The Outer E Newsletter of the Channel Islands PC … · product from the company’s press kit: “Lycoris Desktop/LX is an operat-ing system designed with your ease of ... handling

September 2003 The Outer Edge Page 1

September 2003 Vol. 17, No. 3

To Contact CIPCUG The Outer Edge...........(805) 485-7121

General Information.. . . . . . . (805) 604-7538 Mailing Address...P.O. Box 51354, Oxnard, CA

93031-1354

TOE wins an award — Page 18

Attendance at the August general meeting

88 members and 3 guests We welcome 1 new member

COMMAND.COMCOMMAND.COM

By David Harris, President

E d g e

Newsletter of the Channel Islands PC Users Group

Recently I gave my first SIG on Yahoo finance, a program I have been using since 1999.

Since I was familiar with it, it was easy to demonstrate. In fact it was just like adding another stock and reviewing the day’s stock market. No teaching, just showing others what I do daily. I believe all enjoyed seeing the presentation. We try to present three or four SIGs a month, usually on Thursdays at 6:30 p.m. at Ventura County Computers. Unfortunately, our club has been using mostly the same presenters for these SIGs. We need new blood. I am asking the members to share their knowl-edge with their fellow members. Each of you has been using computers for some time and are very

familiar with the programs that you use daily. Please share what you know with others.

We are always looking for new topics to have presented to the group. I know there are members who know Adobe Photoshop or Photo Elements, Quicken, Front Page, Powerpoint, Access, Money, Excel — to mention only a few of the programs we use that YOU can present at one of these informal SIG meetings.

Do you convert vinyl records or cassettes to CDs, do you scan old slides to CDs? These are some examples of what you do that others don’t but would like to see how it is done.

Let’s all try to come up with a program that can be presented at a SIG and be able to share what you know with others. We don’t ask you to teach, only to present what you do that might be of interest to others.

Andy Toth is the SIG coordinator, and you can contact him at [email protected] with any programs you are willing to share.

Whole No. 197 ISSN 1055-4399

The Friendly Computer Club Helping Make Computers Friendly. On the Web at www.cipcug.org

The Outer

HARRIS

Photo by Jerry Crocker

Speaker Jeffry Padin, right, presi-dent of JP CyberTech Inc., receives a plaque from Vice President Craig Ladd after presenting a program on the company’s Enigma II software. Story on page 8

Page 2 The Outer Edge September 2003

Root Directory

Channel Islands PC Users Group

CIPCUG mailing address: P.O. Box 51354, Oxnard, CA

93031-1354

Executive Board (Elected officials)

President……………….……David Harris …………….………[email protected] Vice President/Program Chairman ………………...Craig Ladd...….482-4344 ………………[email protected] Secretary……………..Martha Churchyard ……………………[email protected] Treasurer…………….……....…Art Lewis ………………….…[email protected] Past President……………...…..Andy Toth ……...………[email protected]

Ex-officio members of Executive Committee

(Appointed Officials) Chief Protocol Officer……...George Lakes CIPCUG ISP Signups………...Helen Long Computer Show Coordinator..Roland Fleig .......………….………[email protected] Garage Sale Coordinator.…...Jim Thornton Go-fer Extraodinaire……….Dick Otterson Legal Adviser.……………………..Vacant Librarian……………......………….Vacant Marketing Director………...Ron Pinkerton Membership Chairman.……...Ken Church ....………………[email protected] Newsletter Editor…………....John Weigle Program Chairman…………….Craig Ladd Publicity Chairman…………Jim Thornton SIG Coordinator………………Andy Toth …………………………[email protected] Tech Support…………………..Toby Scott Web Page Editor……………..Helen Long …………………[email protected]

Past Presidents Walt Yates............ ..............1987/1989 Lois Evans de Violini............1989/1991 Terry Lee............. ..............1991/1993 Jerry McLoud........................1993/1995 Robert Provart.......................1995/1997 Toby Scott.............................1997/1999 George Lakes………………1999/2001 Andy Toth........... ....... ….2001/2003 (With the exception of the immediate past president, past presidents are not members of the board.) Life members Frank Segesman Toby Scott Lois Evans de Violini

CIPCUG is a member of APCUG, The Association of PC Users Groups

The Outer Edge

Editor……………………..John Weigle P.O. Box 6536, Ventura CA 93006 485-7121………[email protected]

The Outer Edge is published monthly by Channel Islands PC Users Group, an independent, nonprofit corporation. Contents of The Outer Edge copyright 2001 by Channel Islands PC Users Group. Permission for reproduction in whole or in part is granted to other computer user groups for internal non-profit use provided credit is given to The Outer Edge and the authors of the reproduced material. All other reproduction is prohibited without prior written consent of Channel Islands PC Users Group. Opinions expressed in this journal are solely those of the authors or contributors, and do not necessarily represent those of Channel Islands PC Users Group, its officers or membership as a whole. The information provided is believed to be correct and useful, however, no warranty, express or implied, is made by Channel Islands PC Users Group, its officers, editorial staff or contributors. This disclaimer extends to all losses, incidental or consequential, resulting from the use or application of the information provided. Channel Islands PC Users Group does not endorse or recommend any specific hardware or software products, dealers, distributors or manufacturers. All trademarked or registered trademarked names are acknowledged to be the property of their respective owners, and are used for editorial purposes only.

Advertising in The Outer Edge

Advertising is accepted for computer-related materials, businesses and services only. Rates are for Camera-Ready copy (clear, clean black and white masters). Typesetting and graphics are available at an additional fee. SIZE Cost/Issue FULL-PAGE (9½”H x 7¼”W)...... ..........$50.00 HALF-PAGE (4½”H x 7¼”W) or (9½”H x 3½”W )....…........$30.00 THIRD-PAGE (3”H x 7¼” W QUARTER-PAGE (4½”H x 3½W)..........$20.00 BUSINESS CARD ad...............................$15.00 Discounts for multiple issues (3, 6, 9 and 12 months) Ad copy deadline is the 10th of the month of publication. Make all checks payable to CIPCUG.

CIPCUG NEWS Beginners’ SIG 11

Coming CIPCUG events 3

Command.com 1

Editor’s corner 18

Executive Committee 4

F1: Your help key 17

Map, schedule 20

Membership report 16

Program: Enigma II 8

Q&A, business meeting 4

Treasurer’s reports 18

Web page news 10

ADVICE

Speeding up your computer: cache

13

GENERAL

Computer news from here and there

14

Odds and ends 15

ADVERTISEMENTS

AT-Plus Computers 11

CIPCUG cruise 9

Copy Court 15

Market Pro 14

Ventura County Computers

13

FTC advice on spam 7


Society news: Coming up

Linux-based Windows alternative to be topic Programs

The Sept. 6 program will be a pres-entation by Jason Spisak, vice president of market development of Lycoris <http://www.lycoris.com>, developers of Desktop/LX, a Linux-based alternative to Windows.

Here is some information on the product from the company’s press kit:

“Lycoris Desktop/LX is an operat-ing system designed with your ease of use in mind. Desktop/LX loads precon-figured for Internet access, office pro-ductivity, multimedia, entertainment and more.

“We’ve compiled a list of othe top 10 things we use Desktop/LX for:

“Surf the Internet “Check and Send Your E-mail “Watch Digital Video “Play Games “Word Processing, Spreadsheets,

Presentations “Create CDs and CD-ROMs Using

your CD-RW Drive “Transfer Digital Photos Using a

Digital Camera “Chat with Family and Friends Us-

ing Instant Messaging “Browse Your Network “Allow Your Computer to be Re-

motely Managed “What does Desktop/LX require?

“Desktop/LX requires a Pentium or compatible processor, 32 Megabytes of RAM, and 700 Megabytes of unpar-titioned hard disk space. We suggest a 300MHz processor, 64M of RAM, 4M video card, and at least an ATA-66 IDE harddrive.

“Lycoris Desktop/LX is currently priced at just $29.95. This includes 60 days of e-mail support and a 30-page installation guide.”

Other programs: Dates aren’t definite, but Craig is

working on presentations on Microsoft Office XP and Active PDF, an alterna-tive to Adobe Acrobat.

SIGs Special Interest Groups (SIGs)

meet at Ventura County Computers in Ventura. From the 101 Freeway, exit at

Telephone, take Telephone south to McGrath, turn left and go one block. Turn right on Goodyear and then right again into the second driveway. Unit 117 is the back, right corner of the industrial building. SIGs are sponsored by CIPCUG and led by volunteers. Unless otherwise noted, SIGs run from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m.

Here’s the SIG schedule for the end of August and all of September:

Thursday, Aug. 28: Cascading Style Sheets (HTML) — Ideally, Web pages should have style sheets that define how all the elements on a Web page will be displayed. By making one change in the style sheet, you can change the look of every page on the site. Cascading Style Sheets are the standard by which this trick is done. Join Toby Scott and learn how simple and easy CSS is to work with and how much easier it will make maintaining even a moderately complex Web site. This is an absolute must for anyone working in Web pages.

Monday, Sept. 8: “News, Rumors, and the Latest Information — Using the Internet,” Michael Shalkey: A SIG on finding out more about news stories you’ve heard about on the radio, through e-mail, on TV, and … Topics will include (1) Latest news on Liberia from different respected sources, New York Times, Washington Post, BBC, Reuters, etc.; (2) Tracking down ru-mors and hoaxes (“You mean I can’t make money by forwarding e-mails?”) (http://www.symantec.com/avcenter/hoax.html, www.vmyths.com); and (3) the Latest “what’s coming” to Com-puters and the Internet (zdnet.com, cnet.com, techweb.com).

Thursday, Sept. 18 : “Dragon Speaking Naturally,” Andy Toth — A SIG demonstrating the ease of use and the reliability of the current voice rec-ognition software.

Come, talk into a microphone, see your words appear and hear them read back to you.

The technology has reached the stage where it’s practical.

Thursday, Sept. 25: “Blue Squir-

rel: Spam Sleuth,” David Harris — Unwanted e-mail is multiplying like rabbits, so you might as well fight it with a squirrel — Blue Squirrel Inc. (www.bluesqirrel.com), whose Spam Sleuth 2.0 promises to make spammers pay for wasting your valuable time. A full version of the software will be given away at the SIG.

David says this is only a 60-minute presentation so bring questions or see a demonstration of the latest “Elvis Sighting Verification” software.

Thursday Oct. 2: “More HTML — CSS followed by an introduction to XML,” Toby Scott — Toby will finish his discussion on Cascading Style Sheets and HTML and introduce XML. Old-fashioned HTML is being replaced by CSS for formatting pages, XML for handling data and HTML for present-ing text and graphics. It isn’t nearly as complicated as it sounds.

Be sure to attend and see how to create Web pages for the future.

If you think this is not for you, con-sider that Internet Explorer can be con-figured to your personal tastes using Cascading Style Sheets. This is the third and final of a series.

September door prizes The club door prizes for September are: Microsoft Wheel Mouse Optical 3-Button

USB P/S2 Microsoft Natural Multimedia Keyboard SMC Barricade 7004VBR 4 Port 10/100

Broadband DSL Router Estimated retail value $163. We have two types of raffle tickets: one for

any prizes offered by the presenter and one for club-provided prizes.

The tickets for the presenter’s prizes are free and limited to one per member.

The tickets for the club-provided prizes are $1 each, $5 for six tickets, $10 for 13 tickets and $20 for 26 tickets and are available to anyone.

SIG reminders available by e-mail

To keep members up to date on coming SIGs, Andy Toth has agreed to offer an e-mail reminder service to club members.

Sign up and he will automatically send you a reminder about two days before each SIG, indicating the topic, location, and date.

To sign up, send an e-mail to <[email protected]> with the subject line “subscribe.”


Steering Committee meeting notes

The CIPCUG Steering Committee meeting was held on Aug. 5, 2003, at 6:30 p.m. at the home of George and Arline Lakes.

Present: Ken Church, Martha Churchyard, Roland Fleig, David Har-ris, Craig Ladd, George and Arline Lakes, Art Lewis, Helen Long, Toby Scott and Andy Toth.

Ken gave the membership report and Art Lewis gave the treasurer’s re-

port, both of which are summarized elsewhere in the newsletter.

Final preparations for the first meeting at the Boys & Girls Club were discussed. The projection screen for the stage has been ordered, and the vendor will install it. Wireless equipment for the Internet connection on the stage has also been ordered.

Andy Toth is assuming responsibil-ity for coordinating the SIGs each

month. George Lakes and Art Lewis have

drafted updates to the By-Laws, which were discussed.

The Board made some suggestions, and Art will incorporate them in the revised By-Laws and bring them back to the next Board Meeting. After the Board approves they will be submitted to the general membership for final approval.

August 2003 By Martha Churchyard, secretary

Society news: Business meeting, Q&A session

Lois Evans de Violini named life member Reported by Martha Churchyard

Business meeting President David Harris chaired the

meeting and the officers gave their reports. Craig Ladd covered the com-ing schedule of meeting presenters. He is talking to Microsoft, which wants to give a presentation on Office XP, pos-sibly in October or November.

Helen reported on the Web site updates, including detailed directions to the new meeting location. She also reported on the August SIG schedule, which is posted on the Web site.

TOE Editor John Weigle is revising the F1 Help List in the TOE. If you can support a program and would like to be listed, or are already on this list and want to be taken off, please contact him at [email protected]. Also let him know if you can help via e-mail only, or phone, or both.

David Harris reminded people to bring in their used inkjet cartridges. The club gets $2.50 to $3 for each car-tridge.

He also thanked the many volun-teers who keep the club running smoothly. He announced the next board meeting. The meetings are open to all members, and he invited anyone interested in learning more about the club to attend.

Lois Evans De Violini was pre-sented with a plaque and a Lifetime Membership in the club in gratitude for

her many years of service to the club. Lois is one of the original members, a past president, and has been essential behind the scenes in keeping the club

going. Among many other things, she has

(Continued on page 5)


Lois Evans de Violini receives a plaque making her a life member of CIPCUG from Toby Scott, the only other living life member.


been doing computer support for the Pleasant Valley Recreation and Parks District for 15 years in exchange for use of a meeting hall without charge.

Q&A session

(Unless otherwise noted, comments and answers are by Toby Scott, CIP-CUG’s technical support adviser.)

Introductory remarks: I don’t usu-ally give advertisements, but O’Reilly has launched a fascinating program called Safari. There is a banner ad for it at the bottom of the CIPCUG Web page with a link to the O’Reilly site. They are offering user group members a two-week trial. After the free trial, you are charged depending on the size of your “bookshelf.”

I urge you to go out and take a look at it. This is the way it works: They have the complete text, fully indexed and fully searchable, of 1,400 com-puter books from most of the major computer publishers such as Microsoft Press, Addison-Wesley, Que, and New Riders, as well as all of O’Reilly.

A search brings up a brief sample of the text. You can look at the Table of Contents, the Index, and small pieces of text and decide if you want to use it. If so, you add it to your “bookshelf,” and then you have com-plete access to it for one month, and the author of the book gets royalties.

The information in computer books is obsolete almost before they are pub-lished, and they are very expensive. This is an excellent paradigm allowing readers to “rent” current information for a short time, save money, and com-pensate the authors and publishers fairly.

It should work for many other fields besides computers. I used it ex-tensively doing research for my com-ing SIG on cascading style sheets in HTML, and found it very useful.

What browsers handle cascading style sheets?

Q: How new a browser do you have to have to use cascading style sheets?

A: CSS 1 was initially supported in

Internet Explorer 4 and Netscape 4. Netscape 4’s implementation is hugely buggy, and you will have problems making those pages look right, al-though there are workarounds.

Beyond that, any of the more recent browsers will work. If you are looking for a browser and want something lean, get Opera or the new Mozilla browser.

Incidentally, do most of you know that Netscape is going away? AOL has taken down the Netscape sign from their headquarters building, and they laid off most of the Netscape people (who were almost immediately hired by Mozilla).

It looks like AOL is going to con-tinue using Internet Explorer as a browser, and Netscape is gone. It will be essentially merged into Mozilla. Mozilla is the engine behind a good number of browsers, other than Internet Explorer and Opera.

Another item: The mail server up-date has been postponed again because of a combination of family illness and several emergencies at work. Some preparatory work for the update could not be done and right now it is not clear when it will happen.

Should I let Real Networks and spooler access Internet?

Q: I recently updated Zone Alarm and now among the things it is asking me is, will I allow access to the Inter-net for Real Networks, and a program called “spooler.” I don’t know what they are so I keep saying “No.” How should I handle this?

A: Let’s take the easy one first. Real Networks is a competitor to Win-dows Media Player and some of the other toys that are built into Internet Explorer. The problem is Microsoft started giving Media Player away for free, so Real was forced to give theirs away free also. To make some money, they had to accept advertising. With Real, you will have a lot of advertising and pop-ups, etc. The core program is excellent, but personally I have found the annoyances to be too much. Real can be uninstalled and won’t have any effect, unless you go to a site that does not support Windows Media Player.

There is nothing in Real that you need — the functionality is all duplicated in other parts of Windows or Media Player.

About spooler — the main spooler that I know of is the print spooler ser-vice. I don’t know a program called spooler, and I don’t know why it would need to go to the Internet. My inclina-tion would be to tell Zone Alarm, don’t let it out and don’t bother me about it any more. Just permanently block it. Then if you get messages from your printer saying the print driver is out of date or something like that, you may have to reverse that, but I don’t think print driver updates are going to run out of the spooler.

Does anyone out there have any ideas? It could be a virus or Trojan that is named Spooler.exe to fool people into thinking it is part of the print ser-vice. I think the Windows application is called Spooler.dll.

Try doing a Google search. In this case, check for the extension next time you get the message from Zone Alarm. Then do a Google search using “Zone Alarm” as one of the terms and “spooler-dot-whatever” as the other, and see if you can find what it is.

This is a very useful technique any time you have a message you don’t understand.

Toolbar gets wacky after I defrag in Safe Mode

Q: I use Windows 98 and after a defrag in Safe Mode, when I go back to normal mode my toolbar, which I have set for “always on top” and “auto-hide,” loses the auto-hide setting and I have to go in and reconfigure it. Is this normal?

A: The answer is no, there is noth-ing normal for Windows. (Laughter) What one computer does, another may not do. I don’t know of any fix for that. Sometimes in Windows 98 things come “unhooked” after a defrag. Win-dows 2000 and XP handle this sort of thing much better — but clicking on “auto-hide” is probably going to be easier than upgrading your operating system.

(Continued from page 4)


More on Q&A: Web style sheets, Netscape


Importing Outlook Express groups to Yahoo groups

Q: During the Internet SIG you were talking about signing up for Ya-hoo groups as an easy way to create a mailing list for a group of people. Is there any way to import groups from Outlook Express into Yahoo groups without having to retype dozens of names?

A: I think so. I’ve never used Ya-hoo groups, but I know two people who do, and they are very happy with it. One of them runs a list of about 15,000 or 20,000 subscribers, and he probably didn’t type them all in.

There must be tools, but I don’t know what they are.

Just go to the Yahoo groups site and see what they have. They have plenty of tutorials and other help.

If Yahoo groups won’t do what you need, look at Lyris, which you can run on your own computer and will defi-nitely work out of your address book. But if you have more than a certain number of subscribers you have to pay for it, and it is expensive; otherwise you can use the free demo version. But Yahoo groups is by far the most popu-lar solution to this type of issue.

Could the club provide Internet backup services?

Q: I have a question about backups. Could the club consider setting up a system where we could back up our computers onto a club-owned server for a reasonable fee? Has this ever been discussed, and is it feasible eco-nomically?

A: Yes, and no. To run a backup farm, we couldn’t use the server we have now. It would put too much of a load on it. If we put another server in, the server rack space at the provider costs about $500 a month. Then we would have to buy a server for maybe $4,000-$5,000. Ideally for reliability we should have two servers for redun-dancy. Someone will have to put in a lot of hours. So you are looking at maybe $10,000-$15,000 in hardware and software costs and $1,000 a month in rack space rental. But there are some

established services already for about $50 a month. How many CIPCUG members are there that would be will-ing to work on this, and could we do it for $50 a month? (Laughter)

There is one other aspect to this: Ideally, you should not be backing up to anyplace in California. If there is a big earthquake, or whatever, you may lose your data anyway.

@backup has been good (From audience) I had the @backup

service for a while. It was really slick, and the price seemed very reasonable.

In the beginning it was about $25 a year. The software is easy to use, my occasional restore went well, and so did getting questions answered.

But once I got a CD writer it didn’t seem worthwhile.

A: Yes, there are some services that you can get relatively inexpensively if you are only backing up your data, but it depends on how much data you have.

Why defrag in Safe Mode? Q: I have a question for one of the

previous questioners: Is there a special reason why you go into Safe Mode to do your defrag?

A (Toby): The answer is, if you have things running in your system tray in regular mode that access the hard drive, defrag has to start all over, and it can create a situation where it takes forever and still doesn’t finish.

It’s much quicker in Safe Mode. You can also go in and turn all that stuff off, but Safe Mode will take care of it very simply.

Adding memory and picking right speed

Q: I have a question about what happens when your memory and your motherboard use different speeds. For instance, what happens if a board re-quires, say, 2100, and you use a lower, slower speed memory or, what happens if you use a faster speed memory than the board requires?

A: There is a hidden question in that: If you are adding RAM, don’t mix speeds. In other words, if you have PC-2100 and that’s what the board calls for, and you add, don’t add 3800 speed or whatever. You probably will have

trouble. Maybe not, but computers are inherently fragile enough that you don’t need to add uncertainties.

You will almost certainly have trouble if you put in RAM that is slower than the motherboard requires. Now, most of the motherboards have a function that will allow you to step down the motherboard speed and the processor speed. You can make that trick work if your memory is within the range of motherboard settings. But that is not a very good solution, because you are not getting all the benefit of the processor’s speed.

One other thing you need to be aware of: We are in a cycle where RAM is going up in price. Through March or April of this year it was drop-ping; but with the proliferation of new motherboards requiring higher and higher speed RAM and more of it, the price has gone back up again.

We are in a race to increase the speed of motherboards, and I don’t foresee any slowdown soon. There isn’t much to be gained any more by speeding up processor chips. The big-gest bottlenecks today are on the moth-erboard, the hard drives, RAM, and so on. If you have a 20-Gb processor and your RAM is still running at 100 MHz, processor speed won’t make much dif-ference. If the RAM doesn’t go faster, the incremental increase from a faster processor gets less and less. So they need to keep them somewhat in sync.

The biggest problem today is hard drive speed. Right now the ATA stan-dard is 150 MHz.

What if I use higher rated RAM on lower speed board?

Q: The more important question to me is what happens if you use higher rated RAM on a lower speed board?

A: If that’s the only speed you use, it will work fine — as long as it’s not mixed.

Strange message on Compaq with Windows 98

Q: I have a Compaq with Windows 98. When I try to bring up the Startup menu to check off programs, I immedi-



More Q&A: Tool bar wacky after defrag


ately get a message that says, “Do you really want to delete this program from your computer?”

What am I doing wrong here? I don’t want to delete the program; I just want it off the Startup menu.

A: Probably the easiest way to do this in Windows 98 and Me is to go Start, Run, and type “msconfig.”

Go to the tab labeled “Startup” and uncheck what you don’t want running. Incidentally, Msconfig is missing out of Windows 2000, but Microsoft put it

back into Windows XP. Fax tries to print outside

margins when it’s received Q: I used an HP G85 printer-copier-

scanner-fax to fax a document from the glass top of the scanner. The document was created as 8½ -by-11 in Word 2000.

The recipient complained that one or two letters were missing on the right margin. He faxed it back to me so I could see what he meant, and I was able to solve the problem by setting the right margin to 1.7 inches.

A: If you have another fax machine available, I would try faxing this docu-ment to that machine to see if it does the same thing, because that seems like more margin than you should need to use. It could be a setting on his ma-chine. Fax machines should be able to go within about half an inch.

The other possibility could be that you are doing some kind of enlarge-ment that is pushing text outside the margins. Scanners can have that capa-bility, so make sure that this is not hap-pening.


More Q&A: Motherboard and memory speeds

Reprinted with permission from the Feteral Trade Commission Web site

<www.ftc.gov> Do you receive lots of junk e-mail

messages from people you don’t know? It’s no surprise if you do. As more people use e-mail, marketers are increasingly using e-mail messages to pitch their products and services. Some consumers find unsolicited commercial e-mail — also known as “spam” — annoying and time-consuming; others have lost money to bogus offers that arrived in their e-mail in-box.

Typically, an e-mail spammer buys a list of e-mail addresses from a list b roke r , who compi l e s i t by “harvesting” addresses from the Inter-net. If your e-mail address appears in a newsgroup posting, on a Web site, in a chat room, or in an online service’s membership directory, it may find its way onto these lists. The marketer then uses special software that can send hundreds of thousands — even mil-lions — of e-mail messages to the ad-dresses at the click of a mouse.

How Can I Reduce the Amount of Spam that I Receive? Try not to display your e-mail address in public. That includes newsgroup postings, chat rooms, Web sites or in an online ser-vice’s membership directory. You may want to opt out of member directories for your online services; spammers may use them to harvest addresses.

Check the privacy policy when you submit your address to a Web site. See if it allows the company to sell your address. You may want to opt out of this provision, if possible, or not sub-mit your address at all to Web sites that won’t protect it.

Read and understand the entire form before you transmit personal in-formation through a Web site. Some Web sites allow you to opt out of re-ceiving em-ail from their “partners” — but you may have to uncheck a prese-lected box if you want to opt out .

Decide if you want to use two e-mail addresses — one for personal messages and one for newsgroups and chat rooms. You also might consider using a disposable e-mail address ser-vice that creates a separate e-mail ad-dress that forwards to your permanent account. If one of the disposable ad-dresses begins to receive spam, you can shut it off without affecting your permanent address.

Use a unique e-mail address. Your choice of e-mail addresses may affect the amount of spam you receive. Spammers use “dictionary attacks” to sort through possible name combina-tions at large ISPs or e-mail services, hoping to find a valid address. Thus, a common name such as jdoe may get more spam than a more unique name like jd51x02oe. Of course, there is a downside — it’s harder to remember

an unusual e-mail address. Use an e-mail filter. Check your e-

mail account to see if it provides a tool to filter out potential spam or a way to channel spam into a bulk e-mail folder. You might want to consider these op-tions when you’re choosing which Internet Service Provider (ISP) to use.

What Can I Do With the Spam in my In-Box? Report it to the Federal Trade Commission. Send a copy of unwanted or deceptive messages to [email protected]. The FTC uses the unso-licited e-mails stored in this database to pursue law enforcement actions against people who send deceptive spam e-mail.

Let the FTC know if a “remove me” request is not honored. If you want to complain about a removal link that doesn’t work or not being able to unsubcribe from a list, you can fill out the FTC’s online complaint form at www.ftc.gov. Your complaint will be added to the FTC’s Consumer Sentinel database and made available to hun-dreds of law enforcement and con-sumer protection agencies.

Whenever you complain about spam, it’s important to include the full e-mail header. The information in the header makes it possible for consumer protection agencies to follow up on your complaint.

Send a copy of the spam to your


How to ‘can’ unwanted e-mail


ISP’s abuse desk. Often the e-mail ad-dress is [email protected] or [email protected]. By doing this, you can let the ISP know about the spam problem on their sys-tem and help them to stop it in the fu-ture. Make sure to include a copy of the spam, along with the full e-mail header. At the top of the message, state that you’re complaining about being spammed.

Complain to the sender’s ISP. Most ISPs want to cut off spammers who abuse their system. Again, make sure to include a copy of the message and

header information and state that you’re complaining about spam.

How Can I Avoid Spam Scams? The FTC suggests that you treat com-mercial e-mail solicitations the same way you would treat an unsolicited telemarketing sales call. Don’t believe promises from strangers. Greet money- making opportunities that arrive at your in box with skepticism. Most of the time, these are old fashioned scams delivered via the newest technology.

Here are some of the most common scam offers likely to arrive by e-mail:

Chain letters. Chain letters that involve money or valuable items and

promise big returns are illegal. If you start one or send one on, you are break-ing the law. Chances are you will re-ceive little or no money back on your “investment.” Despite the claims, a chain letter will never make you rich. For more information on chain e-mails, check out www.ftc.gov/chainmail.

Work-At-Home Schemes. Not all work-at-home opportunities deliver on their promises. Many ads omit the fact that you may have to work many hours without pay. Or they don’t disclose all the costs you will have to pay. Count-less work at home schemes require you



More FTC advice on ‘canning’ spam ...

CIPCUG news: Program

Enigma helps you pick strong passwords By John Weigle

<[email protected]> One of the biggest computer secu-

rity problems today is that people pick passwords that are easy to crack — and they do it because truly secure pass-words are hard to remember.

“It’s hard to come up with a good password,” Leonardo Loro, a security specialist with JP CyberTech Inc., said at our last meeting. The other speaker was Jeffrey Padin, president of the company, which produces Enigma II, an advanced encryption program.

The National Security Institute said in March 2002 that most people pick “passwords that are easy to guess,” thus making their data subject to easy theft.

Good passwords, he said, should be a mix of letters, symbols and numbers, but people will use names of family members, pets or easy-to-guess words and will recycle passwords from pro-gram to program and account to ac-count.

And the problem isn’t a concern of only large businesses, he said, because we all have valuable data on our com-puters.

Padin said that there are four types of passwords, those based on family groups (names and nicknames of fam-ily members); fan groups (names of cartoon characters, pop icons and so on, self-obsessed (sexy, stud, etc.) and finally, cryptic, “the smallest group of all” (iwatvcs246 or 489ilmtv, for in-stance).

Information is more important than money, Padin said. A thief who takes $20 from you has taken just $20, but a

thief who gets your bank PIN number or the password to your online bank account or PayPal account can steal much more.

Enigma II makes it easy for you to pick — and recover — cryptic pass-words by simply hitting random keys on the keyboard. It stores them, along with the name of the account, encrypts them and makes you select a master password to see them again.

And each time it encrypts them it uses a different algorithm.

Of course, you have to remember the master pass phrase, which must be 10 to 20 character long, Pardin noted, and in answer to a member who asked what happens if it’s lost, he replied: “Bad, bad … We don’t provide a tool, at least not for free, that you can use to decrypt a master password.”

He said it took six months to design Enigma because of the amount of re-search done on what users wanted and would understand. “It should be a pro-gram that’s just a tool to use,” he said.

Users can add, edit and delete ac-counts. And users who don’t want to close the program after using it can



Leonardo Loro, security specialist, left, and Jeffrey Padin, president of JP CyberTech Inc., discuss Enigma II at the August meeting.


—————————————————————————————————— PASSPORT NAME: _______________________________________________ [ ]Male [ ] Female DATE OF BIRTH ____/____/____

PASSPORT NAME ______________________________________________ [ ]Male [ ] Female DATE OF BIRTH ____/____/____

ADDRESS: ___________________________________________ APT ____ CITY _____________________ ST ____________ ZIP __________ PHONE: Home ( ) ____________________ Office ( ) ____________________________ Email ______________________________ EMERGENCY CONTACT #: _______________________________________________________________ SMOKE [ ] Yes [ ] No

Please reserve my space as follows: [ ] $300.00* pp For INSIDE CABIN, Double Occupancy

[ ] $350.00* pp For OUTSIDE CABIN, Double Occupancy

[ ] Enclosed is my check for deposit in the amount of $100.00

Make Check Payable to TRAVEL REGISTRY, INC. 22567 Ventura Blvd., Woodland Hills, CA 91364 =cipcug

[ ] Please charge $100.00 to my credit card #________________________________________________________________

Weekend Cruise to EnsenadaWeekend Cruise to Ensenada January 23January 23--26, 200426, 2004

Aboard Carnival Cruise Line’s Fabulous “Ecstasy”

Channel Islands PC Users Group presents...

Cost Includes:

4 Days/3 Nights Cruise All Port Taxes

Tons of On Board Activities, All Meals, Shows, Dancing,

Swimming, Movies, Exercise Room

Special Group Cocktail Party 2 Special SIGs will be given

aboard followed by a Q & A session.

Non Stop FUN...FUN...FUN !

There are only a limited number of cabins at these fan-tastic prices and will be assigned on a first come, first served basis. To Guarantee Your Space, please fill out the form below and mail in with your $100 deposit immediately!

No refunds after December 5

Optional Insurance Strongly Advised.

For More Information Call David Harris (805) 388-2522

Email: [email protected] Email: Marsky1 @ aol.com


More on Enigma II ...

Society news: Web page

CIPCUG e-mail upgrade delayed Oops! Toby did not install the

upgrade on the club’s e-mail server. He is at the point now where he is looking for about three days in which he can camp out at ISWEST facilities to install and trouble-shoot problems on the fly. Be patient! It will come and it will be so neat when

he gets it all in place and work-ing. This month is our very first meeting at the Boys and Girls club and in spite of the vote that I took in August (no, Helen, you

don’t have to redraw your map) Ken Church has put together an abso-lutely perfect map that should pass everyone’s approval.

All the bends in the roads are there, but some of the text was rather hard to read, so I wiped it out just

that part and wrote over it, and I think you can read it now.

Has everyone seen Jim Thorn-ton’s new page? It is labeled PC-Radio, and is in the current revision list now and later can be accessed through Friendly Links in the Table Of Contents.

I am sure there are some of you who are interested in computer-related radio programs, so be sure to have a look at it. Jim has gone to a lot of trouble to produce the page and will keep me posted on updates, won’t you Jim?

I have freshened up the Garage Sale page and have started it off with three items that are for sale at a very reasonable price.

They represent computer antiq-uity, and Noel Van Slyke is trying to find a home for them. He has the Heathkit H-89 computer system in-cluding all manuals and back issues of the REMARK magazine.

He also has a TI-99/4A Computer System with two disk drives and an expansion slot, and an old Commo-dore VIC-20.

He would like very much not to have to dump these in the trash but feels he no longer has room for them.

Have a look at these items on the Garage Sale Page.

I have updated the Club Photo 4 and Behind the Scenes 3 photo pages.

Please check them out to see if I have the right names under the right pictures.

simply click an encrypt button to make the information impossible for anyone seeing the screen to understand.

Passwords aren’t the only steps that users should take for security, Padin added. He also recommended:

• A password-protected screen saver.

• A firewall (a good one is avail-able at <www.agnitum.com>, he said).

• An antivirus program that will screen files, e-mails and downloads. Be sure to keep it up to date, he said.

He also recommended several other steps to take to boost security or to respond to security leaks.

• If you know or suspect identity theft, call (858) 693-7935, the Identity Theft Resource Center or go i ts Web s i te a t <www.idtheftcenter.org>.

• Change passwords regularly. He said his brother works for a pharmaceutical company that makes employees change pass-words every month and prohib-its the reuse of a password.

• Don’t share your password with anyone. If you must, change it immediately.

• Don’t repeat a password.

• Don’t write passwords down or keep them in your wallet. “You don’t even have to be a hacker to grab one of those,” he said.

• Scan with your antivirus pro-gram regularly.

• Don’t stay online at home if you’re not using the browser or e-mail.

“Security is not free, but no secu-rity can be real expensive,” Padin said.

The program comes in several ver-sions and can be downloaded at < w w w . j p c y b e r t e c h . c o m /download.html>:

Enigma II — Personal Version 1.2 (20 Accounts), $39.99.

Enigma II — Professional Version 1.2 (50 Accounts), $49.99.

Enigma II — Professional X Ver-sion 1.2 (Custom made for any number of accounts) call, or e-mail the com-pany.


LONG


Beginners’ SIG:

Questions on printing e-mail and more Reported by Michael Shalkey

(I asked Michael to send along notes on his SIG because I overslept and couldn’t attend. Thanks, Michael — John Weigle, Editor)

The Beginner’s SIG is a great place to come if you are afraid of that “darned beige box” and what it can do that you don’t want it to do.

Some basics and some tips and tricks are discussed every month. If you ever felt like you might have missed a step or two in using a com-puter or don’t understand what certain pop-up screens are saying, feel free to come and share your frustrations and maybe even walk away with some an-swers. (At the very least, a new thing or two to try.)

Today was filled mostly with Q&A:

Q: When I try to print my e-mail,

the printer does-n’t fit all the words on the page but cuts off the right side of the message box. Also, sometimes we get knocked offline in the middle of typing an e-mail. What can we do?

A: You are using Web-based e-mail. Although this is an option for many people who are paying for dial-up service (soon to be an option for CIPCUG ISP subscribers), you ALSO have the opportunity of using offline e-mail clients (like Microsoft Outlook Express) to read and write your e-mails.

This has many advantages. First of all, it will solve your two problems. All e-mails will print fine, and you won’t get cut off while writing an e-mail.

1) Your printing problem comes from trying to print your e-mail from a Web page. It is very common to be unable to print a Web page accurately without cutting off the left or right margin. This is mostly due to the for-matting of the Web page and the size of the screen resolution the Web page is optimized for. If you see Web pages often that you have to use left and right scroll bars to see the whole page, it could be that your screen setting is 640 by 480. That is the default for many older computers. There is nothing wrong with this, except that Web page


SHALKEY


Wanted: Advertising ManagerWanted: Advertising Manager We need someone to talk to computerWe need someone to talk to computer--related businesses about advertising in The Outer Edge. The related businesses about advertising in The Outer Edge. The editor’s job doesn’t allow him to sell advertising for a competitor, even one as small as TOE. Anyone editor’s job doesn’t allow him to sell advertising for a competitor, even one as small as TOE. Anyone

interested should contact Dave Harrisinterested should contact Dave Harris or John Weigle at any meeting. or John Weigle at any meeting.

More on Beginner’s SIG: Cheking multiple accounts

designers are using a screen resolution of 800 by 600 or even 1024 by 768. This means that when they look at their page it fits perfectly, but when you see it, you have to scroll left and right to see everything.

<webmail.att.net> is a perfect ex-ample of this. Looking at this site 640x480 you need to scroll. 800x600 is just right.

If you want to try to change your screen setting, right mouse click any-where on your desktop (not on a pro-gram icon) and choose Properties, then click on the Settings tab. Change the screen area to a higher resolution and click the APPLY button. If your screen is unreadable, don’t panic. Touch nothing for 15 seconds and eve-rything should go back to normal. If you do like the new setting, then click on OK to keep it. (You can always change it back later)

2) Losing your Iinternet connec-tion over a dail-up modem does hap-pen. This is one of the best features about e-mail clients (or e-mail pro-grams) like Eudora, Poco, Pegasus or the most common, Outlook Express. They use the telephone only to go online to send and receive messages. To use this feature, if you've never used Outlook Express before, first set it up by clicking on the icon for Out-look Express. The wizard will start and walk you through the process of setting it up for use with your e-mail address. The below is from the AT&T Web site and is a good example of what you’ll need to know to finish the wizard.

ONE TIP. If you plan on checking your e-mail from more than one com-puter, you’ll want to make sure you “Leave a copy of messages on server.” To do this, after you have set up Out-

look Express go to Tools - Accounts - Mail - and double click on your e-mail account - then ADVANCED, and you'll see a box to check. BE SURE to check the box below it, too, “Remove from Server after ___ days” (my rec-ommendation is five days if you check e-mail at the office and also at home.)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ E-mail and News Settings when

dialed up to AT&T Worldnet Service E-mail Settings: Mail Server Type: POP3 Incoming Mail (POP): postof-

fice.att.net Outgoing Mail (SMTP): mail-

host.att.net User name or POP name: This is

the first part of your e-mail address; everything before the @ symbol.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Now the multiple e-mail sending

tip: Click on create mail or New Mail

button to write a new e-mail message. When you are finished, instead of clicking SEND button, click File -Send Later. This way, you can write 2-27 or more e-mails, and not send any until you are ready. Then when you click on Send/Recv, your computer will dial in and look for new e-mails and send all of yours.

Multiple accounts Q: If I have more than one e-mail

address, do I have to click on send and receive for each account?

A: No. When you hold your mouse over Send/Recv button, you’ll notice it says “Send and Receive all” and that is just what it means. I check 17 different e-mail addresses at my office — all at the same time. To do that, though, you’ll want to do one more step. Let’s add one here for Roxy:

First, create a folder for each e-

mail addresss. Under File - New - New Folder (be sure to put it under Local folders and not under InBox) Folder Name: Roxy

Second, add each new e-mail ad-dress (Tools - Accounts - Mail - Add - Add Mail), [email protected]

Thirdz: USEFUL TIP, but not nec-essarily for beginners: Message Rules

Under Tools - Message Rules - Mail - New Rule, scroll down in the top box and select “where TO: or CC: contains people.” In the next box select “Move it to the specified folder.” Now in the white box below you need to edit the blue words: Edit “contains people” to be the e-mail address ([email protected]) and then the blue word folder to the roxy folder.

Q: When I get a picture in e-mail it is huge and won’t fit on a page when I try to print it.

A: You need to use a graphic edi-tor to resize the picture. First, if you see the picture in your e-mail, right mouse click on it and save it to a folder (like My Documents/my pictures).

Now, using your graphic program like Photoshop, MGI PhotoSuite, or e v e n t h e f r e e I r f a n V i e w (www.irfanview.com) resize the photo to fit on your paper.

Actually Irfanview has a nifty fea-ture that when you go to print you can choose fit to paper and it will resize just for printing without touching the photo itself. (File - Print - OK - then check “Best fit to page”).

See you next month — new loca-tion — same great help and tips.

NEXT MONTH: More on e-mail - (Using Stationary and Signatures) and your questions.



Advice

How to speed up your computer — memory cache

By Jim Thornton

<[email protected]> First of a series

Many of us can’t afford to run out and buy a new computer or the latest operating program every time a new one is announced. What we really want is to get the most performance out of our existing computer. This is one in a series of articles to help you accom-plish this.

Speaking of keeping your existing computer, you would be amazed at the number of people I know who are still using Windows 95 or who have re-placed Windows XP on their new com-puter with Windows 98.

Let’s free a little more of your com-puter’s memory, commonly called RAM (Random Access Memory) with-out spending any money or opening up

your computer. We’ll tell your com-puter that it is a network server and not a desktop computer. By doing this, more RAM will become available to increase your computer’s performance.

First, momentarily depress together your Windows and Pause Break keys.

This will bring up your System Properties window with the General tab displayed. If by chance, your key-board doesn’t have a Windows key, then left-mouse click on the My Com-puter icon on your desktop; after the My Computer screen appears, click on the Control Panel icon; after the Con-trol Panel window appears, click on the System icon; and a smaller System Properties window will appear. Click on the Performance tab; after the Per-formance window appears, click on the File System box under the heading of Advanced Settings near the bottom of

the window; and the File System Prop-erties window with the Hard Disk tab will be displayed. Under the heading Settings, you’ll see a line that says “Typical role of this computer” with the “Desktop computer” being dis-played. Click on the adjacent down arrow-like symbol, and the following choices will appear – “Desktop com-puter,” “Mobile or docking system” or “Network server.”

Select “Network server,” but before we leave this window, let’s verify that the Read-ahead optimization slider, located just below Network server box, is sitting on the extreme right hand side of its slide bar. If it isn’t, move it to the far right hand side. Now, click on Ap-ply, then OK on the File System Prop-erties window and on OK again on the



Computer news from here and there

System Properties window. These changes will not take effect until you restart your

computer and Windows will ask you if you want to restart your computer now. Click Yes, and your computer will restart with these two improvements in effect.

Now what you have effectively done by designating your computer as a network server is to double the amount of your RAM that is allocated by Windows to continuously inventory where your files and folders are located in RAM and on your hard drive. This RAM allocation space is called cache (pronounced cash). And by moving the Read-ahead optimization slider to the right you have improved the per-formance of your hard drive by having it read the largest amount of data that it can as fast as it can.

These instructions have been separately tested on two different computers using Windows 98SE and Me to ensure their accuracy.


Athlon 64-M can run 32-bit software full speed but also take advantage of the vast 64-bit memory address space, opening up new opportunities in scientific computing, database work, and other high-end applications. But AMD isn’t all about high-end, niche computing. The company is hoping that manufacturers will add special code to their games, video-editing products, and other consumer-oriented software to make them run better on 64-bit sys-tems. AMD’s high-end 64-bit chip, the AMD Opteron, is aimed at workstations and servers and will debut in Au-gust.

Next-Generation Pentium 4 to Start at 3.4GHz, Ship in October: In second half 2003, Intel will ship its next -generation processor, possibly to be named Pentium 5. Whatever it’s called, the Pentium 4 successor will start at clock speeds of 3.4GHz and will include new on-chip multimedia-processing instructions and a 1MB L2 cache (compared with 512KB on the Pentium 4). A 3.6GHz ver-sion is due by early 2004, the company says. In addition, Intel is prepping a 2.7GHz Celeron chip for low-end PCs


More on memory ...

By David Harris

<[email protected]> www.papadavid.com

Rest of the World Wakes Up to Windows XP's Qual-ity: A year and a half after Windows XP shipped, the OS is finally getting the respect it deserves. According to the most recent “PC Magazine” annual reader survey, PC service and reliability have improved this year, thanks mostly to XP. “XP has brought consumers the stability of Microsoft’s cor-porate operating systems, Windows NT, and 2000, replac-ing the relatively volatile Windows 95, 98, and Me,” the report reads. “If an OS performs better, so does the hard-ware it controls ... This year, 44 percent of the [17,000] rated desktop PCs run Windows XP. And the users of Win XP machines are considerably happier with their desktops than respondents running other versions of Windows.” The report reveals that XP crashes less often than other Win-dows versions, too: 37 percent of respondents who use XP have never had a crash, compared with just 7 percent of respondents who use Windows 98. And although OSs such as Linux and Mac OS X got high-reliability grades, too, those OSs are barely used, the report notes: “Fewer than 1 percent of the desktop PCs in the survey are running Linux, and fewer than 2 percent are running Mac OS.” As far as XP’s quality goes, am I the only person who honestly isn’t surprised by this news?

AMD Athlon 64 Set for September Release: AMD inadvertently revealed this week through a leaked press re-lease that systems based on its 64-bit AMD Athlon 64 proc-essor will ship Sept. 22. But that’s not all: AMD is also shipping a special version of the chip, the AMD Athlon 64-M, for use in notebook computers. Like Apple’s Power Mac G5 system, PCs based on the AMD Athlon 64 and AMD


By Jim Thornton

<[email protected]> WINDOWS ME HAS MANY

FEATURES OF XP: Did you know that many of the new Windows XP features were really first introduced several years earlier in Windows Me? Here are a couple examples of the many XP features in Me:

The powerful new search tool of Windows XP that makes it easy to find files folders and even words or phrases in files is already available in Windows Me called SEARCH RESULTS. Here’s how to bring it up: (1) from your Desktop, press the F3 key to launch the program; (2) either (A) type in the name of the file or folder that you want to find in the “All Files and Folders named:” box or (B) type in the unique words that will identify the file that you are looking for in the “Containing text:” box; (3) type in the drive or folder name that you want to search in the “Look in:” box, (4) click on Search Now, and the results of your search will appear on the right hand

pane. Windows XP has a new feature

called Restore Point that allows you to go back to previous point in time when your computer was working trouble free. The purpose of this feature is to restore your operating system should the installation of new hardware or software cause your computer to lock-up, etc. The same feature is on Win-dows Me except that it is called SYS-TEM RESTORE. Also, Norton Sys-temWorks 2003 includes a very similar feature called Go Back. As you can see, it is a very useful feature especially if you frequently are installing new soft-ware programs or hardware.

Windows XP has a system informa-

tion tool called msinfo32. This SYS-TEM INFORMATION tool provides a great deal of information about your computer including a summary of your computer, its hardware resources, com-ponents, the software environment, Internet settings, and application pro-grams. To run this System Information utility: (1) click on Start; (2) click on Run; (3) type in “msinfo32” without the quotation marks in the Open box; (4) click on OK; and your System In-formation is displayed with numerous choices. This is one of the greatest sources of detail information about your computer that you can have and the best thing about it is that it’s free and fully supported by Microsoft.

to spend your own money to place newspaper ads; make photocopies; or buy the envelopes, paper, stamps, and other supplies or equipment you need to do the job. The companies sponsor-ing the ads also may demand that you pay for instructions or “tutorial” soft-ware. Consumers deceived by these ads have lost thousands of dollars, in addition to their time and energy.

Weight Loss Claims. Programs or products that promote easy or effort-less longterm weight loss don’t work.

Taking off weight, and keeping it off, requires exercise and permanent changes in your diet. All the testimoni-als and guarantees in your e-mail are not worth the space they take up on your hard drive.

Credit Repair Offers. Ignore offers to erase accurate negative information

from your credit record. There’s no legal way to do that.

Advance Fee Loan Scams. Be wary of promises to provide a loan for a fee, regardless of your past credit history. Remember, legitimate banks don’t issue credit cards without first check-ing your credit.

Adult Entertainment. You may get an e-mail from an adult entertainment site that claims to offer content for “free” and doesn’t require a credit card number for access. All you have to do is download a “viewer” or “dialer” program. However, once the program is downloaded onto your computer, it may disconnect your Internet connec-tion and reconnect to an international long distance phone number, at rates between $2 and $7 a minute. Be skep-tical when you see opportunities to view “free” content on the Web.


and is supporting chipsets for its Pen-tium 5, Pentium 4, and Celeron systems that sport PCI Express I/O and Double Data Rate 2 (DDR2) memory. On the portable end, this fall Intel will release a new version of its Pentium M Processor, which is the thin, light, and powerful Centrino-based notebook computers use. The processor will start at 1.8GHz and will include 2MB of L2 cache, com-pared with 1MB of L2 cache on the cur-rent 1.7GHz processor. Generally, you find this size cache only on high-end workstation and server chips such as Intel’s Xeon processor. The Pentium M Processor will hit speeds of 1.9GHz and 2.0GHz in early 2004, and Intel will ship low-voltage and ultra -low-voltage ver-sions of the chip at 1.3GHz, 1.2GHz, and 1.1GHz in late 2003. Manufacturers will use these chips in the smallest and lightest portables.


Odds and ends

More computer news ...

More on FTC spam advice ...


By Ken Church

<[email protected]>

Welcome to the following new member: Mary Barreto Attendance at the August 2003 General meeting: 88 Members 3 Guests

Total membership: 320

RENEWAL INFORMATION The renewal/New Mbr dues are $25/$35 for single membership, $30/$50 for two or more family membership. Please send your renewal payment to:

CIPCUG MEMBERSHIP P.O. BOX 51354 OXNARD, CA 93031-1354

Or bring your payment to the September meet-ing at the Boys & Girls Club of Camarillo.

July 2003 renewals:

August 2003 renewals:

August 2003 renewals (continued): Mbr# Last Name First Name Pd to Date 0867 Pryor Dorothy 200308 0474 Pryor John 200308 0492 Skinner Donald 200308 0244 Zilm Charles 200308 Sept. 2003 renewals:

And please remember for fast service always address your letters to our P.O. box with:

CIPCUG MEMBERSHIP or CIPCUG ISP or CIPCUG Treasurer And any others by name. We all share the one and only

CIPCUG P.O. box and addressing the first line will allow us to process your mail more efficiently.

Thank You

Mbr# Last Name First Name

Pd to Date

1035 Brooks Richard 200309

1070 Byrnes Bob 200309

0227 Caminer Jerry 200309

0499 Chakires Andy 200309

0661 Cinque Carmela 200309

0811 Crocker Jerry 200309

1071 Curtis Richard 200309

0894A

Duchacek Jane 200309

0894 Duchacek Ralph 200309

0613 Green Gunnar 200309

0249 Greenway Frank 200309

0373 Houle Robert 200309

0236 Kelly Charles 200309

1037 Lerner Robert 200309

0716 Nichols John 200309

0372 Pizza Tony 200309

0989 Shobe Ivan 200309

1036 Smith Howard 200309

0938 Stroud John 200309

0802 Taylor Audrey 200309

0733 Wall Sinclair 200309

Society news: Membership report

Is it time for you to renew?

Mbr# Last Name First Name Pd to Date 0985 Bartels Pat 200308 0488 Bressler Steve 200308 0027 Burger, M.D. William 200308 1030 Cole Chuck 200308 0028 Fiedler Art 200308 0889 Hughes Jim 200308 0806 Hurme Seppo 200308 0562 Johnson Harold 200308 0159 Knopf Jerry 200308

Mbr# Last Name First Name

Pd to Date

0598 Brown Donald 200307 1066 Brown Mark 200307 0357 Chaiclin Dick 200307 0676 Pearson Floyd 200307 1105 Petersen Kurt 200307 00S1T Wefel Ralph 200307 0233 Wolfson Ann 200307


F1—Your Help Key (Revised Aug. 10, 2003)

COMMUNICATIONS/INTERNET (GENERAL) Compuserve DM Note Tab Pro TS World Wide Web DM, TS

DATABASES Access BR DOS RP

EDUCATIONAL / CHILDREN TZ

E-MAIL Eudora JT Lotus:CCMail. DM Outlook TS, AT, MS Outlook Express TS, AT, BR Poco Email MS

HARDWARE, UPGRADING JM

HTML TS, AT

NETWORKS TS

OFFICE SUITES MS Office AT Open Office AT Star Office AT GRAHICS PROGRAMS IrfanView MS Print Shop BR

SPREADSHEETS Microsoft Excel DM, AT Quattro Pro DM

UTILITY PROGRAMS Norton Utilities DM PCAnywhere DM

WORD PROCESSING Microsoft Word BW, DM WordPerfect. DM WINDOWS Windows 98, 95 DM, JM, AT (98), MS (98) Windows Me JT, AT Windows 2000 TS, AT Windows NT TS

Initials Name (805) AT Andy Toth 604-7538 (e) BR Bill Robinson 389-2997 (b) <[email protected]> BW Bart Wood 482-4993 (e) DM David Minkin 469-6970 (cell) (5-11 p.m. weekends); [email protected] JM Jerry McLoud (818) 889-6176 (e) JT Jim Thornton 987-1748 (d) MS Michal Shalkey 483-9921 ext 142 (d) [email protected] RP Robert Provart 498-8477 (b) TS Toby Scott 289-3960 (d) [email protected] TZ Trish Zakas 985-8519 (b) WB Dr. William Burger 653-6889 (e) Phone: (d) = days; (e) = evenings; (b) = both If you would like to volunteer to help others, please send your contact information and programs you’re willing to help on to <[email protected]>. Also, if you have a favorite help site on the Web, please forward that, too, so we can make a separate sec-tion for Web-based help.

Practice safe computing: Back up

Back up Back up

(And then test the backup to be sure it worked)


Society news

Treasurer’s report

Editor’s corner

TOE wins an award

I was hoping to have more details on this, but we’ll have to go with the limited information available at deadline time: The Outer Edge won a first place for design award at the 10th Annual Southwest User Group Conference in San Diego on Aug. 9. President David Harris called me at work to tell me the good news. He e-mailed me a little more information on Sunday: “There were eight entries of newsletters over 12 pages. We won first place for design. The User Group Network won first for content. Web page did not win anything but a participation award. Toby and I attended six seminars each,

obtained a lot of knowledge that will assist the club and they wore us out. More in next month’s Command.com.” While I’d much rather win for con-tent (I was a writer/reporter before I started laying out pages, and I groused so much about the designing part of the job at The Star that I was eliminated from the designer list on the copy desk.), I won’t complain about any award. My only disappointment is that the Web page didn’t place. As far as I’m concerned, it’s one of the best Web pages I’ve seen, computer-related or not. Prizes or not, I think the page —

and TOE, for that matter — serve the members of CIPCUG well, and that’s far more important than what outside judges say. Of course, if you disagree, I want to — need to — hear from you so we can make the improvements you want. I won’t be at the next meeting (I’ll be off learning the latest information about UFOs instead), but you can always reach me by e-mail at <[email protected]>.

— John Weigle, editor

By Art Lewis

<[email protected]> July 2003

Category Description 7-1 through 7-31, 2003 INCOME Donation 107.00 ISP Income 855.00 New Members 35.00 Renewals 605.00 TOTAL INCOME 1,769.75 EXPENSES Coffee-Doughnuts 8.01 ISP Expense 514.00 Storage 50.00 Tax 138.00 TOE 410.61 TOTAL EXPENSES 1,120.62 TOTAL INCOME – EXPENSES 649.13 Unrestricted funds 7,388.73 Restricted funds (ISP) 3,176.25 Bank Balance 7/31/03 10,564.98

ANNUAL REPORT — FY 2002-2003 ASSETS Cash 9,915.85 Equipment (depreciated value) 3,379.00 TOTAL ASSETS 13,294.85 LIABILITIES Accounts Payable none Contracts none Cash assets increased $1,279.46 during FY 2002/2003. Equipment (depreciated value) decreased $1,690.00 dur-ing the year. The club has no liabilities. During the year, the following item of equipment was purchased: Computer 751.00 Total 751.00 Total Revenue FY 2002/2003 20,762.10 Total Disbursements FY 2002/2003 19,482.64 This report has been prepared without audit from the books and records of the corporation, and is believed to fairly represent its financial condition as of June 30, 2003.

WEIGLE


Every month, members of the Channel Islands PC Users Group have access to:

♦ The Outer Edge newsletter, which includes a list of members willing to help other members

♦ The general meeting, featuring a question-and-answer session and program on new software or hardware

♦ Special Interest Groups — special meetings held several times a month on a variety of topics

♦ Door prizes at the regular meeting.

♦ The CIPCUG library of books and videos.

Other benefits include: ♦ Special user group discounts

on books and software ♦ An Internet Service Provider

at a large discount (see below).

♦ A chance to make friends with people who have similar interests

♦ The ability to put your knowledge to good use by helping other members. The whole concept of user groups is members helping members.

CIPCUG members are eligible to sign up for the group’s Internet Service Provider (ISP) at the low price of only $15 per month plus a $15 processing fee.

To sign up, contact one of the club’s techies (see below). Call one of them you may know or one in your area and they will be glad to provide

you with the details necessary for signing up. Checks should be made payable to CIPCUG and forwarded to Treasurer, c/o CIPCUG, P. O. Box 51354, Oxnard CA 93031. Don’t forget to include the $15 set-up fee in your first sign-up check. You may make payments in three-month, six-month or annual increments. Renewals can also be mailed to Treasurer; just be sure to mention the dates that your check is to cover.

There is no program to install; you will use programs that are already on your computer. It’s simple to talk you through the set-up, but if you’re the least bit timid about setting up your computer, a club member will come to your house and make the necessary arrangements. Our agreement will also give you a 5 MB Web page allowance.

_________________________

CIPCUG INTERNET SERVICE TECH TEAM

Jerry Crocker, 486-0308, 6-10 p.m. [email protected], Roland Fleig, 983-8707, mornings [email protected], George & Arline Lakes, 983-2969, 2-10 p.m. [email protected], Helen Long, 642-6521 [email protected] David D. Minkin, 469-6970, 5-12 p.m., weekends [email protected] Claude Whelchel, 482-4017, 8-noon [email protected] ______________________________ Please clip last column and send with payment to CIPCUG-Membership, P.O. Box 51354, Oxnard, CA 93031-1354. Please make checks payable to CIPCUG

Dues for new members Individual member, $35.00 Family membership (same address), $50.00

Renewals are $25 and $30/yr. respectively

CIPCUG MEMBERSHIP

APPLICATION

Amount enclosed: ____________________________ Please Print the following information: Name: _______________________________ Address: _______________________________ City: ___________________________, CA ZIP Code: _______________________________ Phone no. (Home): _______________ (Work): _______________________ E-mail address: _______________________________ User level: Novice _____; Intermediate _____; Advanced _____ Can you help the club as a volunteer? If so, what would you be interested in working on? Date ___________________ Member # ____________

Why join Channel Islands PC Users Group (CIPCUG)?

JOIIN CHANNEL ISLANDS

PC USERS GROUP TODAY!


The Outer Edge Channel Islands PC Users Group P.O.Box 51354 Oxnard, CA. 93031

DATED MATERIAL Please Do Not Delay

NON-PROFIT U.S. POSTAGE

PAID OXNARD. CA

PERMIT NO. 1785

SEPTEMBER 2003 MEETING OF CHANNEL ISLANDS PC USERS GROUP

Saturday morning, Sept. 6, at

Boys & Girls Club, Ponderosa Drive and Temple

Avenue, Camarillo, Calif.

Meeting Schedule: 0830 Doors open 0845-0930 Beginners’ SIG and Internet SIG 0930-1030 Business meeting, Q&A 1030-1100 Break — Please contribute requested amounts for coffee and doughnuts 1100-1200 Program (Lycoris Desktop/LX), Drawing

DUES REMINDER If the number after your name is 0309, your membership dues are payable in September 2003.

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Why join CIPCUG? Here are just a few of the reasons:

Monthly SIGs, a monthly program, a monthly newsletter, a discounted

Internet Service Provider, a library of

Benefits of CIPCUG Benefits of CIPCUG membership include:membership include:

The Outer Edge, our monthly 20-page newsletter Free tickets for

presenters’ prizes at our monthly meeting A variety of Special

Interest Groups (SIGs) every month The society’s Internet

Service Provider for $15 per month

If you’re looking for tips from other members, If you’re looking for tips from other members, check the CIPCUG Web page.check the CIPCUG Web page.

Help your fellow members. Volunteer to lead a SIG.

More details available from Ralph Duchacek, Andy Toth, Helen Long or Toby Scott at

any meeting.