CompuNotes - We now have forums on the website! See below! Notes from The Cutting Edge of Personal Computing ISSN: 1525-4534 April 27, 2002 Issue 181 +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+= To subscribe, send an e-mail to compunotes-subscribe@topica.com To unsubscribe, send an e-mail to compunotes-unsubscribe@topica.com or send an e-mail to listserv@peach.ease.lsoft.com with the following SIGNOFF COMPUNOTES-L +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+= Visit our Family of Sites ========================= GetFreeReports: Tons of Information -- FREE! (http://www.getfreereports.com) Jokes-N-Stuff: Your daily humor web page. (http://www.jokes-n-stuff.com) YALD and Internet Notes - A Great Blog (http://www.yald.com) Become a Friend of CompuNotes and Get Free Advertising for Your Site! ===================================================================== http://www.compunotes.com/friends.htm Get Free Support for your PC or Internet Connection =================================================== Stop by the CompuNotes forums and let us help you work the troubles your PC is facing. Suffer no more. :-) (http://www.compunotes.com/forums.htm) CONTENTS 1=> This Week's Notes, The Forums and You, By Patrick Grote, mailto:pgrote@compunotes.com 2=> This Issue's Winner! Articles: 3=> Email Overload, By Terry Johnston Reviews: 4=> Product: Road Warrior Bullet Drive Professional PC Card Cable and Chassis plus USB interface (hardware) Reviewed By: Songmuh Jong, mailto:songmuh@yahoo.com 5=> Product: Typing Instructor Deluxe v12 (education) Reviewed By: Craig Bull, mailto:nobull@compunotes.com 6=> Product: QuickBooks 2002 Pro (business) Reviewed By: Don Hughes, mailto:dhtech1@sympatico.ca 7=> Product: .NET Framework Essentials by Thuan L. Thai & Hoang Lam (book) Reviewed By: Songmuh Jong, mailto:songmuh@yahoo.com --- To turn a friend on to this mailing, go to: http://go.MailBits.com/Tell.asp?611002.2 --- 1=> This Week's Notes, By Patrick Grote, mailto:pgrote@compunotes.com I wasn't talking about the Roman forums, but CompuNotes' own forums! We offer really nice message forums that can help get you out of your PC jams. The forums also offer the a way to communicate with the writers and editors of CompuNotes and get their opinion on products and trends. Why not stop by today and let us help you out? (http://www.compunotes.com/forums.htm) 2=> Winner! This week's winner: Jodi Bell! Jodi has won a $10.00 Amazon gift certificate. Would you like to win something just for subscribing? We give away a prize each and every week to one of our subscribers. Who knows, it could be you! You could win next week ... all you have to do is subscribe! 3=> Email Overload - Coping Strategies, By Terry Johnston We're here... the information age! Having fun yet? What's that you say.... too much information, finding the spammers are getting the best of you, facing a bloated INBOX everyday, too many friends are sending you those silly jokes and greeting cards, dealing with a mountain of lists and ezines that you spend more time sorting & deleting than reading, can't find that "important" email in the haystack, can't meet those deadlines because you're so preoccupied with sorting out your email? THIS is the information age? What, pray tell, comes next.... Perhaps "The Information Organization Age" - Bingo! You've all heard the statistics: * Every day 8 billion emails are exchanged on the Internet. * By 2005 this figure will increase to 36 billion. * 81% of corps. that implemented email did so to improve efficiency . * The average email user in business spends at least 2 hours a day dealing with email. * According to Internet researcher Jupiter Media Metrix, by 2006 consumers are expected to receive an average of 1,400 pieces of junk e-mail every day! * Yada yada yada. Resources: Email organizing software does exist -- check out: http://www.emailorganizer.com and http://www.amikanow.com as well as websites that provide information that help with email overload such as http://www.email911.com and http://www.OvercomeEmailOverload.com. Coping tips: For those of you brave individuals who want to take a stab at manual organizing here are some practical, tried and true strategies: USE MULTIPLE EMAIL ADDRESSES Although most of you have already figured this one out, it's worth mentioning because it's so fundamental to an anti email overload strategy. One way to think of your correspondence is Personal and Public. For instance, you can open webmail accounts (e.g. Hotmail & Yahoo!) for your public, not-so-critical correspondence. This could include registering when you download software and utilities from the net, marketing promotions, chat rooms and message boards. Your Personal address is reserved for higher priority business contacts, friends, relatives and associates. Although I now use email organizing software, hence my need for webmail accounts has dimished dramatically, at my peak I had well over a dozen accounts going. One caveat to this webmail strategy is that both Hotmail and Yahoo! are now applying strict minimum usage rules (they'll close the account if it's not checked in with frequently). Many people apply this strategy using POP accounts. THE GOLDEN RULE Help your friends and colleagues cope with their email overload by NOT contributing to it! You know how it goes: "do unto others..." It's the old cause and effect thing. Unless they've expressed an interest, perhaps you can hold back on sending those jokes, greeting cards and CCing them on every-little-bit-of-business. While we're on CCing, it's important for companies to develop a policy on what to CC and to whom. If your company doesn't have a policy in place maybe it's time for you to be the Corporate Hero and... DEAL WITH A MESSAGE ONLY ONCE How many times have you read a message, flagged it for follow-up, came back to it, read it again, perhaps left it until you have more time, came back to it, read it again... then replied. This is not a very efficient use of your valuable time, is it? A great discipline is to deal with the message once. That is to say, once you've committed to reading it, reply right away before you go on to the next message. DON'T REPLY TO 'EVERY' MESSAGE That heading was hard for me to write because one of my pet peeves is when people don't reply to me. (I'm getting over it.) The fact is that it's NOT necessary to reply to every message. Especially with those one-word replies... like: Great, Cool, Thanks, Beauty etc. Remember the Golden Rule? Those short, sometimes meaningless, replies are often only contributing to the recipient's email overload. CREATE FOLDERS Most email clients allow you to set up folders. Although limited in scope, people, project and client specific folders can reduce a lot of stress, especially when it comes to finding a message. I know people who religiously go through their Inbox and drag and drop each and every message into a folder (including a trash folder). Time consuming and tedious yes, but in the overall scheme of things folders can make your email existence much easier. SPAM BUSTING Don't fall prey to the "oldest spamster trick in the book" - don't use the unsubscribe feature in spam messages (not to be confused with Lists and Ezines). Spam marketers and list providers use the unsubscribe feature to qualify email addresses! Do you see the irony? You can consult with your ISP. More and more ISPs are providing spam filters. You can also forward the spam you get to the FTC. Send it to uce@ftc.gov I hope these suggestions have brought you some hope. This list, of course, could extend to many more pages but I'd better let you go.... You've got tons of email to deal with!! Happy organizing! About the author: Terry Johnston is Vice-President of Marketing with Caelo Software Inc. Caelo develops user-friendly email organizing software http://www.emailorganizer.com mailto: tjohnston@caelo.com 4=> Product: Road Warrior Bullet Drive Professional PC Card Cable and Chassis plus USB interface (hardware) Reviewed By: Songmuh Jong, mailto:songmuh@yahoo.com Requires: 2.5" Hard Drive, computer with USB, Firewire, or PC Card interface and a small screwdriver. MSRP: US$129 for the kit, US$49.99 for the interface cable We're in an era of portable computing, but it's not limited to mobile users. Desktop users also have the need to share or transfer files across multiple computers. Even if you have an intranet or Internet storage, the hard drives usually fill up before you realize it. With the increasing complexity of operating systems and ready availability of multimedia files and the need for backups, computer users are facing the challenge of getting sufficient storage. Portable storage solutions are getting hotter and bigger than ever. Portable storage solutions usually come in a few flavors: (1) enclosure kit without a drive, (2) enclosure kit with a drive which cannot be easily detached, and (3) enclosure and drive which can be easily detached. The first and last categories are the most interesting ones because they allow you to replace the hard drive using the same enclosure over and over again. All drive kits are available for 25" and 3.5" hard drives. The kit we review here requires a 2.5" hard drive. The interface is also important. The standard interface is universal serial bus (USB) for desktop PC, PC Card for notebooks (PCMCIA), and IEEE1394 (Firewire). Modern notebook computers also come with USB and Firewire ports as standard configuration. One disadvantage of PCMCIA is that the cable can easily break at the card connection. Most of the kits come in one interface, including the Bullet Drive professional enclosure. Assembly and installation of the Bullet Drive is a four-step process. The first step is to mount the hard drive in the chassis. It requires some practice and took me some time to master it. The problems were the small size and enclosure alignment difficulty. The two pieces of enclosure, the front piece, the hard drive and the electronic board must all be aligned properly and fastened in place before you can successfully use the kit. This step also has a big impact on the subsequent steps. Without a careful assembly, this kit cannot be functional. The chassis provides the power. One nice thing about the Bullet Drive Professional is that it comes with both an AC converter and a serial connector. With the AC converter, you hook up the kit to your AC source as usual. The serial connector allows you to use the power from the computer without external source. That's pretty neat, but it is not mentioned in the manual. 2.5" drives do not need any power cable. The second step is to attach the kit to the computer. Operating systems like Windows XP and Windows 98 will recognize the interface cable first. The driver for the interface cable and the chassis come with the kit on a floppy disk. Windows XP will automatically search for and install the driver. Windows 98 requires you to browse or type in the subdirectory name in the A: drive. PC Card installation on Windows XP is automatic and requires no manual intervention at all. The USB driver needs a little extra work, but it is not complicated. Here the manual is wrong about the Windows XP. It says that you have to choose the second driver for Windows XP, but I had to choose the first one on my Windows XP professional notebook. Perhaps the manual was tested with XP Home, but I don't have other XP versions to verify. The third step is automatically initiated by Windows when it finds the Bullet Drive chassis. Again, I had to choose the first driver on the list for my XP Pro computer, not the second one as described by the manual. The last step is the most troublesome. You need to run FDISK to complete the job in Windows 98, or use the Disk Management utilities on Windows XP. Subsequent connection to the computer after installation is also tricky. You must assemble the whole kit before attaching it to the computer. If you leave the interface cable attached to the computer and connect the chassis after the computer is booted, the computer only recognizes the interface cable, not the hard drive. My notebook is running Windows 98; my desktop computer is running Windows XP. Since the kit comes with a PC Card, I tried it on my notebook first. However, I had a lot of difficulty installing the kit on the laptop so I requested the USB interface to try the kit on my desktop. The desktop computer recognized the drive, but the last step still failed because FDISK could not create a partition. So I tried Windows XP Disk Management and it surprisingly worked. I re-connected the drive to the laptop, but Windows 98 FDISK would not recognize the partition created by Windows XP even though I specifically choose not to format it in Windows XP. During this whole period of time, I disassembled and reassembled the whole kit numerous times. My ideal portable storage device is one that has large storage capacity, a convenient interface for multiple computers, compatibility with various operating systems, size and weight small enough for mobile computing, and a form factor which makes it easy to install and switch hard drives. This product segment is still evolving. More interesting products should be coming out in the near future. For now, PC Card looks awkward and the USB port looks more promising. 2.5" hard drives may replace 3.5" if their prices can continue to drop. Companies like iGo have and will come up with more convenient kits that allow easy installation of the increasing larger hard drives to any computer. The Bullet Drive Professional Kit is one step toward that goal. iGo Corporation Road Warrior Bullet Drive Professional PC Card Cable and Chassis Product Web Site: http://www.igo.com (Ed. Note: iGo was quick to respond to the error in the installation instructions under Windows XP. iGo has told us they will add an insert to update the manual in all new Road Warrior Bullet Drive Professional PC Card Cable and Chassis Kit product shipments). 5=> Product: Typing Instructor Deluxe v12 Reviewed By: Craig Bull, mailto:nobull@compunotes.com Requires: PentiumŪ 133 PC or higher, Microsoft Windows XP, ME, 2000, or 98, 32MB free RAM, 15MB free had disk space when run from CD, 435MB hard disk space for full installation, 4x CD-ROM Drive, 800 x 600 16 Bit or higher display, 16-bit Sound Card, Speakers or Headphones, Mouse MSRP: US$29.95 Typing Instructor Deluxe (TID) is the latest release in a series of typing programs from Individual Software. With features such as multimedia presentations, a Magazine Rack, and various games, users can practice and improve their typing skills. Whether your typing skills are rusty or nonexistent, this program is definitely worth looking into. TID utilizes a travel theme to guide you through your typing lessons, starting at the Main Terminal where you can select from activities, lessons and tests, define your word per minute (WPM) goal on your passport and view your progress. As you progress through various tests, your passport is stamped for one of the twelve countries you will travel through. The How To Type section provides a brief multimedia introduction to typing and describes the best environment for typing. This includes monitor placement, chair height, posture and hand placement. It also presents several exercises that you can perform during your day to relieve stress and avoid muscle fatigue. You can start at any point you wish. Lessons flow very much the way I remember them from my high school typing class. At the beginning of each lesson, you are shown which fingers are used for the keys being introduced. A visual representation of a keyboard is displayed, showing proper hand placement. You can select a standard keyboard or an ergonomic one such as the Microsoft Natural keyboard. You can select from a wide variety of musical styles to listen to while you are practicing, or you can select your own music. Upon completion of a lesson, you are presented with a Next-Step. You can take a break at any time, skip ahead or repeat a lesson. After completing several lessons, there are tests and games, apparently based on the WPM goal you define at the beginning. The games, or Virtual Adventures, mostly involve typing faster than your computer opponent. For example, in Cliffhanger, your goal is to scale the cliff faster than the computer opponent. If you miss a keystroke, your character slips (though try as I might, he never fell off the cliff). The tests monitor your progress and present a specific amount of text to complete, reinforcing the keys you've learned to that point. Once a test is completed, you are presented with your calculated WPM, peak WPM, and accuracy percentage. If you just want to practice, a Magazine Rack is available with over 300 books, short stories and articles. These articles are geared to all ages and interests. In addition, new lessons, tests, exercises, articles and practice material are available for download from Individual Software. These can be downloaded through the program. I only have two complaints. When you type capital letters (or other shifted characters) with your left hand, you are supposed to use the right shift key and vice versa. That's an area in which I have difficulty. Typing Instructor Deluxe does not catch those mistakes. More significantly, I had difficulty installing the program on my Windows98SE system. After some troubleshooting, I determined that the Microsoft Data Access Components (MDAC) supplied with Typing Instructor Deluxe did not install correctly. I fixed the problem by downloading MDAC from Microsoft and installing it separately. My concern is that it took several e-mails to Individual Software's tech support before they finally acknowledged that this was a known issue. Unfortunately, they are not certain what's causing the problem. They indicated to me that in some cases, replacing the CD seems to solve it, while in other cases, changing the Operating System user name resolves the issue. If you are interested in learning to type, or just want to increase typing speed and accuracy, Typing Instructor Deluxe will definitely help. The lessons progress logically and the tests help reinforce the concepts taught. The travel theme and music selections help make the software more enjoyable overall. I highly recommend this program. Individual Software Typing Instructor Deluxe v12 Product web site: http://www.individualsoftware.com 6=> Product: QuickBooks 2002 Pro Reviewed By: Don Hughes, mailto:dhtech1@sympatico.ca Requires: Windows 95, 98, ME, NT 4.0, 2000 and XP; Pentium II 350 MHz with 64 MB of RAM or higher, 145MB of hard disk space; Internet Explorer 5.5/6.0 required (v5.5 included - requires 70MB hard disk space); 256 color SVGA video or better, 800x600 resolution, any printer supported by Windows 95, 98, Me, Windows NT 4.0, 2000, XP. Payroll Service and all online features/ services require Internet access with a 28.8 connection speed or higher, E-mail forms:MAPI- compliant e-mail client, Internet access required. MSRP: US version $279.95; Canadian version $329.95 QuickBooks is the #1 rated small business accounting software and the package most recommended by accountants and financial institutions in North America. QuickBooks 2002 Pro has a user-friendly interface that is highly customizable to suit any small business accounting requirements. Using the Internet, QuickBooks can interact with your financial institution, import and convert data from Quicken and Microsoft Money. If you use Microsoft Word, Excel, Outlook or Symantec Act, data can be fully synchronized with QuickBooks. Small businesses using peer-to- peer, NT server or Novel Netware networks can take advantage of QuickBook's two to five multi-user capability by purchasing extra licenses. This latest version features better creation and tracking of sales orders, the ability to creation multiple estimates for a single job, is easier to upgrade and is supplied with more customizable business forms. Users can now apply lump sum payments to multiple invoices, instead of manually splitting up the amount and having to make numerous data entries (which cuts down on paper work for any company doing contract service work and billing clients on a monthly basis). Before setting up your business type and creating an account, you need to gather information such as trade name, address, bank accounts, opening balances, provincial, state, and federal tax account numbers, fiscal start and year end for the company. The QuickBooks setup has a built-in "Easy Step Interview" wizard to guide users and make entering the necessary data a painless process. The set-up has twenty-four business types from which to select. However, if your exact business model is not on the list, select one that closely matches and customize it later. Once the process of setting up the accounts, inventory, invoice formats, number of employees, time tracking, is completed, the main "Getting Started" window appears, providing selections from a wide-ranging list of topics to help you learn more about QuickBooks functions. Entering data into QuickBooks is easy as 1-2-3 using the handy screen icons in each segment of QuickBooks. In the left column of the QuickBooks desktop, a small navigator window provides access to Company, Customers, Vendors, Employees, Banking, Business Services, Reports, and Help and Support. These functions and sub-functions are also easily accessible from the top pull down menus. A click on Customers in the left column opens the larger main customer window where users can create an invoice, estimate, receive payments, enter finance charges, refunds, sales receipts or print invoices. Select Company and you have access to the chart of accounts, backup, journal entries, print mailing lists, make business decisions, etc. In Reports, you can print balance sheets, profit & loss, profit & loss by job or by task, year to date, expense and income, and graphs. To save money users can scan and import a company logo to create a personalized invoice form with QuickBooks built in Layout Designer. Alternatively, you can purchase various types of pre-printed forms, deposit slips, and checks from business supply houses such as NEBS.com for use with QuickBooks . Positives: QuickBooks Pro accounting is designed to fill the needs of most small retail and wholesale businesses. The program is easy to learn, use and navigate. Installation is a simple matter of following the on-screen instructions. Once installed, you can begin the process of setting up the accounting package and customizing it for your business. If you have an accountant or business adviser, it's a good idea to get some advice before setting up your business account. Help is available online within the software or in the 500+ page users guide. You can add or delete journal accounts to customize the program fit a business model. Bank information can be imported from your financial institution as long as it exports data in MSMoney, Quicken or OFX format. This makes reconciliation between a bank statement and QuickBooks much easier and aids in locating discrepancies. Negatives: During testing for this review, I found that if I wasn't careful and got a bit mouse happy, double entries of invoices or deposits could be accidentally created. The second problem was a printed check that for some reason not recorded after assigning the account to the vendor, expense type and printing the check. I was unable to repeat the error. Users cannot build from the inventory. Adjusting and aligning printing for checks can be tedious, as you must use a grid to move the printing up/down or left/right. The inventory part of QuickBooks is for small businesses that buy and sell wholesale or retail merchandise. You cannot build items for wholesale/ resale from stock using QuickBooks if your business is manufacturing, nor if you want to track inventory by last-in, first-out or vice-versa. QuickBooks 2002 Pro from Intuit is an excellent accounting package for any small business, and a great bargain, in spite of some negatives encountered during testing. Intuit QuickBooks 2002 Pro Product web site(US): http://www.quickbooks.com Product web site (Canada): http://www.quickbooks.ca 7=> Product: .NET Framework Essentials by Thuan L. Thai & Hoang Lam (book) Reviewed By: Songmuh Jong, mailto:songmuh@yahoo.com Requires: Microsoft .NET Framework SDK and/or Visual Studio .NET MSRP: USD$29.95/CAD$44.95; ISBN 0-596-00302-1 A book on this topic has to be concise because the title covers a broad topic (and the main text is less than 300 pages, FYI). The market is rapidly filling up with books on the .NET. It is therefore interesting to find that this book is still the textbook of choice for general .NET programming. It must be good because this is the second edition. The book begins with an overview of the .NET (pronounced Dot Net by the way) platform, then proceeds to the underlying design of common language runtime. It explains the meaning of terms such as metadata, delegate, boxing, IL, CTS and CLS very well, and even tells you how to examine the metadata using the disassembly tool. The (most often suggested) beauty of the .NET platform is that it allows programs written in any language to use the same objects and run on top of the common language runtime. This book provides examples written in managed C++, VB.NET and C#, then shows an example of a managed C++ ancestor class utilized in VB.NET and C# to work together in a single project. The sample programs for the other chapters in this book are mostly written in C#. .NET development is used mainly for pushing Windows programming into the area of Enterprise Computing, which often includes the areas of distributed computing, object pooling, transaction, security, and message queuing. All these topics are discussed in the book, detailing the deployment of .NET projects (single assembly, shared components, share assemblies, new versions, etc.) Data access is a also big topic and often requires several chapters of discussion, yet this book condenses the topics of ADO.NET and XML into a single chapter. Not only is a concise description of the topics provided, it also touches on more areas than I have read from other .NET books. This is also one of the rare .NET books that provides XML examples while discussing data access. Web Services is a modern topic and is discussed in chapter 6. Although I think another book from the same publisher gives the best definition, this one provides more detailed discussion and examples on .NET framework for web services. Web forms using ASP.NET is covered in less than 50 pages. The chapter summarizes every aspect of ASP.NET, including terms not covered by other publications. The last chapter goes back to Windows desktop programming (called Windows Forms in the .NET terminology). It contains an excellent discussion about the benefits of the new Windows Forms .NET framework versus old libraries such as MFC. It also shows you how Windows Forms can benefit Web development. I am also happy to see that it includes a discussion of data binding, deployment and web services for Windows Forms. The appendices are also very useful, including common acronyms, common data types and common utilities. In summary, this may be the best book for programmers new to the .NET platform. Not only does it get you started quickly, it also provides a quick reference to every major area of the new platform. This book does not waste space on item lists, talking instead about no-nonsense essentials accompanied by useful examples. This book is best suited as a textbook for classes teaching the introduction to .NET. Every new .NET programmer should own this one. O'Reilly & Associates, Inc. .NET Framework Essentials, 2nd Ed. by Thuan L. Thai & Hoang Lam Product web site: http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/dotnetfrmess2/ +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+= Publisher / Senior Editor: Patrick Grote, mailto:pgrote@compunotes.com Senior Editor: Howard Carson, mailto:agitater@compunotes.com Archives: ftp://ftp.compunotes.com/archives Website: e-mail: mailto:feedback@compunotes.com Want to Write for Us?: mailto:agitater@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 1114 West Essex Ave. St. Louis, MO 63122 feedback@compunotes.com (C)2002 Patrick Grote ISSN: 1525-4534 __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Health - your guide to health and wellness http://health.yahoo.com *********************************************** The COMPUNOTES-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned LISTSERV(R) list management software together with L-Soft's LSMTP(R) mailer for lightning fast mail delivery. For more information, go to: http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html