C C C C N E W S L E T T E R
CENTRAL COAST COMPUTER CLUB
Santa Maria, California
VOLUME XV: NUMBER 11 NOVEMBER, 2000
NEXT MEETING: NOVEMBER 21, 2000 7:00PM KNOLLWOOD VILLAGE 4012 S. BRADLEY
PRESENTATION: Alan Raul on the LINUX Operating System
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| CONTENTS |
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(1) Officers, Helplines, S.I.G.s
(2) President's Corner/ By-Laws Charles Barney
(3) Web Wanderings / Misc. Gil Smith
(4) Editor's Comments / Labels Dick Trissel
(5) Review: Drive Image 4.0 Ray Isenson
(6) October Internet S.I.G. Dick Trissel
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Officers Helplines
President Juno
Charles Barney 937-1240 Gilbert Smith 925-3743
cbarney@lightspeed.net colgil1@juno.com
Vice President Windows 95
Frank Maciel 922-2318 Amy Malicki 925-5780
frm8198@juno.com amymal@juno.com
Secretary Hardware & DOS
Barbara Godwin 934-9885 Ray Isenson 937-6938
yungbag@best1.net risenson@juno.com
Treasurer Voice control & Input/Output
Gerald Miller 934-1396 Amy Malicki 925-5780
2741 Banyan Way amymal@juno.com
Santa Maria CA 93455
gmiller33@excite.com
Librarian Desktop Publishing & scanners
Sharon Allen 928-2209 Don Harelson 934-3926
sallen4060@aol.com qef1@juno.com
Publicity Software User Identification
Bill Corning 934-0775 Fred Adams 934-1128
foster95@juno.com fred421@juno.com
Newsletter Editor Visual Basic
Dick Trissel 937-7572 Gerald Miller
rtrissel@juno.com Gmiller33@excite.com
Program Chairman AOL
Ray Isenson 937-6938 Frank Maciel 922-2318
risenson@juno.com frm8198@aol.com
Special Interest Groups (SIGs)
Windows 95/98 Internet
Amy Malicki Dick Trissel
amymal@juno.com rtrissel@juno.com
CCCC Membership is $15 for twelve months. For this you receive:
Monthly newsletter
Access to the clubs software library
Disk of the month (usually for $1)
Helpline support
Monthly presentation
Valuable door prizes
Question and answer sessions
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CCCC Page 2 November 2000
President's Corner
by Charles Barney
There were about 60 persons who turned out for the October 17th meeting; a
relatively light attendance compared to recent months. Perhaps it was the
final presidential debate or the baseball playoffs on television, or maybe
just the shorter days and cooler nights that kept people home. But what we
lacked in numbers, we made up for in enthusiasm!
The proposed amendment to the club's by-laws pertaining to dues payments
was passed unanimously by the members present. Please read Dick's notice on
this elsewhere in this newsletter for information on what the change means
to you. We are trying to make it as easy as possible for everyone.
I would like to extend a hearty 4C's welcome to new members Richard and
Cheri Holmes. We are very pleased to have you join our group and trust that
your time with us will be a long and rewarding one. We hope that you grow
to feel comfortable with active participation at the meetings, benefiting
from our pool of knowledge and contributing your own ideas as well.
During our main program for the evening, Matt McCann from Intuit gave us a
delightful presentation on Quicken 2001 Deluxe. This being the latest
version of the venerable "Swiss Army Knife" of financial management
software that has been around for 17 years. When asked, probably about one-
third of the members raised their hands to indicate that they were using
some version of Quicken. Matt briefly covered installation of the program
and setup of personal accounts before showing us some of the multitude of
features, blending all of this in with amusing anecdotes about his family.
In addition to the familiar check register, reports and graphs, a number of
exciting new things have been added. The program's extended features are
tightly integrated with the internet. Investors can not only get current
stock prices and instant portfolio updates online, but can now download
news wire stories to research specific companies. Visits to the bank may
become obsolete one day.
With Quicken you can access your bank, credit and brokerage account
records, make transfers and pay bills with just a few mouse clicks. Using
the new Quicken, you can download the current values of your home and car
and even find out how much your neighbor paid for his house! Don't like to
buy stamps? Then buy postage online and print it from within Quicken.
Are you, like a lot of folks, negligent about backing up important files on
your computer? Then take advantage of Quicken's Online Backup. They will
back them up for you, saving them on the Internet for retrieval from
anywhere! A comprehensive listing of all the available features is beyond
the scope of this column, but this much is clear: Quicken 2001 is an
improvement on an already great program that goes a long way toward helping
us manage the financial chaos in our lives.
Matt was generous enough to provide us with three of his products to give
away as door prizes. The club computer called absentees Don Harrelson and
Ira Irwin before choosing Phil Grycel as the proud owner of the Quicken
2001 Suite. New member Cheri Holmes was named a winner, picking up Quicken
2001 Deluxe as was Bill Rust, who got a copy of the Quicken 2001 Home and
Business edition.
In other prizes, George Spingler took home ClickBook 2000 and Robert
Hileman missed his chance, letting Barbara Lohman win a copy of Power
Quest's Data Keeper. The last prize, Partition Magic, was the most
difficult to give away. Called and not present were Diane Hughes, Paul
Highfill, Thomas Phillips, Joseph Knight, Glen Wood and Bob Gallagher. Both
Fred Adams and myself passed. Finally, Charles High took it home!
By the time you read this, I'll have already returned, but I have accepted
an invitation to attend the Fall conference of the Association of Personal
Computer User Groups (APCUG) on behalf of our club in Las Vegas, Nevada
November 11th and 12th.
This annual event is a chance for user group officers from all over to get
together, share their experiences and to have some fun. A number of major
vendors are expected to give presentations and actively seek opportunities
for speaking engagements. I'm hoping to persuade some of them to come out
to the 4C's next year. More on this later!
Mark you calendars now for the club Christmas party on December 19th. It
will be a potluck again, so start thinking about what kind of "finger food"
dish you might want to bring.
Please don't miss the November 21st meeting if at all possible. We will be
voting to elect our club officers for the year 2001 and Alan Raul from
neighboring San Luis Obispo user's group, the SloBytes, will be down to
give us a much anticipated talk on the Linux operation system. I'll see you
at the clubhouse. - Charles
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CCCC Page 3 November 2000
Web Wanderings
by Gil Smith
FUNOLOGY - Fun for the Kids --- This is a great place on the net for kids
to have more fun --- whether sitting at the computer, alone or with
friends, parents, grandparents, pets, etc. The boredom busters are awesome
--- from making Coffee Filter Butterflies to Tissue Paper Flowers. Send to
the kids or grandkids and you just might not hear, "I'm bored!" until
school starts again.
http:///www.funology.com/
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USING CHARTS IN MONEY MANAGEMENT Virtually any finance site can draw you a
chart, but the best ones let you customize the graphic with technical
indicators such as moving averages and trading volumes, compare stocks with
one another or with indexes, and manipulate a wide range of data. MSN
MoneyCentral trumps the field in this category too. It also provides a lot
of information which is very useful in managing your portfolio.
http://www.moneycentral.com
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INTERNET ATOM COLLIDER Just about all of us have encountered a random
generator on the Web at one point or another, but this site takes that
theory to new levels. Claiming that elementary particles of information
are accelerated to nearly the speed of light on the Internet, traveling in
opposite directions around a giant fiber ring, they eventually meet a
collision chamber that the wits at Harvard University who created this site
may or may not have designed. The resulting collisions release small but
massive information particles, scattered in all directions, which are
collected by the information detector and stored for later viewing.
http://www.eecs.harvard.edu/
collider.html
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A HISTORY LESSON Convinced that history is best learned by understanding
timelines rather than memorizing dates and events, the author of this
chart, Ancreas Nothiger, has made it available for use online as an
educational tool. Using this unique timeline, you can check out what was
happening around the world in 1865 while America was in the midst of a
Civil War - the first Trans-Atlantic cable was laid and the Boer War was
raging in Africa. An overall History category shows you a master timeline
which is color-coded to help you keep track of the region you're viewing.
You can also view timelines that show the lifespans of famous figures or
timelines that life spans in more detail.
http://www.hyperhistory.com
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WATCH FREE MOVIES Want to catch a quick flix without going to the theater
or movie rental store? You can choose from over 1,200 titles to be viewed
straight from your computer.
http://www.movieflix.com
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TRUTH OR FICTION Where do rumors, hoaxes, and urban legends come from, who
starts them and why, and what can we learn from them? Find a particular
rumor quickly and easily. This site helps spread truth particularly in the
Internet. Example: The cab driver and the terminally ill passenger -
Unproven. The symbolism on the One Dollar Bill - Truth. Since each rumor,
hoax, or urban legend is unique and sometimes we don't know for sure
without doing some research what to believe, there are some signs to look
for. Use this site to validate what may appear to be a true story, before
sending it to all of your e-mail friends as the truth.
http://www.truthorfiction.com
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CCCC Page 4 November 2000
Editor's Comments
by Dick Trissel
N O T I C E #1
Check your mailing label on this newsletter. In the upper right corner
there will be an arrow pointing to a number (--> #.##). That is the amount
in dollars and cents that you will owe by January's business meeting for
your membership to continue through the year 2001. Only those due in 2000
will still show an expiration date on the label.
There are three categories of members; those that have dues payable this
year (Oct., Nov., Dec.), those that have dues payable in 2001, and those
that have already paid through 2001.
The first category will pay when due this year for the rest of this year
and all of next year. The second category will pay in January for the
remainder of 2001. The third category owes $0.00.
It would help a lot if you paid by check and on time. It's going to be a
little hectic. And paying by check, a receipt will not be necessary.
N O T I C E #2
The first inside sheet of the newsletter is a pull-out ballot. Use it to
vote for the CCCC officers for the year 2001. Bring the filled in ballot
to the 21 November general meeting. If you can't attend the meeting,
follow the instructions on the back of the ballot and mail it to:
Kenneth Stiffler
5321 Redwillow Dr.
Santa Maria CA 93455
This fancy ballot compliments of Ray Isenson.
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CCCC Page 5 November 2000
Review: Drive Image 4.0
by Ray Isenson
An upgrade to the very powerful PowerQuest utility described in the
February 2000 issue of the 4C'er, version 4.0 of Drive Image expands its
span of coverage to include the new Microsoft O/S, ME. For the typical
home computer user, Drive Image makes sense of the humongous hard drives
currently being sold. It does this by simplifying the making of partial or
total back up copies of important files or, at the user's option, all of
the files in a partition or on the drive.
Similarly, it makes practical the use of a second installed hard drive or
an external hard drive, a Jaz or ZIP drive or an MO (Magneto-Optical) drive
for that same purpose. It is not designed to save to magnetic tape.
Drive Image is a very flexible, very elegant utility for backing up
(imaging) part or all of a hard drive. Selectively, it can be used to
create an image copy of an operating system or a partition Thus, in the
event of a catastrophic accident, the damaged partition can easily be
restored rather than requiring a complete new installation. Or, depending
upon the size of the hard drive and number of programs and amount of stored
data, a data partition or even the entire utilized portion of the drive can
be backed up in another area of that drive or to one of the other above
listed devices. If needed, then, the entire hard drive can be restored
with the punch of a button or, with equal ease, one or more files from that
sector can selectively be restored. The main thing is that recourse to
Drive Image will mean, as in a song of years ago, "Never having to say
you're sorry!"
As with older versions, Drive Image 4.0 also can be used to handle the file
transfers and system installation to upgrade drives.
A significant advantage of Drive Image over competitive utilities is its
flexibility and ease of operation. It can be loaded on to the hard drive
and run from the "Start>Program" menu or it can be run from floppy. In the
latter case recourse is made to a Caldera DOS (as opposed to MSDOS). The
computer is booted to the A: drive in the DOS mode. The floppy is replaced
with one containing Drive Image and the program is run from there.
Although it can be used on a 386SX driven computer, a 486 or later is more
appropriate. A minimum 16 Mbytes of RAM is required, although 32 Mbytes is
preferred in any case and required for FAT32 or NTFS configured drives.
Eight Mbytes of hard drive space is required. Any speed CD-ROM drive is
needed for software installation.
A well written, six page pamphlet delivered with the program's CD-ROM disk
provides all of the instructions in a step by step fashion, requisite to
setting up and running Drive Image. The 120 plus page accompanying manual
adds detail to the instruction in the pamphlet as well as providing
information and guidance for handling unusual hardware configurations.
Smart Sector Technology, a PowerQuest feature, results in imaging of data
containing sectors only, bypassing those that contain no data or,
obviously, empty sectors.
User group members may purchase Drive Image v4 at a special UG price of $30
by ordering from the secure web site at
www.ugr .com/order/. You must indicate the special price code of UGEVAL00
with your order.
Drive Image 4.0, PowerQuest Corporation; P.O. Box 1911 Orem, UT 84059-1911,
Phone (801) 437-8900.
List price,: $69.95. Special UG price $30 (see above)
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CCCC Page 6 November 2000
October Internet S.I.G
by Dick Trissel
We had 25 attendees--not bad considering we were competing with the third
presidential debate, baseball playoffs, and Dark Angel.
The discussions centered around cookies, and, of course, that led to
Temporary Internet Files(TIFs).
I discussed an article from the November PC World magazine on Web privacy.
It was about the "benevolent" and "malevolent" types of cookies. The
benefits of cookies is to allow Web sites to track your preferences and
concentrate their presentations around these interests. Some people like
this feature. Also, it appears some ISPs (such as JUNO) put your ID and
password in a cookie so you don't have to enter them each time you logon.
One adverse aspect of cookies is that there are third party "providers"
that can take the information from your various cookies and distribute that
information to subscribing Web sites. Two of these third party cookies are
recognizable with the names Doubleclick and Avenuea.
Some cookies have expiration dates, whatever that means. My experience is
that if the cookies folder content is not managed, it gets quite large. A
comment was made that the index.dat file cannot be deleted from within
Windows--correct. It can be deleted from true DOS. However, it is usually
only around 32Kb.
Another comment was that the JUNO ID and password were in the index.dat
file because if deleted, JUNO asks for them the next time up. I think what
is happening is that with the index.dat file removed, none of the cookies
can be accessed and this is functionally equivalent to removing the
cookies. If you look at the index.dat file with the DOS "type" command,
you see the index of all the cookies files.
The cookies list is viewable in both the C:\Windows\Cookies
folder and the
C:\Windows\Temporary Internet
Files folder. Does that mean the deleting process can be done from either?
My experience is that deleting from the TIF folder removes them from the
Cookies folder, BUT, deleting from the Cookies folder does NOT remove them
from the TIF folder. What is your experience?
The PC World article also mentioned three free programs for blocking
cookies, all at http://www.pcworld.com/downloadsThey are IDcide,
AdSubtract, and Naviscope. Enough about cookies.
Some of the operations with Internet Explorer were discussed--particularly
the options in the Tools menu (View in IE4) at Internet Options, the
General tab (delete TIFs) and the Advanced tab (selections of IE
operational options).
The IE History, Favorites, Channels and Address list are stored references
to your past activity using IE. These all can be managed. The advice
given by Chuck Saylor was "Use the mouse right-click button"--good advice.
The Advance tab options mentioned above are useful, also. Just don't
forget to press the Apply button after you've made a change. For an
explanation of an option listed, either right-click it, or drag the [?] to
the option.
A suggestion for an interesting Web site was
http://www.globexplorer.com. It gives a satellite view of the earth with
zoom capability--fascinating!
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