CompuNotes Notes from The Cutting Edge of Personal Computing April 5, 1998 Issue 113 +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+= To subscribe, send an e-mail to listserv@peach.ease.lsoft.com SUBSCRIBE COMPUNOTES-L FirstName LastName To unsubscribe, send an e-mail to listserv@peach.ease.lsoft.com SIGNOFF COMPUNOTES-L For Contact and Other Information See Bottom of Publication! +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+= CONTENTS My Notes: 1=> CompuNotes Notes, mailto:pgrote@i1.net 2=> This Issue's Winner! News: 3=> News of the Week, mailto:pgrote@i1.net Reviews: 4=> Product: Norse by NorseWest - The Return of the Lost Vikings, games Reviewed By: Craig Bull, mailto:bull@udayton.edu 5=> Product: iPhotoExpress, graphics Reviewed By: Harold Goldstein, mailto:dcbiker@goldray.com 6=> Product: Realms of the Haunting, games Reviewed By: Craig Bull, mailto:bull@udayton.edu 7=> Product: Redesigning Print for the Web, book Reviewed By: Judy Litt, mailto:jlitt@qualitty.com 8=> Product: Conquer the Skies, game Reviewed By: Don Hughes, mailto:dhughes@wwdc.com 9=> Product: Internet Utilities 97, utility Reviewed By: Craig Bull, mailto:bull@udayton.edu --- BEGIN ISSUE 1=> CompuNotes Notes, mailto:pgrote@i1.net Nothing this issue. 2=> Winner! This week's winner: chris@HALCYON.COM . 3=> News and Game Bits, mailto:pgrote@i1.net or mailto:dr2web@sprynet.com None. 4=> Product: Norse by NorseWest - The Return of the Lost Vikings, games Reviewed By: Craig Bull, mailto:bull@udayton.edu Reviewed On: AMD K6 200MMX, 32 MB RAM, Windows 95b Requires: Win95 :Pentium 60, 16 MB RAM, 2x CD-ROM MSRP: $29.95 *This* is a cool game! Norse by Norsewest is the sequel to Interplay's hit The Lost Vikings, which was released about three years ago. (Of course, I should admit that I thoroughly enjoyed the original!) This sequel maintains the same personality of the original, while adding some new and fun features. Our Viking heroes, Baleog the Fierce, Erik the Swift, and Olaf the Stout, have returned from successfully defeating their alien kidnapper, Tomator. However, they quickly became disenchanted with their former Viking lives. After a few private adventures, each returned home. One morning, they head of fishing. Unfortunately for them, Tomator is in the neighborhood, and is still rather steamed about his defeat; he wants revenge! He once again kidnaps the Vikings. However, although he's a genius, Tomator is rather sloppy. Once again the Vikings get away when Tomator's equipment malfunctions. As the Vikings make their escape in Tomator's time machine, they grab some of his high-tech goodies. "...they know exactly what they have to do: find Tomator and beat the snot out of him!" Installation was a snap. The CD supports the AutoRun feature of Windows95. The first time, you can install the game. On subsequent times the disk is inserted, you can play the game or install/uninstall it. Minimum installation takes only about 4MB of disk space. The full install takes 102MB. I ran with the full installation. The CD is still accessed at times, and overall game performance was very nice. The game requires Microsoft's DirectX, and will install it if you don't have it already. Game control is quite simple, particularly if you played the original keys. The game is controlled via the keyboard. There is no option for joystick or gamepad control. The arrow keys control movement, with Space and Shift controlling each Vikings special capabilities. While joystick or gamepad support would be nice, it is extremely easy to play this game from the keyboard. Each Viking has a couple special abilities. Erik can run quickly, which allows him to headbutt walls or enemies. He can also jump and swim. Baleog has an energy saber, which can be used for close-up fighting. I've actually never used it; his Bionic arm is much more fun! It allows him to punch the bad guys from a distance, hit target buttons which open doors, etc. He can also use it to grab jewels. By doing so, he can swing over chasms. You can control the speed of the swing. Olaf carries a shield. This can be used to protect himself and the others from fireballs, enemies, etc. He can also put it over his head to use as a glider, which will allow him to glide over chasms. His best ability, though, is farting. (Yes, Olaf really farts!) From the manual: "Olaf can emit a thunderous blast from the nether region. This can destroy unstable floors, give an extra lift while gliding, annoys Baleog, nauseates Fang, and generally disgusts any parents watching over your shoulder." So, who's Fang? Fang is one of two creatures the Vikings encounter during their quest. Fang is a wolf that can climb walls, jump, and claw enemies. The other friend is a dragon named Scorch. Scorch flies and breathes fire. Each level (there are 31) starts with three of the above characters. On each level, you must recover three items and return them to the person on the level who can help you. For example, in the early levels, you bring the required items to a witch who casts a spell to transport you to the time machine. Unfortunately, it takes these helpers about 5-6 times to get it right! When you reach the level with the time machine, you must gather the parts that the machine spewed out. However, the time machine isn't much better than the helpers, and you end up visiting it several times before the end of the game. Using each of the three characters abilities, you must navigate the level, gathering the necessary items. Other items you can gather include keys, which open doors you will encounter, bombs, which can destroy floors or walls, and food to recover hit points. Each level starts with a comment or dialog from the characters. For example, about half way through, after three failures with the time machine, Erik comments: "OK, show of hands...Who thought we were really going to the time machine?" Baleog is rather obnoxious to people they meet, and Olaf only has one thing on his mind: lunch! If a character is hit three times during a level, he dies. All three must complete a level to move one. Fortunately, Freya the Valkyrie can revive them to give you another chance. If you fail several times on a level, be prepared for some commentary on your game playing ability. The levels are not terribly complicated. But at the same time, they're not the easiest things, either. In most cases when I got stuck, it was either a matter of timing something right or just thinking about what I had in my inventory. Anyone over 8-10 years old should be able to play this game. It does require some logic to figure out a proper sequence to do things in to complete a level. For people who remember the original, the characters are much the same as before. Now, however, you can see the Vikings in their 3D glory. All characters and areas are much more detailed than in the original (which came on ONE 3.5" floppy!). And the Vikings now have voices. While I don't think Erik and Baleog match they way I imagined them (they almost never do), Olaf is almost perfect. He's just the happy-go-lucky kind of guy I expected. This game is extremely playable by most members of the family. Younger children (and some adults!) may have problems with some of the levels. However, there is no gore or extreme violence. The game is rated K-A by the ESRB. I found this to be a light-hearted, relaxing game that was fun to sit and play. I recommend it highly. A demo is available from the Interplay WWW site. Interplay Productions 16815 Von Karman Avenue Irvine, CA 92606 (714)-553-6678 WWW: http://www.interplay.com 5=> Product: iPhotoExpress, graphics Reviewed By: Harold Goldstein, mailto:dcbiker@goldray.com Reviewed On: Pentium100, 32MB RAM, Windows 95, 28.8K dialup access Requires: Windows 95 or Windows NT 3.51 or higher, 8 MB RAM, 486 or higher, CD-ROM drive, 30 MB disk space (although mine installed in 10 MB) MSRP:$49.95 iPhotoExpress is an editing program that enables users to enhance photos (or any BMP, JPG, PNG, FAX, PCD, PCX image) and use them to create greeting cards, invitations, calendars, announcements, posters and business cards. It comes with iPhotoExpress Explorer, a miniature Windows Explorer, for locating relevant images. One can also control a scanner, digital camera or other TWAIN-based acquisition device. It comes with a full array of image enhancing/adjusting tools - rotations, cropping, focus adjustment, lighting, coloring, remove red eye, typical painting tools, and a few special effects such as embossing, ripple, tiling and others. If you've used other photo editing programs then you'll find this one fairly easy to master. If not then be prepared for a day or two of exploration. Text options are flexible although you must create a different text object for any change in attribute (i.e. new size, style, fill, texture, etc) and sometime moving text can be tedious. The edit undo since is a particularly nice touch where you can go back, in a single step, to any of the last five states. Installation: iPhotoexpress comes on a CD. The installation process begins automatically and is a total snap. A number of sample files in each category are included. Interface: The interface is a bit uninspired but fairly straightforward. Horizontally, the types of projects are displayed at startup; Cards, Calendar, Namecards, Posters, Art. Vertically the types of operations are displayed; adjust and enhance for editing, start for new files, and quick task to retrieve the basic tasks mentioned above. Each of the quick tasks has its own interface. Performance: While not providing the power of Photoshop or Ulead's own PhotoImpact, this inexpensive alternative certainly performs as advertised and at the often discounted price of under $35 is certainly a bargain. Ulead Systems 970 W. 190th Street, Ste. 520 Torrance, California 90502 (310) 523-9393 Fax (310) 523 9399 http://www.ulead.com/ info@ulead.com 6=> Product: Realms of the Haunting, games Reviewed By: Craig Bull, mailto:bull@udayton.edu Reviewed On: AMD DX4/100, 32MB RAM, DOS 6.22, SoundBlaster32, 16x CD-ROM drive Requires: 486 DX2/66, DOS 5.0 or higher (supports Windows95), 8 MB RAM (16 MB recommended), 1MB VGA/SVGA, 2X CD-ROM, SoundBlaster or 100% compatible, 100% Microsoft compatible mouse MSRP: $49.95 ESRB rating: Teen for Animated Violence and Animated Blood and Gore I should start by saying I'm nearly as good at games like this as I'd like to think I am. If you're intimidated by large, complex games, stay away from this. If, however, you enjoy intriguing, long games (over 50 hours if you know what you're doing, a *lot* over 50 hours if you don't), then this may be just what you're looking for. Coming on 4 CD-ROM's, Realms of the Haunting is a huge complex game that incorporates action, adventure, and role-playing in to an incredibly detailed, engrossing environment. This game should keep you involved for a long time. The game begins with a movie introduction that lasts about 5 minutes. That's after beginning animations. Fortunately, you can escape out of each of those sequences to get right to the game. You can replay the intro sequence at any time. You should watch the sequence at least once. It's fairly well done, and explains some things you will need to know. You are Adam Randall, whose father's untimely death leads you to a small village named Helston. Things here are not quite normal. You've been having dreams about a house, but you don't recall that you've ever been there. The dreams have become so vivid, you head for the village to investigate. What you discover is nothing short of terrifying. "Realms of the Haunting is a disturbing vision of the future, based on the many beliefs of the Apocalypse." The forces of Darkness have systematically broken the Seven Seals. It's up to you to stop the world of Shadows from eternal reign. This game provides a very detailed environment for you to explore. The mansion is incredibly huge, larger than you (Adam) would believe from looking at the exterior. As you soon discover, you have been thrust into a world that violates many of the laws of Space and Time. As you explore the mansion, you encounter many creatures, people you will need to talk to, spirits, and all sorts of items to examine. (According to the Interplay Web page, over 600 items to examine, with 155 potential inventory items.) The graphics are quite impressive. While not as graphically detailed as a game like Myst, the amount of detail given to the environment is amazing. You play the game from a first-person perspective. However, upon entering certain areas, you withdraw to a third-person perspective to witness events via a movie sequence. The movies can range from about a minute to several minutes. There are several things that I didn't care for in the game. It requires a minimum of 20MB of drive space for realistic performance. You can get away with 7MB, but don't expect much. The standard installation took almost 100MB of disk space. A full install takes just about 4MB more space. As for gameplay itself, I have two complaints. I found the mouse control to be awkward. You must right-click to navigate around. However, if the pointer has an eye on it, right-clicking doesn't move you - it give descriptive info about the item you're pointing at. Holding both button allows you to look up and down. The manual suggest you use the keyboard to move and the mouse to look up and down and fire. I found that rather awkward. To me, it was like rubbing your head and patting your stomach, or vice versa. My second complaint has to do with documents you pick up as you go - letters, maps, books, etc. You have various inventory "areas", if you will. You can separate documents from items, items from weapons, etc. That's a nice touch. However, to view documents, you get a window that's the equivalent of about 8 typed lines. Not bad for a letter, but horrible for maps. It may be fine for other players, but I found it frustrating. I'd prefer to see that window be much larger. Some of the nicer features include subtitles for all dialog. If you playing in an environment where you don't want the sound (work, maybe?), you can turn the dialog off, but leave the subtitles on so you know what they're saying. I left both on. Once you get a weapon, the game perspective is a lot like that of Doom. You have a gun waving in front of you. You *will* need it. Sometime it can get in the way of an object your looking at, since the gun aims wherever you point the mouse. You can also set the level of difficulty for the arcade and puzzle portions of the game. The higher the difficulty setting for the arcade portion, the harder it is to kill the bad guys. Setting the puzzle portion on the easy level doesn't necessarily make the puzzles easier to solve. But, if you click on a lock, if you have the key in inventory, it will automatically move to your hand so you can use it. On the regular setting, you have to select the appropriate item. All in all, I think this is a terrific game, although I should admit I've got a *long* way to go before I finish. While I had some problems with the controls, the story line is very intriguing. I got goosebumps several times while playing. I would recommend it to anyone who enjoys long games that provide a substantial challenge. Interplay Productions 16815 Von Karman Avenue Irvine, CA 92606 (714)553-6678 http://www.interplay.com 7=> Product: Redesigning Print for the Web, book Reviewed By: Judy Litt, mailto:jlitt@qualitty.com Author: Dr. Mario R. Garcia ISBN: 1-56830-343-2 Pages: 239 MSRP: $45 US If you've been wrestling with the problems of putting printed materials on the Web, this book is for you. The title is just slightly misleading; it should be Redesigning Newspapers for the Web. Newspapers are Dr. Garcia's specialty, but most of the principles apply just as well to a large range of printed documents. The first thing you'll notice when you open the book is color. Lots and lots of screen captures adorn the pages of this book, so rare in today's wealth of Web design books. We start at the beginning, with a model for effective information design: understanding the information to be presented focusing on the specific target audience simplifying the message integrating words and visuals It's the old content vs. design argument. You have to have good content to keep viewers, but if they aren't led to that content easily (the designer's job), you may lose them. So you have to understand your audience and know what you want to get out of a Web site before you begin designing. Dr. Garcia points out it's important to realize the people who read the print version of your newspaper may be different from the people who view the Web version of your newspaper. For instance, it's safe to assume that more Web viewers than print readers will be extremely interested in computer technology news. The first third of the book, which mainly discusses the role of the information designer, is a bit dry for my taste. But what comes next is well worth the wait: discussions on how Web design differs from print design, and some design basics thrown in for good measure. Here's some of Dr. Garcia's advice for Web design of newspapers: Include only about 60% of the content of your print version in the Web version. Sports, business, entertainment, history, and trivia are big pullers. Divide the screen equally between editorial content and advertising, but make sure there isn't a visible dividing line. Eye movement, in early studies, show more horizontal movement, left to right. Because the screen is smaller than the newspaper in most instances, the same amount of text doesn't appear as overwhelming on the Web. There's no need to interrupt the flow of text with unnecessary elements, such as pull quotes. To hook the reader, box the headline, using color and reversed out type. There are good, brief discussions of design basics such as: typography, color (deadly color sins), and animation. There's also a brief chapter that covers which navigational tools work (hyperlinks, graphic type, pop-up menus, etc.). The difference between designing for on-line magazines and newspapers is covered. Dr. Garcia contends that magazines for the Web are actually easier to design because their smaller size is similar to the size of the screen. Some of the visual rules of thumbs for on-line magazines: Visuals are very important Need a good balance between text and visuals (about 60 to 40) Emphasize color Chapter 9 will be of special interest to newspapers who are considering the transition to the Web. It's full of case studies of those who've already made the transition. There's screen captures of the sample Web sites, as well as a photographs of the print version of the newspapers. Each case study asks and answers a series of different, important questions that had to be either considered or answered to make the transition. There are several appendices in Redesigning Print for the Web: new media bibliography ( Web sites, printed articles, and books); site catalog (selected Web sites); HTML reference chart; and an appendix listing colors by their names and hexadecimal codes. The inclusion of the HTML reference chart is very interesting. If you need to learn HTML, you'll need to buy the appropriate book (or peek at someone's source code). This book isn't about code, it's about design. And as Dr. Garcia says, this is only the beginning. Redesigning Print for the Web is a beautiful book, with very good information. It's not a "teach yourself ______ in a week" book, but rather a serious look at the differences between print design and Web design. Print designers are the target audience, and there's no doubt Dr. Garcia knows his audience. 8=> Product: Conquer the Skies, game Reviewed By: Don Hughes, mailto:dhughes@wwdc.com Requirements: 386 DX33 min, 486 recommended, 8MB of RAM, 600K free memory, VGA monitor, 6 to 16 MB of Hard drive space. Price $24.94 US There are three software CD-ROM collections in the MicroProse "Conquer" series: Conquer the Skies, Conquer the World, and Conquer the Universe. The "Conquer the Skies" consists of four of their best selling and award winning flight simulator is packaged on one CD-ROM. The flight simulators from MicroProse are: Gunship 2000, "Recognized as the classic helicopter flight simulation. With the award winning Gunship 2000, you'll be able to pilot multiple U.S. Army helicopters, including the AH-64A Apache, the UH-60K Blackhawk and the AH-66B Comanche, in battles throughout the Persian Gulf and Europe." 1942 the Pacific Air War "Awarded several flight simulation game of the year in 1994. Pilot any one of 16 US or Japanese planes, each with realistic cockpits and flight characteristics, through frantic dogfights, World War II era flight simulation." Falcon 3.0 "Regarded by many as the best flight simulation game of all time. Pilot your F-16 fighter jet through three explosive campaigns in Panama, Kuwait and Israel. Selling over one million units, Falcon 3.0 is recognized by many as the best simulation game of all time." F14 Fleet Defender "Considered to be a benchmark in naval aviation flight simulations. Hop into the cockpit of the Navy's premier weapon, the F-14 Tomcat, in the skies above the oceans of the world. With the long range Phoenix missile on board and the nerve-wracking carrier landings, this Tomcat simulation will take your breath away." The test computer for the programs was a 486 DX4 100MHz, 8MB of RAM, SVGA monitor, Sound blaster 16, an ATI Win-turbo Graphics card with 2MB RAM, and a joystick. I tested the CD Auto Play feature on a Pentium 100, but did not install the games onto the Pentium. Installation problems: The CD-ROM has a software installation program that will auto-play in Windows 95, but you are warned to run the programs from DOS not Windows 95. The install feature can also make a boot disk that can be used to run the program, instead of exiting to DOS from Windows 95. You simply follow the on screen instructions to create the boot disk, and reboot the computer. The reason for the boot disk is to eliminate, most of what loads into the computers low (640K of the 1st meg of RAM) memory and make as much as of the memory space available to the program. Also on the CD-ROM are the manuals for the four programs and an Adobe reader for DOS and Windows allowing the end user to read or print parts or the entire manual. The free memory (lower 640K) required for each program is: 1942 580K free and 16 MB hard drive space, Falcon-3 600K free and 6MB hard drive space, F14 566K free and 11MB hard drive space, GS2000 580K free and 5MB hard drive space. The manual size in pages: 1942-225 pages, Falcon3-254 pages, F14-297 pages, and GS2000 -183 pages. When installing the programs to the 486, I also installed the DOS version of Adobe reader and then copied the manual for each program into the Adobe dir. However, if you copy the manuals and the adobe program you will need another 15 MB of hard drive space in order to hold all the files. The reason for copying the manuals to your hard drive is, should you need more free memory, you can REM out the drivers for the CD-ROM in the Config.sys, and Autoexec.bat files. If you need more memory and REM out the CD-drivers, you be unable to access the CD-ROM to read or print information from the manuals. Each of the flight simulations gives you the look and feel of being in the cockpit of an actual aircraft. The flight characteristics of pitching, rolling, yawing, are excellent and the aircraft controls response are very close to the real thrill of flight. The manuals provided on the CD-ROM are in depth and well written. It is a good ides to print the flight control keyboard/joystick function commands on each of the four programs as a reference. At a cost of $24.95, the MicroProse CD-ROM can be considered a bargain, for those of you who are running 386/486 computers. However, those of you that have new Pentiums and running Windows 95 may want to pass on this CD-ROM. The graphic detail of Conquer the Skies clearly is not up to the resolution of current flight simulators and lacks in-depth detail of ground, buildings, targets etc. The software is of early 1990's vintage and simply does not have the enriched 3D graphics of to-days programs. Nonetheless, the flight characteristics and response of the aircraft in each or the four programs are about as good as it gets. During this review I soon discovered "1942: The Pacific Air War" to be my favorite flight simulator of the bunch--excluding the many crash landings, and several times having been shot down. In the 1942 simulator, you can choose from different propeller driven aircraft and select the sides you wish to role-play--Japanese or American. Each product in the package is primarily a fight simulator that gives you the look, feel, and sounds of piloting a real aircraft. The only faults I could find with this software package is the lack of graphic detail, the high free memory requirements, and the programs only work from DOS. I strongly urge users to read the "Conquer The Skies" quick start instructions booklet, before attempting to install the programs. The Conquer the Skies CD-ROM by MicroProse is older software, but still offers any end user many enjoyable hours flying various aircraft at a great price. The CD-ROM makes a great addition for any fly-by-the seat-of your-pants, arm chair pilot, and an ideal gift (386/486 systems) for the coming holiday season. MicroProse 2490 Mariner Square Loop Alameda, CA, USA, 94501 Telephone: (510)522-1164 Fax: (510)522-9357 BBS: (510)522-8909 Web Site: http://www.microprose.com E-mail: support@microprose.com 9=> Product: Internet Utilities 97, utility Reviewed By: Craig Bull, mailto:bull@udayton.edu Reviewed on: AMD DX4/100, 32MB RAM, Windows 95, Netscape 3.01 Requires: 386 or better, Windows95 or WindowsNT 4.0, 8 MB RAM (16 MB for NT), CD-ROM drive, Internet access and 32-bit Web browser, Sound card recommended MSRP: $29.99 Internet Utilities 97 (IU97) from Starfish Software bills itself as the #1 Internet Survival Kit. While the claim of being #1 depends more on the user than on the company (if you ask, they're *all* #1), this is an extremely useful set of utilities. This program provides a number of useful utilities and functions including browser-independent bookmark management, ping, whois/finger, and traceroute utilities, news decoder, FTP client, and a ZIP file compression utility. Each of these utilities is quite easy to use. Probably the most significant utility is QuickMarks. This provides a graphical interface to manage your bookmarks. If you've ever uninstalled your browser to install the latest version, forgetting that your bookmark file gets deleted, too, or you switch between Netscape and Internet Explorer, then this is a life saver. QuickMarks will read your existing bookmark file from either Netscape or Explorer and display them as a tab in the Internet Utilities control bar. IU97 comes with a number of pre-defined QuickMarks. Once your current browser's bookmarks are imported, the can be managed independently of your browser. However, you can configure IU97 to synchronize the QuickMarks with your browser's bookmarks. You can also export QuickMarks for distribution to friends and colleagues. You can even create a QuickMark tab for applications on your hard drive. QuickMarks groups appear as tabs in the IU97 window. You can add, delete, and edit those groups using a Windows Explorer-like interface. Groups can be re-arranged and edited, and marks within those groups can be moved from one group to another. Each group can contain subgroups, allowing you greater control over the organization of your bookmarks. A QuickMark can be added to any tab by simply clicking the QuickMark It! button. IU97 can also monitor your favorite web sites and notify you when there are changes. IU97 also includes several powerful utilities. Ping allows you to determine the amount of time to contact various sites. Extremely slow response times indicates a problem of some sort. You can then run QuickRoute which indicates the number of routers (or hops) you go through to connect to various sites. This is always interesting! I ran QuickRoute to a local provider and found out that to go to his location 15 miles away, my packets went through Washington, D.C. and back. Not only is this fun, it's also helpful in determining if there is a problem. You may only be able to trace a portion of the route. This is helpful in determining why you may be having problems connecting to various sites. The Finger/Whois utilities is helpful in finding information on people and servers. Fingering user@somewhere.com may give you more information about that person. Obviously, this is not 100% reliable. Many sites refuse finger connections, and a lot of users don't create their plan file, which is what finger looks for. The whois utility is much more useful. Doing a whois on a domain, such as udayton.edu, gives you information on who the billing and technical contacts are, where they are located, etc. This can be particularly useful in regards to junk mail that you may receive. You can use whois to determine if the domain exists and, if so, who to contact with questions or concerns. A really neat feature of QuickRoute is the implementation of whois. Do a QuickRoute to a site and you'll get a graphical representation of the hosts you go through. Move your cursor over the icon for a particular host and you will see the billing address. QuickFTP is a very nice FTP client. Once you connect to a site, you are presented with an Explorer-like interface. You can easily navigate through your favorite FTP site looking for files. You can create an FTP tab in QuickMarks and access any FTP site that you define with a single click. You can even receive notification if an FTP site changes. Internet Meter provides a graphical representation of the traffic over your network connection. You can see how much has been sent and received and average throughput. It also provides a logging function so you can see how much time you spend running various programs. Internet Utilities 97 also comes with a utility called Internet Clock. Using this, you can have your computer's clock set, based on the response from one of a number time servers on the Internet. This is handy if your computer's clock can't decide just how fast time flies. You can also use this as a very basic reminder program. You can configure it to notify you about recurring events, set alarms to notify you 10 minutes before the big meeting, etc. While it's not a scheduling program, it can be used for some very basic time management. A ZIP archive utility is also included. While it's not as robust as WinZip, it is an extremely powerful and easy to user ZIP utility. You can decompress any ZIP archive that you download. You can also create your archives with varying compression levels. You can even create a self- extracting archive that you can send to someone who doesn't have a ZIP utility. It also supports the password protection of archive files and is fully compatible with PKZIP and WinZip. Unfortunately, it does not appear to support Gzip archives, such as those that may be created on UNIX computers. The only utility included that I felt wasn't helpful (I'm trying to be polite) is the News Decoder. This allows you to decode the files that are posted in a number of Usenet newsgroups. While it's a nice idea, and a fairly decent implementation, it appears that it only shows those articles that are encoded files. I was unable to get it to act as a general news reader. Given that many other news readers, such as News Express and Forte can read and decode as well, I didn't really see any advantage to this utility. All in all, I'm very happy with Internet Utilities 97. While some of the utilities might not be the best in their class, such as the News Decoder, this is one of the most complete Internet utility packages I've ever seen. I highly recommend it. If you're interested, a Lite version is available from the Starfish Web page. (I don't know why it requires a CD drive. The copy I received came on three 3.5" floppy disks.) While the literature I received indicated that Internet Utilities 97 would function under WindowsNT 4.0, recent experience has caused me to question that. Their WWW page makes no mention of support for WindowsNT 4.0, and installation experience at work leads me to believe that it does NOT support NT 4.0. After installing, I experienced very erratic behavior from my NT system. Upon removing it, the erratic behavior disappeared. I still highly recommend it for those using Windows95. Starfish Software, Inc. 1700 Green Hills Road Scotts Valley, CA 95066 http://www.starfish.com +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+= Managing Editor: Patrick Grote -- mailto:pgrote@i1.net Assistant Editor: Writer Liaison: Doug Reed-- mailto:dr2web@sprynet.com Assistant Editor: Robin Nobles, mailto:smslady@netdoor.com Archives: ftp://ftp.uu.net/published/compunotes/ Website: e-mail: mailto:notes@compunotes.com Want to Write for Us?: mailto:writers@compunotes.com fax: (314) 909-1662 voice: (314) 909-1662 +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+= CompuNotes is: Available weekly via e-mail and on-line. We cover the PC computing world with comprehensive reviews, news, hot web sites, great columns and interviews. We also give away one software package a week to a lucky winner for just reading our fine publication! Never dull, sometimes tardy, we are here to bring you the computing world the way it is! Please tell every on-line friend about us! CompuNotes B440 1315 Woodgate Drive St. Louis, MO 63122 notes@compunotes.com (C)1998 Patrick Grote