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                       W  I  N  D  O  W  A  T  C  H                     
                                                                        
                                                                        
                                                                        
             The Electronic Windows Magazine of the Internet            
                                                                        
                                                                        
                                                                        
                                                                        
                                                                        
   Ĵ
    April 1997                                            Vol. 3  No. 4 
   ;


  page 2
                            WHAT'S    INSIDE
   Vol.3  No.4                                               April  1997
  


                               The Editor's Soapbox   Lois Laulicht
               Internet, Security, ActiveX and Java   Herb Chong
                                 Breaching Security   Paul Ashton


                           The Norton Utilities v.2
                              The Norton Supplement
  
            The Norton Utilities v.2 for Windows 95   Dan Christle
         The Norton Utilities v.2 for Windows NT:
                                      A Dual Review   Stefan Assmann and
                                                         Linda Rosenbaum

                                       OfficePro 97
  
                        Microsoft Outlook: Contacts   Stefan Assmann


                                  Featured Articles
  
                                    Partition Magic   John M. Campbell
  Teaching Old Dogs New Tricks: HTML Tutorial No.VI   Gregg Hommel
                                           WebCount   Lynn Alford
           WordBasics Part II: Beginning a Dialogue   Jack Passarella
 Educational Detours on the Electronic Superhighway   Frank McGowan
                                    The ModemJunkie   Leonard Grossman
                                     Games Reviewed   Lynn Alford
           WinFaxPro v.8 for '95 and NT: A Preview!   Stefan Assmann
      Power Desk Utilities for NT: A Product Review   Linda Rosenbaum
                                      Browser Warts   Internet Humor
                                       The LastWord   Ben Schorr
                                    The Art Gallery   Herb Chong



  page 3
  WindoWatch              The Electronic Windows Magazine of the Internet
   Volume 3 No.4                                              April 1997
  


                          The Editor's Soapbox

SECURITY VIOLATIONS!

During these last weeks, there have appeared on the Internet several
authoritative articles exposing existing openings into the browser
making it possible to access a client computer. These holes can be
utilized to manipulate programming flaws inherent in Internet Explorer
ver. 3 and the new public release of IE beta ver 4. At the end of this
article, we will list sites that provide information from researchers
who have examined the code and have drawn conclusions based upon their
direct experiments with the browser while using various versions of
Microsoft's Windows.

Their warning, in my opinion, should be taken very seriously. It is not
sufficient for Microsoft to say that all browser software is afflicted
with these kinds of security breaches. We know there exists UNIX server
software which can also use browsers to directly access a desktop
computer. But more to the point, some of this criticism goes beyond
challenging just browser security, but is also questioning the overall
security of both Windows 95 and Windows NT while on the Internet.
Please note the last... On the Internet.

The upcoming debate will go far beyond questions of the code itself, or
marketing ploys used by both defenders and opponents of Microsoft. Our
national preoccupation with having and keeping the competitive edge has
more than once forced us to defend a position that provides short term
rewards to the risk takers, while leaving to chance unanticipated
results. It is not surprising that many find it difficult to find any
comfort level amid proponents of strategies of rapid technological
progress as is this effort to integrate the desktop with Internet
browsing! The language of dissent is not polite and is often strident.
It doesn't diminish, however, the warnings of those with a gut
understanding that important components of power could be handed over to
others while we complacently welcome new electronic toys. Those of us
who have been publicly advocating care relating to issues of privacy are
neither paranoid or crazy, but rather come from a different place with
different experiences.

This discussion is not just about a software company that has made
important and far reaching contributions to the computer industry and to
computer users internationally!

Microsoft's eminence and power is not just about skillful marketing or
burying their competitors, as some might allege. It is about making it
possible for ordinary people to have the powerful computer tools
necessary to contribute and compete on a level playing field. The
Internet has had a role to this end but the crucial part of the equation
has been the evolution of the PC operating system where each user can be
king.

Microsoft did not arrive at its dominant role by ignoring market
pressures. It has traditionally listened to its customers and there is
no reason to believe that they will become poor business people in order
to win their competition with Netscape or anyone else!

Microsoft has survived the bad press of the flawed product before this
latest debacle of the insecure browser. However we must not minimize the
problem. An insecure browser on the Internet is significant. All sorts
of institutions are willing to make the necessary financial commitment
to the Internet but must wait until fundamental security questions are
solved. The risks are still too great and place in jeopardy reputations,
assets, liability, and the Internet itself.

Since most operating copies of both Internet Explorer and Netscape have
been given away at breakneck speeds, it seems to me that the expectation
of consistency of quality is unrealistic.

A slow or buggy copy of any developer's browser can be removed from a
system with ease. Not so easy is educating the public to insist that
issues of security be given, as the norm, top priority by Internet
developers. We have the right to expect and insist that Internet
software will not open our systems to casual snoopers, marketers, con
artists, unauthorized law enforcement officials, pranksters and
criminals!

Microsoft will respond properly to this last public embarrassment
because it must. Every time an insecure browser is released to the
public, trust is reduced. Since at this early stage of browser/desktop
integration the only war(t) on the browser table is one of rhetoric.
Only silly children will fault a company for maintaining standards and
credibility with its customers and the public.

Lest we become diverted to the next hot topic, it is our collective
responsibility not to get taken in and abandon judgment to the cheer
leaders. Those who have opted to get onto the Internet have added the
richness of a unique experience to their homes, business and
communities, but must be aware of the risks. Those risks must be
eliminated or we could become passive partners in creating problems
analogous to the worst kinds of public disaster. We've ignored public
concern too often by refusing to carefully examine potential outcomes!

Some of us feel strongly that invasions of privacy can deliver a
dangerous and predictable aftermath.


                    =  =  =  =  =  =  =  = 
Lois Laulicht is the Editor of WindoWatch!


Links to Bibliography and Sources

  "Security Holes Threaten Microsoft Game Plan" By PETER WAYNER;
  NYTimes Online 3/28/1997
       Several weeks ago, " ...students at Worcester Polytechnic
       Institute discovered ways to start up arbitrary programs
       on a user's machine running Microsoft's Internet Explorer
       Web browser."

  "ISP Finds Another Chink in the Firewall" by Brian McWilliams, PC World
  NewsRadio, and Paul Heltzel, PC World 3/28/1997
       "The security of online transactions took a big step backward
       this week with the discovery of a serious new flaw in browsers
       from both Netscape and Microsoft.

  "Analysts downplay, vendors work to solve Internet security risk of
  GET protocol" By Judy DeMocker and Carolyn A. April InfoWorld Electric:
  3/28/1997

  Aaron Spangler http://www.ee.washington.edu/computing/iebug
       "Known Versions Affected:
       The exploit works for both Netscape Navigator 3.01 and Microsoft
       Internet Explorer 3.01 (even with Security Patches.) (earlier
       versions should work as well, but have not yet been tested). But
       you MUST be using Windows NT 4.0 or Windows 97. Look below to see
       how it works."



   ww page 4
  ActiveX and Secure Desktops!
  


                  Internet Security, ActiveX and Java
                      Copyright 1997 by Herb Chong


In recent weeks, Microsoft has been in the spotlight for several major
security holes in it's Internet Explorer and Internet Information Server
products. However, in a more technical arena, Microsoft's ActiveX
technology has been receiving criticism for its security lapses. In this
article, I will try to explain the issues in less technical terms so
that you can understand why the experts are not embracing ActiveX as a
way to distribute smart Internet browser components but are preferring
on Sun's Java.

The first thing you need to know is what is ActiveX. The first time
that Microsoft mentions something resembling ActiveX in Microsoft
Developer Network News, a bimonthly newsletter for developers, is in
the January/February 1996 issue, Volume 5, Number 1. That issued
leadoff article, entitled "What is Microsoft Up to on the Internet?",
contains this paragraph:

       Internet Extensibility in Software. Web documents today
       are largely static -- they present information or provide
       a simple user interface for retrieving information from
       the user. How can we make Web pages more dynamic -- more
       like Web applications, if you will? OLE Controls and OLE
       Scripting provide the infrastructure that lets you add
       behavior and scripting to your Web page, in a
       language-neutral and tool-neutral way. OLE Controls and
       OLE Scripting leverage the investment in tools and
       knowledge that developers already made in OLE.


Note three things in this statement. First is that there is no mention
of ActiveX yet, Microsoft hadn't coined the name at this time. Second is
that these controls are based on OLE controls. I will return to this key
point, time and time again in this piece. The third and final point is
that at the time of the Microsoft article, the only tools that allowed
you to build OLE controls without resorting to to-the-bare-metal C
coding came from Microsoft.

In an accompanying article in the same issue, Microsoft describes a new
feature of Microsoft Office for Windows 95 named OLE Document Objects. I
don't know how many of you use Microsoft Office's Binder application,
but it is a handy tool for grouping together disparate types of Office
documents into in single bundle, a Binder object, so that you can work
on related documents and ensure they stay together, without having to
hide parts of them that are not meant to be seen by their readers, just
their authors. Binder uses OLE Document Objects to pull together
documents into these bundles.


Again, a quote from Microsoft:

      One obvious application for this technology is in Internet
      Browsers, where the adoption of binder technology will
      facilitate the presentation of Internet-based information
      while enabling the browser to present documents from Office
      and Office-compatible applications as well. In short, a user
      need only go to one application tool to browse and view all
      documents, whether local or network based.

There are at least two important assumptions in this statement. One is
that you want to view documents created by some other tool, specifically
Microsoft Office applications, directly using your web browser. The
other assumption is that information suppliers are willing to send this
information to you in a form that you can copy and modify.

Although users might not care as much, information suppliers care
greatly who receives information in a form that that can be copied
freely and modified. Thus the assumption that people want to supply
information across the Internet or an intranet is suspect. By the
May/June 1996 issue of Microsoft Developer Network News, ActiveX had
suddenly appeared. In this brief issue, of only eight pages, the lead
off article, "Is your Client Being Served?" contains a broad brush
picture of what Microsoft planned for ActiveX and its Internet software
strategy. As to be expected, most of the article is for the hard core
software developer, but several things are clear. The first is that
ActiveX is the general name for almost all of Microsoft's Internet
software designs and architecture. The second is that ActiveX is
designed around the notion that there should be no need to know if a
document is on the Internet, your intranet, or on your desktop. It all
looks the same on the desktop.

Where, then, are all the worries by the security experts concentrated?
As you can see by now, ActiveX covers so much that saying ActiveX is the
problem is too vague. The security experts are worried about ActiveX
controls that you download through your browser onto your system. What
makes them worry? The first and most important thing that they worry
about is that an ActiveX control, at this time, is a Windows OLE
control. This means that it is written in native code, as Internet
developers call it. Java, on the other hand, is written in Java and
converted to byte code before being sent to your web browser. This is
the one small difference that causes security experts nightmares.

Java code and the applications they make up that you work with on the
Internet are downloaded to your system via your Web browser. The byte
code that is sent is a set of instructions for an imaginary machine that
doesn't exist yet in hardware, although Sun has announced plans to ship
a card to plug into a regular PC that understands Java byte codes.
Because the byte codes are for a machine that has no hardware
equivalent, it means that some software on your system has to translate
those instructions into something that can run on your system. Sun
Microsystems, the inventors of Java, has a document called "The Java
Virtual Machine Specification" that describes exactly how these
instructions are to be interpreted. It describes and limits exactly what
Java code can or can't do and in particular describes in detail what
operating system services it uses and how it can be used.

There are two advantages to this approach. One is that because the byte
code instructions don't correspond to any hardware, all real systems are
equally disadvantaged. The other is that one set of byte codes will work
on any system that has a Java virtual machine. This includes nearly any
system that can run a Web browser. Nothing comes for free, of course.
The disadvantage of using a Java virtual machine is that it costs and
can cost plenty to run Java code. A really good one will run only
slightly slower than native code, but it will always be slower so long
as a software-only virtual machine runs the code.

ActiveX controls, because they are native code, will run only on the
system they are compiled for. At this time, it means only systems
running Windows 95 and Windows NT. Intel machines running NT will run
ActiveX faster than other types of hardware. The native code will run as
fast as the hardware is designed to run, which is faster than Java byte
codes. Also, because they are native code, they can take advantage of
hardware and operating system features. The negatives are that unless
you are running Windows 95 or Windows NT, you can't use ActiveX. The
Macintosh might be receiving ActiveX soon, but right now, there are no
other platforms in sight. The most important negative is that the
controls are native code and can access operating system services. Let
me rephrase that: an ActiveX control can access all operating system
services.

This then is the crucial difference you need to care about. A Java
virtual machine places severe limits on what a Java applet you download
from elsewhere can do. It is the responsibility of the Java virtual
machine to make sure that all the ways an applet could potentially
damage or alter your system without your knowledge are strictly
controlled. ActiveX controls, on the other hand, are designed to take
advantage of being able to do anything that the operating system knows.
This includes searching for information on your hard drives and sending
it back to the server, implanting a virus, or damaging your system. For
instance, it is trivial to write an ActiveX control to shutdown your
system as soon as it starts running. It is almost as trivial to write
one that formats your hard disk without telling you.

Java and ActiveX controls differ greatly in their placement of
responsibility for security and protection of your system. Because Java
runs in a virtual machine on your system and has clearly described the
responsibilities of it, the copy of Java you installed on your machine
is what you must trust to protect your system. ActiveX, because they are
native code and have nothing standing between them and the operating
system, require the server that delivers the controls to your browser
to ensure that they are delivering safe code. Each and every source of
ActiveX controls must individually ensure that their controls are safe.

In a perfect world, either of these models of control delivery are safe.
However, we don't live in a perfect world. Hackers regularly break in to
Web sites and substitute HTML or other things on them. Doing so with a
rogue ActiveX control would be nearly as easy to accomplish. Microsoft
has offered a registration and secure authentication mechanism to ensure
that an ActiveX control from a certain server really is from that
server. A hacker would not only have to break into the server but also
break the authentication code. However, given enough time, and it's not
a long time these days, any reasonably good programmer can reverse
engineer the authentication generator. As one wag put it, all
authentication does, is give you a name to sue when the control breaks
something.

Substituting a malicious Java applet is not much harder than an ActiveX
control. However, it's not the applet that runs on your system but the
Java virtual machine. The applet would have to subvert the virtual
machine first before it could begin to do damage to your system. Since
the Java virtual machine is designed expressly to prevent this
subversion, the task is much more difficult. Such a Java applet would be
relying on a bug in the virtual machine failing in a certain manner so
as to let the applet do as it pleased. This is not impossible. The
Internet attack in the late 1980's that crippled it for several days
exploited a bug in the mail system to break out and run amok. However,
that is much harder to do than replacing an ActiveX control on a Web
site.

Given how ActiveX is currently implemented, it is inherently as secure
as the Internet as a whole is. You are relying on Web site
administrators to protect their sites and periodically verify their
security and content. I have a friend who is an IS auditor. One of her
jobs is to break into her own company's computer systems to check their
security. She has not yet failed to get into any system she has tried to
access. She's been programming for about 4 years.

With Java, you are relying on the quality of the Java virtual machine in
your browser. On the Windows platforms, there are only two vendors you
care about, Microsoft and Netscape. If you are using either Internet
Explorer or Netscape Navigator, you are using one of their Java virtual
machines. A bug in either of them would expose millions of users at once
to a malicious Java applet. This is the key point. It must be a bug in
the virtual machine and it needs to be discovered and exploited. As you
can imagine, both Netscape and Microsoft have programmers doing their
best to make sure that never happens.

Until Microsoft sees fit to implement ActiveX controls for the Internet
in a different programming language that is designed to be safe, ActiveX
controls are more dangerous to use than Java applets. Microsoft has
hinted that they are planning on doing ActiveX in Java. This would
essentially be a way of running Java applets with an extra layer of
software and none of the advantages of native code ActiveX.

The security flaws are inherent in the application model that ActiveX
uses and in its current chosen implementation using native code. Java is
designed to be safe across an unprotected Internet and it is possible to
mathematically prove that it is safe.


                    =  =  =  =  =  =  =  = 
Herb Chong is a highly respected Windows programmer of long standing. He
has written for any number of Windows magazines which include Windows
Sources, The Cobb Group's Inside Microsoft Windows as well as this one,
WindoWatch. As usual, Herb has produced a highly readable piece to
enlighten. Herb is the Contributing Editor of WindoWatch and the creator
of the gorgeous art in the WW Art Gallery.



   ww page 5
  How Security is Breached!
  


                  MS Internet Explorer Authentication
                     Copyright 1997 by Paul Ashton


    [Editorial Note: Paul Ashton's site was cited in the New York
     Times piece by Peter Waynor cited earlier. Ashton has given us
     permission to republish his work. Obviously not an NT fan, he
     does represent a view.]


The Situation:

Without your knowledge, the MS Internet Explorer on Windows NT
transparently attempts to authenticate with a remote Web server that
requests NTLM authentication.

During the authentication negotiation, IE sends your username, domain
name or workgroup and hostname in the clear to anyone who asks. This is
a serious flaw in itself.

The remote server then chooses and sends an 8 byte challenge to the
client. Your IE client on NT will then encrypt a function of your
password with this challenge, and send it back to the server. The server
should compare its version of your encrypted password with the one sent
by the client to complete the authentication.

In fact two versions of your encrypted password are sent, one of which
is based on the full length and character set of your password up to 128
characters, the other one is the first 14 characters of your password in
upper case.


The problems:

 The server is free to send the same challenge to every client that
  connects to it.

 The server is free to request a challenge from another server and send
  that for you to be encrypted.

 The client cannot detect whether this authentication process has
  occurred.

 The client cannot verify whether it is talking to an authentic server.

 The client cannot prevent the server using the client authentication
  token to attach to any file server/web server/MS Exchange server, etc.
  that it wishes to.


The Repercussions:

By setting the challenge to a constant the server can pre-compute a
massive database of possible passwords and instantly detect whether the
client is using any one of these.

Even if the user uses a strong password, the server can spend as much
time as it wishes in the future to attempt to guess the password without
ever having to contact a genuine NT server.


The Solutions:

 Immediately upgrade to Netscape

 Disable the NTLM SSP service in control-panel/services even though
  this may be detrimental to other services on NT.

 Upgrade to Unix! You know it makes sense


The Test only works with Internet Explorer on Windows NT. After you have
tried it, please change your password immediately, whether it was
guessed or not. Note that the dictionary in use is quite small.


Try it !


Credits

Thanks to Craig H. Rowland for the suggestion of attacking the MS
Exchange/WWW authentication protocol with the static challenge problem
observed for file sharing.

Thanks to Evolution for hosting my demonstration.


                    =  =  =  =  =  =  =  = 
Contact the author Paul Ashton of Eigen Solutions Ltd. paul@eigen.co.uk



   ww page 6
  A Product Review!
  


                  Norton Utilities 2.0 for Windows 95
                   Copyright l997 by Daniel Christle


Norton Utilities has long been heralded as the quintessential PC user's
toolkit. With this latest release, Symantec has maintained that
tradition while adding a few new tools and improving upon the old ones.

I installed Norton Utilities on a Pentium 120 with 32 MB RAM without
incident and was running the program in under ten minutes. During the
installation you are asked if you have Microsoft's Internet Explorer on
your PC. If not, Norton offers to install it so that you can take
advantage of some of their new utilities like the Norton System Genie,
Norton Companion and Overview.

The first thing I noticed was the speed! This version of Norton
Utilities runs faster than version 1. I tested this on a 486DX2/66 with
24 MB RAM and confirmed this, and although it is far more graphic
intensive, the overall speed was quite acceptable on my test platform.
Actually there is quite a bit of animation in the different applets
making a more appealing interface. The second thing that caught my eye
was that there is more to this release than the previous one. File
Compare is back and they have added some new utilities.

The first utility I wanted to get into was the Norton Registry Editor.
This is a handy utility that makes editing the registry somewhat easier
than the Registry Editor that comes with Windows 95. Here you can
bookmark registry keys that you want to return to, see what a particular
entry is supposed to do, and backup and restore the registry. You can
also perform any modification on the registry you wish and even set it
so that the changes you make are not written to the registry until you
are ready to do so. Additionally, the Norton Registry Editor works in
conjunction with the Norton Registry Tracker, a utility that can track
changes to the registry in real time. Install a badly behaved
application and you can restore the registry to its last known good
state after you remove the program.

One utility that you may have mixed feelings about is the Norton System
Doctor, the heart of this package. It is a system monitor that scans
your system for CPU usage, available disk space, slack space, viruses,
disk integrity and so on. (Note: Norton Utilities can scan for viruses
but not remove them. For that you will need a full fledged anti virus
program such as the one offered by Symantec). You have a wide choice of
monitors you can add to the System Doctor, even though you will only
want to add a few depending upon your needs. This program can eat screen
real estate if you add too many monitors so you will need to decide
which system events you want to monitor. On the plus side, Norton System
Doctor let's you launch any of the tools from Norton Utilities from its
console, giving you fast and easy access to all of the tools in the
program.

One of the features I liked about Norton System Doctor is its ability to
warn you when you have been remiss in your disk management chores. You
can tell it to warn you if you haven't optimized your disk or run Norton
Disk Doctor in the last thirty days. It will also tell you when
antiviral definitions are outdated and offer to download them for you
via the Internet or through a call to the Symantec BBS. Incorporated
into Norton System Doctor is Live Update, a program making its way into
all the Symantec products, that allows you to download program updates
at the click of a button. No more having to track down updates on the
web or searching the BBS. Click and your program is updated conveniently
in a matter of minutes. You can also have it schedule events for you so
that Speed Disk optimizes your hard disk at whatever interval you
determine.

Another new utility is the System Genie. This program is used to
manipulate your Windows environment much in the way Microsoft's TweakUI
does. It will allow you to hid desktop icons, control window animation,
how Windows handles short file names and other possibly annoying aspects
of Windows 95. It does so by giving you a list of English statements
such as "I wish I could make Windows handle short filenames better." The
user then just checks off the result they desire and the Genie takes
care of the rest. If the Genie can't directly perform an action, such as
creating an association between a file type and a program, it will give
you advice on how to accomplish the task. It is an easy to use tool that
even advanced users will enjoy and does little to alienate the novice
user.

Overview is a great tool for novices. It is a task oriented program that
gives you a list of things you may wish to accomplish and is really
geared towards the novice user. Like System Genie it too incorporates
Internet Explorer and uses hyperlinks to take you through your task
rather than a menu system. You will see options like "Check the health
of your disks" or "Free more space on your disks". Each of these options
launches the appropriate tools letting the novice user get straight to
work. Most intermediate or advanced users will by pass this one, but it
is worth mentioning.

System Information is another place where you may spend some time . Here
you can get details on system components and benchmark your system. This
can be quite handy when trying to nail down some of the information
about your system. You can run tests on the multimedia components of
your system, your Internet connection and your disks. When I ran the
tests the only problem I ran into was that the multimedia test wouldn't
complete to an overall score because I didn't have DirectX installed.
Due to this, the utility couldn't benchmark me against other systems,
though it did give results on the individual tests it was able to run.
If I had wanted to, I could have installed DirectX from the Norton
Utilities installation CD-ROM. On many of the tabs in System Information
you can launch the Norton Companion, the interactive multimedia tutorial
that is included on the CD-ROM. Norton Companion is designed to teach
you about computers and Windows 95 and I found it fairly interesting and
worth doing.

There is of course the standard fare we have come to expect from Norton
Utilities such as Speed Disk, Norton System Doctor, UnErase and Norton
Protection. Each of these comes with some great features and in my tests
performed flawlessly, though I eventually did disable Norton Protection
on my system. Norton Protection monitors your system and stores deleted
files in a hidden folder in Recycle Bin. It is better than Recycle Bin
for protection because it protects files deleted by 16 applications and
DOS applications giving you more security. As I hardly use more than a
couple of older applications I felt this degree of protection wasn't
necessary. However, I should point out that using Norton Protection does
help if you want to undelete a file that you sent to the bucket a bit
prematurely. The Norton Unerase wizard can help you recover the files,
if you so desire, making the chore a simple and straightforward affair.

Speed Disk, which helps eliminate file fragmentation on your system, is
faster and more aesthetically pleasing than the last version. You can
have it optimize your hard disk in the background and can even wipe free
space and perform write verification if you need security on your
system. Plus it also optimizes Windows dynamic swap file, which gets
fragmented with prolonged system use. Norton System Doctor is also
faster than its predecessor in version one and is a must have for any
Windows 95 user. It quickly can correct file allocation problems and
other file and directory problems you will run into at some point. It is
an excellent disk utility that can diagnose disk problems such as bad
sectors and can safely move the data from those sectors to a safer area
on your disk. It will then mark the bad sectors so that the chances of
data being written to them are minimal.

As I mentioned earlier there is the return of File Compare. A great
utility for comparing ASCII files to see what is changed. Apparently
this feature was heavily requested when it wasn't included in the
original Norton Utilities version 1 for Windows 95 resulting in its
return to this release. With this utility you can compare system files
to see what has changed after installing a badly behaved application, or
if you just want to know what changes were made to a file. You can use
it to compare to exported versions of the Windows registry when you need
to track down a system problem. File Compare marks the changed lines in
color so you can quickly see where the changes are. For myself, I found
it quite useful when removing traces of a program I was having problems
with.

Overall I really liked Norton Utilities and found the expected
reliability and scope of the utilities included in the program to be
quite good. I did discover two things I didn't like. When I installed
Word 97 after installing Norton Utilities, every time I went to empty
the recycle bin I would get a application error that closed down
Explorer. Reinstalling Norton Utilities corrected this problem. The
other thing I ran into was when using the Registry Tracker on a real
time basis is that you get a slight slow down in system performance.
Using WinTop from the Microsoft Kernel Toys I was able to determine that
the Registry Tracker was using up to 6 MB of memory when loaded. If you
install lots of software or like beta testing the hit is likely worth
the degradation is system performance, otherwise I recommend that you
use it prior to installing software so you can recover if you have to.

Having said that, Norton Utilities is a keeper, offering many more
options than the system utilities included with Windows 95. As an aside,
is also FAT32 aware. With this product you will be able to recover from
a system failure more quickly and easily than without the use of their
tools. I give this program a recommended buy.


                    =  =  =  =  =  =  =  = 
Dan Christle has become the WindoWatch expert on SPAM and other Email
annoyances. He is a regular contributor and has written many articles
for the magazine. Any comment you may have about this Norton 2 review
should be directed to him at christle@mb.sympatico.ca

You might also enjoy visiting his home page http://www.mts.net/~christle/



   ww page 7
  The Must-Have Utility!                          A Review and Evaluation
  


                 Norton Utilities (version 2.0) for NT
          Copyright 1997 Stefan Assmann and Linda L. Rosenbaum


Introduction

Many in the NT community were thrilled when they first learned that
Symantec was going to release a version of Norton Utilities (NU) for NT.
In June 1996 at the PC Expo in New York City, a Symantec representative
indicated that NU for NT would be out a few months after the final
release of NT 4.0. Speed Disk was promised to be included along with
other less defined components of NU. As it turned out, Symantec released
NU for NT in late January of 1997 and although this is the first release
of NU for the NT operating system, Symantec is calling it version 2. We
believe this is to keep the version numbering in sync with the updated
version 2.0 for Windows 95.

We have now had the opportunity to install and use NU for NT. What
follows are our impressions, results, and reactions to this long
anticipated product. Each of us has somewhat different hardware,
explaining the motivation for doing a double review of this new NT 4
product.

The system requirements for NU for NT, as listed on the box, are as
follows:

    IBM PC or 100% compatible
    Windows NT (elsewhere on the box is indicated Windows NT 4.0)
    80486 processor minimum
    16MB of RAM
    25MB hard disk space required
    Double-speed CD-ROM drive minimum
    256 color VGA recommended

Although it's a bit hard to decipher, it appears as though NU for NT
only works in NT 4.0. The estimated street price for NU for NT is $99.


The following represents each of our hardware configurations:

  Stefan's system:                     Linda's system:
  ---------------------------------    --------------------------------

  Advanced/EV Intel motherboard        Super Micro P6DNE motherboard
  BIOS 1.00.C06, 512k cache            BIOS .9, 256k cache
  P166 CPU                             Pentium Pro 200 CPU
  HP 1.6GB IDE hard drive, three WD    Conner CFP 4207S hard drive (4GB)
    IDW hard drives, 2.2GB SCSI-2 HP     and Quantum XP32150W hard drive
    hard drive                           (2GB)
  Adaptec 2940 w/ latest NT drivers    Adaptec 2940, drivers from NT 4.0
  128MB EDO RAM                        128MB FPM DRAM (with parity)
  Matrox Millennium with 4MB WRAM      Matrox Millennium with 4MB WRAM
  Media Vision Audio Spectrum 16       Sound Blaster 16
  Toshiba XM-3401                      Toshiba XM-3801TA
  Boca V34 internal modem              Courier V. Everything external modem
  HP DeskJet printer                   HP DeskJet 870Cxi printer
  HP 4C scanner
  15" monitor                          Nokia 447X 17" monitor
  HP Colorado 1400                     Sony SDT-5000 DAT drive



Stefan Assmann's Review

Symantec has been in the utilities business for over fifteen years, and
it shows. This product will make NT 4.0 even happier than it is already.
Let's take you on a tour of this wonderful program.


Installation

This is a snap. Simply insert the CD into the drive and the installation
routine will pop up, beginning with a very small video teaser. After
that, a screen appears with the familiar Peter Norton asking if you want
to install the product. After inputting the usual information like your
name, organization, target folder and installation type, the program
very cleverly asks you in which program group to put the utilities: the
common group, where everyone has access to, or your personal group. If
you're sure your users will behave, you can select the default common
group, otherwise select your personal group (preferred). Perhaps
Symantec should flesh this out even further by making the second option
the default enabling you to select which programs to put with which
group.

Anyway, after having answered all these questions, in just a few seconds
it's time to reboot the machine, and you're ready to begin exploring.


Contents

The Utilities consist of the following programs:

  Disk Doctor: the familiar program from way back, now for NT. It
   supports both FAT and NTFS partitions and begins where the built-in
   utility stops.

  System Doctor: an unobtrusive green stoplight in the tray-bar keeps a
   constant eye on your system and will turn yellow or red when your
   system has become unstable or needs an upgrade.

  Speed Disk: a defragging utility that supports both FAT and NTFS
   drives and runs in the background. Will it dethrone Diskeeper from
   Executive Software? Read on to find out!

  System Information: this utility displays all kind of information
   about your hardware and is a nice supplement for the Windows NT
   diagnostics program.

  Norton Unerase: a program with a wizard-like interface that, in
   conjunction with the Norton version of the recycle bin, will guarantee
   full recovery of deleted files, including those deleted from a DOS-box
   and a Windows 16bit program.

  LiveUpdate: This feature has become standard fare in all Symantec
   programs. It performs, either via an Internet connection or via a
   modem connection, downloads of program updates and installs the latest
   patches while you do something else.

It's time for a closer look at each of these programs.


Disk Doctor

The purpose of Disk Doctor is to keep your drive(s) in tip-top shape,
free from errors of any kind! I have yet to test this feature since the
program didn't find problems on my drives. However, I do know a user who
swears the program does wonders for repairing, for example, a defective
NTFS volume, relocating bad sectors and so on. In the options menu you
can mark the drives that should be checked on start-up, a handy option,
that keeps your disks in permanent good health.


System Doctor

System Doctor is a kind of command center where you can launch all of
Norton's utilities, but its main function is to constantly monitor the
various parameters of your computer through the use of so-called
sensors. You can, to a certain degree, define those sensors yourself. If
one of the sensors falls below a certain point, an alarm goes off,
resulting in a warning sound, a message, or both. Together with the
alarm notification, a useful hint is displayed to help solve the problem
as quickly as possible. The screen shows the following parameters:

  CM free: Commit Memory free is the total amount of memory or installed
   RAM plus swap file, that can be used by applications.

  Thread in use: the number of separate threads in use at any given
   time. When this number reaches 950, as in my case, System Doctor will
   warn me that the system is getting terribly slow and I should kill a
   few threads.

  LiveUpdate: this stop sign will turn yellow or red when it is time to
   look for updates of the program on the Internet or a BBS.

  Virus Definitions: this sign tells me from what date my latest virus
   signatures are and when I should get new ones. Here it is once a month
   since Symantec releases new ones at the first of each new month,
   unless the need arises for intermediate updates.

  Nprotect (see later): this gauge tells me the number of protected
   deleted files. When this number reaches 1425, System Doctor will
   advise me to empty the recycle bin.

Adding a sensor is simplicity itself. Just right-click on empty space
within the program and a context menu will come up, allowing you to
define a sensor with a wealth of properties (depending on the sensor).

Describing every sensor available would take us off course, but be
assured that there are more than enough to keep you busy exploring. As a
bonus, most of them will improve your knowledge of the internals of NT.


Speed Disk

  [Editorial note: See the review of Diskeeper 2.0 in the March issue
  of WindoWatch for some background on disk defragmenting in NT.]

Until the release of Norton Utilities for NT, except for the early beta
releases of Speed Disk made available on the web by Symantec, Diskeeper
was the only defragmentation utility available for the NT platform.

Competition is always healthy for the continuing development of software
of course, and in the end, we all benefit from it. Therefore, the
inevitable question is will Speed Disk be able to de-throne Diskeeper or
not? Well, let's examine the program in a bit more detail.

Speed Disk (SD) has a sleek and convenient interface, even though I
found it took some getting used to. Operation is simple: just select
your drive or drives and click the start button. You can also display a
graphical overview of your disk by clicking the show map button. The
map, however, leaves much to be desired. There's a graphical overview
with a color legend, but it's very small, even when the program has been
maximized. Moreover, it's not very detailed: no info on the MFT, no clue
where to locate the pagefile, and so on, just the distinction between
movable, unmovable, free, unfragmented and defragmented. You can change
the colors of the legend if you wish, to make it more readable on your
screen. However, since the graphical representation is so small on my
15-inch monitor, it hardly makes any difference.

SD does live up to its name: it's very fast indeed! However, speed comes
with a cost, namely thoroughness. There is an option to make SD more
thorough, but even then the competition manages to find fifteen
fragmented files while SD claims the number of fragmented files is zero.

To produce a real test, I made some large and many small file movements
and copy/delete operations on a drive which is nearly always empty, - a
test drive, so to speak. This resulted in a very heavily fragmented
disk. First, I ran SD on it with the thorough option selected. Within
three minutes, according to the program, my 850MB drive was completely
defragmented. To test this, I ran Diskeeper on it and found it indicated
that there were still 38 fragments and 50 excess fragments. I then did
the test again, this time letting Diskeeper do the cleaning job. It took
considerably longer, but afterwards, according to both programs, there
wasn't a fragment left. Maybe Executive uses better algorithms? Taking
into account that this is the first program of its kind from Symantec
for the NT operating system and that Executive has a lead of a couple of
years in the NT field. Experience suggests that the next incarnation
will be much better in this regard,

Both programs support scheduled defragmenting in the background. Here,
SD appears to have a slight advantage because you can tune your
schedules to the minute. Closer examination, however, reveals that this
is only true when scheduled for daily defragmentations. You can also set
hourly, weekly and monthly ones, or every time on start- up. One wonders
why they haven't included a yearly one too (That's a joke!). Seriously,
I recommend you defrag your drives at least once a day, especially on
the drive where your NT system files and your temp files are located.
Currently, all my drives get defragged every four hours. You might think
I'm crazy, but I always have maximum performance. I have yet to find out
whether SD supports separate schedules per drive, as Diskeeper does.

What I also found was that SD uses more processor time than Diskeeper.
With Diskeeper, all my drives may be defragging at the same time and I
don't notice it at all. To be fair, I have 128MB of memory in my
machine, which may contribute to this efficiency. With SD, there is
sometimes a slight pause before I can go on to do something else. Of
course, when running defrag jobs overnight as most people and firms do,
this isn't really an issue.

To conclude: Symantec has made considerable effort to make this a nice
program, and as such, has succeeded. It blends in very well with the
rest of the suite. Although the component still has some rough edges and
falls short on some features compared to the competition. Remember that
this is a first version, and as such, still has to show its real
potential. In addition, SD can be used for both workstation and server
versions of NT, where Diskeeper requires a separate program for each.
Perhaps this will change in the future.


System Information

A nice companion to the more technical oriented Windows NT Diagnostics
program, System Information (SI) gives you a description of your system.
The fist tab gives you an overview of your installed hardware, while the
rest of the tabs go into more detail about specific piece(s) of
hardware. In this version the following information is presented in more
detail: your monitor and video card, your printer(s), memory layout,
hard drives, input (mouse, keyboard), multimedia installed and your
network (if any). Let's go over these options one by one.

The left pane will display your monitor, video card and current
resolution, and color depth. The right pane will display the
capabilities of your video card, along with other information. As you
now know, I have a Matrox Millennium video card with 4MB of WRAM, as
does Linda. I don't know if it's a problem with the program or the video
driver even though I'm using the latest, v3.00 at the time of this
writing. As you can see, there's a slight problem with detecting this
board as the left side just says "M".

   (Linda's note: The same problem exists with updated version of Matrox
   Millennium video driver for NT 4.0. In addition, on my system, the
   version number of the video driver is listed as 3.6 by SI and version
   3.06 by Matrox.) Resolution and color depth is correct. The Windows
   95 version of SI will also display the installed monitor and its
   characteristics, but since NT 4.0 doesn't support monitor selection
   by default, the NT version doesn't bother.)


The printer tab displays useful info about your printer in much the same
format as the display tab does. At the top, you can change printers, if
you have more than one installed, to see the information on all of them.

The memory tab is one of the more useful information panes of this
program. The left side gives you a general overview in pie chat format
about your current memory allocation and set-up, while the right side
goes into detail about the currently loaded applications, be it a
service or a program. If you click on the name of one, the pie chart
will immediately reflect this. With a double-click, even more info about
the program or service in question is displayed. It then becomes quite
technical but is nonetheless, a great problem solver when sorting out
memory conflicts, as you can pinpoint exactly what's going on.

The drive tab will give you an overview of the space allocation and the
amount of slack space. Slack space is wasted space incurred due to
inefficient use of clusters by the FAT file system. You can observe this
clearly in the above figure. The volume is 250MB in size and files have
already claimed 188MB. However, these files don't take 188MB but just
194MB wasting a total of 6MB. Because I keep my Internet Explorer cache
folders here, there are a huge number of small files on this drive. Each
file uses at least 2KB, whether it is 2KB or 1 byte. If you want to
counteract this, switch to the NTFS file system. Each sector only
occupies 512 bytes there, resulting in far less slack space.

My NT system files are on this drive, and to demonstrate a point, I
copied my entire cache folder there as well before taking the screen
shot. The shot clearly show that the NTFS file system is much more
efficient given that I'm only losing about 2MB right now on 678MB of
files.

   (Linda's additional comments: I have a mixture of FAT and NTFS
   partitions. I agree completely with Stefan that NTFS is much more
   efficient with respect to the slack space issue and minimum cluster
   size. However, it is also a bit misleading to give the impression
   there is virtually no slack space in NTFS. I have two 2 gig NTFS
   partitions and one has quite a lot of data and programs on it,
   including the cache folders for both Internet Explorer and Netscape
   Navigator. There is some slack space on this particular NTFS drive,
   although certainly far less than would exist on a FAT partition.
   In addition, SI can give drive information for networked drives.
   Interestingly enough, while the selection is still indicated, the
   actual allocated amount and percentage slack are not.)


We return to Stefan:

Avid readers may then ask why I bothered to have a drive with the FAT
file system. I created a FAT partition of 250MB for my boot partition.
If the worst should happen, and it has already happened once, you just
boot to DOS, fire the NT set-up from the CD-ROM, and you're back in
business in no time at all. If, on the other hand, you're on NTFS and
have a total system crash, it'll take considerably more time before
you're up and running again. You don't believe me? I'm won't go into
detail here, but if you want to know what I went through and how I
solved it, just drop me an email.


Not much to tell regarding the Input tab, except that it incorrectly
detected my mouse. It says I have a standard serial mouse when I have
one of those Intellimouse models.

   (Linda's comments: I also have one of the new Intellimouse MS mouse
   models with the wheel, and on my system, it appears the SI input
   screen is able to detect this properly. I have mine attached via a
   serial port.)


Stefan goes on to say: The multimedia tab lists all of your installed
components for sound and video, together with its characteristics.
The format in which this information is presented is once again exactly
the same as the other SI tabs, clear and handy.


The network overview lists all of your workgroups, the servers per
workgroup and all the clients connected. Here is a similar screen shot
of the SI information from Linda's system, where there is an active
network in place: [screen shots can be viewed in the Adobe Acrobat
edition of WindoWatch.]

   (Linda's additional comments: It is worth noting that all of the SI
   displays contain a button called Details and a button called Reports.
   Details, if available, provides even more detailed information,
   similar to what Stefan describes above for the Memory tab. Reports
   allows you to print out the information contained in that display,
   which can be a big help when doing problem solving.)


Norton Unerase

Unerase will let you recover almost any file when used in conjunction
with Symantec's version of the recycle bin. This version will also keep
track of deleted files through DOS-boxes and Windows 16bit programs. The
program's wizard-like interface makes it very simple to operate. Just
click a few options and you're finished.

One caveat however: When working with the File Manager instead of
Explorer, the program didn't seem to track the deletions. Also, after
having emptied the Norton protected recycle bin, System Doctor starts
whining that the recycle bin has reached its specified limit of
protected files and that I should empty the bin. (Note: This only
happened once, but I found it very peculiar.)


LiveUpdate

With this feature, it's a snap to download updates from either the
Internet or Symantec's BBS. On start-up, you can choose between modem
connection, Internet connection, or have the program find which
connection to use automatically. After that, the program goes through
four stages:

   1. logging onto the ftp server / BBS
   2. querying the latest update info
   3. downloading the update(s) (if there are any)
   4. installing the update(s)

It's all very transparent and easy, as it should be.

LiveUpdate is a shared component for all new Symantec products like the
new Norton AntiVirus (2.0), Internet FastFind and the all-new WinFax Pro
8.0. It is recommended that you use LiveUpdate at least once a month.
But better still, let system doctor take care of it automatically for
you!


And now, the envelope please.

Symantec's Norton Utilities 2.0 for NT 4.0 is a great program. The Disk
Doctor alone justifies its price. As Jack Passarella said in the last
issue when discussing Office 97: "Do not walk but run to the nearest
store and get yourself a copy." However, this does not mean the suite
does not have its shortcomings:

 - I wonder why Symantec left out NT versions of Registry Genie, the
   Space Wizard, and Rescue Disk. These are all super utilities included
   in the Windows 95 2.0 version. In addition, the multi-media tour on
   the Windows 95 version CD teaches you a lot about hardware. The tour
   is geared towards Windows 95, but much of it is also applicable to NT
   4.0. Really a shame that this wasn't included here as well.

 - Speed Disk needs some reworking to be in the same class as its Windows
   95 counterpart. If you're only working on FAT volumes, I even suggest
   using the Windows 95 version of the tool that came in version 1 of the
   utilities.

 - Uninstalling the program will also delete files shared by other
   Symantec applications, Norton AntiVirus, for example. After I deleted
   the whole thing and rebooted, AntiVirus complained about some missing
   DLL's, notably symevnt32.dll. Maybe Symantec should take a course in
   making set-up programs with Microsoft?


*****************

Linda L. Rosenbaum's Review

One thing I noticed immediately after opening the box, was that there
was no manual! All I found was a short booklet in the CD case, which at
least allows one to install the program and become functional with it.
The fact there was no manual did surprise given that all my other recent
Symantec programs for NT do include a very useful and functional manual.
The program does install a shortcut called Info Desk, which actually
gives you the ability to get to online help for all of your Symantec
installed products, including the newly installed Norton Utilities
for NT.

My installation also proceeded quite smoothly. Autorun started up with a
nice screen shot, which noted that I had not yet installed NU for NT and
asked if I would like to do so. I said sure and chose to do a complete
install. I also was able to indicate the location for the program files
on my hard drive. I chose to install the program so it was available to
all users. The set-up program also noted that I had NT Tools installed
on my system. There are a few components in the new NU for NT that are
similar or duplicate components that came in NT Tools. During the set-up
of NU, I was asked if those components could be renamed in NT Tools so
as to avoid any conflicts. Again I said sure. I later discovered that
this renamed the files itself but left in the shortcut to run them. That
is better than nothing being done, - I suppose.

I ran into a problem when I tried to register online, which is done
towards the end of the installation. I am not sure why this happened but
since I got a Dr. Watson error when trying to do so, I had to give it
up. This gave me the opportunity to try using the 800 number provided to
register the product. This 800 number is open 24 hours a day, seven days
a week. I called on a Sunday morning and got through right away. A very
nice gentleman took my registration information and gave me a
registration number.

I don't remember the set-up program requiring me to restart NT after it
was done. But I did so anyway, because I was concerned about the problem
I had when trying to register online. This feature has worked just fine
with all my other Symantec programs.

I ran LiveUpdate first thing after my restart. It found no necessary
updates. I then took a look at System Information. My comments on that
component of NU for NT have been included above with Stefan's comments.

I next took a look at Norton Protection/Norton Unerase. These two
components go hand in hand. Norton Unerase cannot work if Norton
Protection is not activated. In addition, Norton Unerase can only
unerase files which are still being protected by Norton Protection. The
Norton Protected Recycle Bin replaced my Recycle Bin on the desktop. In
order to configure Norton Protected Recycle Bin, it is necessary to
right click on the shortcut and select properties.

From the properties menu, one can change the title name of this shortcut
and select what action double clicking will perform from the Desktop
Item tab. In the Norton Protection tab, you select to enable protection,
the length of expired time before the protected files are to be purged,
exclusions for files you do not want to be protected (for example, temp
files), and the amount of disk space to give to the protected files.
Under the global tab you indicate if you want your settings to apply to
each partition or whether you want to configure each independently. If
you choose to configure them independently, this is done via the
individual drive tabs.

I seemed to have a bit of a problem when I was modifying some of the
items detailed above. It almost seemed as if the first modification
would work and any subsequent ones did not take effect until after a
restart. I am not sure if this was just my misguided impression or if
it truly is supposed to work this way. I have now settled on my
configuration for Norton Protection and have not changed it in some
time.

The number of files that get protected astounded me! For what I do, this
number can easily get to be over 1,000 after a day or two. As a result,
I often empty the protected files before going to bed at night. Usually
if I delete something I should not have, I know right away and try to
recover it immediately. You can empty the protected files via a right
click as well as empty the recycle bin. The two are not the same. Any
files that end up in the NT recycle bin need to be deleted separately
from the Norton Protected files. I must confess that I am not sure why,
but can confirm this is true for my set-up of the two. In addition,
doing this seems to be an all or nothing proposition. I kind of wish
there was a way to selectively delete protected files but keep others
for a bit longer.

I did get the chance to actually use Norton Unerase for a 16bit Windows
program deletion a short while ago. Darned if it didn't work exactly as
advertised! The display of files to be recovered in Norton Unerase
reminds me quite a bit of the Unerase in Norton Desktop for Windows
version 3.0. Almost like an old friend returning.

I next moved on to System Doctor. Stefan does a good job of describing
this program above. I unfortunately have not been able to fully utilize
it because of an oddity on my system that has nothing to do with System
Doctor itself. I have had a problem with running NT 4.0's Task Manager
when using RAS since the release version of NT 4.0. This problem has
continued with three different video cards and two different
motherboards. I suspect its some odd interaction with my modem. In any
case, if Task Manager is running when I am online with RAS, I get an
enormous amount of CRC errors. I was hoping that System Doctor would not
suffer from the same fate. But alas it does, which makes this oddity
even stranger to me. As a result, although I did play with it and set it
to monitor events that I would want to have monitored, I do not run it
all the time. I must close it down before going online. Since I do so
often and for long periods of time, System Doctor has not been used in
the fashion it is intended on my system.

I then explored Disk Doctor. If you check off for it to fix errors, you
get the following message:

    "NDD could not perform a diagnosis or repair because exclusive
    access to the drive could not be obtained. NDD can diagnose the
    drive if Fix Errors is unchecked.

    "Would you like to schedule a repair to occur the next time you
    restart the system?"

This is due to how NT works and the fact it cannot do certain disk
operations if the disk is in use. I did not have it schedule a repair
the first time I ran Disk Doctor, nor do I have Disk Doctor run each
time I start up Windows NT. I did have it check my partitions though
without the fix errors box being checked off. It found no problems that
needed fixing.

A short time ago I did have a lock up in NT. When that happens, I
normally like to have NT run chkdsk on start up so any errors can be
fixed, which cannot be done from within NT itself. I ran Disk Doctor,
after restart and selected it to check each drive and fix errors. When I
got the same message as before, this time I said it was to schedule a
repair on restart. I then restarted NT and watched what took place. At
first it looked like NT chkdsk was running. But the drive name was not
indicated, just the volume name. It also looked like the same tests were
being performed as with NT chkdsk. But then I finally was able to see
that the added checks I had Disk Doctor configured to do (i.e. check
free space) were performed. So while looks were a bit deceptive, it
sure seems as if Disk Doctor was in control. Doing this check for all my
partitions took quite a bit longer than doing an NT chkdsk does. It took
something like a half-hour in total. I do have a mixture of FAT and NTFS
drives as well as a lot of files and hard drive space. I cannot testify
to whether Disk Doctor can recover a problem file or hard drive though
in that it found no problems during this test or since that time.

Last, but not least, I explored Speed Disk. The first time I ran it
manually on each of my partitions. Since I have been running Diskeeper
(which I uninstalled before installing NU for NT to play it safe), my
partitions were not badly defragmented. The manual defragmentations of
my NTFS partitions took quite a bit longer than the FAT partitions. In
addition, there seemed to be what I call frequent "pregnant pauses",
where the program didn't seem to be doing anything. I found the map hard
to decipher and read. I did not even realize, at first, that in order to
get the definition of the various colors, one had to activate show
legend. But even on my 17" monitor, with an 1152x864 screen resolution,
this legend was very difficult to read.

I also set Speed Disk to automatically run using the NT service. This is
set via Properties, Schedule, from within Speed Disk. This is very
similar to what Diskeeper can do, with some variations on the settings
or more specifically how the settings are made. I was able to set all my
drives to be defragmented at 2:00am each day. I did not have to resort
to any workarounds as I do with Diskeeper. In addition, you can
configure all partitions to be automatically defragmented at the same
time, rather than required to set each partition manually as in
Diskeeper. You can even have multiple defined scheduled Speed Disk
defragmentations and select which are to be enabled and which are to
disabled. Since I normally am not using the computer when this is run, I
have it set to normal for the priority to be given to Speed Disk. This
is the highest setting (i.e. fastest but using the most CPU power)
available in Speed Disk, whereas the setting with the same name in
Diskeeper is the middle ground setting. Speed Disk properly ran each
morning at 2am for the full week I used it before reinstalling
Diskeeper.

I reinstalled Diskeeper for two reasons: (1) I was curious to see if
both programs could cooperate at the same time on my system (only one is
configured to do automatic defragmentation at a time) and (2) like
Stefan, I found I liked Diskeeper better than Speed Disk. I did not do
extensive comparisons of the two products as Stefan did, and I am not as
sure as Stefan is as to which product is more accurate than the other
with respect to its analysis of defragmentation. However I do like
Diskeeper's Analysis tools far better and I like being able to access
and use Diskeeper for my husband's system from mine, which only
Diskeeper can do at this point in time. I have been using Diskeeper
again now for several weeks, with no problems. Unlike Stefan, with my
usual settings for each product, I found that both about equally
interfered if I was using my computer when the scheduled defragmentation
took place. Luckily both were done quite quickly so it was no real
hardship. And as I indicated, I normally am in bed, asleep, when this is
performed.

In conclusion, I think that Norton Utilities for NT is a useful set of
utility programs for any NT system, Server or Workstation. Like Stefan,
I am disappointed in the number of components contained in version 2.0
of NU for Windows 95 that have been left out of the NT version. I think
its kind of misleading to call this first NT version, version 2.0. If
you are only interested in defragmentation, then I recommend Diskeeper
over NU. If you are interested in at least some of the other components
of NU, then buying NU for NT instead of Diskeeper makes sense. If you
are using NT Server and wish to be able to monitor and run
defragmentation from the server, then only Diskeeper will fit the bill
at this point in time. And for those junkies who also have the resources
to pay for it all, getting both Diskeeper and NU for NT makes sense.
That is what I do now and I have to admit I like being able to choose
best of breed for whatever my specific needs are.


                    =  =  =  =  =  =  =  = 
Linda Rosenbaum lives and works in a suburb of New York City. She is an
assistant controller at the World Headquarters for a large global
manufacturing company. She has two young children and a husband whose
full time job is to take care of the kids. When not working, Linda can
be found on a variety of online services and the Internet reading and
writing about her experiences with NT, networking, and multimedia. She
maintains a home network of four systems using a combination of NT and
Windows 95. Linda is the NT Editor for WindoWatch and can be reached via
Email at either lindar@cyburban.com or 71154.2622@compuserve.com.



   ww page 8
  Outlook Part III
  

                            The Contact List
                    Copyright 1997 by Stefan Assmann


The third installment of this series will deal with the contact feature
of Outlook. The contact list is a kind of super address book where you
can store a variety of information about a person.


   Before we begin, however, I would like to share the following Waster
   Egg in Office 97 with you:

   First, there's a nice 3D animation in Excel 97. To get it, do the
   following:

   - Start Excel with a new document
   - Press F5
   - In the range section, type X97:L97 and press ENTER
   - Press TAB once
   - Hold the CONTROL / SHIFT keys and click the chart wizard.

   Next month, I'll have more useful tips, so stay tuned!

   And now, to the serious work !


To go to contact view, simply click the appropriate icon in the outlook
bar (far left). To add a contact, click the leftmost button on the
toolbar. The following screen will appear:

   [**The graphic images described in this article can be viewed in
   the Adobe Acrobat edition of WindoWatch.]

This screen may look a bit overwhelming to you right now, but at the end
of this article, you'll be a pro! Let's add the NT 4 editor, Linda
Rosenbaum, to the list. Her name is no problem, so just type it in. More
information can be added if you click on the full name button (you can
add prefix, suffix and her middle name here). This also makes life
easier for you in the beginning as Outlook automatically takes care of
the formatting when you press OK. You may find it tedious after a while,
however. Personally, I type it in directly, which is much faster. As you
can see from the next picture[**], Outlook also fills in the "file as"
part. This part will be used in the address book portion of Outlook. You
can choose to sort by first or last name here. I prefer last name
myself, as this speeds up searching.

As to the address portion, it is wise to click the address button and
fill in the information here. This way, all your contacts will share the
same address format. Since I don't know Linda's address, I'll just put
in a fake one. Note that you can choose between her home address and
business address and that business is selected by default, so be
careful...

Note that in the above screen[**] I already filled in the other obvious,
self-explanatory stuff. On the right side, you can insert all her phone
numbers. Every number imaginable can be put in here. Her phone number,
the number of her assistant, pager, mobile, fax, telex, etc. I even came
across some things we don't even know in Europe!

You can put each contact in a certain category, for example business,
international, hot contacts, etc. you can also combine categories
(international business contact for example) or create your own and add
them to the list of the existing ones. By classifying your contacts, you
can easily generate all kinds of reports. I've categorized Linda as a
hot international business contact. I sure hope she appreciates my
confidence!

Now that we've filled in all the general background, let's get into a
little more detail. Click the detail tab. The following screen will
pop up[**]:

It's all very clear, as you can see. One nice touch here: if you fill in
the birthday / anniversary of your contact, Outlook will put an entry in
the calendar with an alarm and automatically alert you way in time about
this event. Handy for those of you who tend to forget their wedding
anniversary... to be alerted of course, it's imperative that Outlook
remains resident all the time, so put it into your startup group as I
did.

The journal tab will seem totally unfamiliar to you, as I haven't
discussed the functionality of Outlook's journal yet. That will be
something for next month. For now, just trust me when I tell you that's
it's super-handy to select the "automatically record journal entries for
this contact" option. The next articles in this series will explain in
detail the reason for this.

The last tab will show you your information in a table format, letting
you choose between the types of fields you want to see (only the phone
numbers, the personal info, the business info etc). for now, press the
save and close button.

Your contact will now appear in the contact list in Outlook, displaying
the most important information at a glance in the form of an address
card. If you want more information, simply double-click the address card
and you'll be back in the familiar dialog box of a few seconds ago. From
outlook's toolbar, you can choose to display your address card in a
variety of ways, including a more detailed card, all your contacts
sorted by company, phone number, location or category.

And that's about all there is to tell about creating / editing a
contact. Very simple, no? Next month, we'll discuss the journal in
detail and explain the link between the journal and the contact list.

As always, should you have any questions, contact me immediately on the
following address: Stefan.Assmann@club.innet.be Better still, put me
into your contact list as a supplemental exercise. All questions will be
answered both privately and in the next issue.

   [**The graphic images described in this article can be viewed in
   the Adobe Acrobat edition of WindoWatch.]


                    =  =  =  =  =  =  =  = 
Stefan writes up a storm and aren't we lucky to have him! This is part
of an on Outlook Series.



   ww page 9
  The Hard Drive Solution from PowerQuest!               A Product Review
  


                     Partition Magic to the Rescue
                    Copyright 1997 by John Campbell


PowerQuest Corporation first introduced Partition Magic back in 1995 as
an alternative to the DOS FDISK utility. It made possible creating and
resizing hard drive partitions without destroying data. The latest
version, 3.0, does much more. It now works with DOS, Windows (3.x -
NT4.0) and OS/2. PM supports the NTFS file system used by Windows NT,
and the FAT32 file system for Windows 95. It also includes IBM's Boot
Manager utility and a subset of MicroHelp's UnInstaller. And if that
weren't enough, version 3.0 permits users to copy partitions from one
hard drive to another, analyses cluster waste, and it helps update drive
references when CD-ROMs or removable storage devices are added to a
system.


So what's the big deal about  partitioning a drive?

There has always been some controversy surrounding the whole idea of
disk partitioning. The most compelling reason to partition a large hard
drive is to increase file storage efficiency. Most computer users just
don't realize how wasteful a multi-gigabyte drive really is, until they
find that they are running out of free space, even though Windows
Explorer shows their files are only occupying a portion of the total
drive capacity. Why this is so is explained later. Efficiency aside,
there are other logical reasons to create multiple partitions. It makes
sense to, whenever the application permits, to keep data files separate
from programs. If all data can be in its own partition, backup is
greatly simplified. Also, directory paths are shorter, and easier to
navigate. Applications and data become easier to locate. Of course, for
users of multiple operating systems, partitioning is a must. But in the
past, partitioning was such a hassle, only the most determined users
bothered to take advantage of it.


Background

During the formatting process, a hard drive or a floppy diskette is
mapped into chunks called clusters. Because of limitations imposed by
the File Allocation System (FAT) used by DOS, Windows 3.x and retail
versions of Windows 95, as the drive size increases, so does the cluster
size (in bytes). Why is it important to know anything about these
concepts? Because, as I already mentioned, data is stored in clusters,
and no more than a single file can occupy a given cluster! The impact
of this statement becomes clear if we look at some examples.


       Hard Drive (or partition) Size     Cluster Size
       ------------------------------     ----------------
       0 - 15MB                           4KB  (4096 bytes)
       16MB - 127MB                       2KB  (2048 bytes)
       128MB - 255MB                      4KB (4069 bytes)
       256KB - 511MB                      8KB (8192 bytes)
       512MB - 1,023MB                    16KB (16384 bytes)
       1,024MB - 2,047MB                  32KB (32768 bytes)


You can see from the above table that today's large hard drives use a
minimum of between 16KB and 32KB to store a single file! This means a
one-line batch file, which may contain fewer than 20 bytes, will eat up
over 10,000 bytes of storage space on your hard drive. Now, consider
those Microsoft Internet Explorer Favorites, each of which is stored as
a separate file, usually between 40 and 100 bytes in size. I have 325 of
them, totaling 20,136 bytes. But the partition they are stored on uses
16kb clusters. This means I have used up over 5MB (325 x 16384) storage
space for those 325 relatively small files! So what happens to the
unused space in each cluster? A 100 byte file uses only a tiny portion
of a cluster. Well, the remainder is wasted, since no other file can
intrude into a cluster that already contains any data.

There are a number of ways to get around this dilemma. Perhaps the
easiest is to compress a drive, using a utility like Stacker or
DriveSpace. Compression utilities produce smaller cluster sizes,
regardless of disk capacity, but they also have certain disadvantages.
Or, one can switch to an OS that uses a more efficient file storage
mechanism than FAT, such as Windows NT or OS/2. But these are drastic
solutions to a problem that has an easier solution: partitioning.

A physical hard drive can be divided into a number of smaller parts,
called partitions. Each such partition is seen as a separate drive by
the operating system, and receives an identifying letter. For example, a
physical drive divided into three partitions will be treated as drives
C, D and E.) Now, there are different types of partitions, and this gets
confusing fast. For now, let's not go into the differences between
active, extended and logical partitions. The point is, by creating
partitions, we can reduce cluster size, thereby increasing storage
efficiency.

Before the introduction of Partition Magic, creating a partition (or
modifying an exiting partition) on a hard drive that already contained
an operating system and data was a nightmarish task. First, everything
had to be backed up. Then the DOS FDISK utility had to be used to create
the partition(s). Next, the DOS FORMAT utility had to be used to
reformat, destroying everything that was on the disk. Finally, the OS
and all program and data files had to be restored from the backup. If
you were lucky, everything worked again. No wonder most users never
bothered. It was easier to just accept a drive as delivered, no matter
how wasteful of storage space it was. Enter Partition Magic.

The program ships on a single CD-ROM, and is accompanied by a 218-page
manual. Operation requires at least a 386SX processor and 8MB ram. The
installation, which can be done under DOS, Windows 3.x, 95, NT, or OS/2,
(I used Windows 95), proceeded smoothly, and created several program
icons. These included the Partition Magic executable, PQ Boot (explained
later), DriveMapper, and UnInstaller Mover Setup. There is also an icon
to uninstall PM itself. Boot Manager may be installed if the user
chooses this option during the installation. The usage of the various
supplemental utilities will be covered later.

Because PM makes low-level disk changes, it must have exclusive access
to the hard disk. For this reason, attempting to run the program under
Windows will cause the system to switch to DOS mode before PM loads. The
main screen displays an overview of the hard drive, with existing
partitions and other useful information clearly presented.

From the main screen, the user can create, move, copy, delete and resize
partitions. However, it is imperative that the pertinent manual sections
be read before attempting any of this! The online help is extensive, and
there are useful dialogs to guide one, but certain operations will fail
unless the user has an understanding of what is taking place. The manual
does a good job of explaining the different operations by setting up
three scenarios, then covering each example, step by step. Each example
assumes the user has never partitioned a hard drive. (More advanced
scenarios can be found on the manufacturer's Web page.) The first
scenario covers the most basic operation; creating one partition on a
drive that previously had none. The second creates two new partitions,
and explains how to move applications and data from one to another,
using DriveMapper and UnInstaller Mover. The third example covers
installation of Boot Manager in a separate partition, then using that
utility to manage multiple operating systems. Along the way, one becomes
familiar with concepts such as freeing space by making a partition
smaller, then using that space to create or enlarge another partition.
The beauty of PM is that all of this is done by simply clicking on a
displayed drive or partition, using the mouse to move partition
boundaries, then following directions in dialog boxes, all from the
main screen.

The dialogs clearly show the minimum and maximum sizes a partition can
have (it can't be made smaller than the space required to hold whatever
data is stored in it), and the resulting cluster size as the partition
is resized. I used PM to redo my partitions after I removed OS/2 from my
computer. I had a single hard drive containing a primary partition C,
and an extended partition divided into five logical partitions, B
through H. OS/2 had been installed in Drive H, which I no longer needed.
I used PM to remove that partition, which created 700MB of free space at
the end of the hard drive, which was depicted at the right end of the PM
display. I then pulled to the right, one at a time, Drives G, F, E and
D, in that order. As each of these logical drive was moved, PM moved the
files the drive contained into the new area of the physical drive. This
operation can take time -- ten to fifteen minutes per drive in my case.
I now had 700MB of free space at the beginning of the extended partition
-- just to the right of Drive C on the display. I pulled the extended
partition's left boundary 700MB to the right, then pulled Drive C's
right boundary over to meet it. Not satisfied with the 32KB cluster
sizes I now had on several partitions, I moved boundaries around, making
some partitions larger and others smaller, until none exceeded the 16KB
limit I was shooting for.

I found that PM worked as advertised. It made what once was a
time-consuming task relatively easy. But, the latest version offers even
more. The Copy function allows one to make an exact duplicate of an
existing partition on a second hard drive -- data and all! Imagine being
able to easily move your system and data to that new, larger, hard
drive, or clone your existing system as a safeguard before upgrading to
a new version of an operating system. It is possible to "hide" a
selected partition, meaning it won't be assigned a drive letter, and
will be inaccessible to the OS, and can't be seen or tampered with by
unauthorized persons. PM can then be used to "unhide" that partition
when access is needed. Another feature changes the maximum number of
entries permitted in the root directory. This can be handy if one wants
to use Microsoft long file names there. Oh yes, PM also can convert
partitions from FAT32 (the new Windows 95 version) to FAT16 (DOS,
Windows 3.x, old 95) and back, or convert FAT16 partitions to the OS/2
HPFS system, all without data loss.

I will end this review with a brief overview of the other utilities
included with PM version 3.0. (I didn't test these). The Boot Manager
utility, formerly available only with IBM's OS/2 system, makes it
possible to choose from a menu which of multiple operating systems the
computer will boot into each time it starts up. I am familiar with this
utility, since I have used both OS/2 Warp 3.0 and the Warp 4.0 beta. It
is a welcome addition to a non-IBM OS. The UnInstaller Mover from
MicroHelp helps move an application to another drive or folder. It does
this by building a database of all file locations and associations. One
can move single applications or application groups, such as Microsoft
Office. Both 16-bit and 32-bit versions of the utility are included with
PM. I had to try this one. I moved MS Internet Explorer from C to D. It
worked properly, still found its favorites in another directory that was
not moved, and was still called from several programs that launch MSIE.
I'm impressed!

DriveMapper is a wizard for Windows 3.x, 95 and NT that allows one to
easily change drive letter references in files. This comes in handy when
partition changes cause a CD-ROM drive letter to change. DriveMapper
will adjust the references in files that point to the CD-ROM.

PQ Boot is a command line utility that allows the user to quickly change
between bootable primary partitions, in cases where the more
full-featured Boot Manager is not needed.

Partition Magic is as close to an indispensable utility as I can
imagine, being in the same must-have category as Norton Utilities for
users who ever need to fool around with partitions. The only fault I
found, and it was minor. was the slow to load online help system. The
manual is especially well done, and provides a wealth of information
about drives, partitions, and related matters.


                    =  =  =  =  =  =  =  = 
At one point in time John Campbell had four operating systems on his
hard drive(s). That's got to qualify him for something more than
insanity and fitting right in with the rest of the WindoWatch bunch! He
is a regular contributor to WindoWatch, meeting computer challenges with
enthusiasm and commitment! He is the author of many articles.



   ww page 10
  Teaching Old Dogs New Tricks!          The HTML Tutorial Series Part VI
  

                            I Was Framed! II
                     Copyright 1997 by Gregg Hommel


Developing the Frames for our Page

If you recall from last month, we now have a basic framed page design
without any content whatsoever. This already makes our page
probably one of the top 50% of pages on the Web for content, even
though rather boring for the visitor. So, this column, we will begin to
add content to that framed set up.

If you recall, I made an earlier comment that one nice thing about a
framed Web site was the consistency which it allows you maintain.
Given that you can create a title frame for the site and then leave it
alone, so that no matter what page is being viewed, the title remains
displayed. Obviously, then, what we want first for our page is that
title frame designed.

I will warn you now that we may not get much further than our title
frame this column. In planning how to handle that portion of the
page, I decided that the best way to do it was to develop a fairly
decent title frame, right from scratch, and now, rather than later. The
problem with this approach is that, to do so, I will be forced to
introduce three or four new HTML tag sets, which I really hadn't
planned on discussing yet.  Because of this extra discussion now,
rather than later, I may run out of room in this column for the body
of our page, other than perhaps, a very simple, almost nothing one to
tide us over until next column.

Before we begin, let's review the code for our framed page basic.

  <HTML>
  <HEAD>
       <TITLE>WindoWatch HTML Tutorial Page</TITLE>
  </HEAD>

  <!-- This sets the frames for browsers that can use them -->
  <FRAMESET COLS="100%" ROWS="27%,*">
       <FRAME NAME="FTitle" SRC="wwtitle.html" SCROLLING="AUTO">
       <FRAME NAME="FBody" SRC="wwmain1.html" SCROLLING="AUTO">
  </FRAMESET>

  <!-- This sets a page for browsers that don't allow frames -->
  <NOFRAMES>
  <BODY BACKGROUND="images/wall.gif">

  If you are seeing this text, then your browser does not support the use of
  frames, which is what this tutorial page is all about.

  <P>If so, please obtain and install a browser which is frames capable,
  such as Netscape or Internet Explorer, and try loading this page again.

  </BODY>
  </NOFRAMES>
  </HTML>


There is one change you might note in this code from what we wrote last
month. That is a change in the <FRAMESET> parameters from ROWS="20%,*"
to ROWS="27%,*". The reason for this is simple. The extra room in the
title frame was necessary for the more complicated title space that I
had decided upon as I mentioned earlier. More on that later, of course,
so let's get started.


What we want to do is to design a page called wwtitle.html, which will
be displayed in our frame named "FTitle". For this one, content is
actually only of relatively minor concern, at least, for now, since it
is basically little more than the title we want displayed constantly.
Something like this:

  <HTML>
  <HEAD><TITLE>Title</TITLE></HEAD>
  <BODY BACKGROUND="images/wall.gif" TOPMARGIN=0 LEFTMARGIN=0>
  <CENTER>
  <H1>The WindoWatch HTML Tutorial Practice Page</H1>
  </CENTER>
  </BODY>
  </HTML>


Simple enough, isn't it? Basically, this will display a title across
the top of the upper frame, however, you will note my predilection for
something fancier than just a plain background, in the use of our
wall.gif background for the body. However, in all honesty, this is just
the start. This page is simply much too plain, even for me!

To liven things up, we are going to do two things:

1) we are going to change the colour of the title to reflect the fact
   that it is now spring, and things should be getting brighter. (Well,
   here in Ontario, it is almost spring. Mother Nature is still a little
   confused, but she is trying), and

2) we are going to add a "welcome" marquee to the title frame.

Here is the new code for wwtitle.html...

  <HTML>
  <HEAD><TITLE>Title</TITLE></HEAD>
  <BODY BACKGROUND="images/wall.gif" TOPMARGIN=0 LEFTMARGIN=0>
  <BASEFONT FACE="Times New Roman" SIZE=3>
  <CENTER><H1><FONT COLOR="#FF0080">The WindoWatch HTML Tutorial Practice
      Page</FONT></H1>

  <MARQUEE ALIGN=MIDDLE BEHAVIOR=SCROLL DIRECTION=LEFT LOOP=INFINITE
      SCROLLDELAY=1>
  Welcome to our practice page. This is an example of a framed page, from
  columns 5 and 6.</MARQUEE>

  </CENTER>
  </BODY>
  </HTML>


Obviously, a few new things are here, and some explanation is required,
so here goes.


<BASEFONT FACE="Times New Roman" SIZE=3>

Although not required in a simple page, the above HTML tag, which sets a
base font and size for the page, is not a bad idea. In this case, I
prefer to use such a statement in the page, because we are going to be
making font changes later in the body, and I simply prefer to set the
base before changing it to something else. Times New Roman is a font
that virtually every computer will have in one form or another and be
able to display easily. It is also easy to read, and pleasant enough to
the eye. This column is written in Times New Roman.


<CENTER><H1><FONT COLOR="#FF0080">The WindoWatch HTML Tutorial Practice
  Page</FONT></H1>

This is the change for item 1) above, i.e. modifying the colour of the
title text to display in a reasonably pleasant springtime mauve
(purple?), which is easily read against our wall.gif background. Nothing
too fancy here and like most HTML tags, we require an opening and a
closing tag (<FONT> and </FONT>).

The normal parameters for the <FONT> tag are SIZE=, COLOR=, and FACE= .
Since we are not changing the font name, we can leave that parameter out
in this case. We also don't need SIZE= , as the <H1> <H1> header tags we
are using automatically define a larger size text than the base, and it
is unnecessary to repeat that. What we do need and want, however, is
that COLOR= parameter. Don't ask me how "#FF0080" is translated into our
mauve colour, as I can't explain. I can tell you that this is a hex code
for that colour as defined in the HTML specification, and that I
obtained the hex code by using the Quick Font icon in HomeSite, and
selecting a colour for the font from a chart of them. HomeSite did the
rest.

But that is it... our title will now display in the top frame of our
page, as mauve (purple) text on our gray wall.gif background.


<MARQUEE ALIGN=MIDDLE BEHAVIOR=SCROLL DIRECTION=LEFT LOOP=INFINITE
   SCROLLDELAY=1>
Welcome to our practice page. This is an example of a framed page, from
columns 5 and 6.</MARQUEE>

I know... this one is completely new, and totally beyond anything we
have done in this column to date. It is also Microsoft Internet Explorer
specific, which is something that we will take care of in a few moments.

When the remote browser is Internet Explorer, a gray bar will be
displayed, with the text we have specified, centred vertically in the
space (ALIGN=MIDDLE), scrolling across the bar (BEHAVIOR=SCROLL), from
right to left (DIRECTION=LEFT), indefinitely (LOOP=INFINITE). Once the
text has disappeared on the left side of the page, there will be a one
second delay before it reappears on the right side to begin the scroll
again (SCROLLDELAY=1).

Not all that difficult, is it? One must point out, however, that, prior
to Internet Explorer's introduction of this non-specification tag this
was either impossible, or only supported in Netscape through the use of
a Java script. Actually this was just a similar function that only ran
in the browser status bar rather than on the page itself. (In fact, it
may yet be adopted for the still to be finalized HTML 3.2 spec). What
Microsoft did was adopt a slightly different outlook on placement. They
made it a fairly simple tag set which most folks could easily use in
their source code to simplify the process for the many who have neither
time or patience to learn Java scripting.

This does not, however, solve the problem mentioned earlier, that only
Microsoft Internet Explorer supports the MARQUEE tag, leaving those
using other browsers, particularly Netscape, out in the cold. Some time
ago, when designing my own pages, which also use the MARQUEE tag in the
title frame, I was concerned about this, and checked the page out with
Netscape. Rather than displaying the marquee, Netscape simply displayed
the text in place of it, which was reasonable, except that, it also
ignored the <CENTER> </CENTER> tag I had used when displaying that text.
This caused the text to appear rather funny in Netscape as the title was
centred but the text of the marquee (non-scrolling) was not.

At the same time, while looking at the same page using Internet
Explorer, I also found that the marquee simply did not look right going
from left to right across the title frame. In the first place, Internet
Explorer, like Netscape, ignored the <CENTER> </CENTER> tags around the
<MARQUEE> code, and secondly, the gray background the <MARQUEE> tag uses
just didn't look right against my wall.gif back-ground without something
to set it off a little. Luckily, the solution to both problems of
display happened to come in one package of HTML tags: a table.

Using table tags, Netscape could be told to frame the text in a border,
and centre that bordered text on the display, nicely below the centred
title. At the same time, Internet Explorer could be told the same thing,
with the single exception that, when you were using Internet Explorer,
the text was not simply displayed in the framed box, but scrolled from
right to left across the box.

This worked well, and is, therefore, what we will use for our framed
page to perform the same function, as in this code:

  <HTML>
  <HEAD><TITLE>Title</TITLE></HEAD>
  <BODY BACKGROUND="images/wall.gif" TOPMARGIN=0 LEFTMARGIN=0>
  <BASEFONT FACE="Times New Roman" SIZE=3>
  <CENTER><H1><FONT COLOR="#FF0080">The WindoWatch HTML Tutorial Practice
     Page</FONT></H1>

  <TABLE WIDTH=70% CELLPADDING=4 BORDER=4 BGCOLOR="#C0C0C0">
  <TD ALIGN=center VALIGN=middle>

  <MARQUEE ALIGN=MIDDLE BEHAVIOR=SCROLL DIRECTION=LEFT LOOP=INFINITE
    SCROLLDELAY=1>
  Welcome to our practice page. This is an example of a framed page,
  from columns 5 and 6.</MARQUEE>

  </TD></TABLE>

  </CENTER>
  </BODY>
  </HTML>


...which introduces us to a subset of the table commands available in
HTML. The table we are using here is a simple one, with a single cell
with border that we will use to hold the marquee in Internet Explorer
and/or the text displayed in Netscape.

If we look at the commands used the first one is

<TABLE WIDTH=70% CELLPADDING=4 BORDER=4 BGCOLOR="#C0C0C0">

which sets up the table (and requires the </TABLE> tag at the end of the
table) in HTML. The rest of the parameters in the command are used to
control the appearance of the table. Before we continue, though, let's
look at tables in HTML a little. Many of you may think of the type of
table normally seen in Word or other word processors, i.e. what looks to
be a mini-spreadsheet, with rows and columns, often containing numbers.

If you have worked with tables in word processors a little more than the
basics, you also know that in effect, a table can be designed so that it
does not look like this, and indeed, can be used as a method of
controlling the positioning, and formatting of text, or other data,
within the rest of the document. In HTML, things are much the same. Yes,
a table can be used to display data in a spreadsheet style format, but
it also can be used to control the positioning, formatting, and
appearance of text or other information, as we are doing with this
table.

We aren't displaying any data like a spreadsheet but are simply
attempting to control how our marquee is displayed to an end user, so
that it has a more pleasing appearance, and so that we can control where
it appears on the page. Remember this, because, in a few minutes, we
will be doing more of the same for the rest of our title frame's
contents.

OK, back to the <TABLE> tag used above. Although it may look
complicated, and in some cases the defining parameters for a table can
be quite complicated, like the <MARQUEE> tag and it's parameters, they
can also be rather simple to understand. The ones we are using in this
example are in this latter category.

The first thing we want to do with our table is limit it in size or do
we want it going from one side of the page to the other. Sometimes this
can be useful, but in our case, it doesn't look all that great so we
control this by using the WIDTH= parameter. For our purposes, I have
picked a width of 70% of the total width of the page. There is no real
logic or reasoning behind this choice, other than it satisfied my own
personal sense of "look" when I tested the source code in my browser.
Furthermore, since the table is, in our source code, part of that
section surrounded by the <CENTER> </CENTER> construct, the table itself
will be placed central 70% of the page width on the page.

The next two parameters are some of those for the <TABLE> tag which are
used to control the appearance of the cells of the table, and how the
data within that cell is to be displayed. In our case, we are only using
two parameters, CELLPADDING= and BORDER= . Our first parameter,
CELLPADDING=4 , tells HTML that we want the data to be displayed in the
cells of the table to have a 4 pixel buffer area around it, so that the
data in the cell does not touch any of the sides of the cell when it is
displayed. The second one, BORDER=4 , defines a border around the table
which is 4 pixels wide, and which gives the table something of a 3D
effect. It appears to stand out somewhat from the background of the
page, as if it were an object placed there above the background, which,
of course, it actually is. A word of caution! Be very careful with this
parameter. I have found 4, or maybe 5, to be about as high as you want
to go, even though you can set higher numbers. Above 4 or 5, the border
displayed for the table begins to overpower the data that the table
holds, destroying the effect of the table on the page. So please be
careful with this parameter. Test in your browser and on your local
machine any page you design where it is included before you upload that
page to your Web site.

The last parameter used in this table is the BGCOLOR= parameter, used to
set a background colour for the cells of the table. Without this
parameter, the background of the cells of a table are the same as that
of the page they are displayed on or in our case, wall.gif. In many
cases, this may not be a problem, and indeed, may even be desirable.
However, if you recall, I mentioned earlier that the <MARQUEE> tag
places the text of the marquee on a gray background as it scrolls, which
tends to stand out from the rest of the page a little much. This also
applied to the table cell, in a slightly different fashion, but just as
unpleasant to the eye.

To reduce this, I decided to use the gray background for this table or
the same gray as is used by the <MARQUEE> tag, so that it blends in, and
does not stand out so garishly. To do this, I used the BGCOLOR=
parameter, and set it to value #C0C0C0 , which is the hex value of the
same gray used by <MARQUEE> . Overall I found the table which resulted
here to be reasonably pleasing to the eye, and effective in both
Internet Explorer, and Netscape.

There remains one more HTML tag in this source that we haven't yet
discussed, and it is fairly simple, and part of the table coding. That
tag is <TD> </TD> and it is used to tell a browser what to display as
the contents of the cell, and how to display it, within limits. In our
case, we are using <TD ALIGN=center VALIGN=middle> which simply put,
tells a browser to display the contents of this cell centred both
vertically and horizontally.

I can see some of you yawning and starting to fall asleep, which tells
me that I am becoming a little long winded. If you'll hold on for a
little bit more, we'll finish up for this month.

Our title frame is not yet finished, and is in need of one more thing. a
method to be used by the remote viewer to navigate the site or to move
from page to page of display, when we have more than one page to view.
For this, we are going to fall back on another table, with multiple
cells this time. Each cell is holding a link to one of the pages on our
site. There will be two major differences between this table's settings
and those we have already used. The first is the lack of the BGCOLOR=
parameter, as, for this table, the background of our page (wall.gif) is
acceptable. The second will be the addition of a new parameter,
CELLSPACING= . This new parameter simply tells HTML how much of a border
to display between the cells of the table. As with the BORDER=
parameter, be careful of the settings for this one. It doesn't take much
to make an apparently huge border between the cells. In our title frame,
I found 2 to be more than adequate.


Since we don't yet have multiple pages to display in our second frame,
we won't insert links to those in our second table, but will simply use
text to hold our place until we can put the links in later. The code
which we now have for our title frame, is...

  <HTML>
  <HEAD><TITLE>Title</TITLE></HEAD>
  <BODY BACKGROUND="images/wall.gif" TOPMARGIN=0 LEFTMARGIN=0>
  <BASEFONT FACE="Times New Roman" SIZE=3>

  <CENTER><H1><FONT COLOR="#FF0080">The WindoWatch HTML Tutorial Practice
    Page</FONT></H1>

  <TABLE WIDTH=70% CELLPADDING=4 BORDER=4 BGCOLOR="#C0C0C0">
  <TD ALIGN=center VALIGN=middle>

  <MARQUEE ALIGN=MIDDLE BEHAVIOR=SCROLL DIRECTION=LEFT LOOP=INFINITE
  SCROLLDELAY=1>
  Welcome to our practice page. This is an example of a framed page, from
  columns 5 and 6.</MARQUEE>

  </TD></TABLE><P>

  <TABLE WIDTH=80% CELLPADDING=4 CELLSPACING=2 BORDER=4>
  <TD ALIGN=center VALIGN=middle>Starting Page</TD>
  <TD ALIGN=center VALIGN=middle>Second Page</TD></TABLE>

  </CENTER>
  </BODY>
  </HTML>


As you can see, the only change to the code here is the addition of a
second table to the title frame, which will eventually be used for our
links to load other pages into the lower frame of our site. Since the
code used for this is an extension of that we used for the marquee
table, I will leave it with you, the reader, to decipher it to your own
satisfaction.

And with that, we will leave any further discussions of coding to next
month, before we all fall asleep. Before we go, there is one last, small
bit of coding which we will do of a basic and simple start to our
wwmain1.html file. If you recall from last month, and the beginning of
this article, that is the file which by default, gets loaded in to the
second frame on our site. We will, of course, expand further on this,
and other pages to display in that second frame, in future columns,
however, for now, I wanted to supply you with something to fill the
second frame in case you decide to try coding these files yourself, and
want to test them out in your browser. Here is that wwmain1.html file
which is (and not to forget) VERY basic.

  <HTML>
  <HEAD><TITLE>WW Main1 Page</TITLE></HEAD>
  <BODY BACKGROUND="images/wall.gif">
  <BASEFONT FACE="Times New Roman" SIZE=3>

  Welcome to the WindoWatch HTML Tutorial Web Site!

  </BODY>
  </HTML>


Again, I will leave it to you to figure out this very simple code, and
what it does.

Next month, we will expand on this file, create a couple of others that
can be displayed in the lower frame on our site, and then add links to
our title frame, so that people can navigate between our pages.


                    =  =  =  =  =  =  =  = 
As some of you have already noticed, we are beginning to post the
earlier tutorial sections to the WindoWatch home page. Gregg's well
known scripting skill is turning that part of the homepage into a very
busy place. We invite you to stop by too. Gregg Hommel is a member of
the WindoWatch Editorial board and the HTML editor.



   ww page 11
  Why Two Plus Two Won't Add Up !
  


                              Web Counters
                     Copyright 1997 by Lynn Alford


One of the more popular questions and discussion topics in
comp.infosystems.www.authoring.html is "How do I put a counter on my
page?" The following represents a summary of the discussions on this
topic with more to follow if people are interested.


What is a counter?

It is a piece of software used to keep track of how many times a page is
accessed. There are several forms of counters. There are services that
provide free counters; http://www.digits.com is quite popular. There are
CGI scripts that can provide counters. There is at least one Java
program that will do the same task.

There are also associated problems with the counters. Counter services
usually depend upon the user loading a graphic from their site to their
computer. If the user has turned off graphics for any reason, then their
access will not be counted. (As a note, I've checked my pages and about
20-25% of the time people are not loading the graphics associated with
the page.) Additionally, if the counter service is popular, the graphic
may be slow to load, or worse, not load at all. If it fails to load
before the user leaves the page, you may have missed another count.

Java programs will not count accurately if they depend upon the browser
to initiate the program. There are still a large number of browsers that
do not understand Java and are unable to activate a Java program or Java
script.

CGI counters can be quite accurate, but usually you need access to the
CGI-bin or have a webmaster willing to set up the counter for you. Some
are and some are not willing to provide this service.

The most accurate count of all is to use a log analysis program on the
server log files, if you have access to that information. There are a
number of these programs available, Yahoo! has a good list of them if
you are interested in finding one for your platform.


Why can your count never be accurate?

Well it's simple. Your hit count is always an approximation which can
show you in relative terms which pages are most popular and which are
less so. But it cannot show you absolute values. The reason is that as
the web has grown, so have various methods to reduce traffic. One method
implemented by many sites is caching web pages. Once a web page is
cached for a site, it is that cached page that will be sent to local
users of the system. For the time that page stays in a remote system as
a cached copy, you won't see the hits to the page from other users
coming in from that site. Is this likely to be important? As an example,
it is said that one of the biggest cache systems around is for America
Online users. One hit from AOL could mean dozens or even thousands of
hits to that page. But you only see the one hit that transports the page
to the cache.

Counting hits is fun, watching your pages grow in popularity (we hope)
is very entertaining, but remember, all you will get is relative
information. Oh, and do refrain from putting counters on every page. You
may be entertained by knowing how many people visit your page, but does
the rest of the world really need to see it? Generally, it gives a bad
impression of the site to leave counters sitting around everywhere.


                    =  =  =  =  =  =  =  = 
Lynn has promised a more in depth look at this subject if there is
interest. Drop her a note at imla@jcu.edu.au



   ww page 12
  Maximizing Word 7 for Windows 95
  


             WordBasic Basics Part 2: Beginning a Dialogue
                  Copyright c 1997 by Jack Passarella


Introduction

Once you begin writing macros for others to use, you will reach a
point where you need to communicate with the user. Sometimes the
user might even be you! WordBasic offers several options and, of
course, several levels of complexity for you to begin a dialogue with
the user of your macro creations. Sometimes the communication is
merely a courtesy, informing the user that a task is about to begin or
is now complete. Other times, you need the user to choose a path
which will determine which direction the macro takes. Finally, in true
interactive fashion, there will be times where you solicit information
from the user in the form of words or numbers. This information is
then fed to the macro, and indeed, is needed for the macro to complete
its purpose in Word life.

I'll begin with a look at the simple, but effective message box. The
message box can be used to update the user or to determine a macro
path. Next, the Input Box, as you may have guessed from its name
requires input from the user. usually. Finally the custom dialog box
can be used to gather information in the form of choices, check boxes
and text boxes, along with the more versatile drop down list boxes and
combo boxes. I'll leave it to a future article(s) to tackle dynamic dialog
boxes, which are those that change their appearance based upon
choices made by the user.


Message Boxes

A message box can be a simple way to tell the user that a long macro is
about to start or has just finished. It can tell the user that
everything is fine, or stop the user - and the macro execution - to
require something be done by the user before it can finish.

In its simplest form, the message box is easy to `program.' It takes the
form:

   MsgBox Message$

To let a user know that all calculations completed successfully, you
might have this line at the end of the macro:

   Sub MAIN
       MsgBox "All Calculations Complete!"
   End Sub


Just that one line produces this result: a small message box with a
single 'OK" button... no decisions, no customization, just information.
You might want to change the title of the message box from the generic
"Microsoft Word" to something that matches your macro `theme.'

   Sub MAIN
      MsgBox "All Calculations Complete!", "My Macro"
   End Sub

This minor change alters the header of the message box.


The last option available to message boxes is the buttons to be
displayed. And, of course, you can add symbols to spice up the
appearance. Once you start adding buttons, you need to tell the macro
how to react to a different button being pressed. Until now, clicking on
the OK button basically just dismissed the message box from the screen.
When you add a second or a third button, you are putting in the
framework for a decision choosing macro. At that point, the message box
reveals its true versatility.


Message Box Armament

The final parameter to the message box command is a number for `Type.'
This one value is used for additional buttons, display of symbols and
setting the default button. OK doesn't have to be the default button,
i.e., the button that is selected if the user just presses the enter
key. Sometimes OK isn't even one of the choices. Here's a list of
numerical values that can be added as a third parameter for Type.

         Group          Value                Meaning
         -------       ---------         -----------------
         Button          0 (zero)        OK button (default)
                         1               OK and Cancel buttons
                         2               Abort, Retry and Ignore
                         3               Yes, No and Cancel
                         4               Yes and No
                         5               Retry and Cancel

         Symbol          0 (zero)        No symbol (default)
                         16              Stop symbol
                         32              Question symbol
                         48              Attention symbol
                         64              Information symbol

         Button action   0 (zero)        First button default
                         256             Second button default
                         512             Third button default

   (Note: There are also some negative type values which cause Word to
   display your message in the status bar instead of in a message box.)


The simplest addition to our message box macro in progress would be a
symbol. The information symbol (type value = 48) seems appropriate.

   Sub MAIN
       MsgBox "All Calculations Complete!", "My Macro", 48
   End Sub


So far, all straightforward, right? Get ready for a little curve ball.
If you want to add another button, it is implicitly assumed that you
would want the macro change its action based which button was clicked.
If you posed a question with a Yes or No answer, the macro clearly has
to react differently for each case. If OK and CANCEL are the two
choices, then CANCEL had better stop execution of the macro. The user is
bailing out. So should the macro.

Your first question probably is: How do I know which button was clicked?
If you are a forward thinking person, you might be wondering how to
combine that attention symbol with additional buttons. Second answer
first. If you look at the Type table above, you will notice that three
sections: Button, Symbol and Button action. To have a Yes and No button
(type value 4) combined with an attention symbol (type value 48), you
add the two type values together, i.e., 52. To make the No button the
default, you would add 256 to that, i.e., 308.

Simple, right? Well, not too complicated. Rest easy. Some examples will
follow. But first, there's the matter of the - How do I know which
button was pressed? - question. In WordBasic, commands followed by a
pair of parentheses return a value. By testing this value, your macro
can take the appropriate course. The answer or selection made is
assigned to a variable. For example,

   ans = MsgBox("This macro will take an hour. Proceed?", \
   "My Macro", 52)

(Note: the "\" character is used to continue a macro across a second
line. Also note: in Word 97's Visual Basic for Applications 5, the
continuation character is an underscore.)


Before we incorporate this message box command in a real macro, you need
to know what form the answer will and what the macro should do based
upon that answer.

     Return
     Value       Button Chosen             (Possible) Button Text
    --------    -----------------         ------------------------
     -1          First (leftmost) button   OK, YES, ABORT
      0 (zero)   Second button             CANCEL, NO, RETRY
      1          Third button              CANCEL, IGNORE

When the user clicks a button or simply accepts the default button, a
value of -1, 0 or 1 is "returned" by the message box to the macro. You
test this value to determine the course of the macro. Based upon that,
we can add to the macro as follows:

   Sub Main
   ans = MsgBox("This macro will take an hour. Proceed?", \
   "My Macro", 52)
   If ans = -1 Then
   ' Do lots of calculations!
   End If	`No was selected, end macro
   End Sub

Of course, this macro just has a comment line if YES is selected for the
sake of simplicity. In the real world, some serious macro grinding would
begin with a click on YES. If you know this is something your users
rarely do, and don't want to dump them into a macro vortex willy-nilly,
you can make NO the default button choice, so that a quick click results
in nothing happening instead of macro hell. That's a simple change, add
256 to the 52 type value

That simple changes moves the `highlight' or selection box to the No
button. Since a "no" response requires that this particular macro
simply end, I test for a "yes" answer and act upon that, otherwise the
macro just ends.

If you need to have a separate group of instructions for "no" followed
by a group of instructions that are followed after either answer, you
could use an If - Else - End If construction.

   Sub Main
   ans = MsgBox("This macro will take an hour. Proceed?", \
   "My Macro", 308)
   If ans = -1 Then
   ' Do lots of calculations if YES!
   Else
   ' Do other stuff if NO
   End If
   ` Then do these other things
   End Sub


If your messages get a little more complicated, you can put carriage
returns (i.e., line breaks) in the message displayed using the Chr$(13)
character.

   Sub Main
   ans = MsgBox("This macro will take an hour." + \ Chr$(13)
   + "Proceed?", \ "My Macro", 308)
   If ans = -1 Then
   ' Do lots of calculations if YES!
   Else
   ' Do other stuff if NO
   End If
   ` Then do these other things
   End Sub


After working with message boxes for a while, you will realize what
starts out as a simple tool to convey information can be the launching
pad for a fairly sophisticated macro.


Input Boxes

Unlike a message box, an input box requires a return value. That is its
purpose in life: accepting input! Hence the name. You are limited to a
maximum of 255 characters in a response. Input boxes return string
responses, which usually means text. You can convert a string to a true
numeric value by using the Val() command. I recently used an input box
which asked the user how many rows to add to a table. The user would
enter a number, which I converted to a true number using Val().

Input boxes let you specify a default value, and they allow the user to
enter more than one line of text. What can happen is that you get an
extra carriage return. You can use the CleanString$(input$) command to
clean up various excess characters from an input boxes response. My
table row input box macro looked like this:

   Sub MAIN
       ans$ = InputBox$("How many table rows to add?", \
          "My Macro", "5")
   End Sub

Note that the default value of 5 is in quotes. It is treated as a text
string. I wanted to use this value as a loop counter to add rows. That
requires that the text of "5" be converted to a number of 5. You can
accomplish that after getting back ans$.

   ans = Val(ans$)

Or you can do it in one step:

   ans = Val(InputBox$("How many table rows to add?", \
     "My Macro"))


You'll want to put in an error handler in case the user CANCELs the
input box. (Note: when you're developing macros its always a good idea
to "test" it by doing the unexpected to see how gracefully your macro
crashes - er, exits.) Here, you can enter the following command on the
line before the ans= line

   On Error Resume Next

This should stop an error from occurring on a user CANCEL. The input box
can accept text, unlike the message box. However, you can't change which
buttons appear, and the default insertion point is on the input area.
You can tab from this area to the OK button. Pressing return in the
input area just adds a new line!


Dialog Boxes

Dialog boxes are the big leagues. To use a Star Trek metaphor: so far
we've been cruising on impulse; we're about to engage the warp drive.
Well, for space and time considerations, we'll just engage warp factor
one. However, you should know that custom dialog boxes give you a lot of
flexibility. You can basically duplicate anything you've ever seen on
any of Word's built-in dialog boxes. You can have text labels, text
boxes, drop-down list and combo boxes, radio buttons, check boxes,
picture previews, etc. Beyond display and reacting to all these various
controls, dynamic dialog boxes let you enable/disable or show/hide
various sets of controls based upon user input while the dialog box is
displayed.

Dialog boxes could be a topic for a complete article, probably several
articles. I believe dialog boxes are so complex and versatile you could
have an entire book devoted to their construction and functioning. (And
just to make things more difficult, Word 97 completely changes the
rules. Dialog boxes are replaced by UserForms, which use the new macro
programming language in a completely different way. The good news is
that the decrepit old Dialog Box Editor goes the way of the Dodo bird in
Word 97.)

For the purposes of this section on dialog boxes, I won't go into the
strange workings of the Dialog Box Editor. And, as noted above, I won't
go into the more complex topics of dynamic dialog boxes and dialog
functions.


Warp Factor One: Engage!

To tackle dialog boxes at the easiest level, we need to create a simple
dialog box. For this example we'll use three Radio Buttons within a
Group Box. Since dialog boxes quickly get more complicated than either
message or input boxes, I'll show the final result first. Witness, the
Gender Selector[**]:

I could have made this simpler by just having a text label and a text
box, but you've already seen that with the Input box. By using radio
buttons, this example introduces several new concepts, primarily
exclusivity.

To create this dialog box, you define what goes in it between the Begin
Dialog and End Dialog commands. In addition to the Radio Buttons and the
Group Box, you will notice the "Go" and "Stop" buttons, i.e., OK and
CANCEL. If the user selects OK, i.e., -1 is returned by the dialog box,
the macro should proceed based upon the users selections; otherwise the
macro ends. or moves along to another section of the macro.

Radio Buttons, named after the car dashboard radios let you select one
`preset' station from a choice of several, that number depending on the
quality of the in-dash radio. However, you can only select one station
at a time. That's how these radio buttons work. You can only select one
at a time. (Note: to allow multiple selections, use checkboxes.) To make
each Radio Button an `exclusive' choice, you need to put them in the
same option group. This is an important concept because it is possible
to have more than one set (or group) of radio buttons in a dialog box.
In my example, you could have another set of three buttons referring to
age: Under 25; Over 25; and You


Think I'm Telling You?

Without further ado, here's the code to define the dialog box shown
above. you don't have to feel guilty if you looked ahead! Keep in mind,
at this point, all the macro does is display the dialog box. No
functionality yet.

   Sub MAIN
   Begin Dialog UserDialog 328, 92, "Gender Selector"
           GroupBox 15, 7, 163, 68, "What's Your Sex?"
           OptionGroup  .OG1
                   OptionButton 25, 19, 83, 16, "Female", .OB1
                   OptionButton 25, 36, 65, 16, "Male", .OB2
                   OptionButton 25, 53, 96, 16, "Not Sure", .OB3
           OKButton 209, 11, 88, 21
           CancelButton 209, 35, 88, 21
   End Dialog
   Dim dlg As UserDialog
   x = Dialog(dlg)
   If x = - 1 Then
   End If
   End Sub

You'll notice the custom name "Gender Selector" replaces "Microsoft
Word" in the first line. The numbers specify the width and height of the
dialog box. The dialog box itself is centered by default. Let's leave it
that way. GroupBox, OptionGroup, OptionButton, OKButton and CancelButton
are all system names. The number parameters after each of the visible
controls refer to Horizontal Position and Vertical Position from the
upper left of the dialog box, followed by width and height. The unit of
measure is in strange fractions of the system font size and is, for all
intents and purposes, completely impractical to the human brain. Just go
along with it. The tab order of the controls is controlled by their
order in the macro. (Note: In Word 97, you have more control over the
tab order of controls. All I can say is: about time.)

For the Group Box and OptionButtons you also provide a text value.
Finally, the controls are assigned an identifier so that the macro
knows Male from Female, etc., even if you have no problem with that
distinction yourself. You can make up your own names for these controls.
Think of the names as variables. I chose abbreviated versions of
.OptionGroup1 to get .OG1 and .OptionButton1 to get .OB1 (Sorry, OB1 is
not a "Star Wars" reference.) Note that the three OptionButtons follow
the OptionGroup control, which is an invisible but crucial control, to
identify the group and enable the exclusivity of each choice. If you
had a second option group and one of the members ended up under this
OptionGroup line, you would have an oddly functioning dialog box.
Trust me.

Next, let's look at the command lines that display the dialog box:

   Dim dlg As UserDialog
   x = Dialog(dlg)
   If x = - 1 Then
   End If

In the first statement "dlg" is the shortest recognizable abbreviation
of dialog. You could use a different name. The rest of the line is
required. That dialog record is assigned to "x" so that we'll know
whether OK or CANCEL was pressed. If x = -1, then OK was chosen.
Otherwise the dialog box was probably considered too personally
intrusive and canceled by the user.

The bulk of the work for the dialog box will occur with an OK click. At
this point there is nothing between the If and the End If statements, so
clicking either OK or CANCEL do nothing. Obviously we want to react to
differently (I suppose.) to whichever radio button was selected when OK
was clicked. We have three mutually exclusive choices: Female, Male or
Not Sure.

To keep the example still on the simple side, which assumes I haven't
lost you yet, we'll just set up this example to display a different
message box depending on the answer given to the Gender Selector. We'll
use the Select Case. End Select to determine our response. We have three
possible "cases" in this example. The tricky part is that Word starts
counting at zero. So Female would equal a result of 0, Male would equal
1 and Not Sure would equal 2.

You would put this Select Case construct between the If. End If
statements, i.e., the values (results) are used if the user clicks OK,
not CANCEL.

   Select Case dlg.OG1
     Case 0
      MsgBox "What a Lady!", "Your Gender: Female", \
        48
     Case 1
      MsgBox "What a Gentleman!", "Your Gender: Male", \
        48
     Case 2
      MsgBox "Have you considered therapy?", \
       "Your Gender: Unknown!", 16
   End Select

Paste this code into the macro in progress and you will see a different
message box depending upon which gender is selected. Notice that I did
change the symbol displayed for the final option by changing the type
value from 48 to 16.

That's it for an introduction to the powerful capabilities of custom
dialog boxes. Believe me, this only scratches the surface.


Conclusion

Message boxes are best used for updating the user or providing a simple
decision the user needs to make. Input boxes accept user text up to 255
characters, which can be converted to a number to be used in a counter
loop, for example. Input boxes are often the quickest way to get a
single piece of text from the user.

When you need more information or multiple blocks of information from
the user, you will find that one well-designed custom dialog box does a
much better job at collecting it than a series of input boxes or dialog
boxes. Remember, you can use check boxes, drop-down list boxes and
picture previews in dialog boxes.

Your macro's decision-making trees will no doubt be less frivolous and
more involved than my examples. But the outcome of my decisions was
secondary to showing you how to understand which selections a user made.
I hope this article gives you a head start or at least a quick start on
how message boxes, input boxes and custom dialog boxes can be used
interactively with the user - even if that user happens to be you!

  [** The graphic images referred to in this article can be viewed in
  the Adobe Acrobat edition of WindoWatch.]


                    =  =  =  =  =  =  =  = 
Passarella keeps getting better and better! Jack is indeed a formidable
WordMan with a penchant for wit and style. It is because his WordBasic
pieces are so popular that we encouraged him to go on with this project
and have put together Jack's Words on the WindoWatch homepage. If you've
not been there you should stop by. Jack is a regular Contributor to the
magazine and can be reached at jpassarella@snip.net



   ww page 13
  DOs and DON'Ts for Education on the Internet!
  


                DETOURS ON THE EDUCATIONAL SUPERHIGHWAY
                    Copyright 1997 by Frank McGowan


In this article, I will attempt to cull my memory (and others') for the
misadventures I/we've run up against in using computers in an
educational environment. From these experiences, others may find useful
lessons in what to do, and, more important, what NOT to do when setting
up a computer system for a school.

FIRST DON'T: Paint Yourself into Corners

Change comes in three modes:

   1. Evolution (slow)
   2. Revolution (fast)
   3. Inchoate (incomprehensibly fast)

Evolutionary change occurs over time spans so long as to be
imperceptible: how did those oceanic fossils wind up in the middle of
Arizona, for example? Revolutionary change takes place in time frames
shorter than a generation but longer than a teenager's infatuation.

Obviously, neither of these definitions applies to modern computer
technology, where change takes place so quickly as to be almost
impossible to keep pace with. The competition for, and discovery of,
niches is so fierce that legions of designers and programmers are
cranking out new, wildly-radical software at a pace that rivals that of
Stephen King's literary output. Today's hot new product becomes obsolete
almost before you can rip off the shrink-wrap. Trying to keep up can be
as frustrating and mind-numbing as trying to make sense of a rock video.
Things are coming at you too fast and from too many directions.

What this means to anyone who's about to launch their school into
educational computers is: plan for chaotic changes. Try to set up a
system that's coherent: where all parts understand and work with all
other parts and is open to updating.

This may seem self-evident, but it's amazing that so many organizations
wind up with so many incompatible components that it's impossible or
financially unfeasible to connect them into a harmonious whole, rather
than a black hole, a few years down the road. There needs to be a system
czar, for want of a better term, who's got the responsibility and
authority to impose order and rationality. If such a person doesn't
exist, it's very likely that each department or sub-unit of the
organization will make its own decisions, either ignorant or disdainful
of what other departments/sub-units are doing. The result is riotous
disorder, with hardware that doesn't work with the computers across the
room, and software that produces files unrecognizable to similar
programs on dissimilar platforms.


SECOND DON'T: Provide Insufficient Financial Support

The current overworked cultural clich is "Show me the money!"
Unfortunately, when it comes to setting up a decent computer system,
this tired aphorism rings all too true. If, as the old song has it,
"romance without finance is nonsense," then building a school computer
system with nickels and dimes is also folly. Working with shoestring
budgets almost guarantees that what you'll get is a hodge-podge of
kludgie hardware and software, purchased at bargain basement fire sales
and cobbled together with chewing gum and baling wire.

This is bad enough when you're dealing with stand-alone computers. When
you're buying network components at tag sale prices, you're headed for
disaster. A recent example from real life is illustrative: having
decided it was time to make the leap into Windows 95, the school's
computer staff made that all-too-familiar one simple change, only too
see the house of cards they'd spent so many years putting up come
tumbling down in a jumbled heap. What had been a computer network looked
more like the apres-fall Humpty Dumpty.

A corollary to this is to hire as few support people as possible, and
give them as little training as you can get away with. This guarantees
that when things go wrong, as will inevitably happen, the effects will
be widespread and long-lasting. Nearly everyone will be damaged, from
faculty to students. About the only ones not directly hit will be the
janitorial staff, but that could change if, more likely when, the
students get sick of having no computers to work on and institute a
lawsuit demanding their money back (with interest). Compounding the
damage, word gets around that your school can't deliver what it
promises. This kind of buzz can cause damage that can linger for years.

By spending as little as possible, you also create a penny-pinching
atmosphere that will make your support staff think twice, if at all,
about asking for help from outside experts. Rather than risk the wrath
of the bean-counters, they will wait until the crisis is at the
explosion point before admitting it's beyond their technical expertise
and call in a hired-gun consultant.


THIRD DON'T: Practice Benign Neglect at the Highest Levels

It is said that things rot from the head down. Therefore, to ensure
failure in incorporating computers into education, the school's top
level administrators, including the president, should be blithely
unaware of, if not downright hostile to, the implications of high
technology.

Having no top-down direction or high-level policies will create the sort
of anarchy that is guaranteed to destroy any hope of putting digital
technology to good pedagogical use. Above all, avoid publishing any
procedures relating to the area of computers in your classrooms, so
people will have to figure out what to do when problems arise: Who do
they call to fix a software glitch? Who's responsible for the care and
feeding of hardware? Which programs or platforms should be used for
which labs and/or courses? The possibilities for chaos and confusion are
limitless.


FIRST (AND ONLY) DO: Avoid  All the Don'ts Listed Above

Difficult as it is, as an administrator in charge of leading your school
into the next millennium, you have the responsibility to become at least
a little computer-knowledgeable. You should, at minimum, understand the
basics (that there's a difference between an IBM PC and an Apple, for
instance). You need to set up and enforce policies and procedures, and
make sure your staff and faculty understand their responsibilities. It's
boring as dirt, but you can't succeed otherwise.

If you're not the administrator, but are the technology guru, you need
to help the people with their fingers on the purse strings appreciate
what you and the school need if you are to provide the kind of service
and support required to make it work. Insist that your budget be big
enough to provide user support and that it not be spread too thin or
lack in training. Don't be bullied by the green eye-shade crowd into
taking crumbs when you need the whole loaf. On the other hand, don't get
greedy. The goal is to support the computer systems in the school, not
to build an empire. Be ready to prove that your demands are reasonable:
do your homework; use those spreadsheet and presentation programs to
prepare the documentation you need to convince and persuade.

If you're on the faculty, don't be afraid to volunteer for committee
work related to computer topics. You need to make your voice heard on
issues that affect your ability to teach, and your students' ability to
learn. If the students are constantly frustrated by balky hardware or
unusable software, they will quickly revolt. The equation is simple: no
computers = no students = no courses = no job for you. It's crucial to
act, not to react when it could be too late. Corny as it sounds, you
have to stay ahead of the curve.


                    =  =  =  =  =  =  =  = 
Frank McGowan is a college teacher, a former science writer and computer
consultant. His straight from the shoulder, no nonsense approach to
educating students about computer technology comes at a time when
volunteers are stringing coaxial cable all over America in the name of
putting our schools on the Internet! Do we really mean to do this?
Yeah, - sure! Frank is a contributing writer to WindoWatch.



   ww page 14
  WebTV Has Arrived...
  


                      Reflections of a ModemJunkie
                   Copyright 1997 by Leonard Grossman



I don't really feel like writing right now. What I feel like doing is
sitting back in an easy chair and surfing the Web on a giant screen. No
keyboard, no supposedly ergonomic desk chair. No reading glasses to
squint at the text. Just lying back in the comfy chair and pointing a
magic wand across the room.

I did that just the other night. It isn't a fantasy and it isn't out of
reach. But to begin this tale, let me go back a few weeks. I was
checking out the guest books on a couple of my sites. One of my sites
had seven new entries. On closer examination they were all from one
e-mail address. The address of a couple I know -- a retired couple of a
certain age. A couple which had never owned a computer and, until now,
was never likely to own one. And the address was @webtv.net.

WEB TV!! WebTV? Horrors! What is an old modemjunkie like me doing even
talking about that toy. Who would want a limited hunk of metal like
that? Why not get a real computer and get with the program?

The answer: Lots of people. And they are becoming the program. Just as
the Web has drastically evolved in the 3 years since Mosaic first came
on the scene, it will continue to change. Although advertising with
www.xxx.com has become ubiquitous, there is a vast potential audience of
folks who are afraid of computers and have no interest in sorting out
initialization strings and downloading new software every few weeks. But
they have been trained on T.V. to sit back and enjoy. And they will want
to see what this Internet is all about.

Many of them would never do this on their own, but one way or another
they will get hooked. In my friends' case. Their son gave them the WebTV
box for a present. Within a few weeks their 19 inch T.V. was replaced by
a 32" model. And from looking at my hit record alone, I can tell they
are hooked.

We talked about it and they invited me over. "Sure," I said rather
condescendingly, "I'll take a look." I really doubted that this could be
a worthwhile experience.

But there I was the other night, lying back on a big white sofa,
munching snacks and looking up at some of my favorite pages. The
beautiful <http://www.mcs.met/~grossman/rose.htm> rose filled with snow
on one of my pages looked great up there. More to my surprise, my other
pages rendered perfectly. The images appeared where I expected them, the
colors were great, text was readable, if not really sharp. Zap!! All I
had to do was click on the remote and I could move forward or back, up
or down. Following links was easy. And it was fast -- with cute but not
too obtrusive sound effects and graphics to camouflage waiting time.

Search forms worked, although at first I wondered how I could enter text
from the chair. It turns out there are two possibilities. A click pops
up an on screen keyboard. Point at the letters and it is possible to
type in a primitive fashion. But, my friends were already so hooked that
they had bought a standard keyboard, - a good old IBM type! Remember
that metallic click that let you know you had typed some thing? They had
added extension cords long enough to reach that sofa all the way across
the room. Click on the wand and zoom! an e-mail form appears. Just type
in your message and send it on it's way.

There are some features that are not implemented yet, like frames and
the Web TV browser does not like pages that require fixed page widths.
If you want to follow the news groups you will have to use an HTML
format like DejaNews for now, but WebTV promises new features in the
near future. There is a little slot in the front of the box for
upgrades. I haven't looked to see if it takes software or hardware.

Subsequent to writing this article I have learned that WebTV has added a
newsreader and has some frames capability. I am also told the slot is
for use with a "Smartcard".

If they hadn't promised to include frames capability, I would really be
pushing it. Nothing could be better for the future of the Web than a
vast audience without frames capability. Page developers would have to
go back to sound design. But my prejudices are showing, so let me get on
with the story.

Is this the way I would want to get online?. Not really -- not most of
the time. But for a large segment of the public who are afraid of
computers or simply have no interest in them, the Web TV is a welcome
tool. We look down our noses at this possible audience at our own peril.
And it wouldn't surprise me if many in that audience will find that the
Web TV is the Trojan Horse by which computers slip quietly into their
every day lives.

And there are sites which work especially well on the giant screen.
There are many new concept pages which do not require frames or Java
which should look great on the large screen. For starters try
   <http://www.futile.com> "Futile" or
   <http://www.zow.com/colabart/kabbalah.htm> "Kabbalah"
This is the kind of gray, damp, lazy Saturday afternoon on which it
would be great to stretch out in that comfy chair with a bowl of chips
and a bottle of something and just point a magic wand.


Culture Shock

The foregoing story is another example of the vast change going on in
the culture of the Internet. As I have noted before, a couple of years
ago the news groups were full of negative comments about newbies
destroying the culture. A message with an AOL address on it was sure to
get automatic derision regardless of its content. Today that would be
foolhardy. But there are aspects of the culture that are worth
preserving and fortunately still survive.

Not that long ago a primary aspect of that culture was the concept of
sharing. The idea that everything had a price, the idea of commercial
sites with passwords and fees was anathema. Well, that is changing, but
it also lives on.

The counter service I am using is about to become more expensive so I
began to look into ways of analyzing my hits locally. It took some
searching but eventually I found Analog2.11, a program in C which can
compile in your own web directory. It generates its results by analyzing
the html.log maintained by your provider and produces its results in
HTML. It is very powerful and it remains free. Not just free to evaluate
but FREE! To see an example of its output. Go to

        <http://www.mcs.net/~grossman/output.htm>

and take a look. At the bottom of that page is a link back to the source
of the program. Go there for more information and to download the
applicable file. I will give a more detailed discussion of Analog in the
near future, after I play with its many configuration options for a
while.

And while I am on the subject of the old culture, let me give another
example. I was dismayed to discover, just after I registered Opera (boy
that felt good -- an honest man at last... just like that day, half a
dozen years ago when I registered Telix), that Opera does not support
gopher. I was surfing weather sites, many of them are in the gopher
format and I kept getting error messages asking me to define a gopher
proxy. Unfortunately, my ISP believes a good browser should support
gopher and doesn't have a proxy available.

I agree with him, but I also recognize that Opera is under tremendous
pressure to add new features and at the same time retain its small size.
I am also aware that I had been using Opera for some time and hadn't
come across the problem. More and more gopher sites are converting to
HTML.

So, in desperation I posted a note in a local newsgroup. Within hours I
received a note from EnterAct, a competing local ISP. They offered to
let my use their gopher proxy. I asked if they mind public thanks for
their offer. They informed me they intend to keep it an open server. The
old culture still lives.


                    =  =  =  =  =  =  =  = 
Grossman is a bridge person integrating his virtual activities with
those of his real world of family, work, community ,and friends. A
regular contributor to WindoWatch, his ModemJunkie column is always a
very pleasant surprise. His many pages are linked to
<http://www.mcs.net/~grossman> Notes from a ModemJunkie. Leonard can be
reached at grossman@mcs.net



   ww page 15
  Games Reviewed!                                A New WindoWatch Feature
  

                   Discworld II Missing Presumed...?
                             From Psygnosis

               Reviewed and Copyright 1997 by Lynn Alford


Brief Description

This is a second game based on the fantasy novels of Terry Pratchett.
Reading some of the Discworld novels is recommended before you try to
play the game. Not necessary, but recommended because it will give you
some idea of what to expect. If you have played Discworld, you will have
some idea of what to expect. This game is much better supplied with
hints as you try to solve the puzzles and so is much easier. Not that it
is too easy, it is just easier than the first game.

You are Rincewind, a not very successful wizard of the Unseen
University. Death is missing and without him, the dead are failing to
stay that way and returning as zombies. You need to gather the materials
so the archchancellor may use a ritual to call death. But will that be
the end of your problems...

The game is in acts and you must accomplish certain goals to finish each
act. Usually the goal is quite easy to determine, you are told the final
goal. How to get there...that is the problem.

The main voice are by Eric Idle (Rincewind), Nigel Planer, Kate Robbins
and Rob Brydon. The characters are entertaining and some very good lines
are used in the game. This time around they've also thrown in a play on
Eric's name, and some gratuitous Monty Python humour. Don't worry, you
can't miss the latter, they tell you while the scene is happening. Some
of the game characters are new, others you've seen before.

If you have played Discworld 1, you'll notice that the graphics have
improved, the sound should be better (one of the noticeable bugs on my
machine is real problems with the sound), and generally the game play
has improved.


Game Play and Hints

Pay close attention at all times to Rincewind's comments. Quite
frequently, he is giving you a hint about the object you are trying to
use or about the person you are talking to. In fact, you can tell one of
the major complaints about the first game was the lack of hints,
sometimes there's a very pointed, "Not that I'm hinting or anything,"
tacked on to the end of a comment..

When you don't know what to do next, try reviewing all the major
locations. I couldn't finish Act 1 until I realized that there was more
to Mrs. Cake's place then met the eye at first. Try talking to every
character and use items from the inventory on each other or on
something. Once again, Rincewind may well give you a clue as to what can
be right, if you try something wrong.

As in the first game, do be sure to periodically use the cursor on
Rincewind. He has a number of things to say when you 'tap' him with the
cursor, most of them are interesting to say the least. Also trying to
use items on Rincewind can provoke a few interesting replies.


Character Interactions

This is exactly the same interface as the previous game. There are a
number of characters in the game, and you'll need to talk with all of
them. Conversations are icon-based. The standard icons are greeting,
sarcasm, question, musing and goodbye. Musing is yet another place where
they've loaded the game with hints. Sometimes there will be additional
icons available about specific things (candles, pyramids, and other
items).

There are only a few characters that you'll need to talk to more than
once. If you're stuck, it is more likely that you've missed an item, or
an entire room than you need to talk to a character again.


Gripes About the Game

Sound keeps doing very odd things on my computer. I have found a patch
file that fixed the problem. In spite of the number of games that I own,
this is the first time I've found the patch to be vital.

The box says that a 486 100MHz computer should be able to run this game.
My computer was finding it difficult to process all the sound, movements
and mouse-clicks at the same time. The patch improved the situation, but
there were still times (the XXXX continent) where it was more reliable
to use the keyboard rather than click a mouse button.


Conclusion

A worthy successor to the first game. Long term adventure game players
may find this one too easy, especially if you thought the first one was
reasonably difficult. For the rest of us, this is a satisfying game. I'd
say this game is best suited for mid-teen age and up, mostly because the
level of play would be frustrating for younger players.

This game gets top marks for animation, sounds and puzzles. There are no
critical timing puzzles, you cannot kill Rincewind, and most of the
puzzles are fair. There were a few times when you might start using
everything in the inventory just because you're stuck, (now why should I
have guessed that those two items combined anyway?) but there are only a
few of them relative to the first game. It is sometimes difficult to
determine where additional rooms are but there are no pixel-hunt
puzzles. Unlike the first game, I never needed a hint or walk-through
file to solve any part of this game.


Some Final Thoughts on the Game

Thank heavens, the game designers did learn from the first game. Not
only were the hints much better in this game, but you didn't keep
getting Rincewind saying "That doesn't work," over and over again.
Instead, he gives you a bit of a reason why that doesn't work or what
might work.

A much easier but equally funny adventure game is Toonstruck. Sam and
Max Hit the Road may also appeal to you. Also Monkey Island though that
one isn't as easy to find these days.


* * * * * * * * * * * *

Once again, from my archive of reviews, the following:


Zork Nemesis
From: Activision

Brief Description

"You are my only hope," is the last thing you'll hear in the
introduction to Zork Nemesis. You have been transported to a land where
alchemy is real and many things are not what they seem. You'll need to
look and listen carefully as sights and sounds are very important in
this game. Turn off the lights, put on some headphones and be prepared
to have your mind blown away.

This game is beautiful, both in graphics and in sound. You start at the
entrance to the temple of Ancients. Explore the Temple to start learning
the secrets of the Forbidden Lands and begin your quest.

The game includes notes from the last explorer of the Forbidden Lands,
which give you a few clues as to where you are and what is going on. As
you play the game, you will be piecing together the story of four
alchemists, their search for the philosopher's stone and a love story.

The music and sounds are amazing. This comment is from someone who is
running the game in DOS mode. The game clearly states that some sounds
and animations are only available in Win95 mode. When I started the
game, I didn't have Win 95, and I don't feel up to installing the game
again and possibly losing the saved game, just to see. Even so, the
experience is quite something even in DOS mode, this game is something
special.


Also the music and sound effects vary according to what location you are
in at the time. I find the music of the Temple of the Ancients to be
quite haunting. The sound effects of some of the other places can be
scary (the Asylum), or somewhat annoying, Irondune, until you stop the
war. The storyline behind the game is excellent, it isn't as much a
plot-driven game as some, but I felt compelled by the story behind the
game.

There are a number of other people in the game, but you never directly
interact with any of them. Whenever someone (or scenes from the past) is
there, it will be a cut-action scene that you just watch. The acting in
the game is quite good, I rather liked Kaine and the voice of Nemesis is
just incredible. It gave me the shivers when he unexpectedly starts
saying something. Nemesis rather reminds me of Darkness from the movie
Legend.


Game Play and Hints

If you must have a point system in an adventure game, this is the type I
prefer. There are a total of nine points in the game. You get a point
for each major puzzle solved. That's it! Therefore you don't have to
spend time looking at every item, making sure that you get credit for
each. You still can spend the time, and I recommend that you do so, but
if you should happen to restore an earlier game, you don't have to keep
going back to things you looked at once to ensure that you've got the
points from it.

This game requires careful exploration and observation. I find that due
to the way the game navigation works, it can sometimes be tricky to
travel to certain locations in the game. Also, if you are having a
difficult time with a puzzle, it may be that you missed the hint needed.
I failed to notice some desk drawers and therefore couldn't solve one
puzzle. In particular, there are times when you can look up or down, but
they may require some careful examination before you can work out
exactly where you can start looking up or down.

Take notes as you go through, or be prepared to use the hint system a
lot. For a change, using the hint system doesn't cost you points - I
supposed with only 9 points, they couldn't - but I like not having to
worry about losing points if you do use the help.

Be warned. One of the places you travel to, the Asylum, has some very
gruesome bits. I don't think I've had quite such a creepy feeling since
playing with the brains in Frankenstein's lab. This place is much worse
than that though.

Don't be afraid to play with things. There are a few places where it
might be dangerous (surely you know to save any adventure game when
you've made progress?) but most of what is lying around is either useful
or adds character to the game. There are very few items that you can
carry around with you, and so you won't end up with one of those never
ending inventories. There are many books, pictures, and notes to look
at. You can never be sure which will give the clues either, so look at
them all.


Gripes About the Game

It has the bad habit of totally, utterly and completely locking my
computer at the point where you can jump from the Temple of the Ancients
to one of the other game locations. Since you'll need to travel to four
other game locations from this point, this is a major frustration. Once
I realized it was consistent on my computer, I always saved before
trying the jump.

I find the 360 degree navigation system a bit disconcerting. One moment,
you're looking around to see if there is anything interesting on the
screen, then you get the cursor too close to one side and you start
rotating. The navigation isn't as flexible as that of Under a Killing
Moon or The Pandora Directive though. You can look in all directions but
you will move to a predefined spot every time. Sometimes, when you've
moved in for a close view of an item, it can be difficult to get the
cursor to take you back. This can get very frustrating. I think I was
moving my mouse around a bit too quickly some of the time, but looking
for how to get the back arrow quickly gets old.


Conclusion

I highly recommend this game for serious adventure players. If you're
just starting adventure games, be warned, this one is lovely but pretty
tough. It takes a lot of patience and careful observation of your
surroundings to win.

This game is not suitable for the squeamish, there is some gore in the
Asylum. There are also a couple of paintings in the background of nude
women, which might cause concern for some parents. Generally, I wouldn't
recommend the game for those under 15.

Overall, clues to all the puzzles are available. They aren't always easy
to find, and it is very, very easy to miss an item when scrolling around
the screen. The game doesn't have pixel perfect puzzles, and arcade
sequences aren't present (three of the things most likely to annoy
adventure gamers.)

If you loved the original Zork, you may or may not like this game. There
is no question that it is quite good for its type, but it is fairly
unlike any of the text-based Zork games.


Some Final Thoughts on the Game

I have and started ages ago Return to Zork. The game didn't really catch
my attention, and I've never come close to finishing it. This game is so
vast an improvement on RTZ that it's hard to believe the difference.

The end of the game is quite satisfying, unlike some games around, Myst
being one of the best examples. But it is slightly puzzling, until you
find there is an item not far away that cause the end credits to roll.
They give proper credits for the actors, and even the artwork that
you've seen in the game!

Losing the game at the end isn't so satisfying. A minor insult and then
reload or quit. Ah well, they probably didn't worry too much about this
bit because it isn't at all difficult at the last to work out what to
do. Getting to that stage is another song and story, but your last
important act is very self-apparent. Last updated 1 April 1997.


                    =  =  =  =  =  =  =  = 
Lynn Alford is not only a professional WebMaster, and she is that, but
also gamer of reputation. Too modest to tell me, her game reviews are
well know by the gaming community. In any case, Lynn is our newest
Editor with gaming responsibilities. Parents who have concerns for their
children being exposed to both adult and violent material will find
those passages, if any, highlighted in the text with Lynn's
recommendations. Lynn's homepage can be viewed along with her other
games reviews at the John Cooke University's Centre for Interactive
Multimedia http://www.jcu.edu.au/~imla/
Her game review pages are based at http://www.jcu.edu.au/~imla/games2.html



   ww page 16
  WinFax Pro 8.0:                                        A Product Review
  


                       The Ultimate Faxing Dream!
                    Copyright 1997 by Stefan Assmann


Instead of giving you a complete review of this great package, I could
simply make this the most terse evaluation ever with these few words:
This is an absolute must-have!

However, I wouldn't dare dream of depriving you of the pleasure of
reading about my experiences. In fact, I even have some criticism! So,
lets get on with it:


System Requirements

As with all programs these days, moderately hefty hardware is required
to run this gem as it should be run. There are different requirements
for Windows 95 and NT 3.51 / 4.0. On the box, it reads as follows:

   Windows 95
   80486 SX/25
   8 MB RAM
   25 MB free space
   VGA
   CD-ROM or 3.5" disk drive
   Fax modem: class 1, 2 or CAS-compatible
   ISDN: 32-bit CAS 2.0 compliant
   Fax/voice for TalkWorks
   80486 DX2/66 with 16MB for 2-modem support


Windows NT

The same as for Windows 95, except for a 80486 DX2/66 with 16 MB RAM for
normal operation and a 80486/100 for two modems

The above requirements represent the bare minimum for the minimal
install. The box recommends at least an 80486 DX2/66 with 32MB RAM for
both platforms, which is indeed a more realistic minimum. Contents of
the box

 - WinFax Pro 8.0, the main program
 - TalkWorks, an integrated communications solution for all your needs
   (answering machine etc.). This requires a voice modem.
 - Complete manual in Acrobat PDF format (CD-ROM version)
 - Multimedia tutorials (CD-ROM version)
 - Bonus package (CD-ROM version), consisting of ACT 3.0 (max. 25
   contacts), pcAnywhere 7.5 (30-day trial), Internet Explorer 3.0,
   Norton Antivirus NT (detect only) and Norton Antivirus 95 (detect
   only)


Installation

The installation is as simple as inserting the CD-ROM in the drive. A
menu will come up, allowing you to install the package, view the
manuals, take the multimedia tour, or install one of the bonus programs.

The installation program for WinFax itself is more or less the same as
in previous versions. You select the type of installation, I most always
choose custom, and the program checks the capabilities of your modem and
then the necessary files are copied to your hard drive. I don't have a
voice-modem yet (yes, I'm going to upgrade soon) and tried to install
TalkWorks anyway. The program will then pop up a dialog box informing
you that the modem doesn't support the voice features and offer you a
choice of not installing TalkWorks after all (the default choice) or
installing it anyway. I chose to install it anyway so that it's ready
for my voice modem in a couple of months.

I have two complaints about the set-up program (and they are the only
ones for the entire program):

 - When the set-up program has nearly finished and is creating program
   groups, the groups aren't minimized and you can't follow the rest of
   the set-up process.

 - Symantec, known for its virus technology, doesn't bother to check for
   viruses prior to installation (I haven't seen it. Maybe it's being
   done under the surface).

After installation, you are invited to restart your computer. Next time
your desktop comes up, your tray has one more icon, namely that of the
WinFax Controller (the second from the right in the screen below, next
to the traffic light). I don't like that icon, do you? The previous
looked far better to my eyes.

Anyway, the purpose of the controller is to conserve system resources
while still being able to receive faxes automatically, start WinFax, and
so on. It's a nice feature where you can do nearly everything from the
controller without needing the main program except for configuration
purposes, - perhaps .


New and improved

Many of you probably downloaded the 12MB trial version a while ago, when
the program was still in the beta stage. Apart from ironing out the
bugs, Symantec has changed the functionality slightly and made it
faster. Compared to previous versions (7.0, 7.5), Symantec has added an
enhanced version of TalkWorks, Internet faxing, effortless network
faxing (you can use WinFax as a client for Intel Satisfaxtion or its own
WinFax for Networks), Office 97 support and LiveUpdate. This version can
also use two telephone lines, so that you can receive and send faxes at
the same time. Symantec also added a cover page wizard to make it easier
to create your own cover pages. To top it all off, it's now possible to
directly scan a document into WinFax and fax it to just about
everywhere.

Other nice enhancements include fax compression, so that your faxes are
transferred faster, and smart error correction for error-free sending /
receiving.

With Office 97 support, you can fax directly from Word 97 or Excel 97.
The supplied macros add an icon in your main toolbar for this. Just
click and fax away! You can also keep your logs / faxes in Exchange or
Outlook 97.

LiveUpdate goes out on the Internet (or a local Symantec BBS) to find,
download and install updates. It is fully automatic once you have given
the command. This feature is extremely handy and now a standard feature
in just about all of Symantec's applications.


New to WinFax?

For those of you who do not know this program and this is the first
time being exposed to it, WinFax Pro, formerly from Delrina, has won
numerous awards for being the best fax program ever, and with good
reason. With each version, Delrina, now part of Symantec, added
numerous enhancements for making the program faster, easier and
more fun to use. With this package, you can send / receive faxes and
voice messages, turning your telephone into an answering machine
with that required voice modem.  After receiving faxes, you can opt to
let them recognize with OCR (the engine is courtesy of Xerox
Textbridge; you can upgrade to the full version of this package for a
small fee), let the program warn you that you have received a fax,
print it, etc. The program also intelligently interfaces with the leading
word processor and spreadsheet packages to ensure one button faxing
from Word (6, 7 and 97), WordPerfect (7.0) and Excel (6, 7 and 97).
You can also use mailing systems like Exchange / Outlook 97, Lotus
cc:Mail and others. The program, including its interface, is very
customisable to suit everyone's needs and is very intuitive to operate.
As to cover pages, you can choose from an elaborate collection
provided with the program (most of them quite humorous), or create
your own with the new design wizard.

You can send your fax at a scheduled time, during off-peak hours at
night, for example, and in conjunction with a word processors, fax a
mailing list by merely selecting a few options. You can insert your own
logo in your fax header, as well as sign them electronically. Faxing
attachments is a piece of cake. In addition, when you're sending faxes
to the same person(s) regularly, you can set up all the required
parameters in the provided phone book. When you're sending the same fax
to more than one person at a time in regular intervals, you can create a
group in your phone book. Just select this group as your recipient and
you're done. WinFax will take care of the rest. If you have an Internet
connection, a new feature lets you fax long-distance faxes via a local
call over the Internet, saving you time and money.

As for receiving, you can set it to automatic or manual. When set to
automatic, you can set the number of rings before WinFax should answer.
After reception, you can opt to view the fax, OCR it, print it, or all
of these in order.

You want to keep a trace on all the faxes you send / receive? No problem
at all! WinFax keeps detailed logs of everything. Errors & Bugs

I found only one (so far), but it's a serious one. Try to do the
following:

 - from the controller, select "send a fax"
 - select a recipient and a cover page (doesn't matter which one)
 - type something
 - select it
 - Now try to change the font of the selected part.

Let me know if you get the error depicted in the above screen shot!

The ludicrous thing is, you can safely change your font before typing
something, but not on selected text. Changing font sizes and other
attributes work, however.

The bug described above is not new, I also found it in version 7 and
7.5. I can't imagine someone not having alerted Symantec to this
problem.

Other than that and the very minor set-up annoyances described above,
it's one heck of a program. 9.5 out of 10 from me! So, do not walk or
even run, but fly to your nearest retailer and by this program!

In the May issue of WindoWatch, I will be writing a second article on
WinFax Pro 8.0, where I go into more details on the specific operation
of the various components of this program.


                    =  =  =  =  =  =  =  = 
Stefan Assman is a very prolific writer with a broad range of interests
and skills. A committed beta tester, he is regularly bringing his vast
experience to the WindoWatch community. He would be happy to answer your
questions about this product and other shared interests. He can be
reached at Stefan.Assmann@club.innet.be



   ww page 17
  Another Utility for NT 4.0
  

                        PowerDesk Utilities 2.02
                         By Linda L. Rosenbaum


One of the hardest adjustments for many folks when first moving
from Windows 3.x or NT 3.5x is Explorer, the interface in Windows
95 and now NT 4.0 (or called in NT 4.0, the Windows NT Explorer.)
I am definitely one of those folks! I have tried a few alternative file
managers and have been using the file manager that comes in NT Tools
(i.e. Norton File Manager) for almost a year now. I have never taken to
Explorer and use it only if absolutely nothing else is available. A
fellow WindoWatch writer, Stefan Assmann, recently waxed eloquent about
an Explorer replacement/alternative called ExplorerPlus. It is part of a
set of utilities called PowerDesk Utilities and its from Mijenix
Corporation (http://www.mijenix.com). I had first been told about this
utility quite some time ago, but always in the context of use for
Windows 95. Stefan was the first of my friends to use this program in NT
4.0. After a bit more prodding and a mention in the April 8, 1997 issue
of PC Magazine, I finally downloaded the evaluation version of PowerDesk
Utilities 2.02 (http://www.mijenix.com/download.htm).

What a totally pleasant and enjoyable surprise this program turned out
to be! I fell in love almost instantly and went back online a few short
hours later to purchase the program. We have since gotten one for my
husband's system (NT 4.0) and one for my father's new Windows 95 system.

According to a note on the PowerDesk web page, MicroHelp, Inc.
previously marketed PowerDesk, but Mijenix Corporation, the original
PowerDesk developer, recently reacquired all rights to the product.
PowerDesk Utilities 2.02 is currently only available directly from
Mijenix Corporation. It can be purchased online or by calling
1-800-MIJENIX (1-800-645-3649) or (608) 277-1981. The price was $34.95
until April 1, 1997, and is now $39.95, plus shipping and handling. If
ordered online, you are able to download it immediately. In addition, a
disk with the program and a manual is mailed to you.

The installation of PowerDesk Utilities 2.02 is simple and quick. It
asks where you want to install the program. A shortcut to ExplorerPlus
is installed in both the Start menu and on the desktop. One of the more
interesting aspects of the installation was that when I installed the
evaluation version, I was able to begin using it without a restart.
However the non-evaluation version of the program prompts you to restart
the computer after its installation is completed. I have no idea what is
done that requires a restart, but I obliged it.

ExplorerPlus is the heart of this set of utilities and all other
programs can be launched from within ExplorerPlus. ExplorerPlus does
indeed look and feel like Explorer. But it is also very obvious that
there is more to it when the program is run for the very first time. For
starters, ExplorerPlus has two toolbars and a launchbar in its default
configuration:

The first toolbar contains various one-click functions for ExplorerPlus.
The second toolbar contains drive icons for single click access to any
drive, as well as the icon to go up one folder/directory. The launchbar
contains icons for one click start up of programs from within
ExplorerPlus. It contains icons for the other PowerDesk Utility
programs: PowerDesk Size Manager, PowerDesk File Finder, and PowerDesk
Toolbar. It also has an icon to start up the registry and one for
notepad. You can add virtually any program you want to the launchbar.
You can also modify the icons displayed in the other toolbars within
ExplorerPlus.

Next I explored Options, Preferences for ExplorerPlus. I was more than a
little bit overwhelmed by all the various choices:

I actually left quite a few at their defaults at first since I was not
sure what I wanted to do. I also took a look around at the other menu
choices and discovered several view choices including Single Pane (looks
most like Windows NT Explorer), Dual Pane Horizontal, and Dual Pane
Vertical. Eureka! I finally was able to configure a file management tool
that showed me more than one drive/directory and listing of files at the
same time without having to actually run a second instance of itself. I
was always struggling in Explorer to figure out how to copy or move
files from one place to another. I often use My Computer instead by
opening up each respective folder and then do a copy and paste to make
another copy of the same file or cut and paste to move the file. In
these terms, Norton File Manager is better than My Computer, but
requires another instance of itself to be run, and then mousing around
to get to where you need to be. I also went into Configure launchbar and
set up the ability to launch the NT registry to use the 32bit registry
editor. I have not added any more launchbar icons because I also use the
PowerDesk Toolbar.

ExplorerPlus comes with the ability to create and extract PkZip
compatible archives. However, in order to be able to access this I
discovered that I had to reconfigure ExplorerPlus to associate archive
files, which I had not done during the original installation of the
program. After doing so, I got a new option when I right click on a file
called PowerDesk. This now had an option to add to a zip, zip a file and
unzip a file. When using any of these, the dialogue boxes are very
straightforward and easy to follow. Although I am a long time registered
user of WinZip, I had been using Norton File Manager to do much of my
basic zipping and unzipping and find it equally as easy to do in
ExplorerPlus. It is a convenience I no longer will live without.

After getting ExplorerPlus configured to my satisfaction and making sure
it did all the necessary file management type of things, I went on to
exploring the other utilities that came in PowerDesk Utilities 2.02. I
first checked out the PowerDesk Size Manager. It shows you where and how
the space on each of your drives is being used. You can get information
on the size of each folder, group of folders, and each drive/partition.
It is shown in a very nice graphical display with the ability to modify
what is displayed.

When it is first launched via an icon in launchbar, for example, it does
take it a bit of time to gather all of the information it will be
displaying. It seems to automatically scan each local drive/partition
when it first starts but can also give the same sorts of information for
a network drive.

When displaying the detailed folders within a drive, it lists/displays
the largest one at the top. It can also display the number of files
within each folder, the last time it was accessed and the capacity of a
drive in total. It is truly amazing how much space some of my various
programs take up!


I next took a look at the PowerDesk File Finder. While it is similar to
the file finding ability built into NT 4.0, it provides extra
functionality and ease.

The extras that PowerDesk File Finder has include the following:

  an integrated viewer pane to quickly view the contents of found files

  a customizable toolbar

  ability to print the results of a search

  memory of recently-searched patterns

  ability to easily see how to search multiple drives at once

  memory of recently-searched paths

I have used the PowerDesk File Finder a few times and it works just as
advertised.

Last, but not least, I took a look at the PowerDesk Toolbar. It can
provide one click access to your applications, files and folders. It can
be customized, and you can create multiple tool bars, and use them at
the same time. When I first clicked on the icon in ExplorerPlus to start
the Toolbar, I was presented with the PowerDesk Toolbar set up wizard.
After I answered a few questions and my first toolbar was created. After
creating itself, I could get into the properties for the toolbar and its
various components, and modify it to my preferences.


Some of the features of the toolbar I really like are the following:

  Display of start menus so I can skip a few clicks to launch my
   programs.

  System monitor - I have it configured to show CPU usage. While the NT
   Task Manager can do the same, I have a problem with using Task Manager
   and RAS. I get CRC errors when online if Task Manager is running. I do
   not have this problem with the CPU usage monitoring done in the
   PowerDesk Toolbar.

  Clock - I finally have a clock for NT 4.0 that displays both the
   seconds and the date.

  Quicklaunch - provides one-click access to applications, files and
   folders. It first includes whatever was on your desktop when first
   created by the wizard but this can be modified.

  Print Manager - displays each installed printer as an icon and gives
   quick access to printer resources.

  System Access - provides one-click access to commonly used functions
   including shut down, restart, log on as a different user, and print
   screen.

I now launch the PowerDesk Toolbar on startup. I also was able to remove
the vast majority of the shortcuts that used to be on my desktop. This
makes for a much neater and easier to access desktop.

In addition to everything I have described that comes with the program,
Mijenix has posted on their Web a few additional utility programs that
can be used with PowerDesk Utilities 2.01 (and 2.02).

These include the following:

  AVI Video Player - Requires MS VC Runtime DLL (AVIPLAYR2.ZIP, 27 kb)

  Piano - (PIANO2.ZIP, 33 kb)

  SaveNow Screen Saver Starter: Requires MS VC Runtime DLL
   (SAVENOW2.ZIP, 29)

  Poker Game: Requires MS VC Runtime DLL (POKER2.ZIP 48kb

  Magnifying Glass: - (MAGNIFY2.ZIP, 42 kb)

  Calendar - (CALENDAR2.ZIP, 45 kb)

  KickStart - Requires MS VC Runtime DLL - Allows you to start a program
   and open a selected file (KIKSTART2.ZIP, 33 kb)

  PushPin - Requires MS VC Runtime DLL - Allows to disable/enable
   PowerDesk Toolbar moving and resizing (PUSHPIN2.ZIP, 28 kb)

  Microsoft VC Runtime DLL - Visual C Runtime DLL needed for some
   PowerDesk Tools (AVI Video Player, SaveNow, Poker, Kick-Start and
   PushPin). If you do not have the file MSVCRT40.DLL in your 'SYSTEM'
   directory, you will need to download this file for the mentioned
   PowerDesk Tool to work properly. (VCRNTIME.ZIP, 147 kb)


In conclusion, I strongly suggest you pick of the phone or go to the
Mijenix Web page and buy PowerDesk Utilities 2.02. It has been quite
some time since I have seen so much value packaged in such a seemingly
small utility product.


                    =  =  =  =  =  =  =  = 
Linda Rosenbaum lives and works in a suburb of New York City. She is an
assistant controller at the World Headquarters for a large global
manufacturing company. She has two young children and a husband whose
full time job is to take care of the kids. When not working, Linda can
be found on a variety of online services and the Internet reading and
writing about her experiences with NT, networking, and multimedia. She
maintains a home network of four systems using a combination of NT and
Windows 95. Linda is the NT Editor for WindoWatch and can be reached via
Email at either lindar@cyburban.com or 71154.2622@compuserve.com.



   ww page 18
  Internet Humor: Another Browser Wart                          Anonymous
  

      Retrieved from the Ilink Browser Conference:  With thanks to
                 John Campbell and Christopher Greaves


[cross-posted message]

This is best viewed with Internet Explorer Version 396 or higher.

  WASHINGTON, D.C. (AP) - Senate Majority Leader Ray Noorda (P-Utah)
  today demanded that the Department of Justice order Microsoft and
  Netscape to cease development of new Internet browsers, saying the
  ever-escalating battle for Internet dominance had sapped the American
  economy of its vitality.

  In an impassioned speech before the Perotista-controlled Senate,
  Noorda, once a key figure in the information technology industry,
  claimed American workers and shoppers are so consumed with
  down-loading new browser versions, Netscape plug-ins and Microsoft
  ActiveX Controls that they no longer have time to produce anything of
  value or to consume products. "We have been transformed from a nation
  of thinkers and doers to a nation of downloaders worried about whether
  we are keeping up with the technological Joneses," Noorda said.

  Noorda's comments came only a day after Netscape released Version 407
  of its Navigator browser, which includes the ability to listen to AM
  radio from any laptop. Version 407 had just completed its 37-hour beta
  trial, while versions 408, 409, 410 and 411 are in development.
  Microsoft, which has been criticized of late for slipping behind
  Netscape in the browser race, vowed to deliver Version 405 of its
  Internet Explorer "before the next major religious holiday," though
  company spokesman Jim Manzi declined to specify which religion the
  company was referring to.

  Mark Gibbs, author of IDG Books' bestselling "Deleting Old Browsers
  for Dummies", said the continuing instability in the Internet market
  has virtually halted development of new applications. "How can you
  build to a platform that only lasts 51 days?" asked Gibbs. "The only
  apps being developed now are crossword puzzles and 3-D, rotatable
  crossword applets."

  According to research firm International Data Corp., the average PC
  user now has 62 browsers installed. That has significantly limited the
  usefulness of the desktop machine because each "browser operating
  system/object bucket/API repository" consumes a minimum of 1G bytes of
  storage and requires 256M bytes of RAM to operate (somewhat less if
  the touchscreen option is disabled).

  Intel Corp. recommends the use of at least a 757-MHz Decadium
  processor to support current browsers. "There is no capacity left to
  run any other application," said IDC Chief Executive Officer Bob
  Frankenberg. "Our PCs, in essence, are simply containers for
  browsers."

  In the late 1990's, it was hoped that the browser model of accessing
  information would actually allow for the development of simpler, less
  expensive desktop devices that would rely on applications and data
  housed on Internet servers. But the dream of the so-called Internet
  device died with the release of Internet Explorer Version 231, which
  cracked the 800M byte storage requirement and supported some 257,462
  ActiveX, DirectDraw, VB, DirectX, VisualX++ and InActiveX Controls.

  "It's a shame, really," said former Oracle CEO Lawrence Ellison, who
  was a vocal proponent of the Internet device idea at the time. "We
  could have been freed from the Web of Microsoft control, no pun
  intended. But Bill outmanuevered us again," added "Big Larry" Ellison,
  who now runs the Used Cars 'R' Us operation on the Auto Mile in
  Redwood City, Calif.

  In response to Noorda's call for federal intervention, the Justice
  Department issued an electronic press release available on its Web
  site www.bookem.gov.

  "We firmly believe the free market is the best arbiter of whether
  development should continue on Web browsers and servers."


                    =  =  =  =  =  =  =  = 
From: christopher.greaves@pro-mail.com



   ww page 19
  THE LAST WORD
  


                                Dial-In
                    Copyright 1997 by Ben M. Schorr


"Everybody talks about the weather but nobody ever does anything about it."



Sounds like telecommuting, doesn't it? For as long as I can remember
I've been hearing about this mythical corporate worker; nattily clad in
bathrobe and bunny slippers, clacking away for hour after productive
hour at their keyboard. Faxes and print jobs flying every which way,
phone calls - heck even video conferencing - from the office provides a
glorious din to this `90s business samurai.

"Oh the costs we'll save!" "Oh the reduction in traffic!" "Oh the
increased productivity and time to spend with family!" "Free at last!
Free at last! Thanks, Bill Gates and U.S.R(obotics) I'm free at last!"

But! Before we get too many stanzas into the song, we get slapped in the
face with a little reality. Our firm can't afford ISDN connections to
every home and the connection speeds we enjoy with our 33.6Kbps modems
are usually well below their stated maximums. This has frustrated our
directors - all of whom have seen the Jetsons and know perfectly well
that you can connect from halfway across the country and have your
notebook run with all of the speed and reliability of your LAN.

I do realize that there are some companies out there that are living the
dream; but the reality for most companies is that there are too many
users, too few modems, the connections aren't as reliable as they'd like
and the users complain that it's too slow. So what do we do about this?

The fundamental issue, as I explain to our people, is one of data and
bandwidth (a pipe). You've got X amount of data and you need to get it
to the other end of the pipe. There are two basic ways to improve the
performance: Send less data or use a bigger pipe.

So, we've moved as many applications as possible to the hard drives of
the notebook computers; that much less data to suck down the pipe. We've
tried to implement compression and taken every step we can think of to
make the software more efficient; but we're dealing with software that
was written during the Reagan Administration and wasn't really designed
with remote computing in mind.

So we turn to the pipe... we already have 33.6 modems, but our
connections are so poor that a 26,400 connection is guaranteed to bring
a smile. What can we do? Our newest modems are upgradable to the U.S.
Robotics X2 technology, but frankly our phone lines are so suspect that
we have no confidence of being able to actually make use of X2.

Where that leaves us is looking ahead to new software that will
hopefully be more dial-in friendly while hoping beyond hope that some
solution to our bandwidth bottleneck will appear. Cable modems?
Wireless? X2? Who will save us?

ADSL anyone? The biggest problem with ADSL is that it appears as if
nobody in our little city has ever heard of it. A resounding "Huh?" from
the guy at the phone company is not confidence inspiring when we call to
make sure that the phone system can handle it. The awkward pause our ISP
gives us indicates that they not only don't HAVE any ADSL modems, but if
they did have one they've probably mistaken it for a pencil sharpener
and returned it as defective.

As it stands now, the speed problem is not so onerous that our users
don't use the system. Whenever they're out of town they call in for
e-mail and to check their calendars. Sometimes in the evenings or on
weekends, when they don't feel like driving all the way downtown,
they'll call in to do a little work. But we still haven't seen the days
when people make the decision to sleep in; dial-up the office at 8:30
and telecommute for a couple of hours before their lunch meeting simply
to beat the traffic and spend a little more time with their family.

I guess we can still hope that tomorrow will be a sunnier day for it.


                    =  =  =  =  =  =  =  = 
Ben Schorr has been doing his LASTWORD column for WindoWatch from almost
the inception of the magazine. Ben is the Director of Information
Services at Damon Key Bocken Leong Kupchak in Honolulu, Hawaii. His
office is crowded and messy and his modem is slow, but you can e-mail
him at bms@hawaiilawyer.com anyhow.



   ww page 20
    The WindoWatch Art Gallery
  

                      Herb Chong Goes Sky Gazing?


 Beneath Strange Skies
 Copyright 1997 by Herb Chong

 Reflections of the sky, - light and clouds, on the water.


      Herb's original digital art work, Beneath Strange Skies, is
      available to be viewed in the WindoWatch Art Gallery, and
      downloaded in the Adobe Acrobat edition of WindoWatch,
      available at the WindoWatch home page,
      http://www.windowatch.com/.



   ww 


EDITORIAL

Editor:                        Lois B. Laulicht
Contributing Editor:           Herb Chong
HTML Editor:                   Gregg Hommel
Ascii Edition Editor:          Lin Sprague
NT 4 Editor:                   Linda Rosenbaum
Games Editor:                  Lynn Alford

Contributing Writers:          Stefan Assmann, Vlad Balak, John M.
                               Campbell, Dan Christle, Leonard
                               Grossman, Jon Helis, David Kindle,
                               Jerry Laulicht, Frank McGowan, Peter
                               Neuendorffer, Jack Passarella, Jim
                               Plumb, Ben Schorr, and Paul Williamson


EDITORIAL BOARD                Herb Chong, Gregg Hommel, Lois
                               Laulicht, Paul Williamson.


SUBMISSIONS and REQUESTS

Email:                         editor@windowatch.com
                               lois.laulicht@channel1.com

                               Editor: WindoWatch
                               Valley Head, WV 26294


Submissions remain the intellectual property of the author. Manuscripts
will NOT be returned if not used.

Electronic File Access         All back issues are available fom the
                                 WindoWatch homepage. See Back Issues
                                 or anonymous ftp site at
                               FTP://WindoWatch.com
                               www.shareware.com  - Search under the
                                 "All  Windows" category
                               FTP>Simtel.Net/pub/simtel.net/win95/winwatch
                               FTP>coast.net/Simtel/Vendors.html

Comments, letters, and requests can be sent to editor@windowatch.com

WindoWatch (c) 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997 all rights reserved, is the
property of Lois B. Laulicht and CCC of WV Valley Head, WV 26294

  
  Vol.3 No. 4 ww End

