C C C C N E W S L E T T E R
CENTRAL COAST COMPUTER CLUB
Santa Maria, California
VOLUME XIX: NUMBER 10 OCTOBER, 2004
Meetings are held on the third Tuesday of every month at the Knollwood
Village Clubhouse 4012 S. Bradley Dr., Santa Maria.
General meeting at 7:00 PM. Special Interest Groups sessions are at
5:45pm and 6:00pm. Guests are welcome.
Check out our web site: http//member.apcug.org/fourseas for the latest
program schedule information.
Membership is $15 for twelve months for individuals, $20 for families.
For this you receive: Monthly newsletters, EXTRA4C E-mail Messages,
Access to the clubs software library, Disk of the month (usually for $1),
Help-line support, Monthly presentations, Valuable door prizes, Question
and answer sessions.
NEXT MEETING: October 19, 2004 KNOLLWOOD VILLAGE 4012 S. BRADLEY
PRESENTATION: The October presentation will be Gene Barlow, hard drive
and data management authority on relevant software products.
-----------------------------------
| |
| CONTENTS |
| |
-----------------------------------
(1) OFFICERS, HELPLINES, S.I.G.S
(2) PRESIDENT'S CORNER Spence Stimler
(3) EDITOR'S COMMENTS Dick Trissel
(4) WEB WANDERINGS
(5) SYSTEMS S.I.G. Dick Trissel
(6) REVIEW: ACRONIS DISK DIRECTOR STE 9 Ray Isenson
(7) DOCTOR DATA IS IN - BACKUPS Steve Burgess
(8) REVIEW: ACRONIS TRUE IMAGE 8.0 Dick Trissel
------------------------------------------------------------------------
OFFICERS HELPLINES
President Juno
Spence Stimler 938-0217 Gilbert Smith 925-3743
spence@pronet.net colgil1@juno.com
Vice President Windows 95/98/ME/XP & VoiceControl
Bill Corning 934-0775 Amy Malicki 925-5780
foster95@juno.com savvyforseniors@juno.com
Secretary and Book Librarian Hardware and Windows XP
Barbara Godwin 934-9885 Ray Isenson 937-6938
yung.bag@verizon.net risenson@juno.com
Treasurer AOL
Gerry Miller 934-1396 Frank Maciel 922-2318
2741 Banyan Way frm8198@aol.com
Santa Maria CA 93455
gandamiller@verizon.net
Disk Librarian Visual Basic and Genealogy
Sharon Allen 928-2209 Gerald Miller 934-1396
sallen4060@aol.com gandamiller@verizon.net
Publicity Help With Any Problem
Bill Corning 934-0775 Fred Adams 934-1128
foster95@juno.com fredeadams@verizon.net
Newsletter Editor Digital Imaging
Dick Trissel 937-7572 Charles Barney 937-1240
rtrissel@juno.com Cbarney@lightspeed.net
SPECIAL INTEREST GROUPS (S.I.G.s)
Digital Imaging (*) Systems (5:45pm) Word & Windows (6:00pm)
Charles Barney Dick Trissel Amy Malicki
Cbarney@lightspeed.net rtrissel@juno.com savvyforseniors@juno.com
* Cancelled for October
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
CCCC Page 2 October 2004
PRESIDENT'S CORNER by Spence Stimler
Of constant concern is the dwindling attendance of the members at the
monthly meetings. We have scratched our heads for solutions. Nothing
enlightening seems to come out except a few flakes of dandruff. I have
asked a few people why they didn't come and one of the responses is, "I
forgot." To try to help you remember, Dick is going to put out a few
special EXTRA4CS the week before the meeting as reminders of the meeting
date and the programs we have planned.
We have an excellent staff who works hard to try to come up with ideas to
help you with your computer problems and to introduce new products and
services. When contacting a supplier, we need to tell them the size of the
club and expected attendance.
Our speaker for October is Gene Barlow who will demonstrate new software
for managing your hard drive. He is coming from Salt Lake and it would be
a shame if we have only twenty five people to hear him and see the
demonstration. If you want the 4Cs to prosper and thrive, then it behooves
you to put in an appearance. Elsewhere in this newsletter you will find
evaluations of two of the products Gene will be presenting. Read them and
come and bring a friend.
At our September meeting the following received the door prizes: Alexina
Tyo - Ream of printer paper; Charles. Dorsten - CD-RW set of ten in jewel
cases; Allen Alderson - CD/DVD marker set; Spence Stimler - Swivel copy
holder; Joe Magusson - CD sleeve protectors; and Win Campbell - Orthopedic
mouse mat. There were losers whose names were called but were not in
attendance. If you wonder why it seems that some receive more door prizes
than others, it might be because they are regular attendees.
We want to welcome a new member; Joey Sturdivant.
In October, the nominating committee will present a list of candidates for
next year's officers and will take nominations from the floor. Elections
will take place at the November meeting by a show of hands of those
present.
We will have a great program in October and plans for future programs which
look equally as good. We still would like to have suggestions from you.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
CCCC Page 3 October 2004
EDITOR'S COMMENTS by Dick Trissel
The presenter for October is Gene Barlow. Here is his official press
release.
Gene Barlow has conducted his business over the years mainly with user
groups. He is an educator, writer and a talented presenter, representing
many vendors over the years with products that he finds valuable and
effective for home and small business users. Gene now represents his own
User Group Store (www.usergroupstore.com), offering user group members and
their guests considerable discounts on software. Gene will demonstrate 3
of the most exciting products in his line at the general meeting this
month.
SecureClean: Recent studies have shown that hard drives on PCs contain
hundreds of private files that most users thought they had removed from the
drive months or years earlier. Simply deleting a file from the hard drive
does not permanently remove it from the drive. The only effective way to
permanently remove information from a hard drive is to write blanks or
zeros over the top of the deleted information. Gene will demonstrate
SecureClean and show you how easy it is to prevent personal and private
information from building up on your hard drive.
MoveMe: This is a cleaver utility to help users easily transfer all of
their application programs, settings and data files from an old computer to
their newer computer. By using this utility, you can quickly stay current
with technology and still use your familiar files on your new computer.
True Image: Gene's main topic will be Backing Up Your Hard Drive with True
Image, a drive-imaging tool from Acronis. Steve Bass from PC World said
"I've been using True Image for regular backups since the beginning of the
year. So far, I haven't had a lick of trouble, either with creating the
image, adding incrementals, or with the restoration function. I'm happy
with True Image's simplicity". Backing up your hard drive is possibly the
most important thing you should do with your computer. Gene will
demonstrate True Image and show you how to use the incremental backup
feature, backups that are relatively small and are completed very quickly.
This is a topic every user should understand.
Gene and his wife Linda visit about 100 user groups each year. He is one
of the most interesting presenters you will hear. Don't miss this meeting.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
CCCC Page 4 October 2004
WEB WANDERINGS
KIDS SITE: OLYMPIC GAMES ON THE NET
Instead of watching the games on TV, play Olympics-inspired games on
the Web! This site has puzzles and quizzes with an Olympics theme.
http://www.aafla.org/6oic/WebGames/web_frmst.htm
FREE SITE: A TRASH BAG
Enter your name and address to receive a 13-gallon Glad ForceFlex
Drawstring Tall Kitchen bag. U.S. residents only, while supplies last.
http://www.komando.com/koolsites_cat.asp?catID=5667
PAY LESS
I'm cheap. I mean, I'm thrifty. And I'm not alone!
Everybody loves a bargain. Shopping on the Internet is one of
the best ways to pay less than retail for just about anything.
My Bargain Buddy has price alerts, coupon codes and freebies for the
taking. Search for deals by category. Or, check your favorite online
store to see if there are any specials or codes available.
http://www.mybargainbuddy.com/index.shtml
WHAT STAYS IN MSCONFIG?
Some programs will automatically load every time you start Windows.
This can cause your computer to boot up and run sluggishly. To remove
the programs, you have to click Start>>Run. Type msconfig. Click OK.
If you click on the Startup tab, you'll see a bunch of program
listings. But it's difficult to know what needs to stay and what
doesn't. Enter the name of a program at this site to find out
what it's used for.
http://www.sysinfo.org/
THE MONEY RACE
Instead of calling it a presidential race, it should be called
a money race. The amount of cash being raised by candidates today
is a little frightening.
If you're curious how much your neighbors, boss or relatives are
donating, go to Fundrace. Enter an address or name to find how who
is donating to whom. You can also see how much each candidate spends
in hotel and airline bills.
http://www.fundrace.org
HOME-COOKED FOOD, SORT OF
If you make Applebee's Quesadillas and Macaroni Grill's Pasta di Pollo
in your kitchen, is it still considered a home-cooked meal?
CopyKat Recipes has a list of recipes from all of your favorite
restaurants. You'll find recipes from fast food, casual and fine dining
restaurants. Personally, I'm dying to try my hand at Cheesecake
Factory's cheesecake. Yummy!
http://www.copykat.com/asp/recipes.asp
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
CCCC Page 5 October 2004
SYSTEMS S.I.G. by Dick Trissel
As usual, there was a lot of discussion about the Juno ISP. This is
probably because one-fourth (26) of the CCCC members are Juno subscribers--
more than any other single ISP. Verizon is next with 13, then MSN with 12
and AOL with 9. The other 34 are other various ISPs.
One Juno topic was their new policy of blocking possible viruses and
substituting warning messages. This approach seems to be reducing the
amount of spam messages received.
To improve the modem connections, I recommended using phone numbers that
are associated with the V.90 protocol only--not V.90/V.92--unless you know
your modem supports V.92. Some of us also seem to get better connections
using the Nipomo numbers--they are toll free.
An interesting statistic is that in the U.S. 50% of the Internet users are
still using modems.
It was recommended that you pick up the latest free utility disk from
ComputerWorks (207 W. Main). Among other useful programs, it has the full
(272MB) XP SP2 update. However, the recommendation from most tech writers
is not to install SP2 yet. There are fixes for the fixes .
One important topic was discussed--how to backup a hard drive with 15GB of
files (that's not a misprint--15 Gigabytes). One suggestion was to get an
external USB hard drive. One member said he saw an external Western
Digital drive on sale for $80 for a 120GB capacity drive. The usual price
(BestBuy) is $120 for an external 80GB drive. Another possiblity is a high
capacity DVD burner for about the same cost for the burner, software and
media.
There was a comment about the proposed free Wi-Fi access at the Santa Maria
Library. San Diego already has this free capability. And there are some
small towns considering making the whole town Wi-Fi available--for a fee.
I showed a 1GB thumbdrive (USB) that I purchased at Frys in San Diego for
$80 plus tax and after a $30 rebate. This sure beats 700MB CDs for
transferring files from one computer to another--faster, too.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
CCCC Page 6 October 2004
REVIEW: ACRONIS DISK DIRECTOR SUITE 9
by Ray Isenson
With the ever increasing size of installed hard drives and the concomitant
importance of keeping partitions of a manageable size, a utility to assist
in the task becomes essential. The Acronis Disk Director Suite is an
integrated set of management utilities to accomplish that end; a suite of
tools that give the user complete control over the organization and
maintenance of the computer's hard drive. Designed for use both by the
computer novice or the more experienced operator, the Suite has an
automatic mode for the former, and a manual mode for the latter. An
extraordinarily detailed Help file and an Adobe Reader document of over 140
pages are available to help the user through any function.
In the automatic mode the user can create one or more new partitions on a
hard drive, increase the free space on one partition by taking it from
another, copy the information in one partition to another or, in case of an
untoward event, recover partitions.
The manual mode offers a far greater list of capabilities. In addition to
functions that create partitions, there are those to resize and move them
without losing or destroying the data contents of the partition, or delete
partitions. Partition contents can be copied or moved to other partitions.
As with the automatic mode, it can recover partitions that were
accidentally deleted or damaged because of hardware or software error. For
those users who opt, for reasons of their own, to have multiple operating
systems on a single PC, the manual mode will facilitate doing so.
The capabilities include an option selectively to boot from any hard disk
partition or operating system and another that will, for security purposes,
positively erase any partition or even an entire disk.
Significantly, the Suite, in either mode, can be used to create an
emergency boot CD or a set of boot floppies for use when such is the only
way to recover from a system fault. Testing the capability to create a
bootable CD uncovered a minor error in the instructions and a great deal of
concern. The instructions would have the user place a blank CD-R or CD-RW
in the burner before clicking on the button to burn the CD. In fact, doing
so resulted in an error message and program failure. Experimentally, it
was determined that the proper procedure is to open the CD burner's drawer,
place the CD in the tray and leave the drawer open. The software will
cause it to close, automatically, at the proper time. A good bootable disk
will result. With the computer set to boot on the CD as the first choice,
the system will come to rest with Acronis Disk Director open and awaiting
further instruction; not at the Desktop screen.
All in all, the Acronis Disk Director Suite well equips the computer user
to manage his hard drive precisely and effectively.
User group members may purchase Acronis Disk Director Suite 9.0 at a
special price of $34 plus S&H by ordering from the secure web site at
www.ugr.com/order. Indicate the special price code of UGEVAL04 with your
order.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
CCCC Page 7 October 2004
DOCTOR DATA: THE DOCTOR IS IN - BACKUPS
by Steve Burgess
What's the best way for me to keep my data safe, doctor?
Backup, backup, backups!
If there's one thing I've learned in 20 years and 11,000 data recoveries,
it's that everybody doesn't back up their data sometimes. Computers may be
dumb, but they know when you don't have your data backed up - because
that's when they break. Don't let your computer fool you - back up new data
daily.
It's important that you keep alternating backups, and a spare. This means
to have one disk (or tape, or thumb drive) labeled "EVEN" (for even-
numbered days, one labeled "ODD" and one spare. Eventually, something will
go wrong with a backup. For example, if an error occurs on an "EVEN" day,
and you put in your "ODD" backup, you may ruin both. Instead, put in the
spare. If there is a problem, you've saved your extra backup (from the day
before yesterday) and have not wasted all your hard work. If there is no
problem, and it was only a temporary glitch, then put your spare back on
the shelf, reformat the "EVEN", and carry on with your backup.
What's the best thing to make a backup on?
There are a lot of ways to back up your data. Most new computers come with
CD-R, or CD-RW drives. Most PCs still come with floppy disk drives (and you
can get one for a Mac). There are Zip drives, tape drives, USB "thumb"
drives, and more. My current favorites are CD-R for full backups and USB
thumb drives for smaller amounts of data.
For CD-RW drives, I recommend using CD-R media only, as it's too easy to
overwrite a previous backup using a CD-RW disk. This is a good form of
backup for large amounts of data (they hold more than 650 MB), and each
disk is inexpensive. But it leaves you with a lot of plastic disks sitting
around. That's why I typically use them only for large backups. Heat,
bending, and scratching are the enemies of CD disks.
Zip drives come in sizes from 100 MB to 750 MB and cost from $60 to $200,
while additional disks cost around $10 each. These are sensitive to dust,
shock, too much heat, and big magnets.
Floppy diskettes don't hold very much (1.4 MB), but cost a few cents, and
are easy to carry around. Almost all PCs have them, and quite a few Macs
do. Floppies are sensitive to heat, magnetic fields, dust, bending and
other rough handling.
Tape drives should only be used for very large amounts of data. They are
relatively expensive and slow. They're great on large networks for after-
hours backups, but they're easily damaged.
I am an unabashed fan of USB thumb drives! These are actually memory sticks
with a USB plug on the end that act like portable hard disks. They are
sturdy - I accidentally let one go through the wash in my shirt pocket.
After it dried out, it still had my data on it (don't try this at home)!
They come in sizes from 64 MB to 1 GB. They can be shared and used on PCs
and Macs without reformatting. You can buy one at a local computer or
electronics store for $50-$200.
Doctor Data will answer your questions about hardware and software on
Windows and Macintosh. Doctor Data as Steve Burgess is the proprietor of
Burgess Consulting in Santa Maria. Burgess Consulting does data recovery,
data transfer and conversion, and computer forensics. Send your questions
to DoctorData@aol.com.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
CCCC Page 8 October 2004
REVIEW: ACRONIS TRUE IMAGE 8.0
by Dick Trissel
Acronis True Image 8.0 is available to CCCC members from
www.usergroupstore.com at user group discount prices using the code
UGEM0804 or UGNL0804 for $34 (retail $63). The Acronis Web site is:
Homepage: http://www.acronis.com
Acronis True Image is a backup and disaster recovery software package that
allows you to create an exact image of your PC hard disk, including all
operating systems and software, data, personal settings, configurations,
software updates and patches, and anything else that might be on your disk
drive.
In the event of a virus attack, crashed disk drive, corrupted file or other
serious problem with data or a disk drive you will be able to restore the
system or necessary information easily and quickly.
You can repair a damaged partition or recover lost data by restoring the
entire image or just extracting the necessary files to the hard disk.
Acronis True Image enables you to restore image contents directly from
within Windows without rebooting the system
Acronis True Image also lets you migrate data from an existing hard disk to
a new hard disk.
Supported Operating Systems
All DOS, Windows 3.1 + DOS Windows 95 / 98 / ME / NT / 2000 Pro / XP Linux
(any distribution), FreeBSD, Solaris, SCO UNIX, UNIXWARE OS/2, BeOS, QNX.
System Requirements
- PC-compatible computer with Pentium or similar CPU
- 32 MB RAM
- floppy or CD-ROM drive
- VGA monitor
Features
- Windows XP support
- Image creation and restoration without reboot in most cases
- Acronis True Image 8.0 images only the sectors that contain data, so
images are created in just a few minutes!
- Acronis True Image 8.0 supports a wide variety of IDE, SCSI, USB,
FireWire, and PC Card (formerly PCMCIA) storage media
- Support for all hard disks, regardless of capacity
- Complete and incremental backups
- Scheduled and periodical image creation
- Automatic or manual hard disk installation
- Partition relocation and resizing
- Support for all Windows and Linux file systems, including FAT 16, FAT 32,
NTFS, Linux Ext2/Ext3, ReiserFS-3 and Linux Swap; sector-based support for
other operating systems
- User-friendly Windows XP-like interface with full mouse support
- Comprehensive wizards simplify even the most complex operations
- Ability to create a hidden partition (the Acronis Secure Zone) where the
user can store a copy of his disk image
- Adjustment of a priority for process of image creation
- Exception paging/hibernate files from images for the decreasing of image
file size
- Partition/disk image integrity check before restoration
- Partition/disk file system integrity check after restoration
- Control of data compression level, image volume splitting and password
protection
- The ability to clone a disk drive so that multiple systems will have the
exact same base disk drive configuration and software
- The ability to migrate data from one drive to another
- The ability to take an existing drive and prepare it to be redeployed as
a new system drive or a data drive
- The ability to recover an entire disk, a specific partition, an
individual folder or an individual file
- The ability to change a partition type, file system, size and location
during recovery
- The ability to create a bootable diskette or CD as a system rescue disk
- OS-independent operation of Acronis True Image 8.0 from the bootable
diskette or CD
- User's Guide in Adobe Acrobat (pdf) format
-----------------------------------------------------------------------