hate Microsoft with a passion have in recent times supported Netscape as "The Company Most Likely to Defeat Microsoft". This despite the fact that Netscape acts more like Microsoft is accused of than Microsoft itself does. Netscape at times seems to be coasting sheerly on its reputation, earned back when it was practically the only browser manufacturer on the Web. Coupled with that is the sheer arrogance that Netscape can ignore the standards and recommendations proposed by the W3c, and that Netscape's own proprietary standards will rule the day. No where is this more evident than Netscape's decision to use the tag and JavaScript accessible style sheets in Navigator 4.0. On the other hand, Microsoft's web browser has continually improved and Microsoft has made numerous commitments to following recommendations (or at least, proposed recommendations) to follow the W3c. Now, before you start your flame mail, let me say that Microsoft has not been perfect, and they have also done their dead-level best to introduce their own proprietary standards. After all, how many browsers other than Internet Explorer natively use VBScript and ActiveX? (the answer is none, although a plug-in does exist for Navigator). The point is this - Netscape is acting at least as arrogantly as Microsoft, if not more so, and the result is simple: Netscape is losing. Study history long enough, and you begin to see where it repeats itself. Nowhere is this clearer than Microsoft's battles with Apple, IBM, and now Netscape. All three have fallen flat on their faces facing off against Bill & Co.; the ultimate humiliation for Apple was having to be saved by none other than Bill & Co. But the big loser in that deal was neither Apple nor Microsoft; no, the loser was Netscape. Why? Because now all Apple computers will ship with Microsoft's Internet Explorer pre-installed. And we all know how this works - if it's already on there, that is what people will use. But why did Apple & IBM fail? Sheer arrogance; by assuming that their product was superior, they seemed to think that would be enough to carry the day. While Microsoft was out recruiting vendors to develop for Windows, Apple was shooing them away. IBM is even worse; they developed a perfectly good operating system (OS/2 Warp), then abandoned it to it's fate. They even failed to port a version of OS/2 for the PowerPC, a chip they developed with Apple and Motorola! So it is hardly surprising that very few companies have released native OS/2 software. Netscape seems to be heading much the same way. Version 4 of Navigator, bundled together into a huge package called "Communicator" is by far the buggiest version yet of Netscape's browser. Two bug patches have already been released to fix serious security flaws, and rumors are that yet another security problem has been found and will need to be patched. But beyond the issue of security is the browser itself and its ability to get around on the web. Sure, the interface has been significantly improved. Yes, it is easier to use than ever before. But many new features seem to have been tossed in haphazardly, like Netscape decided "Well, gee, maybe it should also do this." A prime example, and one that is the lament of Webmasters such as myself, is Navigator's support of Cascading Style Sheets. Netscape finally caught up with Microsoft, which released CSS support in IE 3.0, but the implementation is even less complete than Microsoft's was in IE 3.0, which came out a year ago! Further, numerous bugs exist. For example, I had several pages where the margins were defined for the body of the page (the body tag controls the overall layout of the page). These pages work perfectly fine in IE 3.0 and 4.0b2; however, when I went to load the page in NN 4.0 - crash. I tried again and again, but got the same result. At first I didn't know what was going on, but when I loaded the page into NN 4.0 with the linked style sheet missing - taa daa - the page loaded fine (although it didn't look right). So CSS support in NN 4.0 is only partial, and what's worse, error- and crash-prone. Don't even get me started on JavaScript and client-side scripting. These aren't problems confined to webmasters. If the webmaster doesn't do a good job of insuring that a page will display well in all versions of Navigator, IE, and Mosaic, he/she runs the risk of a page that won't load at all. While it seems to be less of a problem with Mosaic and IE 3.0, there have been far too many times when I've tried to go to sites using Navigator and been unable to access the site because the browser crashes on that page. Yes, it is true that it is the fault of the webmaster for creating such a bad design, but then why do Mosaic and IE fail so gracefully and still display the page while Navigator simply crashes? Because Navigator doesn't fail as gracefully, Netscape's customers are restricted in what they can see on the web. As it stands right now, the future does not look particularly good for Netscape. From a stance of total dominance, Netscape has been continuously losing market share to Microsoft since the release of IE 3.0 last year. Further, Netscape has lost a number of prominent ISPs, including most notably AT&T's Worldnet. Based on downloads of the beta versions of IE 4.0, Netscape may stand to lose considerably more people try IE 4.0. In my mind, the closest company to being a real anti-Microsoft is Intuit. Why? Because year after year, Intuit's award-winning Quicken continues to outsell Microsoft's Money. Quicken's dominance of Money is so complete that a few years ago Microsoft offered to buy Intuit rather than continue to try to compete with Quicken, a move that was only blocked when the Justice Dept. intervened. If Netscape wants to continue to dominate and outsell Microsoft, it needs to do it the same way: build a better mousetrap. I don't really care if my browser has dynamic HTML or JavaScript accessible style sheets. I just want to be able to find the information I want on the web and get there quickly and easily with as little fuss/crashing as possible. When Netscape gets back to designing a web browser that does that, then they might truly be able to become the anti-Microsoft. 5=> Product: Web Designer's Guide to Style Sheets by Steven Mulder, book/web creation Reviewed By: Doug Reed, mailto:dr2web@sprynet.com Category: Internet-Web publishing ISBN: 1-56830-306-8. 362 pages MSRP: $39.99 US/$56.95 CAN When Microsoft introduced version 3.0 of it's Internet Explorer web browser it introduced a totally new and radical way to improve the look of web sites. This new innovation was not a proprietary standard of Microsoft's; it was instead a new approach to controlling presentation of HTML documents originally proposed and recommended by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3c, http://www.w3c.org/). This new innovation was Style Sheets, and it was such an immediate success that Netscape was forced to play catch-up and add Style Sheets to version 4.0 of Navigator. But for those of us used to dealing with HTML tags, the specs on style sheets can be more than a little confusing. Selectors, declarations, values, classes, and id's are all terms that can apply to elements of a style sheet. Understanding them and knowing how to use them requires the use of a good book that can serve as both tutorial and reference. Steven Mulder's Guide to Style Sheets, part of Hayden Books "Web Designer" series, seeks to be that book. Part tutorial, part reference, this book provides all of the necessary information for the aspiring web designer who wants to use style sheets in his documents. Most valuable of all, Mulder takes the time to explain the differences between the elements of style sheets supported by Internet Explorer (both versions 3.0 and 4.0) and those supported by Navigator 4.0. Mulder also explains additional elements of the CSS specification that are not supported by either browser yet. For these last two reasons alone, anyone wanting to do web design should heavily consider getting this book. I'm a big proponent of CSS, and have been since it was first introduced to the web in Internet Explorer 3.0. Unlike Netscape's proprietary tag, CSS doesn't require the use of any non-standard tags and degrades gracefully on browsers that don't support CSS since those browsers will see nothing unusual. Also, CSS allows the web designer complete access to the look and appearance of all of the elements of the page. However, learning CSS is a challenge as it does not resemble HTML at all, and there are all sorts of little tricks and shortcuts to achieve the look you want. In particular, there are a lot of elements about a tag that one can alter - not only the font, font size, and color, but also things like alignment, weight (bold), line height, background color and/or image, and so on. The list is quite extensive. The only additional problem to learning CSS is that none of the browsers that currently support it support the full CSS recommendation. All of this means that it is essential to have a good reference text around, and The Web Designer's Guide to Style Sheets would certainly qualify. Despite being an "expert" on the subject, I was surprised to learn that I actually still had a lot to learn about how to use CSS! Chapter 1 starts with why you would want to use style sheets in the first place, as opposed to other layout controls like Netscape's tag. Besides CSS, Mulder also mentions briefly JavaScript-Accessible Style Sheets and Dynamic HTML, innovations being introduced in the latest versions of Netscape's and Microsoft's browsers, respectively. Chapter 2, then, starts with the Basic of CSS: how to implement them, the syntax, and the various elements of CSS such as selectors, declarations, classes, and id's. Chapter 3 discusses how CSS cascades, in other words, how the browser decides which rule to implement when multiple style sheets dictate different rules for an element. Chapter 3 also goes into a long and well-needed explanation of how CSS conflicts with the tag (in Netscape's Communicator overrides CSS, while in Microsoft's Internet Explorer the inverse is true!) and how to design pages that "degrade" well when viewed with non-CSS equipped browsers. Chapter 4 covers the thorny issue of fonts; not only mentioning how to set the type, size, and style, but also the question of which font to use (this discussion in continued in Appendix B). Chapter 5 follows this up by discussing Typography, while chapter 6 throws in the issue of color and backgrounds. Chapter 7 and 8 cover the most difficult topic of all (in my opinion) - controlling layout. Chapter 9 discusses the ability to control the classification of the various HTML elements via CSS (not well implemented yet, I'm afraid!). Finally, chapter 10 rounds off the book by presenting several sites that use CSS well, including ESPNET Sportszone and examples from Microsoft's CSS gallery. Mulder's writing style is technical in nature, but not so dry as to be unreadable or boring. This book is definitely for those already fluent in HTML, however, if you know at least something about the subject you won't be lost. If you would like to know all that there is to know about CSS, I highly recommend The Web Designer's Guide to Style Sheets! Check out the companion web site, http://www.hayden.com/internet/style Hayden Books 201 West 103rd St. Indianapolis, IN 46290 317-581-3833 http://www.hayden.com Legibility: Gold User-friendliness: Gold Quality: Gold User: Web designers looking to learn more about CSS 6=> Product: i.Share 2.5, software/networking Reviewed By: Doug Reed, mailto:dr2web@sprynet.com Requirements: LAN, Windows 95/NT So, you have a LAN in your home or office but only one connection to the Internet - what do you do? Install i.Share, of course! This unique networking program, available from Artisoft, allows multiple computers (up to 32) to use a single Internet connection (either direct or via dial-up networking). I.Share is available as shareware with a 30 day time limit or can be purchased on CD from a local retailer. I had just recently set up my own LAN at home so that I can still access the CompuNotes files on the new computer while my wife plays/chats at the same time. I.Share was something of a godsend! Now I can get on the old 'puter (still perfectly good for word processing and website management!) and she can play with the much faster newer 'puter. And all of it was as effortless and simple as it should be. Well, almost. I.Share does have a few quirks, but nothing so serious as to detract from the value of this product for a LAN connection to the Internet. Installation under Windows 95 is as simple as it could be -insert the CD and go! First you have to install i.Share on the computer that will be the server (in other words, the one that has the Internet connection). Once installed, the computer is rebooted and the i.Share server runs as a task bar item. Then you can install i.Share on all of the client computers, in much the same way. The only difference is that with the clients, i.Share only runs when needed and doesn't clog up your task bar. At a time when every utility seems to add itself to your Task bar, it is nice to see one that only does when necessary! Once it is installed on the clients, you are ready to connect! One very nice feature is that you don't need whomever is using the server to connect to the Internet; you can do it all from a client computer! It is as simple as booting your web browser. Since the person running the server may be busy with other tasks or even away from their desk, this saves you the hassle of having to wait or being unable to connect on your own. Very nice! Everything about i.Share can be customized to suit your needs. From the client, you can select the server and method of connection (if there is more than one, presumably) as set various options regarding your ability to connect to the Internet. By default, the i.Share client attempts to contact the Internet anytime you boot an application that might use the Internet (for example, your web browser or a multi-player game). This is exactly what you might want in most cases - for example, when loading your web browser. But what about when you are trying to set up a game over your LAN? In two different games, attempting to either start or connect to a LAN game caused the i.Share client to attempt to connect to the Internet - thereby locking up the game and resulting in much cursing on my part! Luckily, you can set the i.Share client to connect to the Internet only when you manually tell it to - it is just a matter of loading the client utility and setting the proper option. i.Share is an invaluable tool for those looking to extend their LAN to the Internet. If you need that kind of functionality, I highly recommend you download the shareware version and check it out! i.Share by Artisoft http://www.artisoft.com 7=> Product: Pegasus Mail for Windows:How to make your e-mail fly, book/networking Reviewed By: Danny Williams, mailto:danny@packet.net Street price: Around $30 Once upon a time, Novell started selling a network operating system which turned out to be very successful, but strangely enough did not include any sort of messaging or e-mail. David Harris filled that gap for his University by writing his own simple e-mail program. It proved quite popular with those who used it (and those who only heard about it) and Mr. Harris eventually made his e-mail program, named Pegasus, available for free over the Internet. Pegasus now supports not only e-mail among native Netware clients, but also supports Internet mail, MHS, and non-Novell network operating systems. DOS, Windows, and Macintosh clients are available. It remains freely available for download today from, among other places, http://www.pegasus.usa.com/ . Features have been added over time and enhancements made according to feedback from users so that Pegasus mail is truly a flexible, powerful e-mail package able to hold its own in comparisons to e-mail packages costing hundreds of dollars. Documentation included with Pegasus mail is in the form of an on- line guide with enough information to get started and accomplish quite a lot of tweaking without ever reading further and without spending a dime. Mr. Harris does, however, offer more thorough paper manuals for sale at very reasonable prices and this should certainly be your first stop when shopping for detailed Pegasus configuration and operation information. Purchasing manuals from the Author helps insure that Pegasus will remain freely available and that Mr. Harris continues to have the resources to spend on further development of his program. THEN please have a look at "Pegasus Mail for Windows: How to Make Your E-mail Fly" by David Kocmoud, J. Matthew Pierce, and Michael O. Stegman - it is an excellent, in-depth, although somewhat dated companion to the author's printed and on-line documentation The book comes with a copy of Pegasus mail, but expect to see version 2.23 or 2.30 on the diskette, and the current version is 2.54. The current version is always available on-line (see the URL above) and the program in the book works just fine and is certainly sufficient to get started. Upgrading later is a breeze. All of the book translates correctly to that version, save for only a few peripheral features that are omitted and a few menu options that have moved. The book is really like three books in one. In the first part, Pegasus basics are covered - first the theory and operation behind e-mail and the various ways your message can find its way from your computer to someone else's; installing Pegasus mail, and configuring for basic operations of composing, sending, and receiving e-mail. These 50 pages should be enough to get anyone started with electronic mail, and offers much more history and explanations than the author's manuals. It's loaded with diagrams and screen shots to cut down confusion and intimidation of those first scary days learning a new program. Although I've been using Pegasus mail for my personal e-mail for a couple of years and our network at work has been using exclusively Pegasus mail for several months, I was able to immediately pull several useful tidbits out of the second section of the book, "Power Techniques for Pegasus Mail." Part 2 dives more deeply into things like: -address books -distribution lists (sending the same messages to lots of people) -storing messages in folders and trays -automatically adding signatures -dealing with attachments (sending files via e-mail) -automatically filtering incoming messages to folders -Creating and managing noticeboards (like locally run newsgroups) -Managing extensions (adding buttons and forms to the program) For example, after struggling with Noticeboards for several days, I finally found many answers in this book. Particularly helpful were some points about what CANNOT be done. For instance, I wished to be notified somehow when a new message was posted to a noticeboard. The main documentation does not mention whether it is possible or not, but the book tells me it cannot be done yet, so I didn't need to spend any more time searching for that nonexistent solution. Section three helps me at work. I have to keep an office full of Pegasus mail users connected to each other and to the Internet. Section three, "Pegasus Mail and the Network Administrator" helps me do that. While much of the installation and maintenance is straightforward and obvious, there are some sticky parts particularly with composing gateways between different interfaces and in respect to Netware 4. The book has, again, lots of examples and screen shots that help these more intricate operations go more smoothly. The last hundred pages or so of this 472 page book is filled with technical reference information. The sort of thing almost no one would sit down to read but when you need this hard-to-find information, nothings reads sweeter than the meanings of all the file extensions used in the creation and delivery of e-mail, or the directory structures used in storing messages and programs, or the various options available as command line options when starting Pegasus mail. Much of this information I have been able to pick up as it flowed through Pegasus newsgroups and mailing lists, but it is wonderful to have it all in hard copy on the shelf. This book has found a lot of use in both my hands as the Network Admin and "power user," and in the hands of some of my "newbie" users. The first section really helps get some concepts across to someone new to Pegasus or e-mail in general and the last three- fourths of the book presents a lot of information to the more confident users. Unfortunately, this printing is fast becoming outdated, and the Version 3 of Pegasus mail that will likely be released by the end of 1997 will certainly diminish this book's current value. If you are, however, the person in charge of users clamoring now for help using the more advance features of Pegasus mail or newbies looking for a jump start, then your $30 is well spent. If you are comfortable with your capabilities in Pegasus mail for now, though, perhaps you should wait and see if Mr. Kocmoud, Mr. Pierce, and Mr. Stegman revise their book for the new Pegasus mail. I certainly hope they do, as their first book is a great value and help to me. I expect an update could be a real asset in helping me learn the new version next year, and I would certainly be one of the first in line to purchase an updated revision. Manning Publications 3 Lewis Street Greenwich, CT 06830 1-800-247-6553 Publisher WWW: http://www.browsebooks.com ISBN: 1-884777-13-9 Installation/Ease of Use: N/A User-Friendliness: Gold (well organized, easy to find stuff) Quality: Bronze (due to age and rather cheap binding) User: Novice, Power User, Administrator 8=> Product: Great Battles of Alexander, games/strategy Reviewed By: Doug Reed, mailto:dr2web@sprynet.com Requirements: 486/100, 16MB RAM, 30MB HD, 80 MB swap space, Windows 95, SVGA, 2x CDROM, mouse, sound card MSRP: $49.95 Unless you have been living in a cave, you probably have seen the incredible deluge of real-time war games that have hit the market in the wake of the success of Command & Conquer and Warcraft. Every wargame out now seems to offer real-time as at least an option. Amazingly, then, Interactive Magic has released the first edition of the Great Battles series as a traditional, turn-based strategy game, complete with the traditional six-sided hex based maps. Not surprising, however, is the fact that this may be the best war game that has been released so far this year. Not that Great Battles of Alexander doesn't have flaws; but the flaws are only minor and do not detract from the quality of the game. For thinking war gamers looking for a serious challenge, take a long and serious look at Great Battles of Alexander (a demo is available, see the end of this review). You won't be disappointed. Great Battles of Alexander (hereafter GBoA) is a miniatures-based wargame, which is to say that the various military units are portrayed as little soldiers or cavalry units (elephants are also present in some battles, and even chariots). In their full SVGA- splendor, they are quite beautiful to look at. The game covers the entire career of Alexander, from his first battle alongside his father to his triumphs over the Persian and Indians. At the peak of his career, Alexander's empire covered what was known of Western civilization; the challenge here is to see if the player can do as well. Each battle can be fought individually or fought as part of a campaign. The campaign game requires you to subjugate all of the provinces that comprised Alexander's empire as well as fight all 10 battles. As near as I can tell, how well you are doing subjugating the provinces has little or no bearing on the size of your army during the battles or the availability of reinforcements. Herein lies the one great fault of GBoA: the individual battles are set piece. This means that you cannot alter the placement or appearance of any of the troops in any of the battles. The upside of this is that the use of set-piece battles allowed the designers to create a very strong and challenging AI; the downside is that the replayability of the battles is virtually nill once you've played them a few times. Of course, because the AI is so challenging it will take most people a while to be able to consistently beat the AI in most of the battles. Additionally, you can play over the Internet or a LAN against human opponents (as many human players can play as there are leaders in the battle - more on that in a minute). So while you can't fiddle with the historical beginning of the battle, there is still plenty of room to have some fun in GBoA. A common lament of many a wargamer has been the poor use of leaders in many computer war games. SSG and Talonsoft, respectively, have systems that emphasize leadership, however, neither system does it to the degree that GBoA does. Leaders are the key to winning in GBoA, and everything hinges on how well you use them. Ten years ago in my Ancient Histories class in college, the professor of the class stated much the same thing when describing Alexander's victories over the Persians. Seems Interactive Magic's design team listened to their history lessons as well as to wargamer's demands. How does leadership work in GBoA? Well, let me explain! Each side has an overall leader (for the Macedonians, it is Alexander in all but one battle) and several leaders who control any friendly element of the army within command range. At the beginning of each turn, the various leaders "contend" for initiative, with Alexander received a decided advantage in the contention. The designers state that Alexander's advantage was intentional, reflecting his ability to move and strike with rapidity and confuse his opponents. How it works is this - if Alexander loses the initiative, he can call upon "Elite Initiative" and receive the right to start the turn first (Elite Initiative can be used 3 times per battle). Once the turn begins and initiative is decided, the game cycles through the various leaders on each side until all have used their allotted number of orders for that turn. Orders that leaders can give include movement, ranged missile attack, shock attack (a charge into the enemy's ranks), and rally routed units. In addition, at the conclusion of the orders phase, the computer conducts a momentum check for the currently active leader - should he pass, the leader can undertake another orders phase (sort of a double turn, although ordering units to move twice doesn't come without a penalty!). There is even the possibility of passing a second momentum check and receiving a third turn! As with the Elite Initiative, Alexander has an advantage when the computer decides momentum. Leaders can be killed or wounded (even Alexander and Darius, the leader of the Persians), with the obvious negative effects that would cause. So proper use of leaders is essential to victory in GBoA. This is the first time I've seen it emphasized to such an extent, and I have to admit that I really appreciate this fresh approach to the subject of warfare on the PC. It adds an entirely new dimension and depth to the game, to say the least. Designers of other war games would do well to take notice! I haven't really said much about the graphical look of the game; the minatures- style of combat featured in the game conveys very nicely the sense of troops charging into battle. Blood flows freely across the plain of battle, with corpses of soldiers, horses, and even elephants littering the battlefield well before the game is over. While it might upset the incredibly squeamish, the level of blood and gore is appropriate (people did die in these battles, after all, and it is nice to see a game actually reflect that!) while hardly approaching the level seen in games like Doom or Quake. If you are an avid war gamer, I highly recommend you check out GBoA - you will really love this game, it is the best true war game in quite some time. Likewise, if you are a history buff you will find lots to enjoy in recreating the famous battles of Alexander. If your experience with war games is limited to real-time games like Command & Conquer, I still recommend that you download the demo and try it out; you might be pleasantly surprised. Demo: This is a newly revised demo, smaller and more stable than the demo originally released last spring. Download it from Interactive Magic's website at http://www.imagicgames.com/ Interactive Magic P.O. Box 13491 Research Triangle Park, NC 27709 http://www.imagicgames.com +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+= Managing Editor: Patrick Grote -- mailto:pgrote@i1.net Assistant Editor: Writer Liaison: Doug Reed-- mailto:dr2web@sprynet.com Archives: ftp://ftp.uu.net/published/compunotes/ Website: e-mail: mailto:notes@compunotes.com Want to Write for Us?: mailto:writers@compunotes.com fax: (314) 909-1662 voice: (314) 909-1662 +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+= CompuNotes is: Available weekly via e-mail and on-line. We cover the PC computing world with comprehensive reviews, news, hot web sites, great columns and interviews. We also give away one software package a week to a lucky winner for just reading our fine publication! Never dull, sometimes tardy, we are here to bring you the computing world the way it is! Please tell every on-line friend about us! CompuNotes B440 1315 Woodgate Drive St. Louis, MO 63122 notes@compunotes.com (C)1997 Patrick Grote .