
  
  





                       W  I  N  D  O  W  A  T  C  H



             The Electronic Windows Magazine of the Internet





  
   February 1997                                           Vol 3   No. 2
  


  page 2
                              WHAT'S INSIDE
   Vol.3  No. 2                                          February  1997
  

                               The Editor's Soapbox   Lois Laulicht
                         Word 97: First Impression!   Jack Passarella
  Microsoft Outlook: The New Universal Email Client   Stefan Assmann
                                   The Browser Wars   Unknown
             Herman Hollerith's Tabulators: Part II   Herb Chong
                      Should You or Should You Not?   Linda Rosenbaum
                              A Call to Take Action   Jon Helis
                   OS/2 Voice Assist: A Brief Look!   John Campbell
                        Building Your Home Computer   Jim Plumb
       Computers as an Educational and Social Force   Frank McGowan
                  The HTML Tutorial Series: Part IV   Gregg Hommel
                       Reflections of a ModemJunkie   Leonard Grossman
                               Design for Web Pages   Lynn Alford
                                             Menace   Daniel Christle
                                            Reload!   The Caffeinated Chef
                                       The LastWord   Ben M. Schorr
                                    The Art Gallery   Herb Chong


  page 3
  WindoWatch              The Electronic Windows Magazine of the Internet
   Volume 3  No. 2                                          Febuary 1997
  


                          The Editor's Soapbox


When the moon is in the seventh house...

Many realize that we have entered the Age of Aquarius and that the sun
and the planets are perfectly aligned, - a portent, they claim, for
profound change!

Those who use the Internet would say that the promise of the Age of
Aquarius is being fulfilled and that change upon change, has already
become reality. What we rarely discuss, or even more rarely contemplate,
is how sweeping the changes will be or how pervasive the impact upon our
daily lives.

The new toys of multimedia, Internet voice, big screens and cheap RAM
provide legitimacy to the persistent mantra of upgrade, upgrade, and
still more, upgrades! My computer has developed a mind of its own. Every
time I run regclean there are inexplicable displays on the monitor of
"no!" in animated and colorful caps. The error messages become almost
human pleas for help and often times a strange voice from the sound
system wails off-tune "Don't lean on me"!

I admit to being weak, unable to resist multimedia advertisements, and
further, confess to enjoying the amusing creations trumpeting IBM and
Sprint. At the very least, a new art form has been born! As a commentary
on our society, collective concerns and interests, there are few
artifacts that do a better job than the daily onslaught touting computer
hardware and software, - on and off the net. Further, when one succumbs,
or caves in from overload, we become a willing party to a unique
shopping experience!

I would think many times before dropping several hundreds of dollars on
a fashion peripheral like a scarf or costume jewelry, but have no
problem grabbing a few more sticks of memory, in case! I admit to giving
up rationality four years ago when I replaced a perfectly adequate 386
just to run Windows NT ver.3.1, an incomplete operating system at best,
and it's been an inexorable downhill slide ever since.

What has inspired this deep and public exploration of self? Intel
released the new MMX chip a few week ago along with the confession that
this would depress the price of lower end CPUs. When I purchased my
Pentium 133MHZ about a year ago for almost $300 I didn't consider it low
end or do I now! I found, to my delight, that my vendor now prices this
item at $155 when I ordered still another. Further, I confess to knowing
more than a few individuals, suffering from the same malady, who have
already installed 256 Meg of RAM. To do that at today's prices requires
an investment of just $158 per 32 MEG of multiple memory chips. An
excellent buy they would say!

Let's leap together into the fantasy of computer marketing c.1997. When
are they going to decide that I need a dual processor motherboard
running a pair of PentiumPros? (I sure hope soon!) Can you imagine a
collective insanity suggesting, even subliminally, that a pair of
PentiumPro 200 at $650 each is even a remote necessity sometime soon?
Does anyone think that business is going to be so foolish? Nah! They're
still running 386 boxes and Windows for WorkGroups!

What makes this exercise of non-directive mind control so remarkable is
that we spend scads of time talking it up, or more precisely helping to
create this demand long before there is any real utility, for
individuals at least. The Internet, ignored by the powerful for a long
time, has become the rationale to spend even more money on electronic
toys and peripherals giving new meaning to the old saw about a fool and
his money. To paraphrase my friend, Stanley, it will become a purr-fect
Internet world when I can really go nuts with the protection of secure
connections for credit card transactions. Make it so... and soon.



   ww page 4
  A Lick with the Promise Coming Soon!
  


                       Word 97: First Impressions
                   copyright 1997 by Jack Passarella



Introduction

My Developer Edition of Microsoft Office 97 arrived in the mail amidst
workplace chaos. Frantic network installations combined with an
assistant's bout of pneumonia almost kept me from sinking my teeth into
two weighty manuals and a whole suite of new applications. Well, to be
honest, in the last two weeks I've only managed to lodge a molar or two
into one of the manuals and one CD. Those developer's tools will have to
wait just a little while longer.

If I'm known for one thing here at WindoWatch, it's probably for my
Microsoft Word articles. Although I'll have a few things to say about
Office in general here and in other articles, this time out my focus
will remain close to Word, specifically its latest incarnation, Word 97.


Beyond the Splash Screen

The first thing you notice about each version upgrade is the new splash
screen. In case you're wondering, this one appears to be smaller, with a
gray-blue and white and a notice that Word 97 is a Microsoft Office
Family Member. Next you notice that Microsoft changed the appearance of
the toolbar buttons and... they added cartoons.

Yes, cartoons. In the wake of Microsoft Bob's descent into obscurity,
Microsoft strikes again, giving you enough Office Assistant toons to
fill a Saturday morning lineup on Fox Television. Actually, there are
nine of them, but I'm sure the third party vendors are ready to crank
out assistant theme packs any day now. And they're all here to help you
work smarter... with maybe a chuckle now and then. Well, I'm sure that's
their design purpose. Depending on your personality and disposition,
your first thought will be either, "Gawd, that's annoying!" or "Gee,
isn't that cute." After witnessing their humorous, event-driven
animations, your next thought -- regardless of personality or
disposition -- will be, "How much of my system resources are these
things using?"


Assistant Gallery

Microsoft Office defaults to loading Clipit, the animated paper clip
assistant. If you want to change Assistants, keep your Office CD handy,
you'll need it in the drive to load any of the others. Once you load
one, it will stay on your hard drive. Other than the paper clip, you can
choose from a dog, a cat, a bouncing red happy face, a Hoverbot, Mother
Earth, Will Shakespeare, Al Einstein or the puzzle-pieces Office logo.
The Office Assistant takes the place of the innocuous but less
power-hungry Tip Wizard `toolbar' that would monitor your work habits
and suggest better ways to get the job done. A light bulb or lightning
bolt icon would appear to alert you to a new Tip Wizard suggestion. All
in all, the Tip Wizard was helpful, but far from entertaining and only
remotely interactive.

The new Office Assistant appears in a small window, its title bar blank
except for the "X" close button. Bug Alert! I just right-clicked on the
Assistant's title bar to Choose Assistant, so that I could review the
gallery and write down what or who each assistant is supposed to be. As
I was clicking on the Next and Previous buttons, my Windows 95 system
locked up, which proves, if nothing else, that Word97 is not bug free.
This was the system killing variety of screen freeze that requires a
poke at the Reset button. No ALT+TAB or CTRL+ALT+DEL to the rescue. Of
course, my attempts to duplicate the bug failed, which makes the bug a
`quirk' I suppose. You can click on the Assistant's title bar to get a
menu of choices, help with the current task or to search for an answer.

The Assistant window has three basic modes: modal, modeless, and
AutoDown Mode. Modal means that you must to react to the window before
you can proceed. Example: replace existing version. Believe me, you're
used to this type of `wait a second' message. The messenger has just
never been Super Dog before. Modeless just sits around, monitoring, now
and then using the old light bulb icon to let you know it has a tip. You
can safely ignore this type. The AutoDown mode offers a
context-sensitive tip on the fly and generally just goes away if you
ignore it.

The best feature of the Assistant is that, if you are a developer of
add-in products for Office, you can program your help system into this
user-friendly alert and help system. You can program the balloon
dialogue text, bullets, list boxes, text boxes, etc. You can even
control the animation. Be warned: there are thirty-four different
animations.


The Real Story?

What's up with these Assistants? My own opinion is that Microsoft's
share of the corporate market for software suites is reaching a
saturation point. Since these humorous Assistants are so out of
character, I have to assume their design is to broaden the appeal of
Office. I expect the Assistants to get prominent exposure on computer
showroom floors and in future Microsoft television ads. Just to get the
attention of the technophobic couch potatoes. Even though Microsoft
Works is sufficient for most home users, I don't expect that to slow
the onslaught of the marketing mavens in Redmond.

I have spoken to about a dozen people regarding the Assistants. The
first instinct of almost all of these folks was to immediately shut them
down. Real Office pros have no use for the frivolous or entertaining in
their workday software. I decided to take a more patient approach. What
do the Assistants really have to offer a new or experienced user? Does
Super Dog earn his weight in dog biscuits?

For most users, the animation will probably grow old quickly, just like
the novelty of a new theme pack for Microsoft Plus. I have to admit I
chuckled the first time I sent a message in Microsoft Outlook and
watched Super Dog fly into the air, dragging a mailbag along with a
startled mailman. I even smiled the first time Einstein (a.k.a., the
Genius) had his cartoon thought bubble turn into hard copy when I sent a
job to the Laser printer. If nothing else, the animations make the work
environment seem less tedious. I just wish there were a way to turn off
the event-driven animations after they had palled. The idle animations
are just plain annoying and belong in video games. I don't need the
distraction of Einstein rocking back and forth on his heels as I'm
typing my email. Microsoft's solution is to offer you the Office logo
Assistant, which is limited to a `spin' animation when it has something
meaningful to tell you. Be warned: the Assistants also come with sounds.
For example, Super Dog barks to get your attention, Einstein writes in
his pad. These, fortunately, you have the ability to turn off.

  Note: you have the option of turning on Office sound effects when you
  install the suite. I said `sure' just for the experience. I must say,
  however that I find all the binks and beeps and bonks that accompany
  such tasks as delete, to be a little intrusive. Again, individual
  tastes will rein.

The tips are on the order of what the old Tip Wizard would have told
you. Yet, I must admit there is a higher level of interactivity here
than anything you would get from the Tip Wizard. You can select from
radio buttons, enter a search question, type in a text box, etc. You
need to be your own judge. If you want the Assistant without the
distraction, choose the Microsoft logo. (This should also be system
friendly for those with less than cutting edge technology on their
desktops.) One caveat: I have noticed the light bulb tips sometimes seem
to have nothing whatsoever to do with my current task. The tips often
seem random in nature and, of course, when I click on them I wonder why
the assistant `interrupted' me in the first place.

If you decide to close the Assistant, you still have access to it by
clicking on the Office Assistant button on the toolbar. The button is to
the far right, a question mark inside a cartoon dialogue box. The F1 key
will serve as well.


Toolbars... uh, Command Bars

I mentioned that Microsoft tinkered with your toolbars. This probably
has something to do with visual ergonomics, but don't quote me on that.
The buttons are now flat by default. They respond to what's known in the
programming business as a MouseOver event by protruding, as if they were
magnetically attracted to the mouse cursor overhead. When you click on
the button, the button depresses. It's a new look, but definitely not
worth the price of admission. Another feature mimics the Internet
Explorer toolbar: double vertical bars can be clicked-and-dragged to
slide the toolbar around.

But wait, Microsoft didn't stop there. If you do a Tools, Customize, you
have the option of animating your menus. Your choices are Unfold, Slide,
Random or none, which is the default. The slide animation mimics what
Microsoft introduced in Encarta 96. The menu slides down from the menu
heading, like window blinds dropping. Unfold is rather bizarre: you see
the left edge of the menu options first, then the remainder of the drop
down menu seems to untwist itself. I have mine currently set for slide,
because I like the effect. However, slower systems are probably better
off foregoing this particular bell and whistle.

Note: the toolbars and menus are part of a combined object now known as
a Command Bar. Go figure.

The top-level menu choices haven't changed, but their contents have.
AutoText and Page Numbers are now on the Insert menu where they belong.
Under the View menu, you have a few more choices. In addition to Normal,
Page Layout and Outline, you now have Outline Layout and Master Document
views. The subtleties of these escape me for now. Templates has moved to
the Tools menu, and is now called Templates and Add-Ins.

I have always turned off the rulers, finding them to be largely
unnecessary and generally screen-cramping. I still have them turned
off, but they have a unique feature, which reminds me of the AutoHide
setting of the Windows 95/NT 4 taskbar. When your cursor nears the edge
of the screen the rulers slide (no pun intended) into view. To get the
full effect, leave the View Ruler option unchecked, but in Tools
Options, click on the vertical ruler checkbox.

You can now enter a "comment" from the Insert menu. This appears to be a
souped up version of an annotation. The menu item icon looks like one of
those sticky, yellow Post-It notes we all have plastered around our
desks. Selecting Comment from the menu brings up the annotation window.
But after you enter text and close the window, the cursor position is
colored yellow. When you move the mouse cursor over the yellow spot, the
text of the comment pops up like a ToolTip. (Note: Excel for Windows 95
added this pop-up feature for Notes, except the note `notation' in the
cell is a tiny small square.) This is in the user-friendly category and
beats double-clicking to view an annotation in a separate annotation
pane.

Speaking of toolbars or Command Bars, the Microsoft Office toolbar has
apparently been demoted. It is not even installed in the `Typical'
installation. You have to go hunting for it under `Custom.' If you do
install it, it will load automatically in the StartUp group, but how's
this for low self-esteem: Whenever you close the Office toolbar, it asks
if you want to remove it from the StartUp group.


A Worthy Addition: Document Map

Under that self-same View menu, is a new choice: Document Map. This is a
handy way to view your document. It manifests as a left vertical pane or
frame, if you're used to the HTML world. It presents an outline of your
current document.

Like Outline View, you can set the level of Headings that you see. The
gee-whiz factor is that you can click on any of these milestone markers
and instantly hop to that point in your document. For those of you with
older systems, you can view the Document Map in Normal View as well. You
can adjust the width of the pane with the mouse, and scroll along it
when the summary becomes longer than the screen display.

One `bug' manifested. My custom Heading 3 styles fell lower in the
outline hierarchy than some `normal' paragraphs. I haven't puzzled this
out yet. I was able to correct it by selecting the offending paragraphs
and reapplying the normal style. It seems like this feature needs some
sort of refresh option.

Yet Another: WYSIWYG Style List Drop-Down If you are used to selecting
styles from the Style List Drop-Down box, you are in for a pleasant
surprised. Previously, the only additional information you received from
that drop-down list was a symbol to distinguish a character style from a
paragraph style. Now you actually get a WYSIWYG representation of what
each style looks like. Not only do you see the actual font and
characteristics such as bold, italics, underline and color, you get a
small icon showing the alignment and point size. Now this is the good
stuff, all you Word stylists out there.


And a Missed Trick: Font Drop-Down List

You're probably thinking: "Microsoft probably took this opportunity to
make the Font drop-down list box display WYSIWYG fonts." Sadly, you
would be wrong. My educated guess is that displaying all the installed
fonts would cause a performance black hole. When you use the Style
drop-down, it is responsive, almost instantaneous. However, if you hold
the SHIFT key as you click on the Style list, there is a noticeable
pause as all the available styles are generated in WYSIWYG format.
Extend that reasoning to a system with several hundred fonts and you
probably have a scenario where the average user assumes his system is
locked up and reboots the machine. Still, Microsoft could have given us
an option, maybe a dialogue box to select a couple dozen of our commonly
used fonts to discourage us from twisting the system into knots.


Avery Wizard

Office lets you install the Avery label wizard into your applications,
but on both my Windows 95 home system and Windows NT 4 work system, the
installation bombed near the end. The Avery icon did show up under the
Tools and Help menus, as well as on the standard toolbar, so it doesn't
appear to have hindered the actual Wizard -- other than turning Super Dog
temporarily purple -- but I haven't tinkered with that particular tool
enough to vouch for it.


A Colorful Background

You now have the dubious ability to change the background color of your
Word window. I experimented with a nauseating green and promptly
switched back to plain old white. I suspect this feature has something
to do with support for web documents.


Let Me Summarize for You

Word now boasts the ability to AutoSummarize your words of art. I was
skeptical at first and remain so. I elected to have it summarize this
article and place the summary in a new document. What Word seems to do
is grab every heading along with a sentence or two from the text between
the headings. I chalk this one up to marketing smoke and mirrors. Your
satisfaction may vary.


Tables on the Drawing Board

One of the new features, which promise to be useful, is the table
drawing ability. You can draw rows and columns in a table with a little
pencil. You can erase lines with a little blackboard-style eraser. I
proved a little ham-handed with the eraser, more so than with the
pencil, but a little practice should take care of that. For those of you
who have trouble drawing straight lines, don't worry: Word extends
straight lines in the general direction of your mouse movement.

Finally, Word lets you align text vertically in table cells. You can
also rotate text in 90-degree increments. The table toolbar also comes
with an AutoSum button, similar to the function that has been available
to Excel users for years. All of this amounts to a big improvement in
creating tables in Word.


What the HTML is My Hard Drive Doing?

I had read the hype about Office being Internet-aware and
web-compatible. And I noticed right away the Insert Hyperlink button on
my Standard Toolbar. While I haven't had a chance to create/edit an HTML
document in Word, I did load two of my web pages just to take a look
around the new file format support.

I made the mistake of loading my longer web page first. It's about
fourteen pages long and has about 100KB of graphics, maximum. This was
on my Pentium Pro 180 with 32MB of RAM. I waited over five minutes while
the document loaded into Word. The shorter page loaded in a little over
two minutes. This is intolerably, inexcusably slow on that type of
system. I had a frightening flashback to my 486SX days. But I'm better
now.

The good news? Word displayed my background GIF, as well as the graphics
and table. It even recognized the transparent property of the GIFs. It
does not display animated GIFs, however. Also, you can switch to what
amounts to a View (and Edit) Document Source window, but this took a
long time to switch between.

Bottom Line? While I would give the display of HTML a B+, the load time
was so bad I can't consider Word as my primary HTML editor. I gave up
any thoughts of using Word as my Outlook email editor because of the
sluggish load time. But the HTML loads make the email window appear
downright snappy in comparison.


Word Art and Office Art

Along with HTML WYSIWYG support, Word Art (Insert, Picture, WordArt)
sports a major quality upgrade. I suspect this improvement was designed
to work along with web page design, to produce graphics and impressive
3D logos. While, I may not use Word as my HTML editor, I know I will
take advantage of the new art tools. More on these in future articles.


Grammatically Yours

Okay, I can't avoid this any longer. Another gee-whiz feature in Word 97
is the on-the-fly grammar checker. You might recall that Word for
Windows 95 introduced the wonderful on-the-fly spell checker: a wavy red
line appears under your typos, misspellings and double words. If you
take care of these as sprout up like unsightly weeds, you virtually
eliminate the need for an end of document spell checker.

Well, hot on the heels of that innovation, comes the on-the-fly wavy
green line grammar checker. How is it? Well, not as revolutionary as the
spell checker, that's for sure. Everyone can agree on proper spellings.
But grammar -- especially in the world of creative writing -- is subject
to vast interpretations. As a rule, I loathe grammar checkers. Granted,
Word offers you the ability to customize what rules get checked, but
I've never met a grammar checker I really liked. Haven't we all seen how
grammar checkers reduce the most inspiring speeches in human history to
what amounts to corporate bland-speak? Sure I've intentionally made
style choices most grammar checkers and English teachers would
disapprove of, but I've also let a real flub or two unintentionally pass
by because of my intransigence in this area. Make no mistake about it:
the grammar checker misses a few flubs of its own. For instance, the use
of its versus it's was incorrectly flagged.

From that intractable position, I've decided to leave the wavy green
line grammar police on the payroll for a little while longer. Even in
this article, a couple of subject-verb disagreements flared up. Here and
there a mislaid comma was apprehended.


File Format Advisory

Be warned that Word's file format has changed to accommodate HTML and
embedded hyperlinks. Although you can save in Word 6/95 format, the
documents -- by intention or design? -- are saved in RTF (i.e., rich
text format) with a DOC extension. This is bound to create havoc in
mixed Word environment workplaces. You can install converters on the
older versions of Word to read Word97 format, but I haven't tried this
yet so be wary.


Free-Wheeling Documents

If you purchase the version of Office that comes with the IntelliMouse
or purchase the mouse (this is the one with the little gray wheel
between the two buttons) separately, you will be able to scroll through
your document with ease. All Office applications support the wheel, as
does Internet Explorer 3, Windows 95 Explorer and Windows NT 4 Explorer.
I have the `rolled' wheel set to scroll in three line increments and the
`clicked' wheel set to simulate a double-click, which appears thus far
to be an ergonomic boon. It may also be the best solution for anyone who
has trouble setting a double-click speed they can live with.

By using the wheel-button as a double-click alternative, I lose the
ability to have CTRL+wheel-click zoom my document view. But I find the
need to double-click far greater than my need to zoom my document.
Score: Ergonomics 1, Gee-whiz Feature 0. You might think that rolling
the wheel versus clicking it would present a sensitivity problem. But I
find the pressure needed for roll increments as opposed to that required
for a regular wheel-click to be easily distinguishable.

I have noticed certain Word 97 dialogue boxes with scroll bars
completely ignore the wheel's scroll function. Once you get comfortable
with using the wheel to scroll through documents, folder contents and
web pages, it is slightly jarring when it doesn't work. So much for
Office's complete compliance with the wheel standard...

I have noticed a slight difference in the aesthetics of the wheel's
scrolling feature between the various Office applications. In Word and
the various versions of Explorer, the scrolling motion is best described
as jerky or digital, whereas in Outlook, the motion is smooth, a gliding
scroll more analog in nature. Of course, the folks who brought us
Outlook also invented their own new-fangled, oversized vertical Command
Bar.


A Model Object

Finally, and of significant interest for Word developers, WordBasic has
finally been replaced by Visual Basic for Applications, version 5 if
you're counting. Old WordBasic macros are pseudo-converted, but the more
flamboyant variety will probably implode on impact. WordBasic becomes
just another property in the grand VBA scheme of things. Even if old
macros work as converted, they aren't optimized and should probably be
translated into VBA5. You can continue to use WordBasic in its new VBA
property sense, but secretly you'll know that your macros would work
better in the new native tongue. Microsoft also notes that WordBasic
will not be improved one iota to accommodate any new commands. It's a
programming language stuck in time.

The WordBasic programmer has to reconcile himself to the idea that
macros can now be stored in documents or templates, that macro text
itself can't be hidden from view or editing, but that an entire
programming `project' can. Finally, I find it somewhat amusing and
slightly disheartening that every comparison between WordBasic and VBA
macros shows that the VBA macros to be considerably more obese. (Is this
an indication how each version of Office seems to be more bloated than
the last?)

Look at these examples from Appendix B of the Microsoft Office 97 Visual
Basic Programmer's Guide on the WordBasic versus VBA equivalents for the
bold statement/function:

         WordBasic      Visual Basic for Applications
         ---------      -----------------------------
         Bold 1         Selection.Font.Bold = True
         Bold 0         Selection.Font.Bold = False
         Bold           Selection.Font.Bold = wdToggle
         X = Bold()     x = Selection.Font.Bold

I'm sure you'll agree that WordBasic is a trifle more concise.


To quote the text "The object model in Word 97 is extensive,
encompassing approximately 180 objects." Though it is daunting at first,
you will find a graphical representation of the Word object model in the
help system to ease your understanding. Note: VBA help is not installed
in a Typical installation.

Converting Word to a model VBA citizen was necessary to truly integrate
the entire Office suite. Finally, each application uses the same
programming language. Creating a macro or a form -- the decrepit old
Dialog Editor is history! -- launches the VBA5 IDE (i.e., integrated
development environment) in a separate window. Microsoft avows that this
separate application `environment' shares memory space and resources
with the Office application that launched it. I remain skeptical.

If you have only worked with WordBasic macros, the IDE window system is
rather intimidating. I suspect the first time it rears its
multi-windowed head on a new user's system will be the last. If you were
leery of WordBasic macros, the VBA IDE will have you checking under the
bed twice as frequently. You can, however, continue to record macros.
This is, unfortunately, just as inefficient as it ever was. Who knows?
That might even be comforting.

There are some benefits to the whole VBA IDE. If you used the old Excel
VBA, you no doubt witnessed the syntax checking, color coding, etc.,
that was sorely missing in WordBasic. You get all that and more.
Microsoft extends AutoCompletion to the macro language. And after you
enter the dot separator in the new commands, all the available methods,
properties, etc. pop up for easy selection. That should help cut down on
the amount of typing needed to apply bold to your text. For the
recovering WordBasic programmer, Word Help does provide a conversion
chart, something akin to a Spanish-English/English-Spanish dictionary.

I must admit I'm excited about the possibilities of creating engaging
dialog boxes with the new Forms feature, which allows for the inclusion
of ActiveX controls. Since I have been reading up on VBScript, which
also makes use of ActiveX controls, the pieces seem to be falling into
place. Much like that Microsoft Office puzzle logo. But more on the new
macro language and forms in future articles.


Conclusion

That's the surface of what you can expect from Word 97. There are indeed
some major changes to the program. Some of the most hyped developments
will probably turn out to be the least appreciated; while improvements
the Microsoft marketing machine gave short shrift to will pay for
themselves day after day. My worst experience in an admittedly short
period of time has to be the painfully slow HTML loads. On the other
hand, the Document Map is a pleasant surprise; as is the WYSIWYG style
drop-down list and the three- dimensional Word Art.

I certainly feel that Word 97 is worth the street upgrade price of $79.
Performance seemed not much better or worse than the previous version on
my home Pentium 75 with 24MB RAM or my office Pentium Pro with 32MB RAM.
(Unlike Outlook, which appears more sluggish than the Exchange client it
replaces -- and surpasses, at least in terms of functionality.) Whether
the entire Office suite is worth the combined upgrade price is another
question. WindoWatch plans to tackle that very question in a separate
article. Based upon what I've experienced so far, each individual
application, and so the one most critical to you, will probably warrant
the price. So you need to decide how many pieces of Office are critical
to you.


                          =========

Jack was asked to do a first impressions piece of Word 97 and he did so
with a thoroughness we have learned to expect from him. As most of you
already know, Jack Passarella does Word with skill and wit. He is
employed by a commercial printing establishment and is a contributing
WindoWatch writer.


   ww page 5
  New from Office 97                                A WindoWatch Feature!
  


          Microsoft Outlook: The New Universal E-mail Client?
                    Copyright 1997 by Stefan Assmann



With the release of Office 97, Microsoft not only updated its key
programs, Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Access, but also introduced a new
component to the suite, called Outlook. Outlook is a PIM or Personal
Information Manager. With this program, you can maintain a contact list,
read / write / send / receive e-mail from a variety of sources (provided
the proper service has been installed), make quick notes, schedule your
appointments, maintain a task list and, finally, maintain a journal of
all your activities.

Outlook is such a daunting program, that one article will simply not
suffice to describe all the possibilities (and caveats!) of it.
Therefore, I'll make a series of it. This first part will discuss the
e-mail part of the program in detail, focusing on the Internet Mail
service.

After having installed either Office 97 or Exchange Server 5.0, you're
ready to begin. From the start menu, select Programs / Microsoft
Outlook. You'll be greeted with a screen similar to the following:[**]


We'll skip the description of the brand new interface for now, as this
is a common feature of the entire Office 97 suite and will be described
later. On the left-hand side, you'll notice a vertical icon bar. If you
press an icon, the screen on the right-hand side and the top toolbar
change accordingly. Right now, I'm in e-mail mode, the mode we're going
to discuss here.

E-mailing in Outlook should be very straightforward and easy, according
to the manual. Just press the compose button, the left-most one on the
toolbar, and you're ready to go. You can use colors and various font
attributes like type, size, bold, italic and such. When finished, press
the send button and the message will be sent.

Sounds easy, doesn't it? Almost too easy. Whenever something sounds too
easy, I get suspicious. And for good reason in this case. You may write
and send all you like, but when not properly configured, your messages
will never get away, as our dear NT editor found out to her dismay.

What the manual doesn't tell you, is that you have to configure the
e-mail component before you can do anything with it. This is a two step
process:

   install the proper service
   configure it

Let's take this one step at a time, shall we?


You may wonder what a service is. A service is a piece of software that
plugs into Outlook and enables you to connect to some e-mail system, be
it the Internet, Lotus Notes, CompuServe, MSN or AOL. Outlook comes with
a few services, but you'll have to integrate them with Outlook first.
Here's how:

   open the tools menu
   select services

The following dialog box will appear:[**]


Here all the installed services are listed. In this case, I have
installed Microsoft Fax, Exchange Server and Internet Mail. To add a
service, just press the add button and a list of available services will
appear. Just select the one you want, wait a few seconds and the service
will be added (you might be asked to provide the CD-ROM). If you can't
find the service you want, you might have a look on the CD-ROM with the
browse option. Also, if you install some kind of e-mail service, be sure
to install the personal address book and personal folders items as well,
otherwise you won't be able to do very much. Luckily, these are
installed by default.

After having installed the required service(s), it's configuration time!
From the displayed list, double-click the service you want to configure
and press the properties button. A dialog box will come up with the
appropriate options for the particular service. Let's configure the
Internet mail service as an example: if the service has been added,
double-click it to display its properties page, otherwise add it and
then double-click it.

As you'll see in the following, the configuration is very
straight-forward. The only problem that might arise is which server to
put into the Internet mail server box if your ISP operates with two
separate mail hosts like mine. Well, it's very simple.

In this box, you'll have to put the name of the POP3 host, i.e. the name
of the server you send your mail to. Of course, sending mail is only
half the fun, being able to receive mail would be nice too, no? I
thought so. Unfortunately, Microsoft didn't make this very clear. But do
not despair! Reading the help files (Does anyone else read those but
me?) provides the answer: just press the advanced button and enter the
name of your SMTP server there.

At this point you'll have to choose whether to work off-line or on-line.
If you're connected to the Internet via a dedicated line, you can press
OK now, and exit and restart Outlook. If, however, you're connected to
your ISP via DUN (dial-up networking), you will change Outlook's default
behavior of connecting to your ISP each time the program is started
(unless you're as rich as dear Bill). To do this, simply select the
connection tab and set the necessary options there. Press OK a few times
to come back to the Outlook opening screen and exit and restart Outlook.
You're now ready to e-mail me your reactions to this article!

Before we try this however, I still have a few points to make. Tips &
Tricks, if you'd like to call it that. Here we go:

If you want to transport your e-mail and address book to another
computer, there's nothing simpler. All Outlook information is kept in
two files: the first has a PAB extension (stands for personal address
book), the second has a PST extension.

Be sure to compress your data once in a while. Whenever you do anything
in Outlook, the PST file will get larger. To reduce it in size, select
the tools menu, go to services / personal folders, select its properties
and select compact.

If you have multiple e-mail addresses, you can use them all with
Outlook. When you start Outlook, it'll ask you which profile you wish to
use. To implement this, you'll have to create a profile for each e-mail
address. A profile is the combination of services saved under a certain
name. You can add as many profiles as you wish, and each profile can
contain any number of services. To create another profile, do the
following:

Go to control panel and select mail and fax (win 95) or mail (NT) The
default profile will be shown with the services it contains.

Push show profiles. You'll see a dialog box with the name of your
profile (probably default Outlook or something similar).

Knowing you, you'll probably want to select add and configure everything
over again. As I'm kind of lazy, I do it differently. Just select copy
and select the name for the new profile. A new profile will be created
with most of the services already configured. All you have to do now is
to change a few options in the Internet mail connector and your profile
is ready to be used.

You can use Word in combination with Outlook to have the almost perfect
e-mail editor - an expensive one at that! Just be sure to have the
WordMail option installed when installing Office 97, using the custom
installation for this. This option requires the ultimate in hardware,
however, unless you like to become a caffeine addict in record time.

So, you like what you see and want to go using this beauty right away?
Can't blame you, but be prepared for the following:

Outlook, like Office 97, requires moderately hefty hardware. Microsoft
may try to let you believe that a fast 486 with 16MB will let you run
Office, but the company doesn't tell you how it will run, does it? Well,
one word: Slow! Users of Office 97 should have a fast Pentium and loads
of RAM, the more the better. 32MB is a good starting point, but Outlook
will still run like a dog, especially when using WordMail (see above).
The e-mail component described above still leaves much to be desired.
Here's the rundown:

Having to exit and restart Outlook just to get your mail for your other
addresses is bothersome to say the least.

Rule-based mail filtering, both incoming and outgoing, is only an option
when you're connected to an Exchange server. However, Microsoft is
reportedly working on a wizard for standalone users as well. Check the
Office homepages for this.

Most extensions written for exchange (a.k.a. windows messaging) won't
work under Outlook. Fine examples of this are the extensions Deming
provides, most notably its preview add-on. Deming is working on an
extension compatible with Outlook.

Outlook is still full of bugs. The nasty ones may have been ironed out,
but the other ones remain. One example: when using WordMail, you can use
everything Word provides, as long as you don't want to change the color
of selected text.

In later installments, I'll talk about the other nice things you can do
with this nifty program, answer questions that may have come up, and
show you a few other neat tricks. I'll be back!


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


                          =========

Stefan Assmann although new to WindoWatch, is not new to the World of
Windows. He regularly beta tests a range of Windows applications. By
profession he is the Chief Accountant at Burgmann BVBA, a Belgian
subsidiary of a German based multi-national making all kinds of seals
for the industry. A visit to his homepage will show you some of what
this chap is about http://www.stefan95.net


   ww page 6
  Browser Wars!              A Cross-Post to the Ilink Browser Conference
  


              Offered to the group by CHRISTOPHER GREAVES



    "This statement 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 downloading 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 sixty-two 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
touch screen 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 outmaneuvered 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."



   ww page 7
  The Hollerith Legacy
  


                 Herman Hollerith's Tabulators: Part 2
                      Copyright 1997 by Herb Chong


Herman Hollerith was a successful and wealthy man in the 1890's. He had
just finished an astounding job completing the 1890 census in America
and, despite underhanded opposition in Austria, completed their census
and the Canadian and Norwegian ones too. No country with pretensions to
having a modern census could hope to complete it in a timely manner
without the help of Hollerith's tabulators.

Even so, Hollerith was smart enough to know that there was only so much
to be made doing census machines for governments. He had to begin
selling to business too. He would, however, find that selling to private
enterprise to be much more complicated than selling to governments. Rail
barons and census wars, these two things would occupy much of the rest
of Hollerith's life.

By the middle of the decade, America was going through a deep
depression. Money was tight everywhere, and Hollerith wasn't getting as
much business as he wanted. There was going to be a time in the not too
distant future where Hollerith's company would be in trouble if he
didn't find another source of income. He turned to the railroads.
Hollerith's machines had continued to evolve in the years after the
census. Typical census questions were ones that had yes or no answers.
He adapted some of his machines to track numbers and do sums so that he
could complete a census of American agriculture. Many parts were
electric, but there were still mechanical parts and sometimes fussy in
their operation. Hollerith had to convince American businesses in
general and railroads in particular that they needed his machines to do
business.

The 1880's and 1890's were the years of the rail barons. The railroads
of the time were huge companies and through them channeled the lifeblood
of one of the most vigorous nations on the planet. The larger companies
had thousands of cars and engines and hundreds of stations. Millions of
people traveled by rail each year, yet all of the paperwork to record
and track everything was sorted and managed by hand. Those in charge had
virtually no idea of what happened in their companies, how much money
was owed, or even if their company was still solvent, for weeks after
something changed. Like many businesses, however, the owners and
managers had always done business this way and were strongly opposed to
change. Hollerith learned enough about how railroads did their
accounting to believe that he had a better way. He was unable to
convince any of them at first.

Hollerith had to change his methods before he could take on the job of
handling railroad accounting. The most important change he made to his
system was how a punched card looked. The new card was exactly the size
of the paper money in use at the time, exactly 6 5/8 by 3 inches. The
punches were arranged in vertical columns across the width of the card.
There were eighty columns of twelve rows. Printed on the cards were the
numbers that corresponded to each row position. There were lines up and
down the card for each group of columns as required by the users. Thus
it took little training for a human to read the card directly. His
tabulators could be set up to accumulate totals from one set of columns,
compare data from one field to another, and do some conditional
processing to decide what fields to sum from. This form of the punched
card has existed to the present day. Although few people now used
punched cards for their intended purpose, many people still find the
cards extremely useful because they fit in a man's shirt pocket and
allow one to take notes with them.

Hollerith had difficulties with his first attempts to get railroads to
use his tabulators. The first attempt, with Richmond and Danville,
failed utterly. They wouldn't even consider using his machines. He tried
next with the New York Central and the Pennsylvania, offering the use of
his machines to prove that they could do the job before they had to pay.
The New York Central was the first to agree and Hollerith couldn't
afford to run two such jobs at once, so he worked with them. It failed
miserably. Hollerith was perhaps distracted by his efforts to help with
the Russian Czarist census in Europe, but nonetheless, the machines and
Hollerith were tossed out after three months.

Hollerith was both stubborn and desperate. Even though he was nearly out
of money, he redesigned his tabulators to be more electrified. Some
included improvements were the use of magnetic detectors instead of
mercury and dedicated adding machines for each field on a card. He
managed to talk Central to run another test, entirely at his own
expense. He would run the machines for one year free of charge. At the
end of one year, if Central was still dissatisfied, he would remove his
machines. They could place an order any time they were satisfied with
their performance. To finance this experiment, Hollerith sold most of
his belongings, laid of almost all of his workers, and borrowed money
from his mother-in-law.

What saved Hollerith's bacon during this trying time came in the form of
an unlikely group called the Library Bureau. It was formed by the
American Library Association to provide supplies and consulting services
to libraries to improve their services. The deal was that the Bureau
would pay for some new machines and royalties provided that they
marketed, operated and maintained them for their customers, some of whom
were not libraries. They became the first computer service bureau. One
of the Bureau's first customers was the Traveler's Insurance Company.
That deal, along with a request for machines from the French government
to help their census created the income to kept Hollerith's company
afloat.

New York Central was quick to recognize how valuable Hollerith's
machines were to their business. In August of 1896, they struck a deal
with Hollerith to rent his machines for $5,000 per month. Hollerith
agreed to maintain and supply the machines and, through the Library
Bureau, supply the peripherals to handle the punched cards. They also
agreed to buy new cards from Hollerith. However, the other railroads
remained unconvinced. They were still not interested in using his
machines for their record-keeping. It would take a few years before they
would see the error of their ways.

Hollerith was saved from financial disaster by this arrangement, but was
not out of the woods yet. His family had grown and he needed additional
backing to keep his business running. In December, 1896, he incorporated
in the state of New Jersey under the name of The Tabulating Machine
Company, the world's first computer company.

Friends and acquaintances bought stock in the newly formed company and
although Hollerith wasn't the CEO, he was the majority shareholder.
Within six months after the date of incorporation, the company paid of
its debts and issued a dividend. It also terminated its contract with
Library Bureau. The company was going to strike out on its own.

By this time, it was necessary to prepare for the next census in 1900.
The new head of census, William Merriam, could not give the job to
Hollerith outright, but he did arrange for Hollerith to compete against
the old chips system that was second best in the 1890 census competition.
The chips had no chance. With contract in hand, the Tabulating Machine
Company contracted to Taft-Pierce to build the parts for the machines.
During this time several improvements were made to them. For the first
time, a typewriter keyboard was used to activate the hole punches.
Automatic feeders, sorters, and counters were added to the stable of
machines. With this hardware, the 1900 census was completed with a far
more complex set of questions with due dispatch.

Just after the census work was completed, the Tabulating Machine Company
bought Taft-Pierce to ensure reliable parts manufacturing and delivery.
Hollerith also set up an experimental accounting system for Taft-Pierce
to prove that his machines could handle the burden of automatic
accounting processing. Two other companies who adopted Hollerith's
tabulators soon after 1900 were Pennsylvania Steel and Marshall Field.
Slowly, new customers were convinced of how automated auditing and
accounting methods could improve their businesses, but there was no rush
to embrace the new technology.

It was about this time that the railroads had their comeuppance. In
1902, the Interstate Commerce Commission ordered the railroads to
provide more information than ever about how their businesses operated.
The railroads were nearly unanimous in their protests. It was impossible
to supply the information and have time to run a business, they said.
The lone exception was New York Central. No problem, he said with a
smile; we'll have the numbers. The other railroads were outraged and
terrified. It was clear that New York Central knew a lot more about
their business than they did about their own. In one fell swoop, it
became impossible to operate a railroad in America without using
Hollerith's tabulators. Almost overnight, the Tabulating Machine Company
acquired more business than it could keep up with from companies who,
less than a decade ago, saw no need to change how they kept track of
their business. Just at this moment of success, though, there was
trouble brewing in the wings.

Simon North had just been appointed superintendent of the 1910 census
and he was distinctly unhappy with having the Tabulating Machine Company
as the sole provider of equipment for the census. Although he signed a
contract with the Tabulating Machine Company, he believed that Hollerith
was overcharging and that the previously well-publicized savings was
just propaganda. The timing couldn't have been worse for Hollerith.
Although he was scrupulously honest about all his business dealings,
there was much popular sentiment at the time of how big business was
strangling the country and doing essentially as they pleased while the
common people suffered. Hollerith's company was a monopoly, even though
fairly run. Simon publicly criticized the way the Tabulating Machine
Company's contracts and garnered much popular support for his cause.
This would eventually prove Hollerith's undoing. He became obsessed with
these charges and with proving North wrong. North, on the other hand,
was convinced that the government was being cheated.

The 1910 census was to be the battleground for these two stubborn men.
The first skirmish in the war was a counterproposal authored by North to
process the census data for far less than Hollerith was asking. He also
hinted that he was strongly considering using other equipment to do the
processing if Hollerith didn't agree. The Tabulating Machine Company's
board agreed to enter negotiations for a new price. Hollerith was
extremely depressed by this and even considered moving back to Germany
from where his parents had emigrated.

North won a renegotiated interim contract. The second skirmish came with
the announcement that the Census Bureau itself began funding a research
effort to build its own census machines. Hollerith's original tabulating
machine patents would expire in 1906 and the Bureau was free to copy
those designs after then. On July 1, 1905, North threw out all the
Tabulating Machine Company's hardware. Hollerith was furious.

By this time, the Tabulating Machine Company had no need of the Census
business except for prestige. Business was booming after the railroads
started using Hollerith's tabulators and almost every major company
wanted to rent his machines. Even the stock market panic of 1907 failed
to make an appreciable dent in his business. Indeed, Hollerith was
unable to keep up with demand most of the time.

However, Hollerith was obsessed with the census contract and was willing
to go to extraordinary lengths to get it. He called in every political
IOU he was owed and even went to the White House to have North's
research project canceled. He failed.

North, in the meantime, was making some progress. His machines were not
as fast or as efficient as Hollerith's, but they worked. Some of North's
employees included disgruntled former employees of the Tabulating
Machine Company and some who had a personal dislike for Hollerith.
North, in essence, was trying to circumvent enough of Hollerith's
patents to build a competing machine. His engineers made good progress
despite the legal handicaps. One innovation that Hollerith never made
was the attachment of a printer to a tabulator so that results could be
printed when ready. Enter a mysterious Russian with the decidedly
un-Russian name of James Powers.

Powers had worked around the New York area for various electrical firms
before joining the Census Bureau. Whatever his background, he clearly
was a good engineer and inventor. He starting working in North's machine
shop and in short order, designed and built an electric keypunch that
looked like a giant electric typewriter. It was clearly better than
anything Hollerith had and he had to respond. Hollerith went to see his
lawyers about patent infringement, but unfortunately, the law did not
provide for the case of the government infringing someone's patents.
Hollerith lobbied to get the law changed.

Congress actually passed a law that allowed for the government to be
liable for patent infringement, but President Theodore Roosevelt vetoed
it. The law provided for the court of claims to settle the matter.
Hollerith protested the veto to Roosevelt, who passed the letter to his
Commerce Secretary. Since North worked for the Commerce Secretary,
Hollerith's letter was ignored. North started building Power's machines.
In 1909, a new Commerce Secretary came into office and he was not sure
that North was doing the right thing. Hollerith wanted North's head and
started a letter writing campaign to ask for it. In May, he got it.
North was replaced by Edward Durand. Hollerith celebrated the occasion,
but it was to prove to be premature.

Durand immediately ordered a series of machines based on Power's designs
from a company named Sloan & Chase. He also announced that the Census
Bureau would modify some of the few machines Hollerith actually sold for
the new census and claim they were new machines. This was illegal as it
amounted to stealing the machines and claiming they were different.
Hollerith threatened to sue. This led to a meeting between Durand and
Hollerith's lawyer where Durand described some of the modifications he
was making to the machines. The description of the changes were sent to
a leading patent attorney where he decided that the machines did violate
Hollerith's patents. Durand did not agree.

Tabulating Machine vs. Durand went to trial in 1909 before a judge
without a jury. He ruled that the government had right to use the
machines and that the alterations did not violate Hollerith's still
active patents. Tabulating Machines appealed and won a month later, but
it was too late. The Census Bureau had already begun preparations for
the 1910 census and could not change hardware in midstream. The Powers
machines were delivered late, ran slowly. They were unable to perform as
well as Hollerith's machines ten years ago and proved that Hollerith was
right, only his machines could do a proper job of the census.

By 1910, Hollerith was a man in his fifties and suffering from a bad
heart. His doctors told him that he had to slow down. At this time, a
man named Charles Flint entered his life. Flint was a man who
specialized in consolidating businesses with similar markets and
building more efficient and powerful companies by merging them. In 1900,
he had formed a company called International Time Recording Company of
Binghamton, New York, specializing in manufacturing time clocks for
workers. The firm was dominating the industry by 1911. In 1901, Flint
formed the Computing Scale Company of Dayton, Ohio. It was not doing
well in 1911. He wanted to merge these two with another company to help
shore up Computing Scale.

Flint and Hollerith talked. Had Hollerith been of better health or if he
had been younger and still in sole control of Tabulating Machines
Company, he might have done differently, but Flint and Hollerith
eventually made a deal where Flint bought all of Hollerith's Tabulating
Machine Company shares and proceeded to form a new company. With the
addition of the Bundy Manufacturing Company of Endicott, New York, the
new company became known as Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company,
better known as CTR, with offices in New York, Ohio, and Washington, DC.
Hollerith retired to the Maryland shore and lived out the rest of his
life on a huge farm he bought. Although he nominally was still an
engineering consultant to CTR, his creative days were behind him.

In 1914, CTR hired Thomas J. Watson as its general manager. Although
Watson treated Hollerith with great deference, Hollerith never really
liked the man and slowly parted ways with him and the new company. CTR
was becoming Watson's company and with it came the passing of an era and
the beginning of a new. Many of Hollerith's ideas continued in use
through the twentieth century until the 1980's when punched cards
finally faded from the computing scene. Virtual punched cards still live
on, as any veteran of mainframe computing will tell you. Hollerith's
company still continues on today as Watson made CTR a profitable and
eventually booming company based on the tabulating business. In 1924,
CTR changed its name to the same as its subsidiary in Canada,
International Business Machines, or IBM.

   [Most of the research for this article came from a recently
   republished book: Engines of the Mind by Joel Shurkin, W. W.
   Norton, NY, 1996, ISBN 0-393-31471-5.]


                          =========

Herb Chong is the author of many articles that have appeared in
WindoWatch. He is also the Contributing Editor of the magazine and the
creator and principle contributor to the popular WindoWatch Art Gallery


   ww page 8
  Service Pack 2 for NT 4.0
  


                     Should You or Should You Not?
                  Copyright 1997 by Linda L. Rosenbaum



To borrow a famous quote - that is the question! Unlike most of my other
articles and reviews, this time I am not going to make a definitive
recommendation. I believe this decision is up to each and every
individual user. I have now installed Service Pack 2 for NT 4.0, but it
took quite some time before I was ready to do so. And to be perfectly
honest, I still am not convinced it was necessary. Nor do I know for
sure that I will not run into any unexpected side effects. But before I
get into the details of Service Pack 2 and what happened upon the
release of it by Microsoft in December 1996, I would like to give you a
bit of background on Service Packs.

As most of you know, NT is an advanced and very complicated operating
system. There have been four retail releases of NT - versions 3.1, 3.5,
3.51 and 4.0. As one might expect, particularly given the wide variety
of hardware and software in the marketplace, problems are always
discovered after a retail release. Rather than making the end user wait
until the next retail release of the operating system (and time frame
between retail releases has varied quite a bit), Microsoft releases what
are called Service Packs. Service Packs contain updated components/files
after the retail release and are specific to each version of NT. One can
either download the Service Pack from Microsoft (via the Internet, for
example) or order it on CD-ROM for shipping and handling costs.
Depending upon the size of the Service Pack (and they can get to be very
large downloads) will help determine which methodology for getting the
Service Pack makes the most sense to you.

Service Packs are cumulative. That means the most recent Service Pack
for a specific version of NT will contain all fixes from prior Service
Packs, as well as any new fixes made to the operating system. A Service
Pack is easy to apply from within Windows NT and changes only those
files that were originally set up on the Windows NT or Windows NT
Advanced Server system.

As one might expect, care should be given when installing a Service
Pack. The following is taken from Knowledge Base article Q115161
(Service Pack Upgrade Issues):

  Unexpected Results

  As with any modification of system software,
  proper care should be taken in preparing for
  unexpected problems.  For Windows NT, this
  includes having the following before you make
  any modifications:

   - A tape backup of the machine's data.
   - A backup of the disk configuration.
   - A backup of the Registry.


  If a serious problem arises after you install a Service Pack,
  do the following:

  1.   Use the Emergency Recovery Disk. This returns Windows NT to the
       original condition ( as installed format).
  2.   Restore the Registry.
  3.   If necessary, restore the disk configuration.
  4.   If appropriate, reinstall the Service Pack and any additional
       software.


Note that the above Knowledge Base article was last modified on October
6, 1994. I think it is as applicable today as it was back then. The
above helps point out two important aspects to keep in mind when or
after applying a Service Pack.

One is that if you install or reinstall an NT component from the retail
version (i.e. NT 4.0 shipping CD-ROM, for example), it is necessary to
reinstall/reapply the most recent Service Pack on your system. If you do
not do so, the component that has just been installed might not work, or
some other part of your system might not work correctly. That is because
you would now have a mixture of older and newer versions of parts of the
operating system that might not be able to live or cooperate with each
other.

Second, it might be necessary to reinstall customized Windows NT
components or drivers provided by third party manufacturers/OEMs. If you
suspect this might be necessary, I would recommend you contact the
manufacturer/vendor who supplied the customized NT components to you to
make sure they will still work with the Service Pack you would like to
install.

Another important point to keep in mind about Service Packs is that the
version of NT that is available stays the same until the next official
release of a version upgrade. A build number usually describes this. For
example, the release version of NT 4.0 is build 1381. In other words,
Service Packs are not incorporated into the operating system purchased
at your local store or mail order vendor. Hence it may be necessary to
add the most recent Service Pack as soon as the new operating system is
installed.

I first started using NT with version 3.5, several months before the
release of version 3.51. I was aware of the concept of Service Packs
shortly after we got our new system (for my husband) with NT 3.5, but
did not install any of them for version 3.5 of NT. My dealer who sold us
the system did not feel the Service Packs offered anything that was
critical to the proper usage of our new system. In addition, version
3.51 of NT was just around the corner.

I started following the release of Service Packs more closely after
upgrading my husband's system to NT 3.51 and also installed it on my
own computer. I started to see that retail releases of an operating
system are not always as bullet proof as one would like. I also saw that
later releases of software might not work properly in the retail release
of the operating system. A good example of this was with Office 95. This
came out several months after the release of NT 3.51. There were some
problems with Office 95 when run in NT 3.51. Service Packs for NT 3.51
helped to overcome these problems.

As a general rule, I tend to like to have the most recent version of any
third party driver available installed on my system. I tend to believe
it can avoid problems and can often include enhancements. However, I am
also well aware that newer or later is not necessarily better and that
many new versions of drivers have introduced new bugs or other problems
that have required yet another version to fix. - again! I have tended to
extend this philosophy to NT Service Packs, notwithstanding my
preference to keep up to date with the most recent Service Pack. Even
so, I have also taken to not being the first on the block to install it.

Service Pack 2 for NT 4.0 was released towards the end of December 1996.
As soon as I learned of its existence, I went to the Microsoft FTP site
ftp://microsoft.com/bussys/winnt/winnt-public/fixes/usa/nt40/ussp2 and
downloaded it. It was a large download - 15MB! I also reviewed the
readme file that comes with the Service Pack, paying particular
attention to the list of fixes contained in this Service Pack. They are
as follows:


  4.0  List of Bugs Fixed in Windows NT 4.0 Service Pack 2

  NOTE: Use the Qxxxxxx number that precedes the title of the bug fix to
  query the Microsoft Knowledge Base to find an article about that bug.

  Service Pack 2

  Q78303:   Intermittent File Corruption Problem
  Q142653: STOP Message Occurs Calling GetThreadContext/SetThreadContext
  Q142654: Winsock Memory Access Violation in Ws2help.dll Or Msafd.dll
  Q142655: Stop Message Appears After Deleting ProductOption Registry Key
  Q142656: Internet Explorer 3.0 on RISC Computer Cannot Connect to Host
  Q142657: Data Corruption on Windows NT 4.0
  Q142658: Internet Information Server Runs Out of Memory
  Q142659: Internet Explorer 2.0 Fails To Check the Country Code/Language
  Q149903: File Manager Performs a Move Instead of a Copy
  Q156832: STOP Message when IBM Warp Client Connects to Windows NT 4.0
  Q102477: Draw Can't Leave Data in Clipboard After Closing Application
  Q102710: MFX Draw: 16-Bit Device Drivers Incompatible with Windows NT
  Q106503: FIX: SQL Server FixList for Version 4.20aK11
  Q107422: Windows NT Resource Kit Vol. 1 - 3.5 Inch Disk Contents
  Q108144: FIX: SQL Server FixList for Version 4.20b
  Q136032: Systems Management Server Sender Packet Size Computation
  Q140955: XCLN: Error When Opening Attachment in Client for Windows 3.x
  Q142625: NETBIOS Defaults To 16 Sessions on Windows NT
  Q142634: Multiple Processes Are Able to Open the Same Winsock Port
  Q142641: Internet Server Unavailable Because of Malicious SYN Attacks
  Q142648: STOP 0x00000024 in Ntfs.sys
  Q142661: Cacls.exe May Report Errors when Handling Extended Characters
  Q142671: Backup Fails on Certain Directories Due to Lack of Permissions
  Q142675: CSNW Sends Packets Greater Than Negotiated Maximum Packet Size
  Q142687: Windows NT 4.0 Not Able to Read Some Compact Discs
  Q151989: Novell 32-bit Client for Win95/WinNT Doesn't See FPNW Volume
  Q152273: DHCP Server May Give Out Duplicate IP Addresses
  Q152346: Some DEC TLZ06 4MM DAT Tape Drives Not Recognized by Windows NT
  Q153665: SPX Data Stream Type Header May Reset Unexpectedly
  Q154784: Windows NT Operating System SNMP OID Incorrect
  Q155117: Shutdown And Power Off Does Not Appear on Shut Down Menu
  Q155883: NT 4.0 Breaks SNA Server 2.x Server Communication Over IP
  Q156091: Access Violation with Long NDS Context in CSNW/GSNW
  Q156095: Replace Command with Space Character in the Path Does Not Work
  Q156276: Cmd.exe Does Not Support UNC Names as the Current Directory
  Q156324: Device Failure Message with Microchannel Network Adapter
  Q156520: Logon Validation Fails Using Domain Name Server (DNS)
  Q156524: HP PaintJet XL 300 Does Not Print Colors, Only Black
  Q156608: Err Msg: Account Unknown--Account Deleted
  Q156735: WOW Applications Stack Fault When Launched by a Service
  Q156750: AddGroupNameResponse Frame from WinNT May Cause WFWG to Hang
  Q156884: Problems Saving Event Viewer Log from Windows NT 4.0 to 3.51
  Q156931: STOP 0x0000001E in Nwrdr.sys
  Q156958: Serial Service Won't Stop with Serial Printer Installed
  Q156989: Multiple Processes Are Able to Open the Same Winsock Port
  Q157279: Nwrdr.sys Fails Reading File with Execute Only Attribute
  Q157289: Memory Leak Using RegConnectRegistry API
  Q157621: Personal Groups Not Visible If %Systemroot% Is Read-Only
  Q157673: Policy Not Updated on Workstation
  Q157979: NT/RDR: "Access Denied" with Windows NT 4.0 Ntbackup
  Q158142: WM_DDE_EXECUTE API Causes a Memory Leak in the WOW Subsystem
  Q159075: Compression is not supported on Quantum 4000DLT
  Q158994: NT 4.0 Fails to Replicate to Backup Domain Controllers
  Q158387: RAS Server Cannot Use DHCP to Assign Addresses w/ PPTP Filtering
  Q158587: 16-Bit Named Pipe File Open Leads to WOW Access Violation
  Q158682: Shortcuts Embed Admin$ in .lnk File
  Q158706: Shortcuts Embed Admin$ In .LNK File
  Q158707: DDE Destroy Window Code may Stop 0x0000001e in Windows NT 4.0
  Q108261: Windows NT Hangs on Shutdown with Certain PCMCIA Devices
  Q158981: IBM Thinkpads 760ED and 760ELD May Hang During Shutdown
  Q159066: A Client Crash May Prevent an NTFS Volume Dismount
  Q159071: NTFS Does Not Prevent a File Deletion During Rename
  Q159075: Compression is not supported on Quantum 4000DLT
  Q158796: MAC Clients Connected to an NT Server May Intermittently Appear
  Q149817: STOP 0x0000000A and STOP 0x0000001E in Isotp.sys
  Q141375: Winstone 97 May Fail on Windows NT 4.0
  Q141708: RAS Client IP Addresses Not Returned to Static Address Pool
  Q142686: First Line of Print Job Lost When Printing Using Lpdsvc
  Q142847: Bugcheck 0x1e Caused by Isotp.sys Driver
  Q142872: Length of PDC Name May Affect Performance on a Domain
  Q157494: PPC 4.0 Cirrus Driver Fails to Redraw & Fill Objects Correctly
  Q148602: Running SNA Server 2.11 on the Windows NT 4.0
  Q156746: Print Jobs Are Deleted When Printer Is Resumed After Restart
  Q150815: Windows NT May Fail to Boot on Toshiba Portable Computers
  Q152455: File Manager Can Only See 32 Volumes of NetWare/FPNW
  Q152474: Window Socket Application Failure with Connection Reset Event
  Q154556: Delegation Requires a Stop and Restart of the DNS Server Service
  Q156578: Cannot Cancel Print Job on Windows NT 3.51 Shared Printer
  Q159107: Access Violation in Addatom Inside KERNEL32.DLL
  Q142903: Windows NT Ndis.sys and Netflx3.sys Performance Improvement
  Q160583: Windows NT 4.0 With More Than 4 Processors May Stall and Reboot
  Q159971: SetTimer() API causes Memory leak in the WOW subsystem
  Q159972: WinNT 4.0 May not Return a Valid Response for SMB Search Command
  Q160015: 2D Vector Performance on WinNT 4.0 Slower Than on 3.51
  Q160055: Warning Event ID 4010 Generated on Windows NT LPD Server
  Q160189: CSNW can't see more than 32 volumes per server
  Q159095: STOP 0x0000001E in Win32k.sys When Exiting Applications
  Q160328: Internet Explorer 3.0 causes NT 4.0 to Blue Screen
  Q159449: DNS Server Glue data gets deleted
  Q160601: Bad Parameters sent to WIN32K.SYS May Blue Screen Windows NT
  Q160603: No Output from DBMON Using OutputDebugString While Debugging
  Q160604: Access violation in security!SspQueryContextAttributesW
  Q160606: Performance enhancements for SQL Server under Windows NT
  Q160610: READ_REGISTER_ULONG Doesn't Preserve ULONG Semantics on Alpha
  Q160653: NTFS Fails Assertion Under High Stress During Transfer
  Q160190: RasSetEntryProperties does not save a full path script name
  Q159205: HOTFIX: SFM file Type and Creator properties invalid
  Q160657: 16 Bit Version of VB4 May Hang Windows NT 4.0
  Q159108: SMP Full Duplex Adapter Configuration May Cause Blue Screen
  Q159109: ExitWindowsEx Does Not Work With NEC Power Switch Service
  Q159110: CDFS Does Not Complete IRPs Correctly
  Q159111: Multiprocessor Machine Hangs Under Stress Using HALSP.DLL
  Q159129: OpenGL Access Violates with Invalid OpenGL Context
  Q159910: Memory Corruption on a Windows NT Alpha platform
  Q159204: HOTFIX: IoCompletionPort causes blue screen crash
  Q159594: Missing EE FontSubstitutes in Registry
  Q159206: HOTFIX: Reactivation of paused print queues deletes print jobs
  Q159311: NT4.0 RAS not releasing static IP Addresses
  Q159315: NT 4.0 RAS Server does not release static IP addresses
  Q159347: Using NetBEUI for RAS Connector on Windows NT 4.0
  Q159447: HOTFIX: Applications testing for directory existence fail
  Q159098: NT 4.0 resource Kit utility "Remote Console" client fails
  Q159203: HOTFIX: Unattended install prompts for new IP if zero in address

  For the latest information see:
  Q150734  List of Fixed Bugs in Windows NT Version 4.0


The first group of fixes listed were actually first included in Service
Pack 1. I found this list to be daunting! In the readme, however, I
learned for the first time, that Microsoft incorporated the ability to
uninstall a Service Pack. This option must be selected during the
initial install phase of Service Pack 2. It also takes up a hefty amount
of hard drive space. The readme file indicates that an extra 60MB is
needed, but based on my experience and that of others, it seems more
like 20+ MB is taken up by the uninstall directory which contains copies
of the older versions of all replaced files. I decided to hold off
actually installing the Service Pack. I did not want to be the resident
guinea pig and I also preferred to wait until after doing a complete
backup.

Much to my surprise, I quickly saw evidence of other early Service Pack
2 installers running into problems. These ranged from BSOD's when
formatting floppies and in several other situations to not being able to
connect to an ISP when using DUN. It was at this point that my family
and I left town for a long needed vacation.

When I returned, it seemed that either workarounds or the causes of the
problems with Service Pack 2 were being discovered. Having anti-virus
software running in the background was causing some of the BSOD's. The
DUN/RAS problem was cured by a registry change. It was not long after
that two hot fixes for Service Pack 2 appeared. That's right - a fix for
the fix! Both of these hot fixes are available at ftp.microsoft.com/bussys/
winnt/winnt-public/fixes/usa/nt40/hotfixes-postsp2. The first is called
the Kernel fix and it is the one that fixes the problems when running
antivirus software. It is described in Knowledge Base article Q141239.
The second is the RAS fix and fixes the problems when trying to connect
to certain types of ISP's. This fix is described in Knowledge Base
article Q161368. In addition a problem whereby on the first reboot after
an install of SP2, NTFS.SYS becomes corrupted, necessitating a complete
reinstall, was determined to be caused in certain circumstances by the
way the Service Pack 2 files were zipped up for distribution. Microsoft
has replaced the older .exe file with a newer version, which corrects
this particular problem. The underlying files remain the same and do not
include any of the hot fixes just described.

After a rereading of the lengthy list of fixes included in Service Pack
2 as well as strong encouragement from others who were using it quite
successfully with both hot fixes, I decided it was time to give it a
try. I did select the uninstall option and I most definitely had
performed a full backup first. I also applied both hot fixes right away.
I am happy to report that so far, Service Pack 2 is performing just fine
on my system and that I have noticed at least one thing it did fix. My
fix was minor, but it was mentioned in the lengthy list of fixes. It's
nice to see evidence of an upgrade!

During the week of January 13, 1996, Microsoft announced that it has
decided to open future fixes to greater security. According to Enzo
Schiano, product manager at Microsoft, as reported in the January 20,
1996, issue of InfoWorld:

     "We're going to essentially do a formal beta process that
     will have the service pack beta released and tested by ISVs
     and customers, and we will get appropriate feedback to be
     reviewed."

I advise any NT 4.0 user to give Service Pack 2 a close look. Measure
its benefits against its potential risks. And if you do decide to
install it, first do a full backup (or two or three) and make sure you
also apply both hot fixes.


                          =========

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 9
  A Call to Take Action!
  


                     A Fast Forward  from Jon Helis

    "I received the following from another list. After we determined
    that it was not a hoax, we recommend that it be included in the
    next issue of WindoWatch." Jonathan Helis, KB5IAV - Baton Rouge,
    Louisiana.


From: Al Loeschman <wd5iqr@cy-net.net
Subject: Re: FCC Imposed Charges

I am writing you this to inform you of a very important matter currently
under review by the FCC. Your local telephone company has filed a
proposal with the FCC to impose per minute charges for your internet
service. They contend that your usage has or will hinder the operation
of the telephone network.

It is my belief that internet usage will diminish if users were required
to pay additional per minute charges. The FCC has created an email box
for your comments, responses must be received by March 24, 1997. Send
your comments to isp@fcc.gov and tell them what you think.

Please forward this email to all your friends on the internet so all our
voices may be heard.

Thanks for your time,

Elan Amram
DTC SuperNet


    The following was captured from the FCC homepage buried in their
    press releases.

    Last December, the FCC invited people to comment on the issue by
    March 24 and set a deadline of April 23 for replying to those
    comments. After that, according to FCC procedures, the agency must
    issue of Notice of Proposed Rule Making, giving anyone the
    opportunity to suggest how phone companies and ISPs should be
    treated under the law. Later, the FCC would take action, issuing a
    regulation that has the force of law. Even then, there would still
    be an opportunity to file a petition for a change in the rule.



Editorial Note: This is an attack primarily upon your local ISP and the
rock bottom rates you are being charged. If enough people email the FCC
their message will not be ignored by the commissioners. I urge you let
them know what your feeling are in this matter. Jon can be reached at
Jonathan Helis kb5iav@intersurf.com

lbl




   ww page 10
  The Voice Technology from IBM                        A Merlin Component
  


                    OS/2 Voice Assist - A Brief Look
                    Copyright 1997 by John Campbell


Several issues back, I wrote about some of the features of the OS/2 Warp
4.0 beta release. Even though IBM ignored our requests for the final
release version for evaluation purposes, I promised then to describe
IBM's voice-activated navigation and dictation system and here it is. To
the best of my knowledge, this is the first such program furnished as a
part of an Operating System. (I made a similar statement about Warp 3.0
having the first integrated Internet connectivity, and a reader told me
that Windows NT had that feature first. Nonetheless, I still think IBM
was the first to provide as complete an Internet package with an OS.)
At any rate, here is a brief overview of VoiceType.

But first, a reminder about the hardware I used. I ran the Warp 4.0 beta
on a 166 MHz Pentium machine with 48 Mg ram, using Andrea's ANC (Active
Noise Cancellation) microphone-headset. This unit is approved by IBM for
voice assist applications.

IBM's voice assist module consists of two separate components: A
voice-activated navigator, called VoiceManager, and VoiceType, a routine
that makes it possible to write a document by simply dictating into a
microphone. Before either component can be used, however, you must
establish a User Profile. Multiple profiles can be set up. Profiles make
it possible to train the program to recognize the different speech
accents and inflections of the people who will be accessing the program.
You establish a User Profile by clicking on Programs | VoiceType | Voice
Manager. The voice recognition software loads, and a User Profile dialog
box appears.

Here, you enter a name for the initial profile. An icon bearing that
name is then added to the OS/2 Desktop. The next step is Enrollment.
Some users claim you can bypass the enrollment procedure, during which
the software adjusts to your voice, but I found that it helps
considerably, especially for VoiceType, to spend the time needed to
train the software. Enrollment is a two step process.

Both Navigation and Dictation should be trained. The user has a choice
of doing either a limited or a full enrollment. The difference lies in
how many exercises are completed. It has been the experience of many
using other Voice systems, that thoroughness of training the software
directly affects the long terms success and utility of this and other
voice recognition systems. There are, unfortunately, no short cuts.

Each exercise consists of a reading a sentence shown in a dialog box,
some containing quite a few words. When you finish a sentence, words the
program failed to understand are highlighted in red, and another dialog
pops up with advice on possible problems. Here, you can ask to have the
sentence read back through the speakers, so you can spot obvious errors,
such as distortion caused by speaking to loudly or unfortunate placement
of the microphone. The process can be halted after fifty exercises
during the Navigation learning phase. IBM considers this an adequate
sampling of the 120 exercises that make up the total. There are 283
exercises to complete for the VoiceType enrollment, and I found this to
be rather time consuming. I probably spent several hours completing
these exercises. I could have stopped at the half-way point, but I
wanted maximum accuracy for dictation.

I discovered that mike placement is somewhat critical, as is input
level. The mike should be slightly to the side of your mouth otherwise
it tends to pick up breathing. Warp provides a helpful meter in the
dialog box to show the recording level. You have to try and keep the
input level within the central green-colored section of a bar graph
display. I fiddled with these adjustments until most words were
recognized on the first try. Once the enrollment is completed, Warp must
compile the results, a process that IBM advises can take several hours
on a slow computer.

IBM claims that the program has a 10, 000 word vocabulary, with the user
having the option to add as many as 32,000 additional words.
Special-purpose add-on vocabularies are available for medical and legal
usage. One reason a lot of memory is needed is because most of the
vocabulary has to be held in memory. Additionally VoiceType has to
analyze grammatical patterns to determine which word you intended when
it encounters sound-alikes, such as to, too, and two. This required
considerable processor power.

Here is how VoiceAssist works. Once a User Profile is created, clicking
that Desktop icon loads the voice recognition routines. Two new windows,
What can I Say, and Voice Manager, open on the Desktop. The first window
changes dynamically, according to what application has Focus. More on
this later. It shows a list of voice commands that are valid for the
chosen application. For example, when the focus is on the IBM Word
Processor I am using to prepare this article, some of the voice commands
available are APPLY STYLE, BOLD and COPY. By the way, all voice
navigation commands have to be spoken as a single word. JUMP TO is
spoken as JUMPTO.

The What Can I Say Window also has a tab, that when clicked, brings up a
list of words and phrases that are always available within Warp. These
include global words, such as ENTER, BEGIN, DICTATION, and DESKTOP;
so-called Jump to values, which take the focus to other Desktop Objects,
such as Drives, OS/2 System, and Toolbar; and finally, movement
commands.

Now, about focus. The Desktop Object or portion of a window that voice
commands are to operate on is said to have the focus. This object is
enclosed in a bright-blue border while Voice Manager is active. The
focus can be changed either by clicking on another object, or by using
voice commands to go to that object.

As an example, I had the focus on this article in the word processor. I
wanted to open the Connections Folder, which is a Desktop Object. I said
DESKTOP, which changed the focus to the Desktop itself. I then said
CONNECTIONS. The blue border moved to that Object. I said OPEN, and the
Connections window appeared. I found this whole process rather
fascinating, especially when I tried it in Netscape Navigator for OS/2.
I had already been spoiled, since I had opened my ISP connection by
telling Warp to go to that Object and open it. I then sat back and said
DIAL, at which point I was greeted with the familiar sounds of my modem
dialing and negotiating a connection. All that remained, was to say
NETSCAPE, FAVORITES, MOVIES, SLEEPERS, with suitable pauses for each
command to execute, and then, after the usual delay, was the opening
page of that film's Web presence. Moving to the What's New hyperlink was
as simple as saying WHATSNEW. I was ushered there without ever touching
the keyboard!

Yes, I am impressed by this technology. But there's more. There is also
VoiceType, the dictation portion of the package. I was a bit
disappointed with this software. I successfully completed the lengthy
enrollment process once, but then a file corruption problem forced me to
start over. I thought I had set up VoiceType successfully this time, but
the text I dictated was nowhere near correct.

Upon further checking, it appears that the compilation phase of
enrollment had failed. Therefore, I can only report what the program is
supposed to do but can't describe it from first-hand experience.

Briefly, you can dictate text into any application that accepts
clipboard input. With Voice Manager active, the phrase BEGIN DICTATION
brings up the Quick Dictation window. Words appear in this window as you
speak them. STOP DICTATION ends the process.

You can correct errors manually. When you are satisfied with the
results, saying SEND places the text into the OS/2 Clipboard. For
quickly generating small files, there is a VoiceType Dictation window
with a minimal text editor designed for speech input. Macros can be
constructed to quickly add standardized greetings. For example, you
might assign Sincerely yours, John Doe, President to a macro that is
invoked by speaking the word WHIZZLE.

Hopefully, this brief rundown has given you a sense of the basic
features of IBM voice assisted technology. The navigation portion is
exciting, and certainly holds potential for handicapped individuals.

The voice dictation part is still somewhat crude, demanding a lot of
preparation time, and requiring that the user speak more slowly than is
customary for dictation. It does, however, give us a peek into what we
can look forward to when this technology matures. Once mastered the
present state of the art seems at least as useful as much text scanning
software, where users are resigned to doing a certain amount of manual
clean-up.

This completes my Warp overview. I trust it has been of some interest to
fellow Windows users.


                          =========

John Campbell looks forward to shedding one or two of the multiple
operating systems he has on his computer once he completes this task.
This is his second adventure with OS/2 with a number of articles written
for WindoWatch in this genre. John is a contributing writer for
WindoWatch. We look forward to hearing about the next mountain he
climbs.



   ww page 10
  The Do-It-Yourself Upgrade Path
  

                      Building Your Home Computer
                      Copyright 1996 by Jim Plumb


Recently I had the fine experience of building a home computer for
myself and my family as a Christmas present. It was about time to
replace the old 386 and I had been planning it for a few months,
shopping for components and waiting for prices to fall enough to meet my
budget level.

I originally bought the 386 for Christmas in December 93 and paid just
over $1,500 for it, - a pretty good price at the time! For that I got a
386DX25, 2 MB ram, 85 MB HD, 3.5 and 5.25 floppies, 14" SVGA monitor, a
video card with 512k ram and a keyboard. The video card was not very
good and the vendor replaced it with a Trident 1 mg card.

Memory at this time was priced at $50/mb. I used mostly DOS programs, so
windows ram was not too big an issue. I never would've thought that
WordPerfect 5.1 would be upstaged by anything that ran on Windows! So, I
figured this machine would give me a few years of service.

I was right and I was wrong. It'll still run those DOS programs
brilliantly, but not much else. It was not long until I was trying to
run Windows programs and had incredible waits for anything to happen.
Then along came Doom and the rest, needing 4 MB of ram so we stuck
mostly to DOS. It wasn't until 1995 that I could really afford to
upgrade anything, and then I got a great deal on a 400 mg Seagate drive,
only $200! And not too long after that 4mb of ram, only $140! Now we
could finally run DOOM! The kids were in heaven, for a while anyway.

1996 was the year Pentiums arrived. We bought some at work. First some
P-100s and then some P-133s. They screamed, and I wanted one at home but
they were just a little too high for me. A lot more than a little. It
was during this time I decided to upgrade our aging 486 machines at
work. I knew how to change video cards and stuff but had never gotten
down to CPUs and motherboards. I learned something new, for me at least,
that with just a few exceptions, most motherboards will fit into any
computer case. Prices at this time were $500 or so for a P100 with
motherboard. We got one and a few months later prices had continued to
go down so we got a couple more. Prices kept dropping, and by the end of
the summer we were doing P133s with 32 MB of ram onboard.

Doing these upgrades gave me the experience and know-how to completely
overhaul computers. It took this experience to make me realize that I
could easily do this at home. However, looking at what I'd need to
replace I decided to just get a brand new machine.

The research I did showed me that no one had what I wanted at the price
I wanted to pay. I saw, however, that I could afford what I wanted if I
put the whole thing together myself. What I found is that you need to
determine a couple of things in advance. How much you want to spend and
the CPU you want to base your system upon. I had upgraded a few of our
work machines to Cyrix 133+ CPUs and I liked their performance. Plus the
price beat the Pentium 133 hands down. So I decided to use a Cyrix chip.
My budget was put at $1500, just as I had three years earlier. I wanted
to see what I could do with the same amount of money.

The setup I wanted should be a fast Pentium or Cyrix, at least 133, at
least 2 GB hard drive, 10x or 12x CD-Rom, PCI video card with 4 MB ram
and 32 MB EDO ram. I'd start with that and then look for a sound card
and a printer. What I was primarily interested in is something that
would run the latest games as well as handle the latest bloatware office
suites with ease.

By December prices had kept going down. I had one scare earlier in the
Fall when memory prices started to rise for some reason. I almost bought
then, but decided to wait it out until I was ready to do the whole
thing.

At the same time the Cyrix 166+ had also dropped considerably and I
decided that would be my CPU and would build from there. Some research
at the Cyrix web site provided a list of tested motherboards. I had
talked with several mail order houses about what motherboard to get with
the 166+. Some said it didn't matter, others recommended certain chip
sets and motherboard brands. For more in-depth information on Cyrix
chips, sail over to http://www.ionet.net/~rbdavis/faq.htm. This guy has
all the information you will need.

One board that came highly recommended and was also qualified for the
Cyrix 200+ chip is the M-Tech R534 Mustang. After comparing it to other
boards in terms of price and performance, I was sold. Besides being 200+
compatible it is also MMX and M2 (Cyrix MMX chip) compatible making the
technology good for awhile. This board has plenty of slots, can handle
up to 256 MB of ram, and supports a PS/2 mouse. I wanted a PS/2 mouse so
I wouldn't have to deal with extra IRQ settings of a serial mouse. With
a chip and motherboard out of the way I could concentrate on the other
things.

I had originally wanted to get a Matrox Millenium video card with 4 MB
of ram. I have a few of these at work and thought they were great, as
well as, much cheaper than the other 4 MB cards at the time. They were
selling for $270 or so and others like Stealth and ATI were over $400.
Then I saw a review of 3D cards in PC Magazine with an Editors Choice
for the Reactor 3D from Intergraph. I checked out their web site and
found the card was on sale for $149! This card has all the 3D features
(the Millenium is missing a few) and you can't beat the price. I have
also dealt with Intergraph before and their support is very good. This
card uses the Verite chip from Rendition. You should check out the
Rendition web sight, www.rendition.com and the Intergraph web site
www.intergraph.com/ics/i3d100/ for more information on this card if you
have interest in it. I ordered one. It comes with Rendition-enhanced
versions of Quake and IndyCar II. There are some other companies out
there that are creating Rendition-enhanced versions of their games also.
I have heard that Microsoft does some of their 3D development using
these cards.

The hard drive I settled on was the IDE Western Digital 2.5 GB model as
I have always had good luck with them. I had looked at SCSI drives but
felt the extra cost was not justified for a home computer, especially
with my budget.

I found that 12x CD-ROMs were going for $130 or so. They were Acer or
Mitsumi brands. Mitsumis are used by several mail-order computer
companies. For installing software and running some games I felt it
would be just fine.

This left me with getting memory, a case, floppy drive, mouse and
keyboard. I wanted a case that would support a PS/2 mouse, but I found
that my motherboard uses a ribbon cable to a plug which screws into one
of the adapter slots. Usually cases have an extra slot opening so I
could get any case I wanted. I decided on a 3-button Logitech PS/2 mouse
and an Microsoft Natural Keyboard.

Finally, I was left with actually getting all the stuff! The only thing
I'd ordered was the video card. I talked with several mail order places.
Most were backed up for Christmas. I found there was a computer show
going on north at a college in New Hampshire. I could get the parts and
not have to pay shipping or sales tax! What a bahgain as they say here
in Boston.

I found a vendor at the show who had everything I needed, and for a
lower price that any of the mail order houses. The case I settled on is
by EnLite. The mid-tower case slides to the front, is held on by the
front piece and uses no screws or fasteners.

Total price for motherboard, CPU, 32 MB ram, video card, hard drive,
floppy drive, cd-rom, case, mouse, keyboard came to $1080. I put it
together, started it up and its been running fine since. I haven't
mentioned a monitor and that's because I have one and didn't have to
think about a replacement. If I had the need to get one it would have to
be at least a 17-inch job. Monitor prices haven't come down like memory
or hard drive prices.

I have also yet to get a sound card or a printer. I'm using a
Sound-Blaster Pro from the 386 and I will probably be getting a
Sound-Blaster AWE 32 and have looked at some color printers. I
particularly like an HP I've seen which can print computer paper (for
those Happy Birthday banners) or sheet paper and does so at a good rate
of speed.

One point I need to make is about warranties. If you notice I bought
name brand components. One reason is quality, the other is warranties. I
know these companies will replace their products for the full life of
the warranty (and possibly more) which is at least a year and is five
years for the hard drive. You can't get that with no-name products. Of
course you could buy a complete name-brand computer for an extra grand
and have them warranty everything but that's no fun.

If you decide to go this route, do your homework. If you don't subscribe
to any PC magazines, browse through some at the library or pick some up
at the store. You may have seen "Computer Shopper" around. This mammoth
monthly is packed full of ads for systems and parts. As I said before,
figure out how much you want to spend and from there pick your CPU and
build on that. New and improved products keep coming out which relegate
today's cutting-edge technology to the bargain bin. The recent release
of MMX has brought even lower Pentium/Cyrix prices. The urge to wait for
prices to drop even more to get that next great gizmo will lead to
waiting forever.

I'm glad I decided to build a new machine rather than upgrade the old
386. I was able to take one of the 486 boards from work and upgrade my
home 386. I then went out to a used computer parts place and picked up a
couple of network cards and a network line and hooked up both machines
at home. There is nothing that beats a good game of network Doom!


                          =========

Jim Plumb is the System Administrator for a commercial printing
establishment. This down to earth piece belies his skills in the areas
of connectivity of multi-platform computers. Jim was the first WebMaster
of WindoWatch as well as teacher extroadinaire with his Acrobat series
for WindoWatch.


   ww page 12
  Computers and Education
  


              Computers as an Educational and Social Force
                    Copyright 1997 by Frank McGowan



The role of computers in the field of education goes far beyond applying
them to learning rote skills, such as reading, 'riting and 'rithmetic.
Their scope goes to the core of our society and how it will be shaped in
the next decade or two.

The Boston Globe recently printed an article that discussed how the
Internet can be used by high school seniors seeking admission to
college. The writer of the article proclaimed this a boon for high
schoolers and their parents. Among other benefits cited, online
applications would allow college admissions offices to waive the
application fee, because of the reduction in paperwork. Given that the
usual strategy is to send applications to several schools, the savings
of both time and money will be considerable.

The article sent my mind spinning off in several directions, finally
coming to rest on the notion of how computers will affect relations
between the haves and have-nots in America, between whom the chasm is
widening every day. Those who hail the democratic benefits of the
Internet seem to overlook the fact that it's only democratic for those
who have access to it. Not everyone has the bucks to lay out for the
equipment.

One of the most misunderstood songs ever written is Billie Holiday's God
Bless' The Child, usually misconstrued as God Bless The Child. Dropping
the apostrophe leads to the inference that the singer is asking the
deity to confer benefaction onto an infant, when in fact the point of
the song is that divine favor has already been bestowed on those who've
"got [their] own." The gap between the fortunate and those who must be
satisfied with a "crust of bread and such" long ago reached crisis
proportions. I doubt that the advent of the PC as a tool of education
will do much to bring us together until there's a PC in every home that
is hooked to the Internet. Those of us who have home PC's have indeed
been blessed. What about the rest of us?

In his inauguration speech, President Clinton alluded to the Internet
"in every classroom" in the country. As an idea, this is laudable.
Putting Internet connections in public schools, especially in less
fortunate school districts, would be a major step in the direction of
shared intellectual wealth. Whether this comes to pass remains to be
seen. Whether Americans are willing to foot the bill for such an
undertaking is very much in doubt, especially in the current
budget-balancing climate that drives the Federal government. However,
even if universal classroom connection is achieved, the greatest
beneficiaries of the Information Age will continue to be those with
modem-equipped PC's in their bedrooms, dens and home offices. Mr.
Clinton's much touted "bridge to the 21st century" will become an
impassable barrier to those who can't pay the toll. Being stranded on
the wrong side will be like watching the continent split apart, with the
affluent side drifting off to the future, leaving the rest mired in the
past.

As with so many problems in public education, it comes down to money.
Computers are but the latest area where schools in well-off towns fare
much better than those located in less prosperous neighborhoods. If, as
Tip O'Neill said, "All politics is local," school politics is the most
local of all. The notion of "home rule" is nowhere so boldly displayed
as when townsfolk meet to set up school budgets for their children.
While the results may vary from locale to locale, each town gets to use
its taxes for whatever the citizens decide are the proper educational
goals of their community. It's hard to argue with this, unless you are
willing to entertain the notion that educating children everywhere,
regardless of local tax base, is a worthy aim, and recognize that your
own interests lie in achieving this goal of universal education. We all
pay a price for the ignorance of those who make up the national work
force.

While computers in schools are analogous to books as information
providers, the scale of information they provide makes them quite
different from books. A second advantage of computers over books is that
reading can be hard work. The medium of communication is much more
passive - Looking at images on a computer screen takes a lot less
effort. When reading involves a language you don't use on a day-to-day
basis, with a vocabulary that extends beyond your comfort zone, it
becomes nearly impossible (ask anyone struggling with Shakespeare, even
using the Folger's edition). It's no wonder too many kids opt out of
books in favor of the medium they're most comfortable with - video. The
reading muscles haven't had much chance to develop, and the pain
involved isn't seen as worth the payback. It's easy to see the day, not
far in the future, when homework and reading assignments will require
accessing a Web site rather than reading a chapter in a book. Certainly
many young scholars are already using the Web for research purposes. Can
it be much longer before book reports are replaced by video reports? Who
can argue that watching "Silas Marner" isn't easier (and faster) than
reading George Eliot's original?

Whatever the eventual use of the computer as an educational tool, it's
clear that we, as a people, need to invest the money to ensure that this
tool doesn't turn into a wedge that drives us further apart. "Charity
begins at home" should not be construed as justification for keeping it
all for ourselves. It must be interpreted in its true sense - that the
notion of sharing must be ingrained in each of us with our mother's
milk.


                          =========

After spending months examining the various Suites, Frank McGowan has
turned his very competent hand to discussing some of the dilemmas facing
teachers and parents trying to unravel the social snarl of computers
impacting education. Frank is a contributing writer to WindoWatch.



   ww page 13
  Teaching Old Dogs New Tricks!          The HTML Tutorial Series Part IV
  


                     Working Towards a Perfect Body

                     Copyright 1997 by Gregg Hommel



No, this has nothing to do with perfect abs, nor any of those, - uh, -
so perfect bodies you see on TV demonstrating the huge variety of
exercise machines. (A profound question! Tell me why, never in those
commercials or infomercials, any one shown using the machine, ever seem
to need one?)

In this case, however, we are referring to the body of our Web page; the
text, graphics, and information it contains to entice and enchant the
people stopping by for a visit.

We already have a very basic Web page coded, but in all honesty, it's
content is such that it could be prescribed by many doctors as a cure
for insomnia. We need to liven it up and make it interesting, in order
to hold the attention of the hordes who will come to call. We want them
to come back for a return visit, not just a quick and cursory glance
only to wander off! But how do we do that?

As a start, instead of trying to define how we can do it, I think I
would prefer to define how we won't do it. I will admit that the
following ideas are strictly my own, and may not be accepted by many.
They have been formed as a result of a lot of time wandering the Web,
and through discussions with many people I know, regarding what turns
them on or off a Web page. So, for whatever these notions are worth,
let's begin..

1.  Graphics are likely the easiest and most common method of enlivening
    one's home page(s). There is no question that the use of graphics
    can, and often does, improve the a Web page. After all, the World
    Wide Web is nothing else if not a visual medium, and graphics are de
    rigeur for that. However, over use of graphics on a given page may
    be one of the primary causes for lack of activity on that page,
    especially in terms of repeat visits.

    No matter what the magazines and others would have you believe,
    especially those who advertise modems, the most common speed used to
    access the Internet is still just 14,400 bps, even though, by now,
    it may be up to 28.800 bps. In spite of what you may think, neither
    of these is especially fast, particularly when it comes to
    transmission of many and/or large graphics.

    Graphics on a Web page are fine, but keep them limited and as small
    as possible. I know this sounds like an impossible demand, but
    graphics no larger than 10K in size work best. This allows you to
    put more images on a page without slowing down access to the point
    that the remote user will not want to return.

2.  Everyone who has a Web page also has their own favourite places on
    the World Wide Web to visit. A natural and logical thing to do is to
    tell people about those favourite sites, and then provide a link
    from your page for your visitors to go and find out for themselves
    what makes it a favourite.

    But, once again, as with graphics, similar rules apply. In this
    case, it isn't the time to download the page that causes the
    problem, but rather, clarity of purpose. Most browsers are set to
    show links to other pages in a different colour than the normal text
    on a page. However, if there are too many links to other pages in
    the body text of a page, the changes in colour make reading the text
    itself a chore, especially when your eyes get older, as mine are!
    One or two links in a page of text are not too bad, but if you put
    four or more in a couple of paragraphs, you might think about an
    alternative. My personal favourite alternative, is to eliminate the
    links in the body text, and put one single one in their place, that
    one leading to another page, which is a list or table of all of my
    favourite links to other pages.

    This allows the reader to get a feel for these places, and if they
    are interested in going to visit, they merely have to click on my
    Favourite Places link. They get a page with a table of all the links
    mentioned elsewhere where they can then use them. Meanwhile, the
    body text in my main page remains legible, as it is for the most
    part, a single colour, and therefore, easier for most people to
    read.

3.  Everyone enjoys their moments in the sun, most of which are few and
    far between. As a result, we tend to take full advantage of those we
    get, knowing the moment is all too brief. The World Wide Web is
    great for that! After all, this is your personal page, isn't it? And
    that includes your wife/husband, kids, family pets, favourite
    automobiles, bicycles, toy trains, and anything else you can think
    of, doesn't it?

    Honest truth? It doesn't, at least, not to many people who may have
    cause or reason to visit you home page at least once. If that person
    is a long lost relative, or a friend who has moved away (or even one
    who hasn't), such might be of interest to them. But for most folks
    who might visit your page, nothing could be further from the truth.
    And such images tend to also violate the first item above, i.e. they
    are graphics, and by their very nature, as photographic
    reproductions, are large and slow as blazes to download.

    This does not however, mean that you cannot put such things on your
    Web site. My suggestion is that, if you must do this, and many
    people must, then do so as suggested for links above, i.e. on a
    separate page accessible via a link from your main page. Anyone
    interested in looking at you, your family, your pets, or anything
    else you find interesting enough to reproduce on the Internet, can
    do so, via that link. However, casual visitors to your site won't be
    forced to download those large graphics unless they want to, and can
    save their time and energy for undistracted attention to your main
    page(s) instead.

4.  Text and Content - basic rule: Don't write a book, not even a
    novella! Keep it simple and short. The World Wide Web tends to be an
    ever changing, constantly moving thing, difficult to grasp and hold
    on to. As a result, this also encourages quick flittings from one
    page to another, with short stays to view a page. If your content is
    too long, if you try to tell too much in a given page, many users
    will move on without reading it all, and in the process, perhaps
    miss that all-important link at the bottom of your page, or some
    similar jewel.

    Many of the more successful Web page sites I visit with regularity
    contain only about one page of anything on each page of the site.
    Some stretch it to two pages (i.e. you have to do some scrolling to
    see all of the given page), but I don't know of many who go beyond
    that length. Rather than making a page too long, they will break it
    up into multiple pages that hold the content, with links back and
    forth between the related ones, so the visitor can navigate if they
    wish. Those who wish to read/view more, do so. Those who don't,
    aren't forced into it with everything existing on one page, and may
    instead, visit different pages on the site.

5.  Think seriously about using an index page of some sort. As you can
    tell from the above, rather than a single page for a site, I
    advocate multiple pages in order to keep any one page from becoming
    too large. I find that this style lends itself to an index page
    quite well. Also, if you think about it, you are not a one-sided
    person but rather, have multiple interests, hobbies, and goals in
    life. Your Web site should reflect this, and not itself be one-sided
    (or one-paged) and as an aside, almost requiring an index page. The
    index needn't be anything fancy, nor does it need to look like the
    index page in a book. What I mean by an index page is an entry point
    to your site on the Web, a place for people to quickly see what is
    going on, and to find ways to find out more about you and your
    interests, especially those that match their's.

6.  Above all else, and in spite of any tendency to do otherwise, I find
    the simplest rule to use when designing a Web page is an old one.
    K.I.S.S. - aka Keep It Simple, Stupid! A simple layout for each
    page, a simple set up for multiple pages on a site, and simple
    content on each page. It is just courteous to tell visitors when a
    specified link is not simple content but something else.i.e, a big
    graphic or a technical report, etc!

That's enough of the rules and putting a damper on our fun on the Web
for now. Let's look at extending our page from previous columns into
something a little more like what is mentioned above. If you recall, the
code that we have currently is..


  <HTML>

  <HEAD><TITLE>The WindoWatch Tutorial Practice Page</TITLE></HEAD>
  <BODY BACKGROUND="Images\wall.gif" BGCOLOR=#00FFFF TEXT=#000000
  LINK=#7F0000 VLINK=#00007F>

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

  This is our very first practice page for this HTML tutorial.

  <P>I know that this isn't much to read, but it is our first page,
  and we needed some practice at writing the text for the body of
  our page.</P>

  </BODY>

  </HTML>


Obviously, this is in need of some work. The first thing we are going to
do is to convert it to an index type of page for our imaginary site. If
we assume that this is going to be the index, we'll call one of the
pages we will link to, WWREAL1.HTML, and start our index using that, as
follows:


  <HTML>

  <HEAD><TITLE>The WindoWatch Tutorial Practice Pages</TITLE></HEAD>

  <BODY BACKGROUND="Images\wall.gif>

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

  Welcome to our Practice Pages for the WindoWatch HTML tutorial. This
  site is continually suffering from ongoing construction, so please
  bear with us while we build these pages.

  <P> Right now, as you can tell, there isn't a lot on our site, but
  things will improve as we expand our knowledge of HTML Eventually,
  this page will serve as an index to the various other pages of content
  we will have here, and even become the starting point for our framed
  version of the site, which we hope to start working on shortly.

  <P>For now, we haven't much here for you to see, other than
  <A HREF="wwreal1.html">a basic page for example purposes</A>, which
  demonstrates a link to another of our pages, more than anything, and
  also a link to our "parent", <A HREF="http:\www.windowatch.com">
  WindoWatch Magazine</A>.

  <P>As time permits, and as we learn more, we will obviously have more
  here for you to look at. Meanwhile, enjoy what you can <GG>.

  </BODY>

  </HTML>


You will note two new items of interest in the above code, both of them
including HREF= between the standard HTML tags of <>. These are called
anchors and are what we normally would call a link. Both are quite
similar, but one includes a complete URL (Universal Resource Locator),
while the other doesn't. The reason is simple: the first one is a link
to another page on the site, and in the same directory as the page
linking to it. As a result, this one doesn't need a full resource
locator, as the http and current www site are assumed.

The second one, however, which links our pages to the main WindoWatch
page, does require a full resource locator, since it is not at our site,
or in the same directory.

The opening <A indicates the beginning of the anchor, the HREF= tells
HTML interpreter, the browser, that this is an Internet resource, and
the text in quotation marks indicates what that resource is. We then
close the tag with a proper >, however, we don't quite stop there.

Remember, most HTML tags don't actually appear when you look at a page.
They are hidden code, interpreted by the browser in use. We, then, need
something to indicate what the resource in question is, and where the
remote user can click to access the resource. We follow the closing >
with some text which will be shown as a link by the user's browser. This
will be indicated by the browser set up as someplace that can be clicked
upon to access a resource. Then, we put the closing HTML tag, a </A> to
indicate the end of the entire tag area, i.e. and the Anchor is
complete.

One other thing to note. I have dropped the various color settings in
the <HEAD> section of the code. My personal preference in a Web page is
not to specify colours for links, and various other text, but to let the
browser accessing the information display them in the manner the user
has set up and defined. My colour sense is lousy! Ask my wife and kids,
- they have to look at me when I get dressed. "But Daddy! That orange
shirt and those lime green pants don't look right together!" Therefore,
I prefer to let the user define how those colours are displayed. Since
my normal choice is my Wall.gif background, which is like gray
parchment, most colours defined by the browser for text display look
reasonably good.

Right at the moment, of course, if we were to put this sample code up on
our tutorial site at WindoWatch, and anyone were to click on the first
anchor, they would likely get an HTTP ERROR 104, which indicates that
the resource indicated, our REALONE.HTML page, cannot be found. This
would be correct since it doesn't yet exist. So let's fix that (although
I may not put this rather simple sample code up on our tutorial site
yet) by writing a simple example for REALONE.HTML...


  <HTML>

  <HEAD>
            <TITLE>WW Practice Page -  RealOne</TITLE>
  </HEAD>

  <BODY BACKGROUND="images/wall.gif">

  This is a simple "first" page for our practice site, at least for now.

  <P>Later it may contain more, but for now, all it is this text, and
  a link back to <A HREF="index.html">our index page</A>. At least it
  demonstrates the fact that one should *always* include links between
  pages on any sub-pages used, especially a link back to the original
  index type page.

  </BODY>

  </HTML>


So far this month, we have gone from having one boring, simple practice
Web page on our site, to having two boring, simple practice Web pages on
our site! I admit, it isn't much, but it's progress of a sort. We now
have two kinds of anchors or links on those pages, and can build from
that, eventually working our way to those frames that we promised you
way back when we started this thing.


                          =========

Gregg Hommel is an experienced Aspect script programmer. He is
translating his skills into the HTML arena. An accountant, consultant,
and the WindoWatch HTML Editor, Gregg successfully wear many hats while
giving us the benefit of his expertise! Gregg can be found On Ilink and
RIME hosting Windows conferences and answering questions from his many
fans.


   ww page 11
  Ahhh, The Best Laid Plans of Mice...
  


                      Reflections of a ModemJunkie
                   Copyright 1997 by Leonard Grossman



After I finished last month's column, in which I talked about my efforts
to attain a design award for The Gropper Windows pages
http://www.mcs.net/~grossman/gropper.htm, I spotted a gold ribbon on a
page proclaiming the site to be speech friendly. The concept intrigued
me and I learned of efforts on behalf of a number of people, including,
Cathy Anne Murtha, to encourage the creation of sites which are
compatible with speech synthesizers. These voice sites will ultimately
help those with vision difficulties to hear the content on web sites.

Having just received the WDG Award for the Gropper pages, I should have
rested on my proverbial laurels, but my curiosity got the better of me
and I sent a note to Cathy, the sponsor of the award, asking whether a
site dedicated to graphic images could be made speech friendly. I
received an excited and gracious note in response indicating that,
indeed, such a site could be speech friendly. She authorized use of the
ribbon on the page without modification, but also suggested that I
provide greater detail in my descriptions of the individual windows, a
project I have yet to undertake (volunteers accepted). I quickly added
the new ribbon to the miscellany section of the Gropper pages, together
with other kudos it has received.

The design simplicity rewarded by the Web Design Group had resulted in a
speech friendly site. On the other hand, my home page, Notes from a
ModemJunkie, apparently did not qualify. What was the difference, I
wondered.

Eventually, I discovered that while it is a great start, design
correctness, that is validated HTML, and simplicity are not enough to be
truly speech friendly, although they go a long way. Other considerations
are also relevant. For example, on the ModemJunkie page I frequently
include more than one link within a sentence or a line, which confuses
speech synthesizers. There may have been other design elements which
were also confusing. Indeed, when I added the Gold Ribbon to the Gropper
pages, I included a link to the Speech Friendly page
http://www.wwwebit.com/magical-mist/ribbon.htm in the same sentence as
a link to the Web Design Group http://www.htmlhelp.com and to a
Religious index which had featured the site. In the process of boasting
about the award, I had violated its principles!

Cathy encouraged me through the learning process. She told me of her
excitement that her Web Site and award were to be featured on a major
television network news magazine program focusing on seeing eye dogs for
the blind. She had offered to validate the program's web page, which was
to describe that week's program, so that she could award it the ribbon
and gain some recognition for the speech friendly concept. I eagerly
tuned in to watch the show, which was fascinating, but made no reference
to her award.

I can only guess at what internal jealousies had caused the network's
web designers to refuse to submit their page for consideration, but a
quick look at the page showed why. The page, although looking amazingly
clean, used HTML tricks to accomplish its looks and was anything but
speech friendly. Instead, as a sop to the blind, it used Real Audio
techniques to make it possible for a blind surfer to hear the contents.
But I have no idea how a blind person would be able to navigate such a
page to find the Real Audio link. The network was very proud of itself
and an opportunity was lost.

Still, what I was learning fascinated me. I wondered if there were other
individuals with disabilities whose special needs could be met in web
page design. I decided that this month's column would focus on those
needs. I sought out newsgroups related to disabilities and posted
inquiries in all of them. In a three week period I received only four
responses, and one of them warned me that I would be disappointed. I
was told that there were many web pages dedicated to disabilities, but
that many were rapidly orphaned by their creators, which seems to have
been the case. And perhaps I am guilty as well.

However I have not learned enough to write on the subject this month. I
did learn that in addition to speech synthesis there are also Braille
readers which work best with clean HTML and must learn what special
requirements are needed for coding for such machines. I also received a
suggestion that the content for Real Audio and other sound materials be
made available visually for those with hearing disabilities. I guess
turn about is fair play. Interesting, that using clean HTML without
multimedia add-ons is effective and helpful for those with disabilities
in hearing and in vision. One stop shopping. But the battle for clean
HTML is being waged on another front. In the HTML related newsgroups,
partisans are lining up and shouting at each other with religious
fervor. The purported battle lines are between those who side with
design and layout control, which I call fixed formatting, and those who
believe in markup languages and user control of appearance.

The camps shout loudly across the abyss. The HTML purists now style
themselves pragmatists and often seem unwilling to recognize that there
are valid reasons for assuming control over precise layout and design.
Those from the desk top publishing world or those who are used to the
print medium insist that the HTML group are Luddites wedded to a mark up
language that doesn't suit their needs for artistic control.

As a writer for this magazine, which appears in PDF format, I find
myself between a rock and a hard place. I will go out on a limb and
state my preferences:

Unless there is a very special reason, I believe that information on the
web should be presented in the most generic and accessible format. I am
grateful that selected articles from the archives are now being made
available on line in HTML.

However, PDF is great for presenting graphic material. The screen shots
and other graphics appearing in WindoWatch are good examples of this
use. However, I don't know many other reasons for storing material in
that fashion. One example does, come to mind, I needed an IRS form this
weekend. I logged on to the IRS web page and found the form in PDF
format. I downloaded it and then viewed it in my Acrobat reader, which I
obtained just to read this magazine. It looked great. Just like the real
McCoy. But I couldn't get it to print. The print dialogue box opened and
then... nothing.

It would still be hanging there if I hadn't rebooted. In the meantime,
my wife had returned from the library with a photocopy.

But it does demonstrate that there are appropriate uses for fixed format
pages. Still, PDF is not capable of being indexed by the Web Robots and
I don't know whether there is any speech synthesizer which can read a
PDF file.

So for the most part, I side with the HTMLers.

I resist using the term pragmatists for the HTMLers because, pragmatism
always serves a purpose. When money speaks, it may seem pragmatic to
give up accessibility for control if that is what the market wants. And
commercial interests may be more comfortable with fixed formats, just as
they are with image maps, and sound and video -- all features that
interfere with accessibility.

The biggest fight seems not to be over the right to use fixed
formatting. The HTMLers do recognize anyone's right to publish in any
format they want to. Heck, if David Siegal wants to publish a page in
black text on black they won't object, - they might even applaud! What
they rightly object to is recommending and teaching others to use fixed
format design.

I concur. If people want to limit the accessibility of their pages, that
is their right, but just as my home page bears a blue ribbon for free
speech, so do I value accessibility. Fixed format sites, proprietary
extensions all of these are like great potholes on the information
highway. Unfortunately there is no way to get those sites to post
warnings where they can be seen in time to slow down. Some of the more
enlightened sites have taken to using browser detection software.
Unfortunately, if that software makes a mistake, the users get stuck.
Why not use a generic opening page with selectable options? Surfers
still can think for ourselves, we are not robots! Are we?


                          =========

Leonard Grossman, is an attorney who works for the government. He is a
WindoWatch regular and has been contributing "Reflections" for some
time. Leonard's home page was chosen as a "Best o'
comp.infosystems.www.announce" site during April 1996. He is also
president of his local user group in Chicago. Comments can be sent to
grossman@mcs.com.


   Editorial Note: Leonard asked me to comment upon the PDF vs HTML
   controversy. I use both tools as each has their own strengths.
   Nothing can beat PDF when creating large documents or those with many
   graphics. The compression capability built into the software, reduces
   those files to a very manageable size. (See: Adobe Acrobat v.3 Flies
   High: A Product Review by Lois Laulicht; WindoWatchV.2 No.10; Dec.
   1996 ) It seems to me that questions of minimalism as it relates to
   the Web can be carried to as great an extreme as foolish acceptance
   of bloated web sites. Why should we deprive ourselves of color,
   texture, or voice? On the other hand, some very stark pages are
   simply lovely because they have been successful with just a few but
   compelling strokes.

   I hope freedom of speech, also includes artistic expression. So long
   as that expression doesn't interfere with someone else's space,
   freedoms, or is obscene for the sake of obscenity, my own view, is
   that this intense debate over style is but another Internet squabble
   in the same category as the silly browser rhetoric or my software is
   better than yours!

   However, the notion of several options or paths to select
   vision-friendly pages makes much sense. One can easily produce pages
   in a bold font style with good color contrast and spacing of type.
   Making these and other accommodations to the handicapped can be
   likened to a ramp for wheelchairs or large print books.

   lbl


   ww page 15
  Is Less Really More?
  


                          Design of Web Pages
                     Copyright 1997 by Lynn Alford


Introduction:

Last time around, I was introduced to the readers of WindoWatch via my
Care and Feeding of Web Pages. I must say that it appears to be one of
the most popular bits of drivel that I've ever written. I've been
invited to continue contributing to this publication and so, you're
stuck with me...well sort of. No one ever said you have to read
everything in here.

This time, I've decided to discuss more seriously a few aspects of web
page design. My site along with Len Grossman's has been awarded the Web
Design Group (WDG) Award. The Web Design Group is a small collection of
people from the comp.infosystems.www.authoring.html newsgroup.
Membership is by invitation, I believe, and the group are the most vocal
proponents of the idea that designing for the web should be a question
of designing so that the maximum number of users can access your pages.
Their slogan is "Making the Web Accessible for All." To get the WDG
Award, you need to be willing to follow their standards for HTML design.
They have a web site http://www.htmlhelp.com/ which can help you learn
better design principles for the WWW.


What services do the WDG provide?

From WDG's reference section: "... offers background information and
technical specifications on HTML authoring. Its main purpose is not to
provide browser-specific hacks, or workarounds for browser bugs or
limitations, but to give the correct way to do it. In cases where this
may conflict with browsers, there will be a note explaining this." The
web site offers references on HTML 3.2 (named Wilbur) including a list
of all tags and how to use them. I recommend that you print this section
or download an offline version of it. It is a very useful list to refer
to whenever you need to look up a tag.

They also have references for Cascading Style Sheets, not well
implemented by web browsers as yet, the character set overview, and a
technical glossary. Cascading Style Sheets allow the writer to specify
things like putting headers in red, having normal text in black, or
using a margin of 1 cm. The character set tells you exactly what
characters may be placed into an HTML document, and how to get to some
of the more unusual ones. The glossary explains the terms used in the
other documents.

The link section is one that you should bookmark. They have links to
Frequently Asked Questions, Tutorials, Validators, Style Guides,
Reference Material, Rants (this section is fun), Graphics, Miscellaneous
and Newsgroups. When you are just starting to write HTML documents, the
FAQs and tutorials will be most useful. As you get used to using HTML,
the other links will become more useful.

Design elements cover a few more advanced topics including style guides
for frames, and use of images and colour on a web page. Some of these
topics are covered by members of the WDG, others are links to relevant
pages elsewhere in the web. This section covers what image format (gif
or jpeg) should be used for what sort of image, how to make transparent
and/or interlaced images, and a brief bit about animated gifs. Using
colour on web pages can be a bit tricky, some browser use their own
colour palette, so your wonderful picture may suddenly look a lot worse.
Knowing about colour palettes and what you can do to improve your images
for browsers may be of interest if you use images frequently.


What about this award?

The basic and most important consideration for the web is who are you
designing for? If the answer is, for anyone interested in my content,
then you should be designing using the strengths of HTML. To get the WDG
Award, you have to use non-specific browser design, or provide
alternatives for non-specific browsers. This allows your pages to really
belong to the World Wide Web, since your pages are not being designed
with some particular screen size, browser application, plug-in, etc.

How do you design for non-specific browsers? It's actually very simple.
Use standard HTML. You can find the specifications for HTML 3.2 at
http://www.htmlhelp.com/reference/wilbur/. If you follow the
specifications, you can then be sure that your HTML should work on any
browser on any computer system that is HTML 3.2 compliant.

The other requirements to win the WDG Award are to have pages that can
be viewed at 640x480, to keep your pages down to 50 k or less each, text
and graphics, unless the client is specifically warned otherwise, to use
ALT text for all graphics, to ensure that any browser specific tricks
degrade well on other browsers, and to ensure that all links are valid.

Whenever you complete an HTML page, you should consider validating the
page. There are a number of validators that are available, both
downloadable so you can validate from your own computer and online
sources. The WDG has several pointers to these services, and you can try
several of them. I like the Webtechs validator, but the information you
get back from it is on the technical side. I've heard that The Kindlier,
Friendlier Validator is much nicer to use if you aren't a programmer. I
always validate a page before I put it on the web. I try to remember to
re-validate if I do serious work on it. Why? Well, every time I don't,
there is a tag with one and not the second. This is amazingly ugly and
breaks that link very thoroughly. All pages to be submitted to the WDG
should have passed validation.

Well, that's all for now. Tune in next time for the totally exciting and
thrilling topic of Searching the Web. Well, perhaps not exactly exciting
but one that should be important for anyone who needs to retrieve
information from the web.


                          =========

Lynn Alford is the WebMaster at the John Cook University's Ruby 1 Centre
for Interactive Multimedia in Australia. Her interests are not limited
to HTML but include games as well. Her Care and Feeding of Web Pages won
her an award and was printed in WindoWatch as her maiden voyage. Lynn
can be emailed to at lynn.alford@jcu.edu.au or lalford@nyx.cs.du.edu She
has interesting game review pages based at
http://www.jcu.edu.au/~imla/games2.html


   ww page 16
  The Email Proliferation                                 How Bad is Bad?
  


                            The Black Menace
                   Copyright 1997 by Daniel Christle


In many of my articles I have discussed SPAM and it's consequence for
you and me. I decided it was time to find out exactly how much there is
and what can be done about it. There are methods available to contain
this onslaught and there are desktop tools obtainable to help you do so.
In the course of putting this article together, I was led on a tour of
the Internet and fortunately, I took pictures! So sit back, put your
feet up and let me show you my travel mementos.

First of all, I must confess that I failed in my initial goal to get a
handle on the amount of SPAM churning around the Internet. I had naively
hoped to be able to give a more or less definite number on the amount of
SPAM circulating, but apparently there are no SPAM statistics kept. When
you think about it, it's not all that surprising. What I did find was an
inordinate number of web sites dedicated to ridding the planet of this
scourge. Mostly everyone is dismayed and angry about this form of
commercialism, but not enough so, to track any solid information on the
activity other than monitoring well known spammers.

So, I decided to use a different tactic and investigate the user's best
friend, and a controversial one at that, - the Cancel Bot. After looking
at a few sites where Cancel Bots are tracked it was obvious that there
is a lot of SPAM that is being canceled. In fact one site I visited
claimed to cancel a total on 654 MB of SPAM in just under a couple of
months. When you realize that there are about ten Cancel Bots being used
at any given time, it adds up to a lot of net garbage.

Unfortunately, the bots don't get it all and, as the people who work
these agents will admit, as the rules they have in place for what
constitutes SPAM favor the mailer and not the receiver. This is because
it is easier to err on the side of caution rather than have excessive
cancels. They claim that fears of abuse could be construed as an attack
of freedom of speech, like canceling a minority group's mail just
because some one doesn't like them. If you're interested and want to
read more about net abuse, read the Net-Abuse FAQ at
http://www.cybernothing.org/faqs/net-abuse-faq.html To learn about how
SPAM is canceled go to Tim Skirvin's page where you can read in detail
how this process works and get an idea of the standards used for
canceling mail. http://www.uiuc.edu/ph/www/tskirvin/cancel.faq

For many reasons, most people feel that junk email is an intrusion. One
of the primary reasons is that people resent having to pay for someone
else's advertisements. When one factors the costs of paying to be on the
Internet, having access to the resources available on the Internet, and
the time spent downloading unwanted mail, the cost is not negligible.
While you may argue that while it only takes a couple of seconds to do
this, just multiply that through a year and divide it by your access
time. Further, that multiple, factored by the thousands of people who
receive this junk, gives one an idea of the real cost to consumers. At
least when junk mail comes to your house the cost is paid by the mailer,
but that too is heavily subsidized by cheap bulk rates! If you want to
expand this argument, there is the additional time wasted sorting mail
when you could be reading messages that are important and interesting.
Anyone who does real work on the Internet would prefer to correspond
with a customer or associate than read a sea of junk mail.

The second reason is the ever increasing bandwidth junk mail consumes.
SPAM is downright resource intensive. In the above example of 654 MB of
SPAM being canceled in a couple of months by one cancel bot, one could
extrapolate that the ten cancel bots in use, would delete some 3270MB of
junk mail in a month (654/2x10). That figure is not likely accurate for
a couple of reasons. First, I am using the results of a single cancel
bot which is a poor way to generalize. Additionally, cancel bots miss a
lot of mail as evidenced by our in-boxes. However, it does give us an
idea of how much junk mail is being transferred around the Internet
monthly. It works out to be 109 MB of mail per day (3270/30) that we are
collectively paying for.

There are many other good reasons why SPAM needs to be held in check.
You might be interested in the valuable Stop Junk Mail page at
http://www.mcs.com/~jcr/junkemail.html for more information on SPAM and
why SPAM infringes upon your rights. Still not convinced? I recommend a
visit to Mark Neely's page, The Anti-Umail FAQ at
http://www.accessnt.com.au/faqs/spam.html where Mark outlines some
excellent arguments on why SPAM is a waste of Internet resources along
with your time and money. These sites also have links to other pages
regarding junk mail, common abusers and what to do about it.

Another source of information on SPAM is the newsgroup
news.admin.net-abuse.announce, where you will find cancellation notices
as well as the names of common abusers and helpful tips to deal with
SPAM. One interesting site is called Cyber Promotions Issues at
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/stop_uce/ motions.html. Cyber
Promotions is probably the most well known bulk emailer having
challenged America-On-Line in their decision to block incoming junk
mail from known bulk mailers. Here you can get information about Cyber
Promotions legal battles against AOL and Compuserve along with the
various domain names they mail under and how to get off their lists.
This site is definitely anti-spam and can be helpful in dealing with
unwanted mail.

Having gotten a guess-timate of the volume of SPAM, I then decided it
was necessary to learn how to combat it. I found there are so many sites
on this subject I couldn't begin to list them here. However the Stop
Junk Mail page has some great advice on how to go about this. To
effectively beat off the junk mailer you need to first follow a few
steps and also have at your disposal a few Internet tools. First off you
need to respond to the mail by whatever unsubscribe options they offer
in the offending mail. Next you need to determine where the mail has
originated from. In most cases the return address is a fake. So you
need to determine the origin from the headers.

If you want step-by-step instructions, go to the Stop Junk Mail page
where the author gives you an anatomy course on mail headers. Or jump
over to http://www.accessnt.com.au/faqs/spam.html and look at the
Anti-Umail FAQ. Here Mark Neely also give you a course on tracking down
spammers and how you can go about complaining effectively about their
abuses. Much of the SPAM that has to do with get rich schemes and
pyramids usually have a fake return address. No surprise as these
activities are illegal in most countries of the world. To determine the
real address from where the mail originated, you need to look at the
Return-path, X-Sender and the 1st Received Fields in the header to
determine the actual sender. You can then send your complaint which
should be brief, polite and contain a copy of the spam with headers to
postmaster@spammersdomain.com or manager@spammersdomain or
root@spammersdomain.com (where spammersdomain.com represents the second
half of the mail address in the return field after the @ symbol).

You may not get a response but a System Administrator is not likely to
be happy to learn that one of its members is vying to be the next spam
king. You can also try to Finger the originating email address to see if
it actually exists within the stated domain, to be sure, before you
proceed with a WhoIS lookup. You should do a WhoIS lookup on the domain
listed in the fields mentioned above and from this you can determine the
origin site or host site of the mailer. You should be prepared to do a
lookup on the host site to decide if, indeed, it is the last on the
chain of servers the mail passed through. The Stop Junk Mail page lists
even more steps you can take to track the mailer down and I would
suggest that you read it as it is quite thorough.

In the meantime you can take some precautions against junk mail by
employing the proper tools in your Internet tool kit. First thing you
need is a mail program that employs filters such as Eudora (Pro or
Lite), Pegasus, and MS Mail and News. You can set up filters to move
mail containing $, cash, money, etc. into a folder that you can look
through it your convenience. This way, you can sort through the junk
mail, or dump it unread, rather than sifting your way through your
in-box trying to hunt down the important stuff. Another great tool is a
news reader that employs kill filters or a kill file. For Windows users
I would recommend Agent, News Express and Gravity. Kill files work the
same as mail filters and allow you to exclude messages by the contents
of their headers and/or author. Usually a kill filter will mark the
thread as read or mark it ignored though it will vary a bit from reader
to reader. Through the use kill files you can at least make your news
reading more meaningful. The best tool you have is common sense. A lot
of junk mail comes about because you subscribed to a list on some web
page, so only sign up for lists that are truly of interest to you. Just
because there is a form on a web page doesn't mean that you have to fill
it in.

These articles on SPAM are works in progress. Someone will come up with
a way to break through the junk mail barriers. The spamming of the
Internet can be likened to junk mail delivered through the post office.
Perhaps the next editions of email programs will have a return to sender
button reversing the process creating their own sets of problems, like
overloading mail servers.

Let's hear what you have to say about SPAM, pro or con. Email me with
your thoughts at christle@mb.sympatico.ca.


                          =========

Dan Christle is the WindoWatch authority on SPAM, Cookies, and all
Internet routines intrusive! He is a salesman for a proprietary trucking
industry network also providing setup and help for their customers. He
is a regular WindoWatch contributor.


   ww page 17
  FastForward                        Jonathan Helis  kb5iav@intersurf.com
  


        A true online-midi-net-song, our online national anthem.
                An original song by the Caffeinated Chef
                   http://www.duban.com/chef/chef.htm


Reload! (Sung to the tune of Rawhide )

    Loading, loading, loading,
    Damn this Java coding,
    There's that feeling of forbodeing,
    Reload!
    The Applet says it's running,
    And that big grey block is stunning,
    But the screen remains as blank as my mind

    Netscape crash,
    Boot 'em up!
    Net goes down,
    Dial back!
    Logging on,
    Still off-line!
    Reload!

    Try it now,
    Still not up!
    Netscape crashed,
    What, again?
    Boot it up,
    Log it in,
    Reload!

    Tighten, tweakin', smoothen,
    They say the codes improvin',
    So how come I'm still usin' "reload"?
    I'm tired of all this waitin',
    Just give me .gif animation,
    This code is only good for wasting time,
    The applet says it's running,
    And grey block is quite stunning,
    But the screen remains as blank as my mind,

    (Midi solo)
    beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep,
    beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep,
    beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep,
    beep, beep,
    beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep,
    beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep,
    beep, beep, beep, beep, beep,
    beep, beep.

    Netscape crash,
    Boot 'em up!
    Net goes down,
    Dial back!
    Logging on,
    Still off-line!
    Reload!

    Try it now,
    Still not up!
    Netscape crashed,
    What, again?
    Boot it up,
    Log it in,
    Reload!



   ww page 18
  Let's Talk Notebooks...
  


                             The Last Word
                    Copyright 1997 by Ben M. Schorr


Computers keep getting smaller, cheaper, lighter, and more powerful. As
notebook computers continue to make gains over their desktop cousins in
terms of power and price, the attraction of portability is too much for
some people to resist.

I've become all too familiar with this syndrome: We're halfway through
deploying fourteen notebook computers, the first phase, for some of our
litigators. Of course, we gave them the choice when I cheerily strolled
into each office and asked the eternal question: "Desktop or Notebook?"
Pad and pen were poised to record each answer, but I needn't have
bothered. The answer, to a person, was notebook.

And so we ordered notebooks for each. But this is really the tail-end of
the story.

This saga began months earlier when we began our search for notebooks.
We looked at Toshiba and IBM and then Twinhead and Winbook. Of course,
we looked at AST, found Acer promising for a bit and got a quote from
Dell. By the time we finished evaluating all the different brands and
models, comparing the various quotes, tracking down reviews, and asking
questions of other notebook owners, - the models we were checking had
been discontinued! So, - we had to start all over again! When all that
kicked-up dust finally settled, we chose Micron Electronics and their
TransPort Pentium 133s.

When we first got a quote on the Micron units, back in September, the
base price was $5199 each. By the time we ordered them, in January, the
base price was $3599 each. You don't have to be an economics wizard to
let out a low whistle at the state of the industry when the prices drop
$1600 in just four months.

And the other units did likewise. Each vendor was constantly calling or
e-mailing their newest models, lower prices, new features or add-ons.
Each of these led to a new wave of evaluation and comparison.
Spreadsheet after spreadsheet, web site after web site. How much does
it weigh? How many infrared ports does it have? Does it come with a
modem? How about a carrying case?

But Micron was our choice and we stuck with it. Several days later an
exhausted looking Federal Express man arrived with a cart loaded
literally to the ceiling with boxes - Micron Electronics each one
proudly proclaimed. I coaxed him into pushing the cart down the hall to
my office door and we unloaded the whole stack of them. After he went on
his way, relieved to be unburdened, I grabbed a felt-tip marker and
immediately labeled each box with the initials of the user who was to
receive it.

The following day the configuration began. Boxes were eagerly opened,
carrying cases, CD's, registration cards, cables of all kinds were
carefully set aside as we excitedly began the arduous process of
installing all of the various pieces of software, configuring everything
for each individual user and preparing the machines to be the newest and
most powerful tools in our company's arsenal! Dramatic music builds!

Of course, this process was not without blemish. Within seventy-two
hours of unpacking, one of the machines blew a power switch and had to
be returned for replacement. Another came out of the box with a huge
dead spot on its screen and also had to be returned. A third arrived
with no battery, making portable use somewhat difficult.

From all of this, however, we learned some important lessons:

 1. Everybody wants the portability - until they see what's involved
    in packing and unpacking the unit, dealing with batteries and PC
    cards, suspend modes, track-point-stick-ball-glide thingies and
    all of the other attendant nuances that a notebook computer brings
    to the desk.

Lesson: Advise the user before they make the choice that there are
drawbacks and responsibilities that accompany the selection of a
notebook over a desktop system.

 2. The day after the notebooks were issued, some of them arrived back
    in the office substantially different from the way they left. They
    were still the same on the outside, - black and roughly rectangular,
    but they now had different fonts, odd screen-savers and strange
    quirks. They greeted the morning with a maniacal laugh and when
    closing Windows 95 brought a familiar voice intoning "I'll be
    back!"

Those of us in the Information Services Department shot alarmed glances
at each other: Supporting these units was going to be harder than what
we bargained for. It was one thing when we expected the users to install
Quicken or Myst, but quite another to see how they had completely
reconfigured the entire look and feel of the unit, installing
third-party utilities and drivers.

We second-guessed ourselves: should we have established a policy against
this? It wouldn't have helped; the software still would have been
installed, it just would have been better hidden.

Lesson: Be prepared for some support challenges! As soon as the machines
leave the elevator downstairs with their person, they're basically out
of our control. It's not safe to assume that it's still running the same
video drivers it came with or that any of the original settings have
been maintained. A safe bet is that within sixty days we will have to
finish a support call by sitting a user down and explaining that their
Beavis and Butthead screen saver is conflicting with the office E-mail
system and will have to go.

 3. Getting a notebook invokes a peculiar reaction in grown
    professionals. From the day the units arrived we had a steady
    stream of dignitaries in and out of our center, each wondering when
    they were going to get delivery of their new machines and peering
    over our shoulders with poorly concealed anticipation. It almost
    got to the point where we spent so much time explaining our
    progress that we had no time to actually make any progress.

As a result, there developed a tendency to rush systems so that people
who were constantly asking for them would get them. The downside was
that some systems were not thoroughly tested and problems that were
discovered by the first one or two users were corrected before the 7th
and 8th users got their machines.

Lesson: Prepare your time scheduling carefully. Give each user an
install date when they will receive their notebook and be conservative.
The last thing you need is to have an early user report a serious
problem just thirty minutes after you handed the boss his new notebook
as he got on the elevator.

All of that said, the situation is stabilizing. The users are, by and
large, content with their new computers and are experiencing the normal
growing pains of trading a 386SX16 running DOS and weighs thirty pounds
for a Pentium-133 that runs Windows 95 and can fit easily into their
briefcase.

Of course, six weeks from now somebody will have a unit that's half the
weight, twice the speed and $300 cheaper and we'll get to do this all
over again.


                          =========

Ben Schorr has been doing the LastWord from almost the beginning of
WindoWatch. As a former consultant and now Director of Information
Services at Damon Key Bocken Leong Kupchak, his is a very broad computer
experience. Ben can be reached by email at bms@hawaiilawyer.com



   ww page 19
  The WindoWatch Art Gallery
  


This month we feature Herb Chong's latest picture. He calls it We Need
to Talk! The editor asked him to tell her what his inspiration was. It
was a dumb question but his response wasn't exactly brilliant either.
Some thing about the need to put in objects! We'll let it stand on its
own.

The image can be viewed in the WW Art Gallery section of the WindoWatch
home page and downloaded in the PDF edition of WindowWatch, available
from http://www.windowatch.com/.


We Need to Talk  Copyright 1997 by Herb Chong



   ww 

EDITORIAL

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

Contributing Writers:          Lynn Alford, 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 from 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. 2 ww End

