AFTER READING THIS FILE, CLICK THE "FILE" MENU (IN THE WINDOWS PROGRAM) AND CLICK OFF "PSL-NEWS". PsL Hot Picks of the Month ========================== (Double-click on a file name to install it.) ---WINDOWS: Boxes III [WIN\GAMES\BOX310A.ZIP] is a challenging and addictive puzzle game for Windows where you must eliminate colored crates by maneuvering and dropping boxes on them. There are falling stones that block your progress, rockets that can explode boxes and stones that are in your way, and much more. A sound card is highly recommended. Crypt-o-Text [WIN\UT_DSKFI\COT16_12.ZIP] allows you to "scramble" an email message so that it is unreadable until it is "unscrambled" by the person receiving your message. You can also apply a password that will be required before the message can be unscrambled. Front Desk [WIN\BUSINESS\FRNTDESK.ZIP] helps track the coming/going of an unlimited number of employees in Windows. This allows you to track information regarding who's in and available for client calls, conference calls, etc. This also provides a database for an employee directory, which includes name and title, department, important phone numbers, and more. Other features include network compatibility, password security, several useful printed reports, and more. NimSim [WIN\GAMES\NIMSIM1A.ZIP] is a strategy game for Windows where the challenge is to alternate turns with a computer opponent and avoid taking the last marble from the game board. There are many game play options available, including marble colors, board setup, three difficulty settings, and more. Requires VBRUN300. Power Toolz '96 [WIN\UT_SYSTM\PT96.ZIP] is a multi-function utility add-on for WIN31. It includes a calendar, fast exit, program launcher, 20-page clipboard extender, audio CD player, spelling checker, and more . This powerful package resides as a tiny strip on your desktop. Requires VBRUN300. Rings of the Magi for Windows [WIN\MVP\ROTMW12.ZIP] is a challenging puzzle game where you to attempt to match like-colored rings by moving them around a playing board. Winning this game is not as easy as it may seem. There are only a set number of each color rings and making hasty decisions may cause the puzzle to become unsolvable. Features include the ability to save games, digitized sound effects, a music soundtrack, beautiful 256-color graphics, and more. Splitz [WIN\UT_DSKFI\SPLITZ10.ZIP] is an incredibly easy-to-use file splitting and joining utility for Windows. You simply choose the file to split, then select the size of floppy disk you wish to transfer the files to. Strategies to Reduce College Costs for Windows [WIN\HOME\STRATS25.ZIP] provides concise money saving financial aid facts. You will learn how to estimate and increase aid, play "What If?" to test aid-increasing scenarios, answer aid form questions, and more. This also includes an interactive college planner. Super Wallpaper Changer [WIN\GRAPHICS\SWC16401.ZIP] allows you to use JPEG graphic files as wallpaper in Windows. Features include the ability to create unique wallpaper schemes, drag-n-drop support, and random or sequential cycling after a user specified period. Chart USA [WIN\GRAPHICS\USCHART.ZIP] allows you to create colorful and detailed charts using a map of the United States as a foundation. You can quickly color code the 48 states and plot cities anywhere on the map. Requires VBRUN300. WinMiser Pro [WIN\UT_SYSTM\WM_PS11.ZIP] is a unique system monitor and problem resolution tool for Windows. It provides information on critical resources such as Windows DOS memory usage by module, windows local memory usage by module, and memory leakage by module. It can also help identify module load failures, memory allocation errors, and more. AMF Daily Planner and PIM (32-bit) [WIN\BUSINESS\WPIM32A.ZIP] is a powerful PIM for Win95 with a full drag and drop interface and a perpetual calendar/planner with auto-scheduling. Features include the ability to store up to 30,000 entries in the Rolodex style phonebook, faxing capabilities, printed reports, envelope/label printing, and much more. Requires VB40032. WinSpeech [WIN\SOUNDS\WSP300.ZIP] is a text-to-speech converter for Windows. It has excellent sound quality, and allows you to easily change the volume, speed and pitch of the computer-generated voice. This version limits the amount of text that may be read. ---DOS: Pulse Pure [DOS\GAMES\PULSE12.ZIP] is an exciting arcade game where you must group and combine game pieces to advance levels, receive power ups and deal with sudden events. Features include fantastic ray-traced 3-D graphics, an excellent music soundtrack, keyboard/mouse/joystick input, and more Speed-Kar [DOS\GAMES\SPEEDKAR.ZIP] is a fun racecar arcade game where you must try to clear each level of flags while avoiding enemy cars that are trying to crash into you. This is like PacMan on wheels. Each level becomes increasingly more difficult, with more enemy cars and deadly road hazards. Features include joystick support, a high score listing, and SoundBlaster support. The Heart: The Engine of Life [DOS\EDUCA\THEHEART.ZIP] is an interactive animated tutorial on the human heart. It provides information on the heart's basic functions, disease, risk factors, and much more. This is a very impressive package. Disk Usage (CS) [DOS\UT_DSKFI\UDISK10.ZIP] shows drive letter, volume label, total size, space used, space free, percentage used and percentage free for all your disks. C source code is included. YChess [DOS\GAMES\YCHS108.ZIP] allows you to play chess against the computer. You can undo/redo moves, get playing hints, observe move analyses, specify time limits for moves, and much more. YChess plays a pretty strong game. Section Of The Month: Home Apps for Windows =========================================== The Section of the Month on this CD-ROM is "Home Applications for Windows". This section contains ALL Home apps from all of PsL's past CD-ROMs, excluding demo programs. CD-ROM Sections Of The Month: ============================ Following is a list of the sections from the most recent CDs. By getting all of these CDs, you would have every program/file in PsL's collection. Programs for both DOS and Windows are included in each group. Vol. Num. 4 10 Home Applications for Windows 4 9 Business (accounting, finance, general business, time managers, general business, database, spreadsheet, mailing list managers, and more, since V.3, N.11) 4 8 Games and Sounds & Music for DOS (since V.3, N.10) 4 7 Games and Sounds & Music for Windows (since V.3., N.9) 4 6 Programming (new programs since V.3, N.8) (assembler, Basic, C, Cobol, Fortran, Pascal, Modula, Visual Basic, general tools, and more.) 4 5 Communications & Networking (comm programs and utilities, BBS systems, programs for FAX cards, pagers, etc., plus networking pgms.) 4 4 Education 4 3 Words & Graphics (word processing, drawing program, clip art, desktop publishing, spelling/grammar checkers, hypertext, fonts, printer utilities, and more.) (new programs since V.3, N.5) 4 2 Home Apps for DOS 4 1 Utilities for DOS & Windows and All OS/2 Programs (new programs since V.3, N.4 CD) 3 12 Home Apps for Windows 3 11 Business (up to 11/95) (Some older files on 2/95 Business CD are not included on this CD.) 3 10 Games and Sounds & Music for DOS (up to 10/95) 3 9 Games and Sounds & Music for Windows (up to 9/95) 3 8 Programming (up to 8/95) 3 7 Communications & Network 3 5 Words & Graphics (up to 5/95) 3 4 Utilities for DOS & Windows and All OS/2 Files (up to 4/95) FUTURE CD's: Following is the schedule for the section-of-the-month for coming CDs. Because the number of programs in each section continues to grow each month, it may be necessary to split up one or more of the following sections onto separate months' CDs. If this is important to you, check before ordering. ("Num." indicates the month of the year. "Vol.4" is 1996 and "Vol.5" is 1997. Volume 1 appeared in 1993, so Volume 2 is 1994, Volume 3 is 1995, Volume 4 is 1995. The "Number" is the month number.) Vol. Num. 4 10 Home Apps for Windows 4 11 Home Apps for DOS 4 12 Utilities for DOS & Windows plus all OS/2 Problems: ======== In all the years of producing the PsL Monthly CD, we have NEVER found a single problem caused by a "bad CD copy". If you cannot get a CD to work on your machine, please try it on another machine if possible. Otherwise, please read the following Q&A's. If none of this works for you, return the CD and we will check it and replace it if necessary. (1.) "My machine locks up or reboots when I try to install a program." You have one of the small percentage of systems with a CD-ROM driver that is incompatible with PKUNZIP. To get around that problem, we have placed a public domain unzip program on the CD. To invoke it with the DOS-based program, run it using the syntax: "PSL_SHRD /U" (without the quotes). In the Windows based program, select UNZIP in the window that appears after pushing the Install button. In Windows, you can also elect to use WinZip to dearchive files. (2.) "There are no files on the CD." "There are no files in one of the directories." "I get an error trying to copy a file from the CD." We have only had a few such complaints, but in all cases, there was nothing wrong with the CD. Some of the users who made the complaints were able to read the CDs without error on other machines or even when trying later on the same machine. We suspect that the problem is with dust or dirt in the drive or, more specifically, on the laser lens, or on the CD-ROM disc itself. If you do not have a CD lens cleaner, get one from your dealer. Also inspect the non-printed side of the CD for dust or debris. One caller took the CD out, wiped it off, put it back in, and it worked. Maybe it was dirty or maybe just re-seating it helped. (3.) "When I install from the Windows access program, it tells me FILE NOT FOUND." Some combination of flukes in Windows/DOS cause some systems not to be able to find PKUNZIP.EXE on the CD-ROM drive. The solution is to copy PKUNZIP.EXE into your WINDOWS directory on your hard disk. SOUND BLASTER PRO OWNERS: On the January 1995 CD-ROM, we went over 600MB on the CD for the first time and a couple of people with Sound Blaster Pro cards and CD drives were unable to get a directory on the CD. If you have a Sound Blaster Pro and have this problem on a future CD-ROM, ask Creative Labs for a new CD-ROM driver. Frequently Asked Questions: ========================== (1.) "Why don't you install the programs on the CD ready to run instead of in ZIP format?" There are many reasons: - Many programs try to write back to the directory that they are installed in, which cannot be done on a CD. - Many programmers require that their programs be distributed in archived format. - Some installation programs configure the software to the system they are installed on, so that a program installed on our system may not work on yours. - Because we add a section of PsL's disk-based library to the CD each month, there is not room to have all the programs dearchived. - For use of the CDs on BBSs, files must be in archive format. Distributing the programs in archive format makes for a much neater package, making programs easier to find. Dearchiving a program to hard disk only takes a few seconds and by using a temporary directory, you can easily delete the files when done. (2.) "Are the same programs repeated on each month's CD?" No. The \DOS, \WIN, and \OS2 directories contain only the new programs received by PsL during the last 30 days. In addition, we put a different section of our disk-based library on each month's CD. (3.) "I'm not interested in the section of PsL being added to the CD this month. Why should I have to pay for a CD with a section I don't want in order to get the lower subscription price?" The majority of each CD contains new programs received during the last 30 days. These are programs of ALL types and now usually total over 400MB. Rather than leave the rest of the CD empty (as we did during the first year of producing the CD, we fill it in with a different section of our library each month. Even if you don't care for that section, there are tons of programs on each CD for all interests. (4.) "After the PSL_NEWS program installs a file, the program sometimes has to be installed again from those files. Why can't it just be installed once directly from the CD-ROM?" Some shareware authors have custom installation programs which create directories, put files in specific directories, configure the program to the user's specific hardware, etc. We cannot have multiple INSTALL programs in the same directory and it would be cumbersome to have a separate directory for each program, so we are forced to archive such programs, resulting in their having to be dearchived from the CD-ROM before they can be installed with the author's installation program. Contacting PsL: ============== Your comments and suggestions are appreciated. We are striving to make this the ideal CD for sysops and vendors, as well as for individual and users. We will implement every possibly suggestion which will still allow us to produce the CD in a timely manner and which will not degrade the CD is some other way. If you are a programmer and want your program distributed on this CD, simply send it on disk to the address below or if it is a Windows program, upload it to our forum on Compuserve (GO PSLWIN). Public (software) Library P.O.Box 35705 Houston, TX 77235-5705 Voice: 713-524-6394 FAX: 713-524-6398 CompuServe: 74777,3465