This issue brings you two more fantastic Clickables, reviews of Sitekeeper and EzQuest Cobra+ and an opinion piece on Cyberspace and Race! CompuNotes - We now have forums on the website! See below! Notes from The Cutting Edge of Personal Computing ISSN: 1525-4534 March 28, 2002 Issue 178 +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+= To subscribe, send an e-mail to compunotes-subscribe@topica.com To unsubscribe, send an e-mail to compunotes-unsubscribe@topica.com or send an e-mail to listserv@peach.ease.lsoft.com with the following SIGNOFF COMPUNOTES-L +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+= CONTENTS 1=> This Week's Notes ... By Patrick Grote, mailto:pgrote@compunotes.com 2=> This Issue's Winner! Clickables: 3=> savegames.net and Quoteland, Reviewed By: Patrick Grote, mailto:pgrote@compunotes.com Articles: 4=> Cyberspace and Race - A Retort, By Patrick Grote, mailto:pgrote@compunotes.com Reviews: 5=> Product: EZQuest Cobra+ 120GB External FireWire Hard Drive Reviewed By: Howard Carson, mailto:agitater@compunotes.com 6=> Product: Sitekeeper (network utility) Reviewed By: Howard Carson, mailto:agitater@compunotes.com --- Why not suggest CompuNotes to a friend, family member or co-worker? You can win $10,000 and they have a chance to win each week with great information! Please click: http://www.recommend-it.com/l.z.e?s=864865 --- 1=> This Week's Notes, By Patrick Grote, mailto:pgrote@compunotes.com Thanks for joining us for another issue of CompuNotes. This issue is jam packed with information you can use! We'd like your help in showing support for CompuNotes. If you have a website would you consider adding a link or a button to our main page (http://www.compunotes.com)? If you want do this you'll get something out of it as well! 1) We'll list you on our FRIENDS page ( http://www.compunotes.com/friends.htm). Your site will be on our pages forever with a description! 2) Additionally, each of our pages will feature a link to the FRIENDS page. (Look on the left of the screen :-)) 3) We'll add your site to one of our future issues! We appreciate your help in getting the word out on CompuNotes! See the FRIENDS page for more info! :-) Our list of friends keeps growing! The latest site to join is inboxMagazine at http://www.inboxmagazine.com/. They offer a great weekly newsletter with tips and tricks! 2=> Winner! This week's winner: Jodi Bachman! Jodi has won a $10.00 Amazon gift certificate. Would you like to win something just for subscribing? We give away a prize each and every week to one of our subscribers. Who knows, it could be you! You could win next week ... all you have to do is subscribe! 3=> Clickables - , Reviewed By: Patrick Grote, pgrote@compunotes.com savesgames.net (http://www.savegames.net) We all know the great things computers can do. Most are time saving, productivity enhancing, money clutching applications. Then you have games. Games are one of the most popular uses for PCs. If you've ever found yourself a victim of PC time you know what I mean. PC time is time multiplied by 10. For instance, the wife is bugging you to come outside and cut the grass. You may yell to her, "In 5 minutes honey, I am finishing this game." The next time you look up it's been 50 minutes. That is PC time. Games can be a great escape, but sometimes the time you pour into them can be lost. Lost? Yep, lost! Imagine if you have worked so hard to get through an interactive adventure only to have a power outage. Imagine getting so far in a game, getting excited and ending it before you saved your game? Put away the crying towels, because savegames.net is here to help! savesgames.net (http://www.savegames.net) allows you to load the saved games from other people! What a great idea and one I have never seen on the internet prior to this! savegames.net shares the wealth of saved games by allowing people to upload their saved games. savegames then categorizes the games in alphabetical order for easy downloading. The site doesn't stop at saved games. It features a ton of great, little features that will make your stop well worth your time. You can see the top 5 downloads, the latest saved games added to the library and there is a great link site to online games. The real value of the site is the saved games, but the additional content is a real winner as well! When you are browsing the saved games you can see a screen shot of the game and read comments from fellow visitors concerning the save or the game. Advertising on the site is minimal and well placed. If you play games and you want to ensure you get the most out of it, you need to stop by savegames.net today! Quoteland (http://www.quoteland.com) "Excellence is not a singular act, but a habit. You are what you repeatedly do." Shaquille ONeal Did you know Aristotle really said the quote first? "We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit." Aristotle I know this because I found an excellent site you'll add to your bookmarks. The site is Quoteland (http://www.quoteland.com) and it is the best source on the internet for quotes. Let me back up a little and correct that ... Quoteland is much more than just a quote site. The site itself features quotes, but much more. First off, the site is truly interactive. Because it is based on a database backend you can click on almost all information about a quote. Want to see what else Aristotle said? Click on his name. Want to find all the quotes concerning EXCELLENCE? Click on the subject. This makes finding the quotes much easier. The second great feature is the forum for the site. Here visitors can discuss quotes among each other, ask for help in finding a quote or hunting down the author of a quote. It is an active message board with some great people on it! The quotes themselves are organized in four areas: topic, literary, by author and by occasion. I found the occasion section to be an amazing time saver as I am always looking for a quote for work or a birthday! Advertising on the site is minimal and well themed. For instance, each quote has a link that allows you to have the quote embossed on everything from a coffee mug to a bookmark. This is advertising done right. Quoteland should be the only site you need when you're looking for the perfect words for that special occasion. 4=> Cyberspace and Race - A Retort, By Patrick Grote, mailto:pgrote@compunotes.com Let me start off by saying I am a white conservative. Recently I read Henry Jenkins' article on Cyberspace and Race ( http://www.techreview.com/articles/jenkins0402.asp). Mr. Jenkins is a white liberal. He works for MIT and has done a tremendous amount of work on computers and society. In any of my other articles, reviews and opinion pieces for CompuNotes I have never felt the need to comment on my political leanings or race. I do this because Mr. Jenkins feels we need to "...recognize, discuss and celebrate racial and cultural diversity." As I read Mr. Jenkins' article I became very upset. As a 33 year old man I have actively, progressively thought about race relations in the United States. My wonderment about race relations was born out of my absolute love of Martin Luther King's I Have a Dream speech. When I read it in 8th grade I realized that race was going to be a big part of my life. From the time I read it I actively sought out diversity in my life. Growing up in predominately white neighborhoods, going to almost all white schools didn't offer me an opportunity to experience diversity until high school. When I arrived in high school I felt the tingling you can only experience when you immerse yourself in other cultures. As my adult life moved along I found myself in the polarized region of St. Louis, Missouri. For those of you who don't know, St. Louis is about as polarized as you can get in a region. It started with the north side of the city primarily being black, while the south was white. Over a 15 year period it has become the city itself black, while the outlying county areas are white. It's frustrated me to no end as I realized that there is no single solution for race relations. What I did learn is that the internet was the great equalizer. My belief is that the online environment is color blind. I think it's a good thing, but Mr. Jenkins thinks it's a bad thing. Where I view a color blind online society as diversity at it's best, Mr. Jenkins sees it as a place where "...people simply assumed all participants in an online discussion were white..." This is a striking comment to make. Striking because it assumes that this is the way people think. Do people think that way? My friends and family don't think that way or at least they won't admit it to me. I certainly don't think that way. If anything the internet removes the stereotypes that we normally associate with race. When I see a person's name in a message board the first thing I think is, "How did they pick that name?" I look for the joke in it or the clever wit. I don't look at a name and think, "I wonder if that person is Asian." I think you'll be hard pressed to find someone who actually thinks about the race of the person they are interacting with online. In most cases the bonds of friendship are formed over the need for communication, help or companionship. They are not formed for the desire to segregate yourself from others. Mr. Jenkins continues the train of internet segregation by discussing the digital divide. His main issue is that the availability of online access doesn't necessarily guarantee inclusion. His comment, "...but equal access is not the same as equal participation" sums up this thought. What Mr. Jenkins fails to realize is that the internet brings the sort of access and control that minority groups have been seeking for many years. Anyone, regardless of race or economic background, can access the internet and create a voice, a space where they can be heard. To take this a step further the color blindness of the internet can truly be seen in ecommerce. When I purchase products from internet sellers I never think about the race of the owners providing the service. I don't have the built in prejudice of knowing the store is in a Hispanic area. I do agree with Mr. Jenkins on his next point. He says, "It is hard to imagine universal computer literacy in a country that has yet to ensure that all citizens can read and write and again, there is a strong correlation between race, class and literacy rates." Amen. Education is the key to success in life and I think as a country we do a horrible job of protecting our children through the process. In his last paragraph Mr. Jenkins concludes, "In the end, we will need to give up any lingering fantasies of a color-blind Web and focus on building a space where we recognize, discuss and celebrate racial and cultural diversity." Boy oh boy is this where I was so upset I sat down to write this column. What gets my goat on this is that Mr. Jenkins is advocating using race as a classification system online. He wraps the idea in words like recognize and celebrate, but what he is really saying is that the online world should be like the offline world. A world where being black, asian, hispanic, white subjects you to stereotypes and prejudices. Isn't this what we're trying to solve in the offline world? Why would we dare introduce it into the online world? Mr. Jenkins hopes the catalyst for offline world racial relationships can be found online. With his ideas he's severing the single place where we are all color blind. I'd be interested in hearing your comments on race online. Remember, I am not a sociologist and I don't even play one on TV. Jump on the CompuNotes' forums ( http://www.compunotes.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?topic=87&forum=2&0) to leave your thoughts or send me an e-mail at pgrote@compunotes.com. 5=> Product: EZQuest Cobra+ 120GB External FireWire Hard Drive Reviewed By: Howard Carson, mailto:agitater@compunotes.com Requires: PC or Mac with installed IEEE1394 (FireWire) connection, MacOS 8.6 and higher, Windows 98 and higher MSRP: US$489.00 EZQuest has introduced and is shipping its Cobra+ 120GB, 7200RPM IEEE1394 (FireWire) hard drive for PCs and Macs. You read it right - 120GB. It's currently the largest capacity, high-performance FireWire drive on the market. The drive is designed for quickly transferring and storing large amounts of data and is being marketed at and sold to recording and mastering studios, professional music, broadcast, multimedia and film industries, home studios, digital photos labs and hobbyists. The Cobra+ is stackable and ships with Intech Hard Disk Speed Tools (a RAID level-0 striping software for Mac), and is also compatible with the striping software that comes with Windows 2000. This capability is great for fast, easy storage and retrieval of large files. The Cobra+ 120GB FireWire hard drive is housed in a light-gray, streamlined case that is fully shielded with 0.6 metal. In addition to its 7200 RPM speed, the drive boasts an average seek time of 8.9ms and a burst transfer rate of 35MB/sec. It comes ready to use and includes a built-in universal auto-switching power supply, a FireWire cable and software. I hooked the Cobra+ up to a PIII/550 running Windows 2000 Professional (SP2), with a Pinnacle IEEE1394 card already being used for digital video capture. Windows 2000 recognized the drive automatically (no drivers needed for FireWire!). The Indigita FireWire interface, internal to the drive, connects flawlessly and passes data without interference. I used Partition Magic v6 to partition the drive. The process took about 90 minutes and the drive set up perfectly - no bad sectors, no problems - just one *huge* partition. The main problem with testing this drive is the fact that it is portable, which means that everyone you know with a FireWire card will want to 'borrow' the drive. Just say no. The drive was shipped to my office and I had to wrestle it out of my Shipper's hands. He's still begging. The first thing you notice about the Cobra+ is that it's quiet - fast and quiet. Even under high loads imposed by digital video rendering and large single file transfers, thrashing is barely audible. The good looking EZQuest case sports a very quiet cooling fan too - barely audible in fact. The CompuNotes credo is all about everyday users writing reviews about real experiences. As a result, my Sony Digital 8 video camera has been getting a serious workout since the Cobra+ arrived. Digital video capture via FireWire has never been a problem - it's fast and relatively idiot-proof. Storage of multiple, 20 minute long captures requiring upwards of 1GB for every 10 minutes of footage tends to eat up hard drive space in great big gulps however. Editing captured footage, adding text, effects and music creates more large files. Producing everything to MPEG or AVI files uses many more hundreds of megabytes. The bottom line is that I've been pounding away in MGI VideoWave 5 and Adobe Premier 6 for a couple of weeks now - producing 9 different 10-15 minute home movies - and the Cobra+ isn't even one quarter full. I can take my sweet time about file housekeeping because storage pressure is non-existent. Amazing. Reading and writing those large files is also an interesting experience. The drive is rated for sustained reads of 34MB/sec and sustained writes of 31MB/sec and judging from my actual use (as opposed to benchmarking tests) the read/write specs are bang-on. FYI, that sort of data transfer is very good for FireWire with it's technical limit of 50MB/sec (400 Mbps) and excellent for most practical purposes. By comparison, Ultra SCSI is rated at about 20MB/sec, Ultra ATA is rated at about 30MB/sec, and Ultra160 SCSI is 160MB/sec (the main problem with Ultra160 SCSI being that it costs $1,800.00 for similar capacities!). Cons: There are none - this drive is an excellent piece of hardware. The only quibble I have is a wish for some bundled backup software or some other utility which emphasizes the enormous capacity of the drive. It's a pretty small complaint. Some Windows 98SE users may need to download a FireWire patch from the EZQuest support page. Ditto for Mac users - there's a FireWire updater available. The patches are tiny and take only a few seconds to download and install. Pros: Forget SCSI. FireWire is e-a-s-y. No Device IDs, no LUNs, no drivers. Just plug-and-play. In addition to the 120GB model reviewed, EZQuest Cobra FireWire drives are available in 40GB, 60GB, 80GB, 100GB sizes. Fast, quiet, good looking external drive. Stands up to heavy- duty use for video and audio recording and rendering. Fast seek times and data transfer rates. The price is right. Short-term testing was absolutely stable and completely reliable. We're doing a long term test too, but for now the Cobra+ is very highly recommended. EZQuest, Inc. Cobra+ 120GB External FireWire Hard Drive Product Web site: http://www.ezq.com 6=> Product: Sitekeeper (network utility) Reviewed By: Howard Carson, mailto:agitater@compunotes.com Requires: Windows NT 4.0 SP5 or greater with IE 5.5 or greater, Workstation or Server; Windows 2000 SP2 or greater with IE 5.5 or greater, Professional, Server and Advanced Server; Windows XP Professional MSRP: US$562.50 (1-10 systems license, electronic download) Want to know a secret? One of the biggest fears experienced by corporate executives is that an auditor will show up one day to do an actual count of the number of software installations compared to the actual number of licenses bought and paid for. Don't laugh - even in a small company, using 10 licenses of Microsoft Office on 30 workstations amounts to at least a US$10,000.00 copyright violation (if the auditor only demands that you immediately purchase the correct number of licenses). If you add inadequate licensing of MS Windows itself, WinFax Pro and a few other common programs, the bill can quickly reach $100,000 or more. In companies with 100's or 1000's of workstations the violation reaches into the millions of dollars. Don't even think about Business Software Alliance (BSA) fines which can run to $100,000 per disk and higher! Software audits and site raids are not funny - not funny at all. And they're happening every month across North America, Western Europe, India, South Africa, Japan and so on, conducted by BSA, FBI, RCMP, Scotland Yard and other police forces. It's been too easy to buy a handful of software licenses, complain about the prices to salve your conscience, then blithely proceed to install those few licenses on dozens or hundreds of computers. Bad move. Sitekeeper is designed to inventory all software on a site without having to physically send IS/IT staff to each and every computer on the entire network. Sitekeeper will also install software remotely over Windows NT, 2000 and XP operating systems using a simple, fast, two-stage operation that will free system administrators from having to invest days and weeks of IS labor to do the job manually. We installed Sitekeeper on a PIII/500 network server with 396MB RAM running Windows 2000 SP2. We then installed the free copy of the Microsoft SQL Server Desktop Engine (MSDE) which is supplied via an installer link from the Sitekeeper web site. If you already have a usable SQL 7 or SQL 2000 server running, you don't need MSDE. Once Sitekeeper is installed it can be used to scan all flavors of Windows NT4, 2000 and XP (but not Windows 95/98/Me yet). Sitekeeper runs in its own Internet Explorer window and displays report data in separate windows. When the program is first run, a guided system and database configuration routine appears which sets up the database and allows you to choose which computers to inventory. Sitekeeper has three main sections: 1 - Inventory Tracker figures out what software is installed on each computer on a network and maintains an updated record for all the software which includes details about versions, builds, updates, and patches. The function does its job by scanning the Registry on each computer on the network. Initial scanning can take anywhere from a split second to half a minute per computer, depending on how much software is installed on each one, network loading, individual computer loading and the priority of the service setting. For extreme high-speed scanning, do it after hours (if there is such a thing on your network). It's fast enough in any case and the report that's generated is accurate. 2 - License Tracker provides a software license compliance report (i.e.: the number of machines per product) and lets the system administrator or inventory controller (or whomever) know how many licenses or updates may be needed with automatic, up-to-date record keeping. License Tracker can also ferret out individuals who have installed software without the administrator's permission. Gotcha! (not surprisingly I found a couple of 'violators' on my own network). This function is as much an anti -virus/ security review and standardized system reinforcement as it is license compliance tracking. Once License Tracker is set up, it runs automatically. 3 - PushInstaller allows administrators to easily install or uninstall from a central location on selected computers throughout a site, any software, updates, upgrades and patches which are logo-compliant for Windows 2000 and Windows XP or Microsoft Installer compliant. PushInstaller can also be used to install Windows itself onto clean desktop machines. Microsoft's SMS does the same sort of thing, but it's a lot harder to learn and use than PushInstaller. It only took about 5 minutes to figure out and begin using PushInstaller. Cons: The big (sick) joke in all of this may be that the offices of some people working on software licensing cases are also reputed to be software license offenders. Now let me see - count their computers, then count the number of WordPerfect licenses, then count the number of WordPerfect licenses on laptops which are taken home, etc., etc. Hmmm. Only SQL database is supported at this time, but broader database support is in development. No data exchange or conversion between Sitekeeper and SMS. No support for Win95/98/Me. Pros: Sitekeeper requires Administrator privileges for any installation. It means that reliable inventories and license tracking are possible without problems caused by casual data input. Find out real fast how much money you need to spend on software licensing. Background services use very few CPU cycles - most computer users on the network won't notice when their machine is scanned. Reports can be printed, saved to a file or exported to Excel. Sitekeeper can help managers, owners and executives create rational software purchasing budgets, deploy new software, updates and patches. Pop-up messages alert you to license inadequacies, which means you don't have to manually search a database to find the problems. The smallest companies (5-10 workstations) to the largest organizations with tens of thousands of computers should consider Sitekeeper. The software works extremely well. Recommended. Executive Software International Sitekeeper Product Web site: http://www.executivesoftware.com/sitekeeper/ +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+= Publisher / Senior Editor: Patrick Grote, mailto:pgrote@compunotes.com Senior Editor: Howard Carson, mailto:agitater@compunotes.com Managing Editor: Don Hughes, mailto:don.hughes@compunotes.com Archives: ftp://ftp.compunotes.com/archives Website: e-mail: mailto:feedback@compunotes.com Want to Write for Us?: mailto:agitater@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 1114 West Essex Ave. St. Louis, MO 63122 feedback@compunotes.com (C)2002 Patrick Grote ISSN: 1525-4534 __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Greetings - send holiday greetings for Easter, Passover http://greetings.yahoo.com/ *********************************************** The COMPUNOTES-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned LISTSERV(R) list management software together with L-Soft's LSMTP(R) mailer for lightning fast mail delivery. For more information, go to: http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html