CompuNotes Notes from The Cutting Edge of Personal Computing ISSN: 1525-4534 April 23, 2000 Issue 164 +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+= 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! +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+= ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Buy Sams Teach Yourself Microsoft Exchange Server 5.5 in 10 Minutes at Amazon.Com Now and Support CompuNotes! Amazon.Com - about $10.39 -- Click Here: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0672315564/compunotes/ ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ CONTENTS My Notes: 1=> CompuNotes Notes, DSL - Worth the Pain? Part Two, mailto:pgrote@i1.net 2=> This Issue's Winner! News: 3=> News of the Week, mailto:pgrote@i1.net Commentary: 4=> Gamer's Corner - Best Game of the 90's and some special awards Doug Reed, dr2web@sprynet.com Reviews: 5=> Product: Drive Span 1.0, utility Reviewed By: Paul Schneider, mailto:p-schne@uiuc.edu 6=> Product: PowerZip v5.01, utility Reviewed by: Howard Carson mailto:howardcarson@home.com 7=> Product: Peter Norton's Complete Guide to PC Upgrades, Second Edition, book Reviewed By: Don Hughes, mailto:dhughes-reviewcdn@home.com 8=> Product: Server Magic v3.0, Part Two, utility Reviewed By: Jim Huddle, mailto:jhuddle@cfl.rr.com 9=> Product: Xerox DocuPrint P8ex laser printer, hardware Reviewed By: Howard Carson, mailto:howardcarson@home.com 1=> CompuNotes Notes, DSL - Worth the Pain?, mailto:pgrote@i1.net (Note on future issues: Next week I'll be writing an piece on the passing of Phil Katz, father of the ZIP file. Phil passed way last week. http://www.jsonline.com/news/obits/apr00/KatzPhillipW041900.asp) Some of you may think I am still without DSL. Nope. I had it installed from day one. Thanks for your notes of support, though. I have found a sense of community at DSLReports, http://www.dslreports.com, which is a great site for learning about DSL. They have specific mailing lists for each DSL provider. This provides a great sense of community, as you can talk with others about issues, features, etc. Well, on with the story . . . OK, so if you tuned in last week you heard about my install date saga with DSL. The hardware install went ok, but alas, we weren't getting an Internet connection. We were getting a network connections, but when you tried to browse or ping onto an outside network you got nothing. The DSL I subscribe to is called Enhanced DSL. It comes with 5 static IP addresses. This is incredible as I thought static IP addresses were so rare now you had to have them willed to you. It's now 5:00pm, two hours into the install, and the technician is on the phone with his support people. They can't find my order and I'm not in the system. My first thought is Cha Ching. Free DSL. My second thought hovers somewhere around, "How long is this going to take" to "I want my ISDN back." Within 90 minutes the issue is identified ... Wrong IP addresses. Southwestern Bell sends you a welcome kit after you sign up that includes your static IP addresses. Welp, mine were wrong. As soon as the technician gave me the right numbers, I could connect. When I say connect, I mean really connect. I leapt onto ZDnet's Hotfiles site, (http://www.hotfiles.com), and downloaded a demo of Microsoft's latest game release, High Heat Baseball. It was over 25 megabytes in length. Of course, I asked the technician to stay to make sure my throughput was ok. Ten seconds into the download I was peaking at 85K a second throughput. Amazing. Simply amazing. After shouting out various kudos to the technician like, "You're the man" and "You've made the happiest guy in the world", our technician departed. Sitting alone and looking at my computer I was almost overcome with emotion. I slowly realized that I had come from 300 baud, which is like .003k modems to 1200 baud, 2400 baud, 9600 baud, 14.4 baud, 28.8K, ISDN and now this. As I loaded the My Excite page I use, I quickly realized that pages no longer load, they appear. Yes, I know the speed of my loading is based on the remote server's and network connections between me and them, but come on, this is incredible. Immersed in the pleasure of high bandwidth, I did things I could only dream about using ISDN. I watched full screen movie trailers, I downloaded programs, I listed to MP3 stereo audio and I did so much more. At one point during the evening I was getting 100K a second in downloads. YES! 100K a second! I went to bed that night thinking that my computing life was never going to be the same! The next morning I bounded into my office to look at the news sites at high speed. Incredible. Stunning. Again, the pages popped or appeared on my screen. No interlacing as the graphics loaded. No waiting for long links to load. This is how browsing should be. I went off to work knowing that I'd be able to brag that I could download faster at home than I could at work .... As I arrived home, I was very anxious to download from the Internet. I had come across a few demos of management software I wanted, but waited until I got home to try them out. My wife was the first to stop me. "Why is eBay so slow today?" My daughter nailed me at the top of the stairs. "I can't download the games I play." I entered my office, sat down at my PC and was horrified to discover they were right. Slow loads, I mean really slow loads were occurring. Where did my popping go? Where did my fast downloads go? I was no averaging 2-4K a download. Less than a 56K modem! Way slower than my ISDN line. Logically, I thought maybe there was something wrong with the hardware. I powered off and then on the DSL router. No go. Same throughput. I verified the IP addresses. All correct. I checked Southwestern Bell's internal system status site and found everything ok. Bummer, I need technical support. Why bummer? Well , first off all, you have to understand that I do this networking/computing thing for a living. It is frustrating having to peel through layer and layer of support. Second, Southwestern Bell has horrible ISP support. One of my clients has an ISDN connection through Southwestern Bell and their support has been horrible. As I waited on hold, I decided to try my hand at finding out the problem. I tried pinging all my local IPs. No issues. I tried pinging the Southwestern Bell network, know issues. I tried pinging the CompuNotes website, ammo! Dropped packets. I run a TRACERT and find out that my fourth hope, the one where I jump on the Internet backbone and off of the Southwestern Bell network, is causing an issue. Packets are being dropped. Now, imagine my feeling. I've had the luxury of this great speed and now I am hobbled. Hobbled by something out of my control. I know exactly where the problem is and have a good idea of how to fix it, but I can't. Southwestern Bell's technical support is so inept and poorly staffed, it takes me until Friday to get a hold of someone who will help me. During the three days that have passed, I've used Visual Route, (http://www.visualroute.com), to trace the router I am having issues with. It is a Digex router located in Maryland and is my 4th hop. Very odd, as St. Louis Southwestern Bell should be using the Chicago NAP. NAPs are access points onto the Internet backbone. There are only a few of and they are used by the major ISPs to transfer traffic. All I needed was a static route to put me through to another NAP or internal Southwestern Bell router. Heck, I could even give them the command line Cisco command to do that. I JUST CAN'T TALK TO ANYONE. I finally find someone in the DSL hardware repair area who will help me. She stayed on the phone with me for FIVE hours until we worked through three departments. As I finished my conversation with the last person I was assured that a ticket was open with Digex and that a status would be communicated to me. I made the technician promise to call me within 3 hours. At this point it was 5:00pm on a Friday evening. I knew that if it wasn't fixed soon, I'd be without high speed for the weekend. As I told everyone, gong through this was like the Got Milk? commercials. Someone gave me my cookies, but took away the milk . . . Like I said, I finished the conversation with the last guy. His last promise was to call me with a status. True to his word, almost three hours later he called and let me know that A) A ticket was open with Digex, B) Southwestern Bell doesn't consider it their issue and C) There was no way for me to tell when it would be fixed. As I grew angrier and angrier I ran Visual Route again. Weird. No packet loss. Hurriedly I downloaded the same Microsoft game demo to another machine and I was back in business. The problem was fixed and has never raised it's head again. Whew! What did I learn? The following: 1) DSL rocks. Get it if you want high speed access to the Internet. 2) Southwestern Bell support isn't prepared to handle it. Heck, all ISPs aren't ready to handle it. 3) Southwestern Bell's install is smooth. Yes, we had an issue with the IP addresses, but everything else went great! 4) When you get DSL, your Internet experience will never be the same! I want to hear from you about your DSL experiences and resources! Send me your experiences at pgrote@i1.net. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Buy Network+ Cheat Sheet and Get Certified! at Amazon.Com Now and Support CompuNotes! Amazon.Com - about $21.24 -- Click Here: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0789721775/compunotes/ ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 2=> Winner! This week's winner: Chris@COMPNMORE.COM. 3=> News of the Week, mailto:pgrote@i1.net Go Figure! Mafia Boy's Dad may be Mafia ... http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-1726303.html Look and Feel of Pac Man is Proprietary ... http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1006-200-1719304.html Real Networks Going the Way of Netscape? http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-201-1579817-0.html New Netscape Bug . . . http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,2553337,00.html Was King's Ebook that Successful? http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,35722,00.html Chinese Regulating Internet News . . . http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,35825,00.html Palm VII Too Hot for National Lab ... http://www.sjmercury.com/svtech/news/breaking/merc/docs/001887.htm 4=> Gamer's Corner - Best Game of the 90's and some special awards Doug Reed, dr2web@sprynet.com Well, the time of year has come to anoint what somebody thinks is the best game of the previous year. I'm not going to bore you with my choice - Starfleet Command, by the way, but instead focus on the 90s as a whole. What was the best game of the 1990s? That largely depends on the type of games you like to play. Civilization would be high on most people's list, as would Doom, Command & Conquer, and Warcraft. Some might venture Diablo, some might say Warlords or Master of Magic. What about Quake, or Duke Nukem 3D? I've been playing computer games for darn near 20 years, so I think I'm entitled to my opinions. Just to have some fun though, I've thrown in some additional 'awards' for the fun of it. Most Entertaining Gaming Company: Ion Storm wins this one, hands down. No one has kept me more entertained - all without producing a single game! For the last two months alone, who could miss the "THE WAIT IS OVER - Dikatana" ads blaring on all the gaming websites. And still no sign of Dikatana in stores, or even word that the game has gone gold. Thanks John, Todd, and all you guys & gals - you've made life fun. Best Game to Save a Company: Mechwarrior 2. Lots of people have probably forgotten this gem, which came out in 1995. Activision was on the ropes at the time, and the word was out that if Mechwarrior 2 didn't succeed Activision was finished. Mechwarrior 2 did succeed - boy howdy, did it succeed - and saved Activision's butt. Fasa promptly decided that someone else should develop future Mechwarrior titles and took their business to Microprose. Worst Disaster of the 1990s: Spectrum Holobyte's purchase of Microprose, thanks to a bad business decision by Microprose to try and market arcade machines. The company that gave us M-1 Tank Platoon, F-19 Stealth Fighter, Pirates, Railroad Tycoon, X-Com, Master of Magic, Master of Orion then went on to produce a huge number of buggy flops like Across the Rhine. The original founders went their own ways, founding Interactive Magic and Firaxis. Microprose still produces the occasional gem (Rollercoaster Tycoon!) but has nowhere near the reputation that it did at the beginning of the 90s. Worst Trend of the 90s: The clone wars, by far! Companies eager to capitalize on the success of Doom, Command & Conquer, and Warcraft II produced an avalanche of crud that buried great games like Seven Kingdoms. Best Gaming Companies of the 90s: Well id, of course is one of the tops. Interplay ranks up there too, as does Firaxis. Blizzard - hey, three of the best selling games of the 90s (Warcraft II, Diablo, Starcraft). Lucasarts Special Award for Producing the Most Bug-Free Games: To LucasArts. Thank you George & crew - your games are by far and away the most bug-free of any companies. Don't believe me? Check out the number of patches from their website. http://www.lucasarts.com Special Crud Award for Producing the Most Buggy Games: A tie, can you believe it? Sierra and Activision, please step forward! Along with Activision, special mention also goes to Take 2, Interactive Magic, and Origin for releasing games that were unable to be played as originally released (Sin, Battlecruiser 3000, Destiny, and Ultima IX - respectively). Gosh, what a special honor! Okay, now finally for my choice of Best Game of the 1990s. Or maybe I should say Best Games, because I found it impossible to pick one above the rest. Here they are, in no particular order: Civilization (I & II) Doom Dark Forces Mechwarrior 2 Total Annihilation Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers Half-life X-Com: UFO Defense Panzer General Tie Fighter There you have it - my picks for the Best Games of the 90s. Hopefully one or two of them was a pleasant surprise, or at least makes you nostalgic for those old games. Till next time! dr2web@sprynet.com ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Buy Network+ Cheat Sheet and Get Certified! at Amazon.Com Now and Support CompuNotes! Amazon.Com - about $21.24 -- Click Here: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0789721775/compunotes/ ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 5=> Product: Drive Span 1.0, utility Reviewed By: Paul Schneider, mailto:p-schne@uiuc.edu Requirements: Intel Compatible PC (486/66 or higher) Windows 98 or Windows 95 version 4.00.950B (OSR2) or later, 3.5" Floppy Drive (for installation), VGA or higher resolution, 8MB free disk space, 8MB RAM Recommended: Pentium with 16 MB ram Reviewed on: AMDK2-233, 96 MB RAM, 2x CDROM, MX300 Sound, Mystic Video card, 1 1.6 meg Maxtor Drive and 1 5.2 meg Maxtor Drive. MSRP: $39.95 About three months ago a student in one of my beginning computer classes asked me what he should do when installing a new program if his C drive was full, but his new hard drive, the D drive, was empty. I wish, at that time, that I had known about Drive Span! Drive Span seeks to solve this age-old problem of Windows wanting to install everything on the C drive. Using some clever technology, Drive Span sews two drives together to form one seamless one. On my system I have 2 hard drives, the larger is divided into 3 partitions and the smaller (1.6 megs) into a single partition. Well, although I have some good reasons for this division I threw caution into the wind, backed up my drives and wiped them clean in order to bring you, gentle reader, an accurate review! Okay, so it wasn't all selfless, I too was terribly curious as to how well this product would perform. Drive Span's main purpose is to connect two drives to form a single drive with an upper limit of 2 terabytes. However, it also rids you of having to ever use FDISK again. Yes indeed your hard drive initialization woes are over. After FDISKing my existing drive and thus turning it into a clean empty one, I turned my computer back on. As soon as Windows began to boot, Drive Span stepped in. At first I thought it was a Windows program doing the work, because it said, "Windows detected a new drive." However, it was Drive Span incognito. After this initial detection Drive Span shows its face and prompts you to either create a new drive or span an existing one. My first choice, the creation of a new drive went flawlessly. In a matter of minutes my drive was formatted in FAT32 and recognized by Windows. If you decide to use the later choice, you need to first meet a couple specifications. First, the drive to which you are connecting must be a single partition. Second, this drive must be formatted under FAT32. Third, the drive you are adding must be blank. In other words, FDISK the drive to add and wipe it clean of all partitions if it is not brand new. If your system meets these three requirements you are set. The first step is to simply turn the system on. After recognizing the drive, tell Drive Span you want to Span a drive (there are only two choices). After this point Drive Span pretty much takes over. As you have probably gathered, there isn't much to Drive Span or as I would say there isn't a lot of needless dribble. In this day and age of bloated programs it was refreshing to see an extremely useful utility come on a single floppy disk. Not only that, it contained comprehensive documentation in the form of online help and an Adobe Acrobat PDF file. Though to be honest I barely looked at until after I had already performed the said tasks! So what is the downside? For most people there won't be one. However, if you're system meets one of the following you may want to think twice: People with dual boot NT/Windows 95/98 systems probably are using FAT 16 which will not work with Drive Span; People using NT only will want to look to Drive Span's NT version; If you have a single hard drive already partitioned into multiple drives it may be more trouble than it's worth to eliminate those partitions and create a single big one. In sum, Drive Span delivers on its promise and while I can't provide adequate testimonial to is reliability over the long term it does sport several safety features to address drives gone bad. (S.M.A.R.T. (Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology) for IDE drives and a quick recovery program in case one of your two drives goes bad). What I can testify is that Drive Span is easy, quick, and useful. If you have a tendency to follow the default choice for every installation and your hard drive is nearly full, never fear Drive Span is here! Future Systems Solutions Drive Span http://www.fssdev.com ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Buy Sams Teach Yourself Microsoft Exchange Server 5.5 in 10 Minutes at Amazon.Com Now and Support CompuNotes! Amazon.Com - about $10.39 -- Click Here: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0672315564/compunotes/ ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 6=> Product: PowerZip v5.01, utility Reviewed by: Howard Carson mailto:howardcarson@home.com Requires: Windows 95, 98, NT 4.0, or Windows 2000; 16MB RAM recommended, 5MB free disk space MSRP: US$20 single user (volume and academic license discounts available) PowerZip is a feature-rich archiving, compression, decompression program and shell for Windows 95/98/2000 and NT 4.0. PowerZip is a direct competitor to WinZip (from Niko Mak Computing) and the top-rated ZipMagic 2000 (from Mijenix Corporation). PowerZip supports the ZIP, ARJ, RAR, ACE, CAB, TAR, GZ, HA, Z, and LZH archive formats. PowerZip combines a convenient, intuitive user interface with flexibility and advanced options such as ZIP encryption (password protected ZIP files), ZIP comments, and multi- disk ZIP support. PowerZip was tested on two computers: a PII/350MHz with 128MB RAM running Windows 98SE, and an older Dell Dimension XPS P166s with 64MB RAM running Windows 95b. Installation was flawless on both machines. Basic tests of PowerZip included compression and decompression speed comparisons with WinZip and ZipMagic 2000, as well as ZIP, CAB, TAR, and Z file compatibility. PowerZip's speed test results were competitive - barely. Have a look at these comparisons: 1 - 16 files (EXE, ZIP, and TXT) PowerZip timing = 20 seconds to create a 12.2MB ZIP WinZip timing = 14 seconds to create a 12.0MB ZIP 2 - 184 files (EXE, ZIP, and TXT, some in sub folders) PowerZip timing = 140 seconds to create a 95.7MB ZIP WinZip timing = 90 seconds to create a 93.4MB ZIP 3 - 240 files (TXT, DOC, Quark, BMP, etc.) PowerZip timing = 115 seconds to create a 50.1MB ZIP WinZip timing = 120 seconds to create a 49.9MB ZIP Note that PowerZip did not do anywhere near as well as WinZip timing-wise, when archiving already compressed files. PowerZip was WinZip's equal at archiving uncompressed data however. It provides similar results with CAB files (although WinZip can't create CAB files; it only reads and decompresses them). We used WinZip and ZipMagic 2000 to decompress ZIPs created with PowerZip (and vice- versa). There were no problems or incompatibilities. PowerZip provides an option which registers it to handle its archive formats within Windows, to extract files from within Windows Explorer. It also adds a selection to Explorer's context menu for automatically extracting the contents of an archive to a new folder. PowerZip acts as a GUI shell for a variety of command-line programs which handle other compression formats (separate LHA, ARJ, and HA executables are required for LHA/LZH, ARJ, and HA compressed formats respectively). PowerZip can create Win32 and MS-DOS self-extracting ZIP files, which makes it a good utility for assembling distributable ZIPs. You can create both 16 and 32-bit files, select a default unZIP path, add comments, and run a program or display a file once the operation is complete. Other features include multiple disk spanning (e.g.: creating a 250MB archive stored on 3 Iomega Zip disks), encryption, and password protection. Cons: PowerZip does not store file size data accurately - its ZIP files are sometimes read incorrectly by Windows Explorer (a 50MB test ZIP created with PowerZip and consisting of DOC, TXT, Quark, and other data files was reported as 18.MB in Explorer, while the identical ZIP created with WinZip was reported accurately). This is a serious bug because it provides users with inaccurate, favorably smaller file size data. We also found a bug when creating new test archives - drag & drop worked perfectly, but using the normal file selector dialog to select more than about 30 files/folders at a time always turned up a "Cannot read file" error. The UI is easier to use than WinZip (the New and Add archive functions in WinZip often confuse users), but PowerZip could still use tweaks in the Settings dialog (context sensitive Help would solve the problem for users unfamiliar with many terms used in both PowerZip and WinZip). Utility software makers could also take a hint from Adaptec (and others) that use long ToolTips or Guide text in the UI, rather than full blown Help files or Microsoft's 'What's This?' context Help. There's no support for UUencode or UUdecode which is a drawback for Usenet fans. No support for MIME and BinHex files (which is a problem if you regularly receive e-mailed files from Lotus Notes or Mac users). In Online Help the ARJ file link to the University of Oakland's FTP server is no longer accurate. Use the following FTP link instead: (remove the angle brackets and extra spaces). Pros: Very easy to use. Trident Software provides an easy to access bug report page and form on its Web site, as well as the usual 'Suggestions' page. Immediate online support is also available through Frequently Asked Question files (FAQs). Single user licenses for PowerZip are US$9 less than WinZip, and nearly US$20 less than ZipMagic 2000. PowerZip appears to match WinZip feature for feature and is slightly easier to use too, although it doesn't achieve the overall speed of WinZip or the speed, huge feature count, and usability of ZipMagic 2000. PowerZip is reliable and comparatively inexpensive and is recommended for anyone who has occasional use for a reliable archiving utility. Trident Software PowerZip v5.01 Product Web site: http://www.trident-software.com 7=> Product: Peter Norton's Complete Guide to PC Upgrades, Second Edition, book Reviewed By: Don Hughes, mailto:dhughes-reviewcdn@home.com Authors Peter Norton and Michael Desmond Publisher: Sams, 201 West 103rd Street Indianapolis Indiana 46290 Price $29.99 USA, & $42.95 CAN ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Buy Peter Norton's Complete Guide to PC Upgrades, Second Edition at Amazon.Com Now and Support CompuNotes! Amazon.Com - about $23.99 -- Click Here: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0672314835/compunotes/ ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Peter Norton's Guide to PC upgrades is a comprehensive seven hundred and fifty-two page information packed resource too just about everything the reader wanted to know about PC hardware upgrades. Norton states that books purpose is to aid a user to: Upgrade your PC components with confidence, Understand the capabilities as well as the real and hidden cost of new hardware technology . . . Explore the new vistas opened by Pentium IIS, DVD, High-speed Plug & Play buses, USB, Fire Wire, and Cardbus, Video Capture Boards, and high-capacity Jaz drives . . . Learn how to do basic repairs yourself and know when to take your hardware to a professional. The authors provided an additional bonus for the reader, by placing on inside and backside covers of the guide "Quick References to Product Upgrades" by subject headings and page numbers. To aid a novice farther the book is broken into seven main parts that encompasses twenty-nine chapters. The guide's main "Part" topics include: Introduction, Core elements, Basic Data Storage, Advanced Data Storage, Multimedia, Connectivity, and Input and Output, and Appendix and Glossary. The book opens with a brief history of the PC Starting in 1981 with the release of the IBM PC. With their release of the IBM PC in 1981 also gave birth to a new small company, the Microsoft Corporation. They quickly bring up the reader to speed on the PC's of today, and the PC's of tomorrow. Norton calls Windows 95 "The Operating System that Reinvented the PC." For the first time users had a Windows operating system that worked without a separate DOS underpinning. The Windows 95 and Windows 98 allowed 32-bit addressing, plug & play, multitasking, and hardware management, etc. The book contains many charts and explanations for "You need an upgrade when" or "when not to upgrade." Chapter five entitled "Think before your shop" has tables recommending hardware for purchasing or building, A first system for a home user, Home Office system, Corporate Desktop, and a powerhouse multimedia PC. Placed throughout the text are "Instant Reference" notes placed throughout the text to aid the reader in understanding the complexity of subject covered. For example on pages 151-152 titled "How to Upgrade your CPU," the reader is cautioned: First, be warned. The complexity and diversity of the PC marketplace makes CPU upgrades a fairly uncertain proposition. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of system vendors, most have produced hundreds, if not thousands, of individual models. No CPU vendor can anticipate and design for this wide universe of platforms . . . The leading culprit in this compatibility soup is the BIOS . . . Plus in a processor purchased four to six years after your system BIOS code was written, and there is no telling how the two will interact. That's why I mention this piece of sage advice now (and will be repeated mercilessly throughout this book):back up your hard drive first. The "Instant Reference" just below the above text reads: For more on backing up before an upgrade, see Chapter 3, "Upgrade Strategies." Throughout the book, the authors, Peter Norton and Michael Desmond caution the reader to be careful when making upgrade and to be sure to backup their data or the hard drive before adding new hardware. Additionally Peter Norton's Complete Guide To PC Upgrades, provides a reader the knowledge necessary to continue with the upgrade. Armed with this knowledge a reader can then decide whether he or she wants to install the upgrade themselves or have a professional do it for them. Farther to aid the reader the guide contains many charts, drawings, photographs, screen shots, and near the end of every chapter, a troubling shooting section. Sam's "Peter Norton's Complete Guide to PC Upgrades" is an excellent resource to anyone who is interested in upgrading or maintaining a PC. First time PC buyers can also benefit from reading this book before purchasing a new computer system. The hardware explanations, advice on purchasing new systems, suggestions, tips, and troubleshooting make this book worthwhile purchase. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Buy Peter Norton's Complete Guide to PC Upgrades, Second Edition at Amazon.Com Now and Support CompuNotes! Amazon.Com - about $23.99 -- Click Here: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0672314835/compunotes/ ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 8=> Product: Server Magic v3.0, Part Two, utility Reviewed By: Jim Huddle, mailto:jhuddle@cfl.rr.com Requires: Windows NT 4.0 Server with SP 4 Installed. 486/DX-33, 16mb RAM and 12mb of Disk space MSRP: $495.00 This is the second part of a two part review of Server Magic (SM). Part one detailed the NetWare side of SM, this part is about the Windows NT Server side. Server Magic allows you to do some nice things with NT and non- NT partitions located on the same box. While NT can't see Fat32, Linux Ext2 or HPFS partitions, Server Magic can. You can manipulate these partitions with Server Magic from within NT. There are some limitations when working with NT partitions you should be aware of. For one thing, any changes to a partition with open files requires that the system reboot. The operation then finishes in what Powerquest calls a boot mode. Similarly, any partition having the swap file will necessitate a reboot to finish the operation. One other point to keep in mind is that NT based software RAID partitions are not supported. It will support hardware based RAID however. Installation is a breeze. The CD will run automatically if NT is set to do so. If not, you just run the BROWSECD.EXE. Along with installing Server Magic you can also create rescue diskettes or read the online documentation. The same precautions when running Server Magic for NetWare apply to NT. PowerQuest recommends you back up your hard disk, take the server offline and shut down all running applications. In addition, it's recommended that you backup the boot.ini file and create an NT boot disk. The program's GUI interface is simple to use. It follows the common Windows conventions for a menu bar, tool bar and status bar. The partition information is located in an interior window. The partition information window carries plenty of useful information. At the top is a partition map. It shows the partitions roughly to scale. The partition list is the real hit. You get the volume name, the type of file system, partition size and used and free space. It also shows the partition's active status and whether the partition is a primary or logical. Server Magic allows you to resize, move, create, delete, format and copy partitions. Note that PowerQuest states that Server Magic does not support stripe sets, volume sets or mirrors created with NT's Disk Administrator. You can resize a mirror set, but you'll have to break the mirror, resize the master partition and then recreate the mirror with Disk Administrator. One of the neatest options is Info. When selected, a dialog box displays with four tabs. The first tab shows disk usage both graphically, in pie form, and numerically. The disk usage tab shows this information for FAT, FAT32, NTFS and HPFS file systems. The Cluster Waste tab only shows FAT and FAT32 file systems. The information is shown as data and wasted space, as well as the file system's current cluster size. The dialog also includes a bar graph showing the percentage of wasted space to used space. The Partition Info tab shows the partition type, serial number and physical sector information. The fourth tab shown depends on the file system type. For FAT and FAT32 systems there is a FAT Info screen. If the partition is NTFS the tab displays NTFS Info and HPFS Info for HPFS. The FAT Info dialog gives information including number of sectors in each FAT and the number of FATs in the partition. It shows the starting sector of the FAT and data sections as well as the root directory capacity. It also shows such information as number of bytes in use by file, the number of files, and the number of hidden files. It also gives this information for the directories in the partition. The bottom of the page gives information on OS/2 Extended Attributes, if any, and the bytes, files and directories with long file names. The NTFS Info dialog includes the NTFS version, bytes per physical sector, and cluster size. Since NTFS has a different file system organization than FAT, the dialog gives the starting cluster for the Master File Table (MFT) and size of the records in the MFT. The HPFS Info dialog shows the partition's status, being either Active, Dirty, Corrupt or Not Active. It also includes other information specific to HPFS file systems. Another nice operation you can perform with Server Magic is the conversion of file formats in a partition. FAT partitions can be converted to FAT32, NTFS or HPFS. Conversion to NTFS or HPFS is a one way move. Once there, they cannot be converted back. A FAT32 partition can however, be converted to FAT if there is appropriate unused disk space on the partition. The Advanced operations of Server Magic allow you to change a partition's drive letter (under NT only), retest bad sectors, hide and unhide partitions, set an active partition, resize the root directory and resize clusters. Server Magic for NT is okay, but it doesn't excite me like the NetWare version does. It does gives good reporting on partitions and makes moving and resizing partitions a snap. The limitations on stripe sets and volumes sets is a problem for me however. It's been my experience that NT admins tend to use these options quite a lot. Whether this is budgetary or poor planning isn't always apparent, but it would have been a nice addition if Server Magic for NT Server could deal with these. PowerQuest Corporation Server Magic v3.0 Product Website: http://www.powerquest.com/ ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Buy Network+ Cheat Sheet and Get Certified! at Amazon.Com Now and Support CompuNotes! Amazon.Com - about $21.24 -- Click Here: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0789721775/compunotes/ ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 9=> Product: Xerox DocuPrint P8ex laser printer, hardware Reviewed By: Howard Carson, mailto:howardcarson@home.com Requires: Windows 95, 98, or NT4.x, parallel or USB connection MSRP: US$399 Xerox has moved deeply into the mainstream consumer, SOHO, and small business laser printer market with its P8 series. Built on an advanced print engine, this 8ppm monochrome laser printer is productive and easy to use. 1200 dpi image quality and Printer Control Language v6 (PCL6) enhanced printing features enable professional text and graphics output on a wide range of print media. The standard USB and parallel interfaces enable flexible connectivity and shared printing. The P8ex is expandable to meet changing needs with optional memory (up to 36 MB) and network connectivity via a Xerox external Ethernet adapter, all in a small and quiet package rated at 8,000 pages per month. The printer has some other notable features including 8ppm print speed, high paper capacity, 4MB standard memory, high yield laser print cartridge, advanced features with PCL5 or PCL6 emulation including custom watermarking and N-up printing. The printer also features a moderate desktop footprint, automatic power down to standby mode, easy access front and top covers, and a slide out SIMM RAM upgrade port. We tested the Xerox DocuPrint P8ex using our SOHO workhorse - a PII/350 with 128MB RAM, running Windows 98. We installed the printer via the USB connection without any problems. We also added a 16MB SIMM to the printer's base memory. Tests included text and images generated in or with Microsoft Word 97(R), MGI PhotoSuite III(R), Microsoft Publisher(R), and Adobe PhotoShop 5.5(R). We used a variety of paper stock - everything from cheap 20lb. copy paper, to ultra-smooth card stock, rough textured envelopes, and a number of different Avery-Dennison(R) specialty papers including stickers, labels, and high-gloss photo paper. The only paper feed problems we encountered occurred with some really terrible no-name copy paper (which doesn't feed properly on our Lexmark Optra S2455 network printer either - we're stuck with about 5 cases of the stuff, so anybody who wants it can come and get it). The first thing we noticed is that the P8ex is fast. We hit the 8ppm rated print speed on simple correspondence (three-quarters of a page of B&W 12pt. text). The initial rendering routine in the P8ex driver is slower than it should be however, no matter what resolution you've chosen. Hopefully, Xerox will address the issue with a driver update. Note also that we really never came close to hitting the duty cycle of this printer (8,000 pages per month), so it tended to power down between output sessions, and that extended the first page cycle time. Output from the P8ex was mostly faultless although we expected somewhat better B&W or grey scale rendering of color bitmap images. Bitmap reproduction was good but not exceptional. Text (all colors) and vector graphics (color and monochrome) were outstanding and rated at least as good and in most cases better than our benchmark Hewlett-Packard(R) 5L (HP5L). For the record (and to provide some perspective) there are some versatile alternatives to fast desktop lasers. For example, in the same price range the latest crop of inkjet printers from Epson boast text and grey scale output virtually identical to the P8ex. The Epson 660, 840, 900, and 1520 also boast the finest desktop color output on the market today in their respective price ranges. Hewlett-Packard has not been able to touch Epson's color inkjet output technology for some time now, and it's a tribute to HP's marketing and PR that its printers still remain more popular than Epson's. For many people, $399 worth of color inkjet is a much better bet than a $399 B&W laser. Inkjet consumables are more expensive, but if you're in definite need of color, the Epson line is affordable, rock solid, and top drawer. Competing color inkjet models from Xerox (DocuPrint C11 & C15) and HP (970cse, 1120cxi, etc.) don't quite measure up to Epson's standard. Canon is lost somewhere, still struggling to sort out what constitutes top quality and reliability. Cons: Dithering and/or rendering of color graphics, especially bitmaps and low resolution (web) graphics needs improvement (the HP5L, if you can find one, is still the monochrome laser bitmap graphics king). Start up or first page cycle time is slow in low volume environments (less than 2,000 pages per month; 10-12 pages per hour). Pros: Although the maximum paper size is limited to U.S. Legal (8.5"x14"), the P8ex can handle a wide range of paper thicknesses, formats, and standard sizes quite well (including A4, A5, B5/C5/#10 envelopes, Monarch envelope, DL envelope, 8.5"x13" Folio, and custom). Black text from 300 dpi all the way up to 1200 dpi is superb. Line art and gradients are reproduced extremely well. Memory is expandable via the addition of single SIMMs; it doesn't get any easier or cheaper (by comparison, HP still uses expensive proprietary memory cards). Toner cartridges are widely available from all the normal sources, and directly from Xerox. We didn't test the printer against all its marketplace rivals, so we can't officially give the P8ex a 'Best Buy' rating, but if you're in the market for a relatively small, serious SOHO or small office workhorse, the Xerox DocuPrint P8ex is a good choice. Recommended. Xerox, The Document Company Xerox DocuPrint P8ex desktop laser printer Product web site: http://www.xerox.com (/go/xrx/products/PT.jsp) ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Buy Sams Teach Yourself Microsoft Exchange Server 5.5 in 10 Minutes at Amazon.Com Now and Support CompuNotes! 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