TOM'S COMPUTER NOTES FOR JANUARY 1992

Public Domain

WORD PERFECT is beta testing a new version of their OFFICE program. It has
been almost five years since that one was revised or updated. The new one
will include their nice "slim & trim" word processor (Letter Perfect) plus
communications, a basic spreadsheet, database, FAX program, file manager,
etc.

WINDOWS 3.1 (release version) will not have a REAL MODE is the latest
rumor. One that I find hard to believe.....   I guess everyone and their
brother has seen one or another of the beta versions of 3.1 by now. Each
version was better and the final version (for sale to the public) should be
very well debugged.

WORD PERFECT FOR WINDOWS (everything installed) takes up 9 megs of HD
space.

OS/2 Version 1.3 comes on 19 1.44 meg disks. To install a "base" version
(single user) you only use 8 of the disks.

DID YOU HEAR about Borlands demo of QUATTRO FOR WINDOWS at Comdex? The
crowd broke into applause/laughter when the demo screen lit up with
Unrecoverable Application Error.

PsL NEWS arrived (I should have written this up last month but I ran out of
time to do it) and said on page one, "Someday virtually everyone will be
using Windows (or its off-spring or future clones.)" If PC MAGAZINE had
tried to shove that down my throat I would have taken offense but coming
from Nelson Ford at PsL I have to sit up and take notice. He is probably
right. Sort of like the old "DIESELS FOREVER" bumperstickers and patches
that the submarine guys had when nuclear subs first came into the
inventory. It was a losing battle.

PsL has had a new disk of WINDOWS utilities and routines every month for
the past six months now. The flood of shareware and PD programs has really
accelerated since the introduction of Microsoft's Visual Basic last June.
You can get lots of interesting stuff from PsL such as WinSpell which Ford
calls "The best Windows spelling checker" (it works inside any Windows
application)   to ---- WinRoach, "When you close or move a window on the
Desktop roaches scurry from under the window to hide under other windows."

I THINK YOU CAN STILL get a free sample of PsL NEWS (I think) by calling 1-
800-242-4775.

I SURE LIKE THE software outfits that put a README file (or something in
the manual) telling what each file is and does. Like Microsoft MONEY for
WINDOWS. I like to delete files I don't need to save disk space.

TWO WEEKS PASSED and no computer parts in the mail from Florida. So, I
called there and was told, "We have no record of you having ordered
anything from us." Called my bank and they said my credit card had not been
charged.... Guess I'll buy locally, thought I. Called store number one and
was put on hold for a long time. Gave up and called store number two. I had
recently received a flyer from them (I seemed to remember) which listed
controller cards on sale. "Not here" they told me. Called Fast Micro in
Phoenix. "How fast can you get a controller card down to Tucson?" I asked.
"About a week" was the reply. . . )     UPDATE: Called them again on 4 Dec.
to try again to buy from them. They offered to ship by air but only charge
me for ground shipping. So, I decided to give them another chance. It's now
12 December and I have no parts. Called Florida (800 number)  Was put on
hold briefly and listened to a company promo that said, "Order by three PM
and we will get your order to you the next day via over night shipping."
The next time I'm going to order parts from someone in California that
ships Federal express.

UPDATE Number Two: The parts finally arrived from Florida's Verticom. Took
about 5 minutes to setup and install the controller card. That confirmed
that I have a bad 1.2 meg floppy drive. Another five minutes to put in the
new drive. Sure glad I have a "flip-top" computer case. ... The controller
($19) is a four drive job made in China. It has such good markings on the
board that I can throw away the instruction sheet and will still be able to
reset the dip switch & jumpers five years from now for a new combination of
drives. The sheet is not all that hot, as in: "The following is some drive
blands for you computer is setting." ... The no-name drive (the ad said
Chinon & maybe it is) ($55) works fine and formats 84 tracks, my normal
setup via MaxiForm.

FROM OUR SECRET software testing laboratory in North Dakota comes the
following: "Stacker takes 23K of my conventional memory. If I had the
hardware card as well as the software I'd lose less memory. Deleted the
Stacker program and not only gained 23K but my system speed increased
noticeably, back to the way it was before Stacker."

FREE DEMO of Micrografx Designer - 1-800-659-2151.

FREE MEMBERSHIP & software from AMERICA ONLINE (nice BBS with neat GEOS
interface) call 1-800-827-6364, Ext. 5668.

TIMELINE 5.0 demo from SYMANTEC. 1-800-228-4122, Ext. 314P.

THE PRICE CLUB sent a folder on their Positive line of computers. A 33MHz
486 at $2,999 looks to be about the same (configuration & features) as a
ZEOS that sells for $400 more. Tax at the price club would run $210. I
don't know what ZEOS shipping charges would be.

INCREDIBLY FAST is what the Price Club sez about their SONY CD ROM drive.
(It's probably 340ms or so, the average CD speed.) It is $450 for the
internal version and $500 for an external unit. Five free CD's come with
it. It's installed free in a Positive brand computer if you buy the
computer from them. The ad doesn't mention an interface card for clone
installation, ie., if an interface card comes with the drive or not.

ONCE I GET a 720K 3.5 inch disk formatted to 1.44megs on my desktop
computer (the 1.44 drive has a switch that I flip to fool the drive into
thinking that the extra hole in the disk shell is there when it isn't) I
can use it in my laptop at the higher density. Turns out that the only
thing you need the extra hole for is the FORMATTING. After that it's a free
ride.

WANT TO START WINDOWS without the welcome (logo) screen? Do this: WIN : and
make sure there is a space between the WIN and the colon. Won't start any
faster but at least it's a little different for a change.

FREE DEMO disk of Q&A Ver. 4.0 database program 1-800-228-4121, Ext. 104-D.

FREE DEMO disk of MATHCAD Ver. 3.0 - 1-800-MATHCAD.

FREE DEMO disk dBFast for Windows 1-800-645-3003. From Computer Associates.

THERE ARE 15,000 beta testers out there for WINDOWS 3.1 plus a number of
others who are "volunteer" testers, ie., got their copy some back door
way... There is a compatibility problem when you run WINDOWS 3.1 with DR
DOS 6.0 and I wonder if Microsoft did it that way on purpose?

WORD 2.0 for WINDOWS tends to crash (itself and WINDOWS) when checking
spelling in 1.1 files that have been loaded into 2.0. Fortunately, its
mostly documents that have footers, not any others.

SEIKO has upgraded their label printer to the Smart Label Printer Plus and
they have a free demo disk (which I suppose runs a little movie about the
product.) Call 1-800-888-0817. Buy the product by 1/15/92 and get a free
copy of Instant Recall.

THE END
