Reviewed: MacroMedia Flash, DVD Drives- Toshiba & Hitachi, Delphi3.0 8 top notebooks tested Laser Proof On the CD: MS Development Network, Sega Rally, Ultimate Soccer Manager 2 CANON’S PC REVOLUTION Overseas Price £3.95 Germany DM 20,00 Italy 15,000 Lire Spain 1,225 PTS Malta Lm 2.85c Holland HFL 17,95 Belgium 295.00 BFr Finland FIM 49.50 Canada CAN$12.95 VNU Business Publications www.pcw.vnu.co.uk If your CD-ROM is missing ask your newsagent No-nonsense Buyers Guide p326 EVERYTHING YOU NEED UNDER ONE COVER April 1997 £2.95 8 top notebooks tested Check your change Accounting software group - tested 1997 features, 1996 prices EXCLUSIVE Photo Magic Sony sets the pace
Transcript
Reviewed: MacroMedia Flash, DVD Drives-Toshiba &Hitachi,Delphi3.0
8 top notebookstested
9 770142 023069
0 4
Laser Proof
SPINE
Volum
e 20 N
o4w
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.pcw
.vnu.co.u
k
On the CD: MS Development Network,Sega Rally, Ultimate Soccer Manager 2
76 Toshiba SD-M1002 andHitachi GD-1000 DVD drivesDVD drives hit the UK.
78 Sony DKC-ID1 and DSC-F1
80 Epson Stylus 800 and Stylus 600
83 Lexmark 2030
83 Yamaha SW60XG
85 Dr Solomon’s HomeGuard
86 Borland Delphi 3.0The market-leading RAD tool reaches3.0.
88 HoTMetal Intranet Publisher
90 Adobe Persuasion 4.0
93 Macromedia FlashEasy animation for the web.
95 Cleansweep 3.0 v PowerCleaner v Uninstaller 4.0
97 PowerQuest Partition Magic 3.0
97 Asymetrix WebPublisher 1.0
CD-ROMs
98 Atlas round-up including MS Encarta97 World Atlas, Compton’s Interactive World Atlas and SmallBlue World. Plus, Space Station Simulator and Thomas Edison.
Edutainment and Kids
102 The Simpsons Cartoon Studio, Animals of Farthing Wood, Five on aTreasure Island, Kingfisher LearningExplorer and Cyberpest
Long Term Tests
108 PFS Publisher 1.1, Works 4.0 forWin95, Canon BJ-10sx
10 Ad Index
12 Subscriptions
13 Editorial
14 Cover Disk Notes
20 Reader Offers
26 NewsprintModem speed confusion; PC priceshit by memory price ramps.
41 News AnalysisOnline banking; the Brits at Milia 97;Tim Bajarin on the rebirth of PC/TVs.
45 Sounding Off
47 Homefront
49 Straight Talking
51 Business Matters
54 Letters
323 Beginners
326 Buyer’s Guide
346 Buyer’s Charter
341 Direct Buyers’ World
515 Product Locator
523 ChipChat
Contents
Personal Computer World • April 1997 • 98 • Personal Computer World • April 1997
Cover Story
Focus216 Politics and
revolutionaries on the web.
Workshop223 In-depth technical help
for web masters.
Online232 Net.news238 Net.answers
Media247 Books
Futures250 Toby Howard on
quantum-basedencryption. Tim Froston the next generationof computer animationfrom Motorola.
134 Budget PCsIt’s possible to buy a P133 with 1.6Gb drive and 16Mb RAM, for under £1,000. But is it worth buying? Lynley Oram tested ten entry-level PCs for performance and value.
62 The PCW Awards 1997Vote for your favourites in the computer industry. There’s a chance to win yourself a hi-fi system, too, in our Prize Draw.
114 Lotus Domino 4.5Lotus is hoping its Domino web server will be spot-on for theintranet. Eleanor Turton-Hill describes the strategy behind the technology, a powerful mix of the internet and Notes.
126 Canon: big in JapanThere’s much more to Canon than cameras and copiers. George Cole reports from Japan on the company’s heavy R&D investment and its plans for the the 21st century.
216 Net.focus: Politics on the webThe first thing the Peruvian guerrillas holed up in the Japanese embassy did was set up a web site. Tim Philips reports on the growing use of the web as a political tool.
223 Net.workshop: CGIIn part three of his tutorial, Ian Wrigley takes you through accepting and processing information off a web page.
Reviews
Regulars
Group Tests
156 Accounting SoftwareJames Taylor plays the numbers game to find out which package counts. And this time, it’s not personal.
190 NotebooksThe new crop of notebooks are offering bigger screens, faster CD drives and speedier processors. Adele Dyer hits the road.
Cutting Edge
Awards 97 p62
255 Introduction257 Workshop: this month
— Visual Basic tutorial260 Windows 95263 Windows 3.1266 Windows NT270 Unix273 OS/2276 Word Processing281 Spreadsheets285 Databases290 Numbers Count294 Hardware298 3D Graphics300 Graphics & DTP304 Sound307 Visual Programming313 Networks318 Macintosh
Hands On
Features
504 Screenplay
508 Retro
509 Brainteasers
Leisure Lines
509 Computations
513 CompetitionWin a Roldec multimedia Pentium PC.
Accounting Software p156
Notebooks p190
Budget PCs group test p134
135 Bytewise Technologies Swift P133135 Choice Systems Ultra Multimedia P133137 Edge Conquistador P166137 Express Micro Rapier ELS P133138 Fox Premier P133138 Innovations Direct P133140 Paragon Computers P133140 Roldec Systems P133144 Stak Trading Diamond Discovery144 Tiny P133 Multimedia System
Acer 01628 533422 5 8
A C i 01625 526 777 3 4 0
Adams Technology 0161 282 8822 1 8 7 - 9
ADI Systems 0181 236 0801 1 3 0
A d o b e 0131 451 6888 1 6 1
A G F A 0181 231 4200 2 0 2
A J P 0181 452 9090 350/1,
5 1 4
Alternatives 01925 700007 1 3 2 / 3
Alternatives (Insert) 0500 314314 1 3 2 / 3
American Power 01753 511022 1 6 4 / 5
American Power 01753 511022 1 6 5
Apricot 0800 212422 1 1 1 / 3
A r m a r i 0181 810 7441 3 9 8
A r t i s o f t see advert 1 2 1
Atlantic Systems 01792 700002 136,
1 4 1 / 1 4 3
A T T 0181 520 1007 5 1 8
British Telecom 0800 800 001 3 0
Byte Direct 0121 766 2565 3 9 9 / 4 0 3
Bytewise 0171 275 8853 3 9 6 / 7
C&T Group 0171 637 1767 3 7 8 / 9
Cambridge ISDN see advert 9 4
Carrera Technology 0171 830 0486 2 9 2 / 3
CD Revolution 01932 562000 1 8 0 / 1
Choice Systems 0181 993 9003 1 9 2
Choice Systems 0181 993 9003 3 9 0 / 1
Collosus 01282 77 00 88 2 4 3 / 2 4 6
C o m p a q 0990 232425 5 2 / 3 , 6 0 / 1
C o m p u S e r v e 0800 289378 2 2 2
Computer Trading 0114 253 1600 3 9 3 / 5
C o r e l 01703 814142 2 8 0
Creative Labs 01245 265265 7 9
Dakota 0181 452 8400 2 6 8
Dan Technology 0181 830 1100 2 2 - 2 5
Dan Technology 0181 830 1100 3 4 1 / 5
Dell 01344 894300 5 - 7
D e v c o m 01324 825005 4 2 8
Direct Connection 0181 297 2200 2 3 7
Dr Solomon’s 0800 136657 4 4
Edge Technology 0181 232 8811 5 1 6
E l e c t r o n e 01494 511999 5 2 2
E l o n e x 0181 452 4444 6 8 / 9 , 1 5 0
E p s o n 0800 220546 1 6 7 , 1 0 5
Evesham Micros 01386 765500 4 1 2 / 2 7
Express Micros (Insert) 01909 530 242 4 2 8 / 9
Fox Computer Systems 0990 744500 374,376/7
Gateway 2000 (Insert) 0800 172000 1 0 0 / 1 0 1
Global Internet 0181 957 1003 2 2 7 / 2 3 1
Grey Matter 01364 654 100 5 2 0
G u l t r o n i c s 0171 436 3131 3 6 3
Hi-Grade 0181 532 6123 2 7 9 , 3 0 3
Hitachi Europe 01628 585000 4 6
HM Systems 2 3 4
I D T 001 201 928 2990 3 2 5
Ilyama 01438 745482 5 6 / 7
Intermediates 01279 600204 5 0 7
Keyzone 0181 900 1525 3 1 2
Kingston Technology 01252 303588 2 0 4
Leonardo Computer 01734 753477 3 2 2
Locland Computers 01355 228808 1 5 4 / 5
L o g i t e c h 01344 894300 1 3 9
M c A f e e 01344 304730 5 0
Memory Bank (Insert) 0181 956 7000 4 2 8 / 9
MESH 0181 452 1111 65,
1 2 2 / 1 2 5
Micrology 01784 485500 3 1 7
M i c r o s a v e 0121 765 4685 3 6 2
Minolta see advert 1 1 6
Mitac Europe 01952 207200 1 9 7 / 1 9 9
MJN Technology 01282 777 555 1 6 9 - 1 7 4
M o r g a n 0171 255 2115 3 7
MPC International 01923 249898 3 5 2 / 3
Multimedia Direct 01635 873000 3 6 4 / 7
N o v a t e c h 0800 666500 3 5 4 / 3 6 1
O b o d e x 0181 841 3555 2 5 3
O f f t e k 0121 722 3993 4 0 4
Opti International 0181 507 1818 2 8 4
Opus Technology 01293 821555 2 1 1 / 2 1 5
Taxan 01344 484646 8 7
Tech Direct 0181 286 2222 4 9 4 / 4 9 9
Technomatic 0990 559944 4 3 0 / 7 7
Time Computer 01282 777111 386/7,
4 7 9 / 9 3
Tiny Computers 01293 821333 4 0 5 / 1 1
T o u c h e 2 9 7
Universal Control 01902 28688 3 8 4 / 5
US Robotics 0800 225252 2 2 5
UUnet Pipex 0500 474739 1 0 6 / 7
O r a c l e see advert 7 7
Pace 0990 561001 2 4 1
P a n r i x 0113 244 4958 1 4 6 / 7
Paradigm Technology 01491 822611 1 2 8
P a r a g o n 0181 478 8700 3 9 2
PC World 0990 464 464 206/7,
3 2 0 / 1
PC Zone 2 8 9
P e g a s u s 01536 410044 1 5 9
P e r s o f t 5 9
Pico Direct 01483 202022 3 8 0 / 1
Pinstripe Software 01442 870234 1 6 2
Powermark (Insert) 0181 956 7000 4 2 8 / 9
Programmers Paradise 0500 284 177 3 1 0
Purple Computers 01639 871 571 5 1 0 / 1 1
Richnight 0800 318298 3 8 2 / 3
Rock Computers 01926 832291 2 0 0 / 1
Roderick Manhatten 0181 875 4400 328,329,
331,333,
3 3 5
Roldec Systems 01902 456464 3 6 9 / 3 7 3
S a g e 0800 447777 3 9
Sight and Sound 01527 579 120 3 6 8
Silica Systems 0181 309 1111 2 4 9 , 2 5 9
SMC (Insert) 01753 550 333 4 2 8 / 9
S P C 01344 712122 8 1
Stak Trading 01787 577 497 3 7 5
Stak Trading 01787 577 497 1 5 2
Sterling Managment 01483 301331 5 1 2
Syquest Technology 0990 115565 1 4 9
CYAN•MAGENTA•YELLOW•BLACK PERSONAL COMPUTER WORLD
Personal Computer World • April 1997 • 11
CYAN•MAGENTA•YELLOW•BLACK PERSONAL COMPUTER WORLD
10 • Personal Computer World • April 1997
Ad Index www.pcw.vnu.co.uk A d v e r t i s e r T e l e p h o n e P a g e A d v e r t i s e r T e l e p h o n e P a g e A d v e r t i s e r T e l e p h o n e P a g e A d v e r t i s e r T e l e p h o n e P a g e A d v e r t i s e r T e l e p h o n e P a g e A d v e r t i s e r T e l e p h o n e P a g e
Direct Buyers’ WorldThe place in P C W w h e re you can compareprices on a wide range of hard w a re ands o f t w a re. The card insert at page 341 marks the start of the section.
A J P 350/1, 514
A r m a r i 3 9 8
A T T 5 1 8
Byte Direct 3 9 9 / 4 0 3
Bytewise 3 9 6 / 7
C&T Group 3 7 8 / 9
Choice Systems 3 9 0 / 1
Computer Trading 3 9 3 / 5
Dan Technology 3 4 1 / 5
D e v c o m 4 2 8
E l e c t r o n e 5 2 2
Evesham Micros 4 1 2 / 2 7
Express Micros (Insert) 4 2 8 / 9
Fox Computer Systems 3 7 4 , 3 7 6 / 7
Grey Matter 5 2 0
G u l t r o n i c s 3 6 3
Intermediates 5 0 7
Memory Bank (Insert) 4 2 8 / 9
M i c r o s a v e 3 6 2
A d v e r t i s e r Page No. A d v e r t i s e r Page No.
MPC International 3 5 2 / 3
Multimedia Direct 3 6 4 / 7
N o v a t e c h 3 5 4 / 3 6 1
O f f t e k 4 0 4
P a r a g o n 3 9 2
Pico Direct 3 8 0 / 1
Powermark (Insert) 4 2 8 / 9
Purple Computers 5 1 0 / 1 1
Richnight 3 8 2 / 3
Roldec Systems 3 6 9 / 3 7 3
Sight and Sound 3 6 8
SMC (Insert) 4 2 8 / 9
Stak Trading 3 7 5
Tech Direct 4 9 4 / 4 9 9
Technomatic 4 3 0 / 7 7
Time Computer 386/7, 479/93
Tiny Computers 4 0 5 / 1 1
Universal Control Systems 3 8 4 / 5
Watford Electronics (Insert) 4 2 8 / 9
W e s t l a k e s 3 8 8 / 9
R
S
T
U
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
K
L
M
N
O
PV i e w s o n i c 01293 643 900 4 8
Viglen Computer 0181 758 7080 5 2 4
Vine Micros 01843 225714 3 2 2
V i s i o n e e r 0181 477 5000 1 1 9
Watford Elec. (Insert) 01582 745555 4 2 8 / 9
W e s t l a k e s 0181 902 2392 3 8 8 / 9
Xerox Imaging 01734 668421 8 9
V
W
X
Group Editor Ben Tisdall Managing Editor PJ FisherNews Editor Clive Akass Features Editor Gordon Laing Technical Editor Eleanor Turton-HillReviews Editor Adele Dyer Associate Editor Simon Rockman Senior Staff Writer Dylan Armbrust Staff Writers Adam Evans, Lynley Oram Editorial Secretary Etelka Clark C o l u m n i s t s Brian Clegg, Barry Fox, Michael Hewitt, Tim NottInternational Correspondent Tim BajarinEditorial Phone 0171 316 9000Editorial Fax 0171 316 9313VNU web site w w w . p c w . v n u . c o . u kAll email addresses are in the following form:f i r s t n a m e _ l a s t n a m e @ v n u . c o . u k
Production Editor Lauraine LeeSenior Sub-Editor Patrick RamusS u b - E d i t o r Rachel Spooner
Art Editor Claudia RandallAssistant Art Editor Katy Holden
Internet Editor Angela CollinsCD Project Manager/DesignerJoolz Pohl J o o l z p @ v n u . c o . u kInteractive DevelopersSteve Rogers / Joel [email protected] j o e l—n e w m a n @ v n u . c o . u k
European Labs Manager Wisse HettingaLabs Manager George MacDonaldLabs Testing Editor Jonathan RicksOperations Manager Alan Rider Labs Phone 0 1 7 1 316 9067 L a b s F a x 0171 316 9059
REPRINTS We offer a full reprint service for reproduction of all or partof any current or previous articles. Minimum order 1,000.For details contact Susie Ross (0171 316 9000).USE OF EXTRACTS We are delighted for people to use quotations andsegments of articles for internal or promotional purposes.For clearance, contact Juliet Parker (0171 316 9000).SUBSCRIPTIONS Hotline 01483 733870 Fax 01483 756792. Emailp c w s u b s @ g a l l e o n . c o . u k. Credit card orders welcome.BACK ISSUES We keep a stock of past issues and can provideindividual copies at a charge of £5. Call 01483 733870.
12 • Personal Computer World • April 1997
Editorial Advertising
Sales Director Brin BucknorHead of Portfolio Sales Paula Barnes 0171 316 9194Portfolio Sales ManagerPranav J Oza 0171 316 9466Assistant Ad ManagerKevin Elderfield 0171 316 9303
PC Consumer Sales Melanie Clark 0171 316 9727 Matt Rigney 0171 316 9306Beccy Carr 0171 316 9307Stuart Mills 0171 316 9439Helen Thomas 0171 316 9178Dave Barr 0171 316 9533
F o u n d e r Angelo Zgorelec P u b l i s h e r Jon Ross 0171 316 9187Marketing ManagerJuliet Parker 0171 316 9191Marketing & Sales Co-ordinatorTimothy Mickelborough 0171 316 9820
Test Results are based wholly or in part on methodologiesprovided by National Software Testing Laboratories, adivision of McGraw-Hill Inc, and licensed to PersonalComputer World. Neither NSTL nor the Publisherguarantees the accuracy or adequacy of its testingactivities and makes no representations or warrantiesregarding tested products. Articles or portions of articlestranslated and reprinted (or adapted) in this issue from PCDigest or Software Digest Copyright (c) 1994, by NationalSoftware Testing Laboratories (NSTL), a division ofMcGraw-Hill, Inc, 625 Ridge Pike, Conshohocken,Pennsylvania 19428, USA. Reproduction of the NSTLmaterial in any manner or language in whole or in partwithout permission of NSTL is prohibited.
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Enquiries or complaints regarding any advertiser in thismagazine should, initially, be presented in writing to: Anthony George, Customer Relations Department, VNU Business Publications, VNU House, 32-34 BroadwickStreet, London W1A 2HG. Tel 0171 316 9 1 8 6 .Readers are reminded that we are unable to providetechnical help/support services, either written or verbal.
Personal Computer World • April 1997 • 13
Editorial Next MonthFor this month’s PC Group Test (p134) we have taken a
bold leap into the uncharted waters of the PC bargain
bins. Being something of a first for us, we weren’t too sure
what we would end up with as our specification laid open
our test pages to brands which would be
new to PCW.
There continues to be a school of
thought which suggests that the only
PCs worth buying are those with the
letters I, B and M inscribed upon the
fascia. There is some truth in this: major
brands such as IBM, Compaq, Dell and
others do tend to use better-quality components and pay
more attention to the standard of construction, inside and
out. They also cost more.
This is why buyers often turn to the ranks of the
clone makers where they believe a similar-performance
PC is available at a fraction of the cost. Such PCs are
easy to make — all the components are available off-the-
shelf and anyone with a corrugated iron shed on a windy
industrial estate can set themselves up as a PC
manufacturer. The trouble is that all too often, these
manufacturers source poor-quality components to enable
them to pare away the price of a PC to the minimum.
They also care little for internal layout, expansion or
general design, so what buyers gain in initial savings, they
may lose in downtime and repairs.
Perhaps there is cause for optimism however in our
Group Test results. It seems that you can get a decent
machine with a Pentium 133MHz which performs well, is
well built, and could last beyond the normal life cycle of a
business PC. This proves that with care, attention to detail
and a little forward thinking, a genuinely good PC can be
built at aggressive prices. In other words, PCs that have
been designed. These companies could become the
Compaqs and the Gateway 2000s of the future. It seems
such a simple lesson; the real wonder is just why so few
manufacturers bother to learn it.
Of course, properly structured long-term tests would
be needed to discover just how well these machines serve
on a daily basis. But rest assured, Personal Computer
World will endeavour to find out.
PJ Fisher
Managing Editor
May ’97 issue On sale Thursday 3rd AprilJune ’97 issue On sale Thursday 1st May
VNU European Labs place166MHz MMX Pentiums and17in monitors under theirintense scrutiny.
* Next month’s contents subject to change.
Plus…Desktop Publishing Group Test
Operating Systems:Special Report
Gordon Laing presides over our 28-monitorsupertest and sorts the sharp from the soft.
Which OS isbest for you?Our 15-pagereport looksat the stateof the art forthe desktop.
MMX PCs
17in monitors
P166 MMX PCs: Could this be the newbusiness standard?Dylan Armbrust takes
ten to task.
Cover disk notes
If you have problems with the floppy, such asthe message “cannot read from drive a:”, pleasereturn the disk to TIB plc, TIB House, 11 EdwardStreet, Bradford BD4 7BH, together with a SAEand two 25p stamps. Where it is a duplicationfault, the postage will be returned with yourreplacement disk. TIB is on 01274 736990.
Our floppy-disk hotline is available on weekdaysfrom 10.30am - 4.30pm on 0891 715929.
PCW cover disks are thoroughly virus-checked,but PCW cannot accept liability for problemsarising from use of the disk.
You are advised not to install any software ona networked PC without having checked it first.
Cover disc notes
Personal Computer World • April 1997 • 1514 • Personal Computer World • April 1997
Introducing issue 8 of our new-look PCW CD-ROM. The discis packed full of games, multimedia, music, hints and tips,and resources to download to your hard disk.
Possible problems with the floppy
The CD isdivided into nine
sections, each with itsown icon. Each of the nine
section buttons is almost alwaysvisible on-screen so you can movefrom section to section just byclicking on that button, rather thanhaving to continually return to ahome page. If you are not surewhere each section is, roll over thebuttons and the name of thatsection will be displayed along witha contents list for the section. Exitthe disc by clicking on the “Q” inthe bottom left of the screen.
This month’s PCW floppy contains threeprograms. Anno Domini V4.02 is acalendar/almanac program, designed toaccompany the many personal informationmanangers (PIMs) on the market.MahJong is a PC implementation of thepopular Chinese game. Animouse lets youchange your Windows cursors for aselection of amusing and artistically creativearrows, hourglasses and sizer arrows.
To install the programs onto yourdesktop from the floppy disk, put the floppyinto the drive.Windows 95Click on START\RUN from the taskbar. Typeinto the box a:\PCW0497 and click OK.Win 3.11Go to FILE\RUN on PROGRAMMANAGER. Type into the box a:\PCW0497.EXE then click OK.
To install the programs from the CD:
1. Quit existingapplications.
2. Put the discinto your CD-ROM drive.
3. Win 95: If you’ve got Windows 95, the PCWinteractive loader will appear on your screen. Ifyour CD doesn’t auto-load, start WindowsExplorer and double-click PCW.exe.Win 3.1: From Windows Program Managerchoose File/Run, then type in <CDDrive>:\PCW.exe and press enter.
4. Click on main menu. If youdon’t have Quicktime forWindows, Video for Windowsor Acroread with search plug-in installed, you will beoffered the chance to installthem before continuing.
Hardware requirements
To run the CD-ROM, you need a PC withWindows 3.1 or later and a colour VGA display.We recommend a multimedia 486 or Pentium PCwith a minimum 8Mb of RAM. The optimumconfiguration is a 16Mb Pentium.
A searchable database of the PCW coverdisc contents since September 1996.
A beginner’s interactive guide tonotebooks, printers and desktop PCs.
Install and launch “Acrobat reader withsearch plug-in” to view and search PCWHands On articles from the past year.
AprilCover disc
From Windows Explorer orFile Manager, double-clickon PCW0497.EXE in thedirectory <CDDrive>/FLOPPY/.
This will create a directoryon your hard disk calledPCW0497* which willcontain the sub-directoriesAnnodomi, Animous andMahJong.
Anno Domini V4.02(Windows 3.X and above).To set up this program,double-click on C:\
PCW0497*\Annodomi\Ad_402.exeAnimouse (Windows 3.11 and Win 95).To set up this program, double-click on C:\PCW0497*\ Animous \ Animouse.exeMahJong for Windows 95 (Win 95).To set up this game, double-click on C:\PCW0497* \ MahJong \ setup.exe
(*default directory name)
1. If you have launched Acrobat reader inthe Hands On section and cannot find thesearch icon described in the first page ofnotes, this may be because you alreadyhave a copy of Acrobat reader on your C:drive, so the autostart for this cover disc isnot asking you to install our version whichincludes the search facilities. You can eitherdelete your Acrobat reader from the C:drive, or change its name and runPCW.EXE again, which this time should askyou to install the Acrobat reader with searchfacilities.
2. If you get a message such as “Not readyreading drive D:”, you may have a dud CD.
Return the disc to: TIB plc, TIB House, 11 Edward Street, Bradford DB4 7BH, for afree replacement.
For other problems concerning the CD,call 0891 715929. Calls cost 39p/minuteoff-peak and 49p at all other times. (From19th February all calls will cost 50p/minute.)
Possible CD-ROM problems
Here you can preview the featured gameson this month’s CD. Some you can playstraight away, others you’ll need to installfirst or can only play from DOS.
p16
Four interactive Windows demos for you toenjoy.
Anno Domini v4.02, Animouse, MahJong
April 97Run A:\PCW.EXE from WindowsFull details on page 16
those images. This month the four featuredsoftware demos are:Microsoft Development Network — AVisual Basic starter kit containing essentialinformation including technical articles andre-usable sample code.OfficeForms (Win 95) — Toplevel’s latestforms package.
Cover disc notes
Personal Computer World • April 1997 • 1716 • Personal Computer World • April 1997
Please note: The demos featured in the Games and
Multimedia sections can be previewed and
some will run from the PCW main interface.
However, due to technical issues
concerning the software supplied to us,
some demos will not run alongside the
interface and others require installation to
your hard disk.
PCW reviews index, advertisers’ index,glossary and general information about theCD.
Browse through VNU’s re-designed webe-zine called The Room, and see the firstwinning entry for the “Write an episode forthe Stoney Blokes cartoon” competition.
Browse through VNU’s new e-zine, even if
you’re not on the web
A library of shareware, utilities and drivers,each with a brief description which can becopied onto your hard disk, using theNetscape browser.
Multimedia & FeaturedSoftwareTo preview any of the multimediademonstations, either drag one of theimages along the bottom into the box in thetop right corner, or double-click one of
p18
Cover disc notes
PCW and CompuServe — giving youmore on CDCompuServe’s latest cover CD containsmore than ever before, includingCompuServe 3.0.1 for Windows 95. Forbudding webmasters there’s Home PageWizard and HoTMetal Light so you canstart building your own web pages to putup on CompuServe*.
When you aren’t toiling away on yourpersonal home page, there’s demos ofSonic the Hedgehog from Sega andSyndicate Wars from Bullfrog Productionsto keep you amused.
The CD also includes SuperscapeViscape, SSEYO Koan Pro, CompuServeWorldsAway, Tesco Wine Selector and
Above Includes sample
code amd technical
help
Right A contact
management package
Below Choose G-Nome
— a futuristic
destruction game
MultiMusic — A music sample resource,by Mantra, with song construction facilities.Goldmine 3.2 (Win 95) — A contactmanagement package.
GamesTo preview any of the games, either dragone of the images along the bottom into thebox in the top right corner, or double-clickone of those images.
Destruction Derby 2 — This is the first oftwo fast driving-game demos included onthis month’s disc. Complete with realisticcrashes, steep hills, jumps and bankedcorners, it plays as smoothly and excitinglyas the original, and has a pit area for repairs.Sega Rally — (Sorry Windows 3.1 users,Sega Rally is Windows 95 only). Sega Rally
combines high-speed driving adventurewith neat moves such as flying over jumps,sliding around corners and side-swipingother cars.G-Nome — (Sorry Windows 3.1 users, G-Nome is Windows 95 only). G-Nome, by7th Level, is a futuristic destruction gameset on the planet Ruhelen. Union SergeantJoshua Gant must assemble a team ofexperts and penetrate Scorp Republic todestroy the ultimate genetic soldier, the G-Nome, before that creature can bedeployed in battle.Ultimate Soccer Manager 2 — If you’veever fancied yourself as a football manageryou’ll love Ultimate Soccer Manager 2, bySierra. Decisions range from drawing upplays that will be used during a match, tochoosing what kind of merchandise is soldat your fan shops.The Settlers II — The Settlers II is made byBluebyte Software. It is a variation on theSim City game and is set in the last centuryin a world of amazing colour and detail.
In Sega Rally, if
you’re stuck
behind someone
bang ’em out of
the way and put
your foot down!)
Tesco Recipe Selector.(*To join CompuServe, follow the on-screeninstructions.)
Following our competition withCompuServe and Air UK in the December1996 issue of PCW, comgratulations to theten lucky winners:
Phil Atkinson, Birmingham; Steve Fox,Warminster; Alec Whitfield, Hereford; IanRigg, Stockport; David Stout, Longstanton;Steve Ashton, Grimsby; Rhodri Evans, StAlbans; Iain Duncan, Fife; Chris McCarthy,Birmingham, and Dave Griffiths, BereAlston.
Please note: CD contents subject to change.
CompuServe CD
Fast TrackIf you would prefer to play or install the Gamesand Multimedia demos from outside the mainPCW interface, or want to know the location ofthe Software Library home page (in order touse your own internet browser rather than thedefault Netscape browser), click on the HELPbutton on the PCW loader. This help\info filealso contains the locations of other items onthe disc, along with a full contents list and helptips.
Error!If you experience any problem running
any of the Software Library programs
once you have copied them from
Netscape, please do the following:
1. Delete the directory you copied
them to.
2. Re-select them in the Software
Library section.
3. Ensure that ONLY “copy” is ticked.
That is, untick the box “decompress”.
4. After copying the file, unzip it
manually using PKUnzip.
time you click on the hypertext link, thetransfer should work okay. Other file typesClick on the file you would like to copy toyour hard disk. This will bring up the “saveas” dialog box. Choose where you want tocopy the file (make sure you don’t try tocopy the file to the CD itself, or you will getan error message). It’s a good idea tocreate a directory or folder for it first (usingWindows File Manager or Explorer).
Note: Avoid copying any of the resourcesfiles into your Windows directory or into theroot of your C: drive.
Using NetscapeThe Personal Computer World InteractiveCD-ROM uses Netscape as the deliverymechanism for the resources section andto run The Room.
If you’re on the internet, chances areyou’re already using Netscape and have arough idea of how it works. If you’re not,this provides a great opportunity to find outwhat this browser business is all about.
You navigate through web (or HTML)pages using hyperlinks. These are imagesor, more often, highlighted text whichtakes you backwards and forwardsthrough different pages. You can alsomove between pages you’ve already
We are always on the lookout for material for our cover-mounted CD-ROMs. If you think you have something that might besuitable, such as software, pictures, fonts, demos and so on, please let us know: email Steven Rogers at [email protected] orwrite to him at CD Development, New Media, VNU Business Publications, 32-34 Broadwick Street, London W1A 2HG.Please note that Steve cannot deal with technical support.
Wanted: material for PCW cover CD-ROMs
Personal Computer World • April 1997 • 1918 • Personal Computer World • April 1997
Cover disc notes
Using the Hands OnsectionYou can load Acrobat either by selectingHands On from the launch menu or bygoing into the Hands On section of themain menu.
To search Acrobat files, justclick on the search icon. Adialog will appear. Merely typein the word you want tosearch for and click the icon.
In a second or so, the search results dialogwill appear containing a list of the fileswhich contain that word.
You can then view any of the files. Theword you search for (“CD-ROM drives” inour example) is highlighted. On average-sized monitors the text will be greeked, butyou can use the magnifying glass icon toexpand the text: just click on the icon then,with your mouse, select the area of thepage you want to magnify.
Using the Software LibrarysectionThe files in this section are copied to yourhard disk using the default Netscapebrowser on the CD.
If you already have your own frames-compatible browser installed and want toaccess the resources section, run yourbrowser, go to File Open and openD:\html\res\resource.htm.
Compressed Zip files or self-extracting archivesMost files in this section are compressedzip files or self-extracting archives. Click onthe file that you would like to copy to yourhard disk. A box will appear, stating thename of the file to copy and the destinationdirectory. Click on OK. If using the defaultbrowser, you will be given the option of:1. Copying the file only, from the CD to adestination of your choice, with no furtheraction.2. Decompressing the files contained in thearchive into the destination of your choice.
By selecting both of the above you cancopy the file and decompress it into yourchosen location. If you have to abort thecopy, and subsequent attempts todownload the same file give an unexpectedfilename, go to c:\vnu\netscape and deletethe copy of the file contained therein. Next
visited by using the back and forwardarrows on the toolbar.
Netscape 2.0 also has a feature called“frames” which divides the screen intoseparate areas. When using frames, usethe right mouse button, rather than thearrow keys, to move backwards andforwards.
When using Netscape from within PCWInteractive you’ll need to go to File/Exit toreturn to the main screen.
Installing PKUnzip orWinzipZip files are the standard compressionformat for distributing programs andutilities on the web and on floppy disk. Ifyou choose to copy the resources zip filesonto your hard disk and decompress themlater, you will need to install PKUnzip orWinzip before you can “unzip” them. Go tothe Essential Utilities section and click thelink “PKZip/PKUnzip” or “Winzip”.
Winzip: choose Winzip and a new pagewill appear offering you Winzip for Win95and Winzip for Windows 3.11. Select theappropriate platform and save it to alocation of your choice. If you have lessthan 16Mb of RAM it’s probably a goodidea to quit Navigator, and the PCW CDnext. Then use File Manager or Explorer tofind Winzip95.exe or wz60wn16.exe.
PKUnzip: choose PKUnzip and savepkz204g.exe to your hard disk — theC:\DOS\ folder is as good a place as anyto save it. After you’ve quit Navigator andthe PCW CD, double-click on the file toexpand it to 16 separate files (if you havechosen not to decompress and save it toyour hard disk in one action).
Associating the file: unless you intendto use DOS to unzip files (laborious andtricky) you need to associate .zip files withPKUnzip. From File Manager, choose FileAssociate to associate *.zip files withPKUNZIP.EXE. Under Windows 95, zipfiles will be associated automatically.
PCW INTERACTIVE Entire Contents List:
Multimedia section• Microsoft Development Network• OfficeForms (Win95)• MultiMusic• Goldmine 3.2 (Win 95)
Games section • Destruction Derby 2• Sega Rally (Win 95)• G-Nome (Win 95)• Ulimate Soccer Manager 2• The Settlers II
Arts section• 32 graphic images from the ImageBank• Jukebox containing the track Alivefrom Triggerfish
Getting Started• A beginner’s interactive explorationof notebooks, printers and desktopPCs
CD Index• A searchable index of the PCWcover discs since September 1996
Hands on• Hints, tips and practical advice onevery aspect of personal computing
The Room• A browse through VNU’s newredesigned e-zine, The Room
F O L D H E R E
April 1997
Cover disc notes
All the goodies are here. From our Hands On section files to Goldmine, from an Alicia Silverstone
screensaver to Netscape Navigator, Acrobat Reader and more. There’s something for everyone
Full details page 14 April 97
Vet AntiVirus
Office formstemplates for MS Office
Executive Desk personal info manager
MSIE Cache Explorer offline browsing
Kilkenny dice game
Alicia Silverstone screensaver
Opera -cool browser
Anno Domini
calendar
Reference section• 12-month productsand features archivabledatabase• Advertisers’ index• General info on the CD• Glossary of PC termsSoftware librarysectionIncluding those filesreferred to in the HandsOn section of PCW• Acrobat Reader v3.0(Win95/Win 3.11)• Alicia Silverstonescreensaver• APOLLO — Mission tothe Moon• Avery Label templates• Cachchk• Chess• Creative Writer• Desktop Deluxe
• Direct X3.0• Edesk 97• Flash View• FreeAgent V1.1• GPS Software • Icoholic• Icons Control 95• Images Control• Internet Explorer 3.0(Win95/NT)• Kilkenny• Lottery v4.10• Magtrakj• MicroAngelo v2.1• 3D Movie Maker• MSIE Cache Explorer• My Personal Diary• Netscape Navigatorv3.0 (Win 3.x/Win95/NT)• Odometer Win 95• Opera• PAYE-Master• PDQ Lite
• Pegasus Mail for 16-and 32-bit• PKZIP & PKUnzip• Ponger• PSP v4.12 (Win95)• PSP v3.11 (Win3.1)• Quake v1.01• Qunck• VBRun 100, 200, 300,400.dll• VETLite 3.11• VETLite 95• Video for Windows• VistaCalc Spreadsheet• What PC? — mobilepages buyers’ guide forPsion 3a incl the newNicholson London Pages• Wincode• Win95 PowerToys• Win95 service pack 1• Winzip • Word Game
Just type in the word you want to search for
— in our case, CD-ROM drives
In a second or two, a list of all the files
containing that word will appear
Please note: Even if you have previously installedAcrobat Reader 3.0 from theSoftware section, when visiting ourHands On section for the first timeyou will be asked to install Acrobat.This is because in order to searchacross the PDF files, you need thesearch plug-in which is installedwith Adobe Acrobat Search for CD-ROM, but not Acrobat Reader 3.0.
Personal Computer World • April 1997 • 21
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p29
Newsprint
Personal Computer World • April1997 • 2726 • Personal Computer World • April 1997
Modem buyers facemonths of confusion with
at least four technologiesoffering double-speed downloads — and not one is astandard.
The rival devices all run at56Kbps only downstreamfrom compliant service
providers — notupstream, or modem to modem.US Robotics wasfirst to announce a56K technology,called x2, last year.PCW has justreceived its first x2,a Sportster Flash,for review but itrequires a flashupgrade to work at56K.
Pipex, whichlike most UKservice providers says it willsupport USR, has also yet toupgrade its system to 56K.
USR claims a big advan-tage in that its later models aresoftware upgradeable to 56K.
Rockwell, which sells mostmodem chips, is about to shipmodels based on its K56Plustechnology. AT&T spin-offLucent is due to ship its own
V56Flex models.Motorola, Rockwell and
Lucent have agreed to mergethese into a fourth design, calledK56Flex, by summer. Earliermodels are likely to need chipswaps. K56Flex is believed tooffer uploads at up to 45Kcompared with USR’s 33.6K.
The US industry will distill yet
Newsprint
‘He reckonshe’s the fifthhorseman ofthe Apocalypse.The first fourbrought war,death,famine anddisease. Hehelped codetheMillenniumbug.’
Time was when the millennium waslinked with the Second Coming,hellfire, and Judgment Day. But theYear 2000 bug — code that countsdates only up to 99 — seems to haveshifted the focus of fear from theapocalyptic to the algorithmic. Latestpredictions include: US missile systems will fail. UK military systems may go thesame way, even after a £100 millionbug-fix programme. Planes will crash as satellitepositioning systems go awry. Nuclear power stations will getcatastrophically confused.
Oh yes, and if you survive that lot,you can look forward to a collapse ofworld IT systems leading to a globalslump, says a new book called TheMillennium Timebomb by SimonReeve and Colin McGhee (VisionPaperbacks, £8.99).
Yet IT managers are having troublegetting extra funds to deal with theproblem, according to a Year 2000report from Softlab. Finance directorstend to blame the bug on ITmanagers, who are asked simply toredirect existing funds to sort it out.Vision 0171 460 4684; Softlab 0181 742 2277
Short Stories
Disastrous news on the joke of the millennium
MMX upgradechips on saleIntel has launchedMMX upgrade chipsfor 100MHz, 90MHzand 75MHz PCs.
They boost chipspeeds to 166MHz,150MHz and 125MHzrespectively, as wellas supporting MMXmultimedia features.
The new 100MHzMMX overdrive chipcosts about £311;upgrades for theother two speedswill cost about £250. Intel chief, p34
Boost for LSsuperfloppy The chances of theLS-120 drive, aka thea:drive, replacing thefloppy drive rose lastmonth when Fujitsuand Siemens Nixdorfannounced theywould fit it in PCs.
Some Compaqsalready use the drive which reads standard floppies aswell as 120Mb disks.
The case for theLS-120 will beunanswerable if bigsales drive downprices — alreadybelow £100 in bulk. See also, p38
The Royal Bank of Scotland hasbecome the first in the UK toannounce banking over the web.
When the service goes live inthe spring, users will be able toprint out account details goingback six months, view standingorders and direct debits, and paybills to more than 750 large com-panies. But doubts aboutsecurity were expressed almostas soon as it was launched.
Hackers from the Chaos Computing Club of Germanyshowed on TV how Microsoft’s
Active X technology can be usedto rifle home users’ bankaccounts. Microsoft has long
said that if you want ActiveXpower there is a security risk,and you should accept only filesbearing encrypted securitycertificates.
The Royal Bank guaranteesto refund any money lost bycustomers who have used theservice and kept theirpasswords secret. It alreadyoffers the same guarantee to itstelephone banking customers.
In the long term, internetbanking is expected to costbanks a fraction of conventionalbranch banking. But the RoyalBank plans to charge users£1.50 a month for using theservice. One other catch is thatyou are tied to using theMicrosoft Explorer 3.0 browser.
Ben Tisdallwww.royalbankscot.cop.uk
See News Analysis, p43
First net bank faces doubt over ActiveX factor
Fast CD recorder Yamaha says its CDR400CD recorder is the world’sfastest. It writes at four-speed,reads at six-speed, and costs£450 (ex VAT) complete with a2Mb buffer.Yamaha 01908 366700
PowerPC NT blow Microsoft has stopped dev-eloping NT for the Power PC, itsaid last month. This means theMacOS and AIX will be the onlyoperating systems supporteduntil Apple’s NeXTstep-basedRhapsody appears. Apple exodus, p34
This £115 (ex VAT) devicefrom Lindy transforms your PCmonitor into a TV.Lindy 01642 765275
Asister company of the Daily Mail,scourge of all sinners and arch
upholder of family values, is acting in effectas a conduit for pornography.
Parent company Associated Newspapers has set up a web search
engine calledUK Plus, oneof a new
breed aiming to provide local informationfor UK users. It is well designed, with sitesconcisely reviewed by journalists, andmakes a point of vetting out smutty pages.
But next to the UK search button is onefor UK Plus’s partner, the USsearch engine Infoseek, which canact like a pornographic hotline,negating the whole point of the vetting. Asearch on any smutty word provides a stringof pornographic sites, the home pages ofwhich include a stream of obscenities obviously aimed at attracting hits.
Infoseek says it vets its listed sites andso must be aware of their content, thoughit does not go as far as rival Excite, which
even carries adverts (above) for a porno-graphic search engine.
Web watcher programs like Cybersittercan stop smutty searches, but there is noeasy way for a search engine to do sowithout blocking non-sexual discourse.
Ironically, UK Plus’s own local searchesshow that much can nevertheless be done.Executives at Associated Electronic Publishing, the newspaper group’s onlinearm, reacted indignantly to the suggestionthat they are channelling smut.
Mike With, UK Plus editor, said no otherengine was so careful to avoid porn and hewas proud to be associated with Infoseekbecause of its quality of service.
But he added: “We have no control overInfoseek policy.” Clive Akass UK Plus www.ukplus.co.uk
Daily Mail stablemate actsas conduit for internet smut
Porn ad
carried by
Infoseek
rival,
Excite
Fourfold confusion asfirst x2 modems ship
Cover story Peter Gabriel’s Eve CD won the prestigious Milia Gold multimediaaward in France last month. See p41
These two icons put the 56K modem debateinto perspective. One shows a DirectPCsatellite link capable of downloading atmore than 800K. The other is a standardupstream phone net link.
It’s the kind of interactivity that will soonbecome commonplace as digital TV satellitechannels go live and cable companiesrespond with cable modems and boxes. Soby the time a 56K standard is agreed, it mayalready be out of date.
Newsprint will be taking a closer look atthese technologies next month. Smart NC links, p34
Continued on page 32
Edited by Clive Akass. Send your news and views to [email protected]
Lotus’s new Domino package (reviewed onpage 114) provides almost all the internet andintranet functions needed by Notes users,
Lotus Developmentpresident, Jeff Papows(pictured, left) told thefirst European Lotus-phere Conference here.But two products duesoon, codenamed
Lookout and Maui, will be additions to theNotes client.
Lookout will feature an updated andenhanced user interface and navigation“paradigm” that will integrate web productssuch as SmartSuite 97, Microsoft Office 97
and Internet Explorer. It is expected to shipin the late half of 1997. Maui will be thefollow-on Notes client that will support a raftof new internet protocols, including IMAP4,LDAP, NNTP, IIOP and ICAP. Papows saidthis further enhancement was acontinuation of Lotus’s support of openstandards-based clients.
Lotus also seems to be jumping firmly onthe Java bandwagon with a preview of Kona,a set of Java-based applets designed foruse over the web on a Network Computer(NC). There will be a full “suite” of applets,ranging from a word processor to
presentation graphics, all with coreapplication functionality to run on any Java-based browser, whether it’s on a LAN,WAN, or internet based network. However,Lotus will continue to develop and enhanceits full-featured application, SmartSuite.
Papows said that Lotus, in conjunctionwith its parent company, IBM, wasrefocusing on a network-centric strategyand that it planned to aggressively go headto head with Microsoft.
“Lotus has not been the tour de force thatMicrosoft has historically been” but Lotus/IBM“will spend WHATEVER [his emphasis] ittakes” to keep and extend their lead ingroupware, particularly in R&D, he said.
Personal Computer World • April 1997 • 29
Mosaic browser ownerSpyglass thinks small Spyglass was the companythat bought Mosaic, the motherof all graphical browsers, fromthe National Centre for Super-computing Applications. TheNCSA has just announced thatit has stopped all browser devel-opment, as it can’t competewith Netscape and Microsoft.
So whatever happened toSpyglass? Well, it owns part ofInternet Explorer, which is basedon Mosaic. And it is busy devel-oping browsers for non-PC webdevices. Now it has bought informer Palindrome exec, DavidHarris-Evans, to head up a newoperation in Europe where hereckons there is a “huge potential for embeddable Webtechnology.” New Acorn mini OS, p36Spyglass 01753 705003
Netscape still leads Netscape Navigator is still byfar the most-usedweb browser. But
Microsoft reckons its InternetExplorer is catching up fast, witha share of usersrising from 8 to 28percent in the lastfour months of1996 alone.
4Mb palmtop Hewlett-Packard is offering a£450 (ex VAT) version of its 200LX palmtop with 4Mb RAM.Hewlett-Packard 0990 474747
Short Stories
Newsprint
p31
PC buyers are gettingwise to the dubious
value of some extendedwarranties, judging from anew report. But they are stillpaying twice as much forcover as continentals.
Charges at high-streetshops can be nearly fivetimes German rates, saysthe Inteco report. It singlesout Dixons and Currys,where warranties costrespectively as much as 9.4percent and 11.5 percent ofthe system price. The UKaverage is 5.5 percent.
Yet three out of four buyers have no problems inthe warranty period — andproblems that do occur tendto be software related, saysInteco. As a result, seven inten second-time buyersrefuse extended cover. Andmany are voting with their feetby buying via ads rather thanfrom shops, Inteco seniorconsultant, Pete Day, warns.
“Certain channels are
very good at persuadingneophyte PC buyers to takeout an extended warranty ontheir PC, but they can’t relyon this forever. Less than 50percent of the people buyinghome PCs are doing so forthe first time,” he said.
Buyers are right to balkat buying extended cover,says the government-fundedNational Consumer Council.They have wide legal rightsto redress if faults occur in a
“reasonable period”.Beyond that, “cover
under an extended warrantyoften stops just short of thepoint where a machine islikely to start going wrong,” aspokeswoman said.
Dixons said in a statement that its Coverplan,also sold at Currys, PCWorld and Link stores, offersunmatched benefits. “It isimpossible to compare awarranty in the UK with onein France and Germanywithout knowing what levelof service is offered,” thestatement added.Inteco 01483 751777
NCC 0171 730 3469
Buyers sniff rip-off inextended warranties
Country Cost PeriodFrance 2.7% 1.8 yearsGermany 2.2% 1.6 yearsUK 5.1% 1.8 years
Average percentage cost andperiod of extended warranties
From DYLAN ARMBRUST in Nice
Domino knocks spots off the rest, says Lotus
Cherry ripe for readsCherry’s latest keyboard
includes a built-in reader forbarcodes and magnetic swipe
cards, so you can swipe some-one’s identity card to ensure
they don’t swipe your money. Cherry 01582 736100
Personal Computer World • April 1997 • 31
Newsprint
p32
The days when AST was a topfive PC vendor are long gone. Ithas slipped out of the top 10 witha market share hovering aboutone percent.
Samsung bought a one-thirdshare of the company and put in$350 million in late 1995, whichkept it solvent. With AST still introuble, Samsung brought itsshare up to 49 percent anddemanded six of the 10 boardseats. This still did not help.
Now Samsung has offered tobuy the rest of the company for$465 million. It could gain controlwith just two percent more, butthat is not the way Asian business minds work: controlmeans 100 percent and no less.
Samsung could also have justwalked away, but that would beadmitting failure. Instead, it willput more money into AST tosave face.
Ironically, AST managementhas not decided if it wants to selland has passed the decision toan internal committee – thoughSamsung, with a majority on theboard, has the final say. But ASThas had another cash infusionand will be around for at leastanother year.
Systems using the newmultimedia-enhanced MMX chipare already on the market in bignumbers. The big news is that Intel has priced the 166MHz and200MHz chips reasonably andPC vendors are following suit.
Hewlett-Packard and Sonyare both offering the followingsystem for $2,399 (£1,500):32Mb EDO RAM, 4Gb harddrive, 33.6 modem, 16x CD-ROM, 256Kb pipeline burstcache, 2Mb video RAM,accelerated 3D video graphics,MPEG 1 for full-screen digitalvideo, 3D, SRS surround-soundwith subwoofer, phoneanswering system and twouniversal serial bus ports. Addthe MM video monitor, and thewhole system goes for $2,899.
The aggressive pricing showsIntel is serious about gettingeverybody on to MMX as fast aspossible. Prices are higheroutside the US, but here they areso low that researchers thinkupgrades and new purchasesshould put PC sales growth atabout 18 percent in 1997.
TimBajarinreportsfrom theUS
The message from Micrografx was clear: itsnew high-end graphics software packagesare not meant to compete with Photoshop. Itis interested less in the professional graphicsmarket than in corporates where “GraphicsSuite has been designed to work with Office97,” said David Whitewood, UK generalmanager.
However, the positioning of the products isnot clear. A new web suite offers the samecomponents as Graphics Suite 2.0 (nowshorn of its ABC tag) less the enhancedFlowCharter, but costs around £140 less.Both include Picture Publisher 7, Designer 7,Simply 3D 2 and Media Manager 2.
But both packages contain advanced features. Vector graphics can be transferredto the web from Designer and 3D animationscan be converted to animated GIFs fromSimply 3D 2. VB scripts can be applied toobjects created in Designer and used tocreate mouse-over events on web pages.
FlowCharter 7 now includes “living flowcharts” where dynamic events can be programmed into the boxes on a flowchart,again using VB script. For example, a flowchart could be created that walks usersthrough telephone canvassing procedures.
Micrografx also announced Small Bus-iness Graphics and Print Studio, designed tomake stationery creation easy. Paul FisherMicrografx www.micrografx.com
Micrografx hits two suite spots
The cost of memory chipsjumped by more than 25percent in two weeks lastmonth after a year which sawprices fall by up to 80percent. The rise followed adecision by South Koreanmanufacturers, who account
for 35 percent of the market,to cut output by around athird in a bid to push upprices. Prices levelled off butindustry watchers are dividedon the long-term view. USanalyst Dataquest predictedfurther falls this year of up to
30 percent.But Lianne
Denness, MDof vendor Hypertec (seeleft) thinksprices will staysteady for awhile and thenrise slowly.
Prices ofwhole PC sys-tems will belittle affectedunless thereare dramaticRAM price
rises. Small increases wouldbe offset by Intel’s regularprocessor price reductions.
The global glut of chipsthat pushed prices down isbeing eroded by a higherdemand as users find RAMupgrades are the cheapestand best way to boost per-formance: 32Mb RAM is nowregarded as de rigeur forMMX and NT machines.
Vendors in Europe lastmonth waited anxiously tosee if the EC would reimposeanti-dumping tariffs after an18-month suspension due toend on 7th March.
John Byrne, of Vanguard,was hoping for tariffs to beimposed as they vary according to source, and hisTaiwanese suppliers wouldnot be affected.Vanguard 01604 859542
Free memory insuranceHypertec is offering free theft insurance on itsRetrieve memory chips which are tagged toidentify the owner. Stolen chips will be replaced within a day. Hypertec 01488 686844
RAM market steadies afterprices Korea out of control
PCW price checkThese charts, based on averageprices from major vendors, show thedownward trend of system prices since last October.Some of the dips are due to fluctuations in memoryprices. Intel also reduces some processor prices as itintroduces faster versions. Over the next few weeks wewill see the effect of MMX on prices of older Pentiums.
Chart based on figures supplied by Dan, Viglen,Mesh, Dell, Evesham and Carrera. Not all supplied allconfigurations for the whole period.
SYSTEM DETAILS: 120MHz, 133MHz prices include 1Gb disk,
16Mb RAM and 14in mon; 166MHz, 200MHz Pentium and Pro
same with 15in mon; MMX machines, 2Gb disk and 15in mon.
32 • Personal Computer World • April 1997
Micro Solutions has comeup with a device to fill thatnasty storage gap, while we allwait for DVD-RAM to happen.
The Backpack PD/CD actslike a hard drive, a backupdevice and a CD-ROM driveand uses rewritable opticalcartridges, which should workin next year’s DVD drives.Prices, with sound card, startfrom £539 (£438.72 ex VAT). www.micro-solutions.com Micro Solutions 001 815 756 3411
Lynley Oram
Class act for screens Keyzone is selling a range ofClasnet systems which allowteachers to scan all students’screens or project one screenon to all of them. The systemsalso allow a teacher to takecontrol of a student’s keyboardor mouse. Prices start at £895.Keyzone 0181 900 1525
Samsung keyboard Samsung has replaced thealuminium keyboard backingon the SensPro 500 with asteel backing. This should stopthe keyboard bending whenyou type, as in the model wereview this month (p203).
Pace modems The contact number for thePace ISDN terminal adapter inlast month’s issue should havebeen 0990 561001. We apologise for any confusion.
Short Stories
Newsprint
p34
Sanyopacks sound bytes
Sanyo’s new Flashback MobileOffice digitally records up to 35minutes of sound into flash RAMwhich it can then pack into 2Mbof disk space. The sound can berandomly accessed, speeded upwith no change of tone, and sent
efficiently over the net. The £399(plus VAT) kit has three modules,each available separately: arecorder and memory (left), anda PC Card that downloads thememory to a laptop or PC (right).Sanyo 0500 368080
£500
£750
£1000
£1250
£1500
£1750
£2000200Mhz Pentium MMX
166Mhz Pentium MMX
200Mhz Pentium Pro
200Mhz Pentium
166Mhz Pentium
133Mhz Pentium
120Mhz Pentium
FebJan 97DecNovOctSep
Aggregates
another spec out of all this,which may or may not be madean ITU standard next year.Hayes, Motorola and Microcom(which has just launched a nice-looking £140 33.6K voicemodem) are all offering upgradedeals on modems bought in themeantime.
There are doubts whetherany will work in practice.James Gardiner of Demon, theonly major UK provider not tohave backed USR, advisesusers to wait and see.
“We are not going tocommit to a technlogy until weare sure it works,” he said.
Bill Pechey, chief technology officer for HayesEurope, also warns users tocheck what a provider meansby x2 support. “It could be justa single 56K line.”
data. Casio’s Cassiopeia,due to ship here in July,does not power downproperly when switched off.
All data is stored in RAMand so is vulnerable to lossof power. Casio technicalsupport person, Scott Nelson, said Microsoft wasaddressing “a problem withpower management.”
A software patch wasdue to be posted on theCasio web site. VNU Newswire
Users face ‘wait andsee’ game on 56K Continued from page 26
Psion buys customerswith real gold Psion Dacom has come upwith a nifty way to push its latestPC data card: the first 25,000off the production line havebeen plated in real gold.
The Gold Card Globalfax/modem card, configured forV.34 modem operation, hasPTT approval in twentycountries and optional supportfor most handsets, includingNokia, Panasonic, Alcatel, AEG,Matra and NorTel.
All GSM networks from 900to 1900 are supported andthere is 2Mb of flash memory toease upgrading. Prices start at£209 (£245.58 inc VAT), Nokiaupgrades cost £159 (£186) andother GSM upgrades are pricedat £139 (£163). Lynley OramPsion Dacom 01908 261 686
IT departments ignoreMonetary Union The political storm over Euro-pean Monetary Union has notalerted UK businesses to theimpact the scheme will have onIT systems — whether or notBritain joins. Fewer than four inten (38 percent) have begunpreparations, according to aMicro Focus survey of delegatesat a recent seminar. Nine out often could not say how long itwould take to EMU-enable theirsystems, but estimates thatwere provided ranged from 15months to five years. Micro Focus 01635 565272
Luxury screen Viewsonic will launch this14in active-matrix monitor
at Cebit nextmonth. Maxi-mum resolu-tion is 1024x768 at 75MHzrefresh.Yes,we want onetoo, but thesedevices don’tcome cheap.Most are sold
to City dealers with moremoney than desk space. Viewsonic 01293 643900
Smoke signals More that 1,000 stylish waysto get cancer can be found atwww.cigaraficonado.com. The eponymous US cigar magazineclaims to have a 400,000 circulation worldwide.
Short Stories
Newsprint
p36
34 • Personal Computer World • April 1997
Newsprint
Apple has for the first time infive years dropped out ofthe top five for US sales onDataquest figures for the finalquarter of 1996.
But it ranked fifth for thewhole year, with 6.7 percentof the US market — downfrom 11.1 percent in 1995.Compaq stayed at numberone with 1.03 million salesover the last three months
and 3.4 million in all 1996. Compaq also led world
sales in 1996, with Apple infourth place at 5.2 percent— down from 7.9 percent .
Much of Apple’s slide was
due to a lack of customerconfidence, which CEO GilAmelio highlighted in his MacWorld keynote. Many corporate Mac sites haveswitched over to the PC andWindows 95 or NT ratherthan new Macs.
But Mac clone sales haverisen and some analystspredict a rise to 500,000 this year. Tim Bajarin
A home-video editing suite shows a newdirection in the convergence of computingand television. The £290 (inc VAT) Studio2000 package from newsroom video specialist Pinnacle Systems comes withGold Disk’s VideoDirector package whichPinnacle bought last year for $4.5 million.
But the bulk of the video processing ishardwired into a modem-size box that plugsinto the PC parallel port — no need to messwith expansion cards. Custom chips (ASICs)
in the box contain a range oftitling and transitions developedoriginally for systems costing upto $100,000.
You plug a video recorderand your camcorder (or a secondVCR) into the box and the PCacts only as a controller, marking
the start and stop positions of theedits and the transition type.
This is not as fast or as flexible assystems that store the video digitally ondisk, but it does mean that you can use thesystem on a low-spec PC — a 486 with4Mb of RAM and minimal disk space. Pinnacle plans a version using the fast 1394
serial port when that is generally available.And the hardware does not need to be in aseparate box, so Pinnacle is talking withmanufacturers about puttiing its ASICs intovideo recorders or camcorders which wouldplug directly into a PC (or PC/TV) via 1394.
UK vice-president, Brian Connor, said:“Most of the cost of ASICs is in researchand development and we have recoveredmost of this selling our professionalsystems. That means we can now offer thechips at a price low enough for the homemarket.”Pinnacle 01895 442003
Two Microsoft alliances havealso staked their claim onthe future of PC video.Matrox has licensed toMicrosoft technology toextend the WindowsActiveMovie 2.0programming interface intothe professional market.
The enhancements couldhelp speed the defection ofhigh-end video productsfrom Apple to NT.
The second alliance iswith Mediamatics, which willbring MPEG 2 playback fromthe emerging Digital VersatileDisk (DVD) technology. This
will in theory allow software-only playback. But Pier Frate(above), Mediamatics’ VP ofmarketing, said that evenMMX Pentiums are not fastenough for a full-qualitydisplay, for which an extrachip costing about $35would be necessary.
Mediamatics’ DVDExpress audio and videoplayers are already availableto manufacturers fromSurrey-based Britcomp. ButFrate warned that copyrightrows were likely to delayDVD for some months. Matrox has cut the priceof its Mystique acceleratorby 25 percent to £109 (exVAT) with 2Mb of RAM or£139 with 4Mb. Videocapabilities can beenhanced with the RainbowRunner plug-ins. Matrox 01793 614007
Mediamatics takes a hard lineon DVD software playback
Falling Apple sales highlight gravity
Time for a
change: a
Pinnacle
transition
in action
US % market share last quarter1 Compaq 13.7 2 Packard Bell, NEC 10.6 3 IBM 10.2 4 Dell 7.15 Gateway 6.8
Key Apple executive HeidiRoizen resigned last monthas Steve Wozniak joined co-founder Steve Jobs back atthe troubled company.
Roizen, aged 38, was incharge of maintainingrelations with software
developers who are vital tothe company’s future. Sheinsisted that her departurehad nothing to do withevents at the company. “Iwant to spend more timewith my chjildren,” she said.
Three other executivesalso quit,reportedlyvictims of atop-levelreshuffle.
CEO GilAmelio evid-ently hopes thetwo Steves willrevive Apple’searly flair, butthe exodus will
do little to cure a crisis ofconfidence after poor salesfigures (see below).
Apple cut the prices on itsflagship PowerMac range byup to 25 percent, as newmodels were announced.And Motorola cut its MacOS-model prices by up to 33percent and announcedthree new models, with theentry-level StarMax DT3180starting at £869.
IMC, UK distributor forMac cloner Umax, counteredby bundling the Freehand Graphics Studio 2.0 suitewith all its models.Apple 0181 569 1199; Motorola
01628 39121; IMC 01344 872000
Mac execs leave and pricesdrop as founder Steves return
Now for the good
news... Apple’s latest
PowerBook 3400 uses
a fastest-yet 240MHz
603e PowerPC chip,
built-in ethernet and
modem link, hot-
swap expansion
modules and a
four-speaker
sound system
You’d think a company which
made $5.2 billion last year has
little to worry about. But Intel
is led by Andy Grove, whose
motto is “only the paranoid
survive”, and he paraded his
fears across Europe last month.First he feared that Europe is
falling behind in internet usage, aconcern not unconnected with awish to sell more chips here.
Then he was worried about
the ease and cost of administer-ing networked machines, andoutlined a series of Intel answers.
This clearly had everything todo with the much hyped advan-tages of the network computer,which incidentally does notdepend on Intel chips.
There was a curious subtext,spelled out in a Fortune articledistributed to an invited audienceof press and IT managers in
London: we all needIntel to win.
The argument hasforce. Intel spendsbillions developingnew chips and set-ting up chip fabs. Each gener-ation finances the next, so ifsales falter, so does R&D.
Moore’s Law, which hascomputing power doublingevery 18 months, could break
down if everyone decided not tobuy, say, MMX chips. That is,we might never get to play withthe 400MHz Pentium Pro Intelshowed off in San Francisco lastmonth. Clive Akass
Intel parades its NC paranoia
Siemens backsWintel as Lotuslauds smart NC Two giant companies straddled the networkcomputer battleline lastmonth. Siemens Nixdorfplumped squarely for theWintel camp by announcinga strategy called user-centred computing based onMicrosoft software, with itsnew emphasis on easy, low-cost administration.
It also announced aNetPC based on the cut-down PC that is Wintel’sanswer to the pure NC.
Meanwhile in Nice, IBM-owned Lotus was evange-lising the Notes-poweredintranet (see p29), andshowing an NC prototypegood enough to impressPCW’s Dylan Armbrust.
Lotus reckons we will allcarry around smartcards thatallow any NC from Tooting toTimbuktu to download ourfamiliar desktop. Goodbyenotebook. Goodbye PC.
Far fetched? Well, I’vebeen playing with a DirectPCsatellite link that coulddownload my system in thetime it takes me to boot fromdisk.
The smart NC may notmean the death of the PC,but it shows why Microsoftand Intel have the jitters.Clive AkassLotus 01784 455445;
Siemens Nixdorf 01344 862222;
DirectPC 01494 455466
New Acorn mini OS
N e w s p r i n t
CYAN•MAGENTA•YELLOW•BLACK PERSONAL COMPUTER WORLD
36 • Personal Computer World • April 1997
CYAN•MAGENTA•YELLOW•BLACK PERSONAL COMPUTER WORLD
CAMBRIDGE start-up nCipher’s prototypeencryption product caused quite a stir atthe recent RSA Data Security conferencein San Francisco. Fastness, brainchild ofbrothers Dr Nicko and Alex van Someren,promises 300 secure transactions persecond, putting paid to the joke aboutRSA standing for “really slow algorithm”(the acronym actually stems from Rivest,Shamir and Adleman, who devised thenotoriously slow RSA public key encryptiona l g o r i t h m ) .
Marketing director Carol Atack said thefirm has had very promising talks withbanking and mail-order companies.“Things are looking very exciting andshortly we will be issuing test products ofthe Fastness hardware accelerator tofinancial institutions and companies whosebusinesses involve transactions across thei n t e r n e t . ”
Fastness is a low-priced add-on boardfor servers which accelerates RSAcomputations needed for SFL and SETtransactions on the internet. Encryptionsinvolve unhackable 1024-bit numbers anda typical unaccelerated server manages
just 10 a second — a claimed 30 timesslower than Fastness.
“By having our product plugged in,companies are able to offer secureservices and at the same time know theyare not slowing down the server,” saidAtack. nCipher is exhibiting Fastness atInfosecurity at London’s Olympia at theend of next month and is taking onprogrammers and technical marketing staff(see w w w . n c i p h e r . c o m) .
Also expanding is Sibelius Softwarewhich last month collected a BritishComputer Society IT Award for its musicprogram, Sibelius 7. Here another pair of
brothers, Jonathan and Ben Finn, are par-tners in a growing empire that includesoffices in Los Angeles and dealershipsworldwide. They took one of the topawards for what is essentially a wordprocessor for composers. It runs only onAcorns (see d e v e l o p s i b e l i w w w) .
PSINet, the second internet serviceprovider to set up headquarters inCambridge, home turf of UUNET Pipex,claims to speed up links for the smalloffice/home user with the launch ofPSILink at the end of February. Theinterface is suitable for those working fromhome or remote sales people who wanteasy-to-use software on unclogged lines.
PSINet’s lines are monitored closely toavoid congestion and they take advantageof its frame relay network here and in theUS. Managing director Valerie Holt saysthis is particularly good for those contacting the US a lot. “This is not forplaying games. It’s a robust industrial-quality product,” Holt said. Its attractionsfor the SoHo user include its price of£14.95 per month ( w w . u k . p s i . c o m ).
Short Stories
Fen Wa t c hCaroline Swift continues her
reports from Silicon Fen
Acorn and has announced a new operating system tar-geted at the next generationof smart appliances.
The Gallileo OS willcompete with the likes ofPsion, Microsoft and Dibafor a potentially huge marketas smart appliances, rangingfrom email phones to webTV, challenge PCs as themost common computingdevices.
Microsoft’s Windows CEis an attempt to establishthe Win95 interface in thisarea. Psion is working on a32-bit version of its EPOSoperating system
Galilleo will run initially onRISC processors from
Acorn sibling ARM. Butspokesman Kevin Colemansaid it will port easily to otherRISC processors. “We arenot going to be preciousabout this. We will useanybody’s chip,” he said.
Galileo includes a qualityassurance function which
guarantees systemresources to critical tasks. Toshiba has developeda Java operating systemcalled JVOS for Intel-basedPCs. It will be available inthe autumn.Acorn 01223 725000;
Toshiba 01932 828828
Bannerbridge says its £1,095Signature is a fast and cheapway to print designs on CDs. Bannerbridge 01628 419101
Cut-price notebooks Morgan’s is selling 120MHzPentium Fujitsu Lifebooknotebooks with an 810Mb disk,8Mb RAM and a six-speed CDfor £1,100 (ex VAT). Morgan 0171 255 2115
Get a-life The Cybertation artificial lifeengine featured on Notting Hill’sEvolution of Life CD canbedownloaded fromwww.nottinghill.com/cyber
nCipher promises fast secure sales for web
Cold and HuskyHusky’s new FS/3 PC is
powered by a 25MHz386 chip but that is
plenty fast enough forthe kind of data entry
and collection tasks forwhich it is designed. And
it will perform them inconditions in which your
PC would turn on itsback and die.
Husky 01203 604040
The battle of the superfloppies hasshifted to notebooks, where special thin
versions of 100Mb Zip and 120Mb LS120drives are vying to replace the floppy.
The LS-120, sold by OR Technology asthe a:drive, reads and writes standardfloppies as well as its own 120Mb disks. Theprice to manufacturers is now below £100,but the added system cost is less than thisbecause a floppy drive is not needed.
It has received huge backing fromMitsubishi and 3M spin-off, Imation, both ofwhom are manufacturing the disks.However, the write speed to standardfloppies is relatively slow.
Iomega’s Zip drive is faster but cannotread standard floppies. However, somevendors believe it has the edge because thedesktop version is already established.
Siemens Nixdorf, which has launched anew entry-level model for its Scenic Mobilerange (right), is testing both devices. Mobile
productmanager, StefanReister, said no decisionhad been taken but he believed the Zipwould prove more popular. “The Zip hassold millions. It is a de facto standard.”
Both drives are bootable provided thehost machine has a compliant BIOS.OR 01491 413663 (Dealer: Ideal
0181 286 5000; Iomega 0800 973914
38 • Personal Computer World • April 1997
Solomon gets wiser Dr Solomon’s Software hasreleased version2.5 of Audit,which keepstrack of hardware andsoftware on anetwork. Itincludes 32-bit scannersfor trackingNT andWindows 95installations. A five-PC starterpack costs £475.www.natinst.com/uk/
UniDirect says its IPconnectpackage is the first to offerintegrated internet access andemail for Novell users. It gives awhole network internet accessvia a single modem, avoids theneed for a dedicated internetserver, and acts as an SMTP orPOP3 mail server and firewall.Unidirect 01788 552005
AA guide The new MathLab 5.0 for Finance promises advancedcomputing and analysis tools forfinance workstations.AA 01634 297123
£1000 server Elonex claims its £995 Kayakis the first preconfigured serverto sell for under £1,000 (ex VAT).It uses a 166MHz Pentium-classprocessor, with 512Kb pipelinecache, 24Mb of RAM, an eight-speed CD, a 2.5Gb drive, a 14inmonitor and a network adaptor.Elonex 0181 452 4444
Free NT defragger Executive Software hasposted at www.execsoft.co.uk afree, non-expiring version ofwhat it says is the only diskdefragger for NT.Executive Software 01342 327477
Web faxer Message Management isshowing at www.faxfromwed.co.uk its new system that letspeople with slow modems havepages sent to a fax number.Message Management 0181 960 2700
Short Stories
Newsprint
p40
Thin drives move battle of thesuperfloppies onto notebooks
Clock this… This image of a clock in Basle isone of 50 on a £8.50 CD calledBeautiful Desktop. All come in ninedifferent screen resolutions foruse as wallpaper, but someimages are more practicable forthis purpose than others. Pickingout your program icons from ahigh-definition picture of theColosseum in Rome is likely togive you a headache, howevermagnificent the view.Price Media 01635 862064
Siemens Nixdorf’s new
entry-level multimedia
Scenic Mobile 300 has a
modular design to ease
upgrades — even of the
processor. Prices start
at £1,199 ex VAT
Two major manufacturers have offloadedtheir computer divisions in the past month.Troubled Olivetti sold its PC division to anew company called Piedmont, set up bythe Centenary group led by London lawyerEdward Gottesman. The deal, worth about£100 million, will leave Olivetti with tenpercent of the new company. Some
analysts fear Piedmont is interested only inasset-stripping but Gottesman claimed theunit can be profitable.
Meanwhile, Texas Instruments sold itsmobile division, which makes the TravelMateand Extensa series of notebooks, toTaiwan-based Acer, the fourth biggest PCmanufacturer in the world.
Texas, Olivetti sell off computer divisions
Visual Basic 5.0, thebiggest upgrade yet to
Microsoft’s best-sellingprogramming environment,goes on sale this month.The price was due to beannounced at launch day.
VB 5.0 will also be soldas part of Visual Studio 97,a new suite of integratedprogramming and internettools — a kind of MicrosoftOffice for developers. It alsoincludes the latest C++,J++, and FoxPro Visualenvironments, a library of
documentation, and VisualInterDev, a new system forbuilding database-drivenweb applications.
Bill Gates will launch thesuite, and announce theprice, at a training event fordevelopers on 19th March.
Mike Pryke-Smith, nettools product manager atMicrosoft UK, said the newsuite would help companiesbuild “communications linksto business partners andcustomers” based on theirexisting IT infrastructure.
New features includenative-code compilation,ActiveX controls andimproved components:performance is up to twentytimes faster than VB 4.0.Users who bought VB 4.0after 27th January canupgrade free of charge. Microsoft is holding £99“DevDay” training events inDublin, Edinburgh, Londonand Birmingham on 20th,24th, 25th and 26th Marchrespectively.Bookings on 0990 228811
40 • Personal Computer World • April 1997
Short Stories
Newsprint
Showing off DIP claims its Showman Pronotebook is the only oneavailable with a built-in overheadprojector tablet. There’s a choiceof 10.4in or 12.in TFT colourscreens with 800 x 600resolution, and an eight-speedCD drive is included asstandard. Prices start at £2,300.DIP 01442 874006
Hard facts Jenson Tools is selling a CDversion of the MicrohouseEncyclopaedia of Hard Drives,which claims to have details ofvirtually every drive andcontroller made for the PC. Itcosts £195 (plus VAT)Jensen Tools 01604 787060
Name offer CIX is offering personalisedemail addresses for £30 a year,plus net access charges. Theytake the form [email protected] 0845 355 5050
Top 10 Windows software Last month
1 Win95 U/G with Internet Microsoft 42 MS Encarta 97 (CD) Microsoft 13 MS Off/Pro 97 B/Shef + Mouse Microsoft 564 MS Flight Sim 6.0 (95) CD Microsoft 25 Master Clips 101,000 CD IMSI 56 MS Word Bundle Microsoft 37 PC-Cillin 95 R. Manhattan 128 First Aid Deluxe (95&3.1) R. Manhattan 89 Cleansweep 97 v3 Quarterdeck -10 Norton A/Virus U/G Ins Symantec -
Top 10 DOS software1 System Commander POW 12 Command & Conquer (Red Alert) Virgin 33 MSDOS v6.22 Upgrade Microsoft 64 Total Insanity CD Europress 45 DOS 2 Win95 UG with Inter Microsoft 106 Turbo C++ v3.0 Borland 97 MSDOS 6.22 MLP 1 Microsoft 618 MacroAssem 6.11 for Win Microsoft 349 Quake Full Release v1 CD GEM 710 Norton PC Anywhere v5 DOS Symantec 23
Top 10 CD-ROMs1 Star Wars Trilogy One Stop n/a*2 Beavis and Butthead Screensaver Tring Int. n/a3 Babylon 5: Limited Edition Screen Ent. n/a4 Star Trek Voyager Screen Ent. n/a5 Empire Strikes Back Screen Ent. n/a6 Encarta 97 Microsoft n/a7 Inside Independence Day Electronic Arts n/a8 Cinemania 97 Microsoft n/a9 Music File File Productions n/a10 Kais’s Power Goo Principle n/a
Top 10 peripherals1 PNP 16-bit PNP ASOUND Enta 42 Inns 33600 Ext voice/fx/mo USR 103 Primax 4.800 Direct Primax 54 33.6 Int Fax/Modem no Voice Tashika -5 33.6 Int Svoice 2.2 Tashika -6 Creative Phoneblaster Creative 287 miro Connect 34 miro 88 33.6 Ext with Voice Tashika -9 Evergreen 486/586 Proc UG Mid 1510 8x MultiMedia Kit Tashika -
New Visual suite goesway past the Basics
Developers can now use their Visual Basic skills to buildspecialist applications for Psion’s Workabout range of
industrial handhelds.Psion is now selling Workabouts with its VB-compatible
Oval development kit, which allows applications to beprogrammed on a PC to run on a handheld. Oval programsalso run on Psion 3c organisers. VB code can be ported toOval with the aid of conversion wizards.
Psion, facing its greatest ever competition from the newWindows CE handhelds, has formed a new industrial divisionto sell machines for specialist applications. Typicalapplications include data collection tasks.
Workabout prices start at £300. There is a variety of add-ons including a new Wanda barcode reader.Psion 0171 262 5580
VB for Psion Workabouts
Software and peripherals figures supplied by Software Warehouse. CD figures courtesy of HMV Games/Level One. *Information not available at press time.
News Analysis
Personal Computer World • April 1997 • 41
he French take their culture almost asseriously as their food, so at Milia, lastmonth’s international festival of multimedia at
Cannes, the Minister of Culture, Philippe Douste-Blazy,addressed press and participants because, in his ownwords, “it would be unthinkable not to”. This is not justpolitico-speak. Although PC ownership in France iscomparatively low, it increased by 150 percent last yearand over 3.6 million CD-ROMs were sold. Of these, 15percent were classed as “cultural” — three times thepercentage for Germany. The government isdetermined to make multimedia a success: “It isimperative that both the wealth of our heritage and thetalent of our creators should exploit these newelectronic tools,” said Douste-Blazy.
Since 1983 it has been compulsory for other mediapublishers, in addition to book publishers, to depositcopies of published works with the BibliothèqueNationale (National Library). So there is now acomprehensive national archive of multimedia. Inaddition, there is the newly founded Médiathèque del’Ircam which provides a unique collection of documentsand media relating to 20th century music.
There is a drive to digitise the contents of galleries,libraries and museums throughout France, forgingpartnerships between state and independent publisherswhich has conceived titles such as Montparnasse’sstunning virtual reality tour of the Quai d’Orsay gallery.The Bibliothèque Nationale is itself getting digitised, withthe long-term aim of making it truly national, with on-lineaccess from local libraries. By 1998, 100,000 texts,
300,000 images and 40,000 hours of sound recordingwill be available electronically. The Ministry of Culture hasits own web site, scoring 5,000,000 hits per month.
The state is putting its money where its mouth is on anumber of levels. First, training for budding creators (atthe Ircam studio and throughout universities and artschools) will be counterpointed by training for end-users,with local libraries offering practical instruction for newreaders of electronic publishing. Second, financial aid:through the Centre Nationale de Cinématographie, 60projects have already benefited.
Aid is available in the form of loans for multimediaprojects, to counteract the banks’ reluctance tounderwrite the new technology. Financial support is alsobeing offered to exporters, with aid to help in the“localisation” and translation of works into otherlanguages, and grants to attend international trade fairs.On a practical level there are state-funded organisationsfor authors to simplify the legal issues of publishing andprotect their electronic rights, and the formerlycumbersome restrictions on where CD-ROMs couldlegally be sold has been lifted.
So, analysts who predict gloom for “serious”multimedia in the UK market, take note: it is not for lackof talent or cultural diversity that the UK is lagging.Multimedia is a seed technology, and, as with all seeds,it needs nurturing and watering. Above all, we need toaccord it the respect and support it deserves. I will leavethe last word to M. Douste-Blazy: “Like our cinema, ourmultimedia must be taken seriously. If we do not provideaid, then it will cease to exist.”
T
In France, where PC ownership and CD-ROM sales are increasing apace, the state is backing multimedia to ensure its success, reports Tim Nott.
Vive la multimedia
British culture was not entirely neglected at Milia. Even though it took a US company,Seventh Level, to bring it to market, Monty Python and the Quest for the Holy Grailwas joint winner in the games category. It tied with The Pink Panther’s Passport toPeril (pictured, right), already awarded a five-star verdict in PCW (March). Boots theChemist, and Uploaded (the on-line edition of Loaded magazine) were shortlisted forbest web site but lost out to the Discovery Channel. In the edutainment category, thewinner, Operation Teddy Bear, sounds encouragingly English but is, in fact, a Frenchtitle. France also scooped the Reference section. But in the Recreation — How-Tosection, Anglo-French honour prevailed with the English-language CD-ROMmagazine, Interactive Wave, from Editions Numeriques. The Art and Culture prizewent to the beautiful National Museum of American Art. And the top prize? The MiliaGold? Step forward Peter Gabriel, whose Eve, a joint UK-US production, combinescontemporary art, music and technology in an “exploration of the eternal riddle of therelationship between man, woman and nature”.
Vive les Brits
p42
Personal Computer World • April 1997 • 43
News Analysis
42 • Personal Computer World • April 1997
News Analysis
veryone likes the idea of online banking: thebanks because it costs so little, and thecustomers because they can do it from the
comfort of their home or office. A recent survey by BoozAllen and Hamilton estimates that 80 percent ofEuropean banks will provide a full banking service on theinternet within three years. Another, by ICL/Mori, nowexpects that 17 percent of people will use PC bankingwithin five years (up from 13 percent the previous year).
The Royal Bank of Scotland’s announcement that itwill offer internet banking to all its customers by springhas stolen a march on its rivals. While other banks try outproprietary systems, Royal Bank will offer a range oftransactions across the net. Customers will be able toreview their account details, direct debits and standingorders, pay bills to any of 750 major companies andexport account data to a spreadsheet or personalfinance package. The service will be free for the first sixmonths, with a fairly nominal monthly fee thereafter.
One of the barriers to net banking has been security.But Royal Bank is so confident that it has solved theproblem, it is offering its internet customers a refund ofunauthorised transactions provided they have kept theirsecurity and PC registration codes secret. But the bank’searly move to net banking has tied it to an InternetExplorer-only solution. It says that only Microsoft couldsupply the 168-bit encryption it needed in the timeavailable. Royal Bank’s initiative has left rivals floundering.
Barclays PC banking service, announced lastOctober, is completely proprietary. Users have acustomised version of Microsoft Money to dial upBarclays own servers. Bizarrely, Barclays claims thisapproach will make the service more widely available tothose who have a PC and a modem but no internetaccess. What it is perhaps forgetting is that ascorporates hook up to the net with fast leased lines, it willbe simple for office workers to log on in their lunch hourand sort out their banking requirements.
NatWest’s approach falls somewhere between thetwo. Its pilot scheme, now with 1,500 personal and 500small-business customers, opted for internet-compatiblesoftware. But the software, Netscape’s browser, is acustomised version designed to dial in to NatWestservers. TSB’s scheme is different again. It offers aservice that’s available only to CompuServe customers.
So far, the online banking services on offer are limitedto viewing and planning finances. The next stage will
involve smartcards. Compaq is predicting that within 18months every home PC sold will be fitted with one.Acorn, which plans to launch its TV set-top box, theNetStation, in May, will ship it with a smartcard. NatWesthas already trialled its Mondex system in Swindon whilerival, Visa Cash, is on trial in several countries. In Atlanta,in the USA, 1.7 million Visa Cash cards have alreadybeen issued. Two types of card will be available:disposable (like a phonecard) and reloadable. This is howit works: you connect an inexpensive smartcard readerto a PC and then charge the card by downloadingelectronic cash. It acts like an electronic purse and canbe used both in real shops and virtual shops on the net.
Visa’s research shows that less than 0.2 percent oftransactions under $10 are made using a conventionalcredit card. Smartcards will enable cheaper, faster,transactions and will make it practical to charge a fewpence for accessing a web site.
In the long term, everyone expects the banks to moveto internet-only solutions; the simple reason is that it’scheaper than developing and maintaining proprietaryclient software. After that it’s “Bye, bye, ATMs” accordingto James Lockheed, the MD of NXYS which designedthe interface for the Royal Bank service. What bankswant is a single interface for all banking services. You’lluse that interface whether you’re visiting a web-enabledkiosk at a high street bank, or surfing your bank accountfrom your desk or from a web-enabled TV at home. You’lleven use it if you’re walking down the street and you’renot carrying cash, just a couple of smartcards.
Banking on it
En 1984, when the PC was starting to gathersteam, a major Japanese television makerasked me to view a product it had in its labs.
As a PC analyst I could not imagine what it was, but Iwent out of curiosity. My host showed me what musthave been the first-ever PC/TV combination. Here, infront of me, was a 21in TV that had in its base a modified
286 motherboard.The company was
very excited about thiscontraption and askedme what I thought theyshould do with it. At thetime, I was working on aproject for a cable TVcompany to define therole of cable and itspotential impact in a
business environment. I didnot have a clue what
the TV peopleshould do withtheir PC/TVcombo, but Isuggestedthat the PCand the TV
might converge in the future and that their chicken hadbeen hatched too soon. As for the cable guys, our finalreport stated that unless cable could provide two-wayaccess, the business community would have no use fortheir services. I was reminded of those early days as Iwalked around the Consumer Electronics Show (CES)and came across various PC/TV schemes, such asthose from Web TV and Akai, as well as various cablemodems and internet access schemes.
All the major TV and cable firms are now aggressivelychasing business and consumer markets with productsaimed at bringing consumers into the digital age.Interestingly, this move has become controversial as wellas highly parochial. The TV and cable industries wouldlove to control the way home users access digital “stuff”.The problem is that integrating a PC forces them to dealwith standards and protocols.
So it should come as no surprise that Intel andMicrosoft have entered the fray. The day before CESopened, Microsoft officially announced its “reference”
model for a PC/TV. Of course, it is based on the Intelprocessor and Windows 95. But, like Netscape and Sun,who would like the internet to be based on openplatforms, the cable and consumer electronics industriesdo not want Microsoft and Intel dictating their future, andthis is one area in which the two giants are not assured ofa dominant role.
If the internet becomes the backbone for deliveringtwo-way interactive entertainment, and Netscape andSun Microsystems (along with the cable and consumerelectronics companies) resist this advance fromMicrosoft and Intel, the hearts and minds of mass-marketconsumers will be up for grabs.
In fact, this will be at the heart of a major debate overthe next 12 months as each faction tries to move in onthe other’s territory. Cable and electronics firms arereviewing the Microsoft reference design carefully, butnot because they really want to adopt it. Content deliverywill be a major part of their role but they will needprogrammers to make it more exciting and interactive.There is a multitude of x86 programmers who could helpthem achieve this, but Java is also a strong contender. Ifthe internet is the only broadcasting backbone, Javacould provide a powerful cross-platform programminglanguage that makes a PC-based system an option, notthe primary digital access device.
I am convinced that this is the year the issue will takeprime debating space. The battle for control of howconsumers gain access to digital content will be foughtand clear winners will be declared by Christmas. If youwere thinking of getting a DVD-ROM or DVD player soon,think again: the lack of secure copyright protection isstalling the rollout of these next-generation devices. DVD,digital VHS and digital video recorders are all affected.Without a secure transport scheme embedded in all ofthem, movie and music companies have been reticent toput any of their content into digital form and make themavailable for these digital platforms. All parties haveagreed on a method of software encryption but themovie and music industries want protection extended tothe data paths inside the PC or other DVD devices.
One suggestion is to incorporate encryption into theIEEE-1394 specification for fast serial links (or what Applecalls Firewire). Most PCs will be 1394-enabled by nextyear, anyway. But these secure transport specificationswill take time to finalise, making it unlikely that DVD willmake any impact in 1997.
The big fight
I
It’s TV and cable industries versus Microsoft and Intel. The battle for control ofconsumer access to digital content will be over by Christmas, says Tim Bajarin.
The ubiquitous
queue at the bank
could soon
become a thing
of the past with
the onset of full
on-line banking
services and the
“electronic
purse”
Turn it on and it
will run: The
Apricot MS530
Diamondtron 17
PC/TV system
has everything a
family could want
and comes
internet-ready
[reviewed in
PCW, May ’96]
Within three years, most European banks could be providing a full internetbanking service. Some are almost ready to go. Ben Tisdall gives an account.
C o l u m n s
Personal Computer World • April 1997 • 45
he shops in uptown Penzance remind me ofthose I visited in Moscow’s GUM departmentstore during the butt-end of the Communist
era. Essential items are there, but your chances of findinganything up-market or unusual are as close to nil as it’spossible to get without playing for Scunthorpe United. Soon those odd occasions when something vaguely exoticdoes turn up, everybody’s natural instinct is to snap it upon sight. Not because they need it or want it, but just tostop anyone else getting it first. So when I discoveredthat the Penzance branch of Dixons had managed to gethold of a sheet-fed colour scanner, out popped my Visacard. Called a Primax PagePartner, it’s one of those hi-tech miracles that, according to the blurb on the back ofthe box, transcends the functionality of a mere scannerand becomes instead a “solution”, or to be more specific,a “complete input device and peripheral sharing solution”— i.e. it plugs into the PC’s parallel port, while the printerplugs into the back of the scanner. Once I’d stuck in allthe bits and installed the software, I availed myself of myergonomically designed complete water-heating andthroughput-enabling solution to make a cup of coffee.Then it was play time, using some pages torn from Arena.
I’d forgotten how massive an A4 colour picture canbecome when scanned at 300dpi. Even someinconsequential little git like Noel Gallagher amounted to24Mb. When that girl from the Wonderbra advert joinedhim, the PC began begging for mercy. Finally, it gave upthe struggle and declared that it had performed an “illegaloperation”. Then it rolled over and died. Most irritating.So I applied mouth-to-mouth and re-started, this timewith my snapshot collection, at a more modest 150dpi.
Using Corel PhotoPaint, which came with the scanner, Ifed stuff in and got creative. I turned people’s coats fromgreen to red, “colorised” black-and-white photographs,sharpened-up out-of-focus shots, rotated images through180 degrees, stuck one person’s head on another’sshoulders and generally wasted the afternoon in a verypleasant manner. Every so often I’d get another memoryallocation error or pacemaker failure, but what the hell? Withtoday’s software and hardware, it’s par for the course.
Don’t imagine the above is in any way innovative. No,indeed. Just as every generation believes that itdiscovered sex, so every new incarnation of the Pentiumchip thinks it invented graphics handling. In fact, peoplewere doing this sort of thing when many of the currentPCW editorial staff were just knee-high to a workstation.At least ten years ago, there were systems around thatcould scan and process such high-quality colour imagesas I’ve described. Furthermore, they were more powerfulthan today’s PC-based “solutions”. And, moreimportantly, they were more reliable.
The big names back in the mid-eighties werecompanies like Quantel, Crosfield, Itek and Scitex. Theirsystems could “gang-scan” dozens of photographs or
transparencies in one go and feed the data, inmulti-gigabyte lumps, to an adjoiningworkstation over a fibre-optic link. There, youcould manipulate the picture in any way youwanted. If you wanted to flip it through 180degrees, it flipped almost instantaneously. Ifyou wanted to give Margaret Thatcher a punkhairstyle you just clicked on a box and she gotan instant mohican. There was none of thishour-glass and “Please wait…” nonsense. Andthis was happening in the days when a 286was regarded as a fast computer.
The reason for the hyperactivity was simple: thesewere all dedicated systems. The functionality was hard-coded into the chips, each of which performed just oneoperation. Without the drawback of a buggy operatingsystem to hold them back, they were supersonic. But youcouldn’t just wander down the high street and pick up,say, a discounted Crosfield 9500 workstation for cash. Ascanner and workstation setup took a large chunk out of£1m, so they didn’t make much impact on the home orSoHo markets. Only the likes of Robert Maxwell andRupert Murdoch could afford the things. But this in itselfwas an advantage. Today, if my graphics software suffersan embolism, mid-operation, I’ve got just two options;Ignore or Close. But Maxwell and Murdoch could click ona third — Sue. If the graphics system responsible for, say,t h e Sunday Mirror magazine decided to barf before press
day, that would have been it. No magazine, noadvertisement revenue, nothing. So the companiessupplying the kit made sure their systems were ultra-reliable before they left the premises. They didn’t use thecustomers as unofficial beta testers. If problems didoccur, they didn’t keep Captain Bob on hold and suggesthe re-install the software or download an upgrade patch(not if they wanted their company to stay solvent,anyway); within the hour, a technician would visit.
So bear that in mind. With today’s technology, we’renot necessarily making progress. Just catching up. M H e w i t t 1 0 2 @ a o l . c o m
S o u n d i n gO ff
T
Colour scanners today are not so innovative, pointsout Michael Hewitt, they’re just more accessible.They could never compete with a good gang-scan.
Michael Hewitt
CYAN•MAGENTA•YELLOW•BLACK PERSONAL COMPUTER WORLD
C o l u m n s
Personal Computer World • April 1997 • 47
s those who read all the way to the back ofP C W may have noticed, I fancy myself as a bitof a whizz with all this technical stuff. I can
read words like “parameters” and “configuration” withoutbreaking into a cold sweat and, unlike some columnists, Iknow the value of pi. Consequently, I’vealways felt smugly confident of beingable to cope with any little problems myPC, and the electronic world at large,care to throw at me. This week, though,this hubris was abruptly punished byNemesis.
I’ve been using electronic mail for sixyears now, through the CIXconferencing system. I can composeemail messages offline using Ameol,and these go straight to a fellow CIXen’smailbox or are forwarded to otherinternet addresses. That’s letters, if youmaintain the mail paradigm, but parcelsare different. If I want to send something other than aplain text message (usually a ZIP file containingdocuments and graphics for a feature) then it goes bybinary mail. In this case, the files go straight to therecipient’s private directory at CIX, and a note appears intheir mailbox stating that the parcel awaits downloading.
Parcels outside CIX are delivered in a different way.Ameol converts the files to 7-bit uuencoded format andbreaks it into 64-bit chunks. These can be transmittedacross the internet like ordinary messages and therecipient can re-assemble the thing and decode it. Intheory. Even when it does work, it’s a pain in the neck.But since practically every UK computer magazine has aCIX account, the problem doesn’t arise.
This week, however, I had to deliver copy and pictureselsewhere. Back came the message that the uuencodewouldn’t decode. Could I please resend, not usinguuencoding? Since the latter was the only option usingAmeol/CIX, I sent it all as MIME attachments via my localISP, France Telecom’s Wannadoo. Okay, piece of cake;write a covering message, attach the file and press send.Off it all went… to my Outbasket, where it stayed like agreat, constipated lump.
The next few hours were unpleasant in the extreme,and having exhausted the B- C- D- and F-words I gotdangerously near the end of the alphabet. First, Exchangefed Wannadoo the logon password instead of the mailboxpassword. Having sorted that, there followed a merrydance with me clicking everything in sight and nothingoccurring except my phone bill. I then tried things from theWannadoo end, which rather unhelpfully launched Ameolagain. I had an extended conversation with the little Officepaperclip, who introduced me to a selection of fascinatingbut totally irrelevant topics, then gave up. Finally, by acombination of techniques I would rather not divulge, I got
Wannadoo and Exchange connected. Andzoom! My Exchange Inbox instantly filled withmy Wanadoo mail. All of which I’d alreadyread, but let’s not be churlish. Thud! Myoutgoing message stayed exactly where it was
and nothing would shift it.By now, the little paperclipwas in tears, so I logged offand closed down Exchange:“There is unsent mail, doyou really want to quit?”Pausing only to scream, I dragged anddropped the files onto a floppy disk. Idragged the disk out of the machine,out of the house and down to the PostOffice where I embedded it in a suitable“container” and attached a Sticky Tariff-Aware Mailing Protocol, or “STAMP” aspostal techies would say. All thatremained was to stop dragging and
drop it in the box. Sometimes, the old ways are best.
Where it’s @ Thank you, all who came up with names for the @ thing,as used in email addresses. We were looking fororiginality and wit but also the serious requirement that itshould pass the “telephone test”, i.e. not sound likeanything that could be confused with part of a host ordomain name when spoken over the phone.
This is where many fell down: suggestions such as a - c i r c l e and a - r o u n d, although eminently sensible, use
words too ordinary to pass the test, and RayTempleton’s ingenious a t p e r s a t just doubles theconfusion. Honourable mentions must go to d o o f e rfrom Thomas Hodgson, Romanou Macauley’s a - n u t,Stuart Thompson’s t a d p o l e and Dan Ferris’ T h a tdamned “a” sign. The two runners-up, who each get a£15 book or record token, are Sophie Dixon for herunambiguous and delightfully silly belly button a n dDavid White for a m p e r s n o t, because it’s NOT anampersand. The outright winners, of a £25 token, areCarole and Stephen Cotterell for the unmistakable andapposite e - s n a i l. t i m n @ c i x . c o . u k
H o m e f ro n t
A
Tim Nott CIX over the traces, having encountered abundle of trouble with email. And next, ladies andgentlemen, the winner of the @ thing competition.
Tim Nott
CYAN•MAGENTA•YELLOW•BLACK PERSONAL COMPUTER WORLD
“Off it allwent … to my
Outbasket,where it
stayed like agreat,
constipated,lump”
C o l u m n s
Personal Computer World • April 1997 • 49
onsumers expect their VCR or TV to last tenyears, yet are resigned to a PC’s working lifeof only about 18 months. After that it is
obsolete, as it doesn’t have the wherewithal to run thelatest software. I spent the pre-Christmas period advisinganyone who would listen not to buy a Pentium PC untilthe MMX chip was launched. We knew it was coming butIntel would only hint at the first quarter of the year. Sowhen Intel officially unveiled MMX just one week into thenew year and manufacturers had MMX hardware andsoftware available for sale the same day, the companyredefined the boundaries of commercial cheek andcontempt for consumers. Those who had bought aPentium PC for Christmas saw its built-in obsolescencepared down to just 18 days. A PC bought the day b e f o r ethe MMX went on sale, was obsolete within 18 hours.
At the launch, Intel boasted that the company hadbeen working with 100 software developers for 18months: so, there will soon be a flood of software that willonly run on an MMX. But somehow, Intel had not had thetime to finalise plans for an overdrive chip that wouldhave breathed MMX life into an existing Pentium. Therewas no date, no price and no information about whichmotherboards could be upgraded. Admitting the highcost of a new MMX chip to replace a near-new Pentiumchip that has no re-sale or trade-in value, would haveembarrassed even the armadillo-skinned Intel.
These days, I am telling anyone who will listen thatthey should hold fire on modem purchase and certainlyshelve plans to install an ISDN line until the dust settleson 56K analogue modems. ISDN lines provide a basic64Kbit/sec pipe into the internet but BT charges £400 toinstall the line and over £100 rental per quarter (or variousconfusing variations on the same outrageous theme). AnISDN Terminal Adapter, which is needed to connect thePC to the digital line, costs several hundred pounds. Andthe net can still be treacly if the remote server or its routeconnections are clogged by traffic. The 64K connectiononly really comes into its own when uploading anddownloading large files by direct connection, or on anemail or closed user group.
There is little point in paying for an ISDN internetconnection. But if a £200 modem could run at similarspeeds on an ordinary analogue line, it would be worthusing. Such modems do now exist and will shortly go onsale. They achieve what should be the impossible bytaking advantage of recent developments in the wayInternet Service Providers and data sources connect theirservers to the national and international phone networks.
The phone company uses PCM coders to sampleanalogue speech at 8kHz and code it into 8-bit words.This gives only 256 sample levels. It roughens the soundby adding quantisation noise, which puts a ceiling ofaround 35Kbps on today’s modems. If service providersconnect their digital servers direct to digital phone lines, the
data which streams down the line to a user’smodem never passes through an analogue-to-digital PCM converter. It only passes through ad i g i t a l - t o - a n a l o g u e converter before reachingthe subscriber. This conversion uses only the256 accurate levels of the PCM code and sointroduces no quantisation error. Although thetheoretical data speed should now be 64Kbps(8kHz x eight bits), system noise and equalisersin the phone network reduce practical workingto 56K. The reverse route upstream from thesubscriber’s modem into the network must, however, passthrough an analogue-to-digital converter as the line fromthe subscriber’s home is analogue and the network isdigital. So the upstream route suffers quantisation noisewhich limits data speeds.
With big market rewards at stake it was inevitable thatcompanies would develop proprietary implementations ofthe 56K idea. Lucent Technologies conceived V.flex2while Rockwell worked on the similar K56Plus system.Last November, the two companies agreed to poolresources and promote a single system, K56Flex.
US Robotics (USR) developed a different system, X2.The difference is that USR provides a return path of33.6Kbps, whereas K56Flex claims 45Kbps. The fasterreturn path from K56Flex is desirable because it bringsanalogue data rates closer to ISDN. But 33.6Kbps ismore robust. The International Telecommunications
Union (ITU) is trying to set a single standard for 56Kworking but the industry isn’t waiting. USR is making apre-emptive strike with Sportsters which have flashmemory to download the X2 code when it is ready, andclaims support from ISPs. But support talk is onlymeaningful when a large proportion of an ISP’s serversare up and running at 56K. With the industry’s trackrecord of disregard for the customer, I would want awritten assurance that any 56K modem bought now willbe upgradeable to whatever standard the ITU finallyagrees. Without that, it’s safer to wait a while. Barry Fox is at 1 0 0 1 3 1 . 2 0 1 @ C o m p u S e r v e . C O M
S t r a i g h tTa l k i n g
C
And it came to pass that the MMX chip laid wastethe Pentium PC… Barry Fox did warn you. Now takeheed: bide your time before buying that 56K modem.
Barry Fox
CYAN•MAGENTA•YELLOW•BLACK PERSONAL COMPUTER WORLD
C o l u m n s
Personal Computer World • April 1997 • 51
hen a large company buys PCs and software,it usually either contacts a manufacturerdirectly or goes to a specialist dealer who will
provide staff full-time in order to handle the company’severy need. When a small business goes IT shopping,it’s a different matter. The kind of service provided will beon a different scale. So how best to proceed in thepurchasing jungle?
The cheapest approach will generally be mail order,but purchase price isn’t the only important factor.Support could well be an issue, and there’s a limit towhat can be done down a telephone line. Against thatyou need to set the extra cost of shopping in the highstreet and some assessment of chance that the localretailer will deliver on its support promises.
Large mail-order companies like Dell have built areputation on good customer service (even if there’sbeen some grumbling in the press lately), usuallyproviding lifetime phone support and everything up toon-site next-day maintenance. A box-shifting outfitlooking to provide the tightest deal on memory orsoftware is unlikely to have the same level of support,but can be extremely competitive.
There’s a range of options available on the highstreet too, from Dixons to the small computer shop.However, the most likely place to walk into these daysis PC World or one of its competitors. The PCsuperstores accept that they can’t match mail-orderfirms on price, but claim instead to provide bettersupport when buying, better assistance after the saleand general handholding.
Perhaps surprisingly, when buying what is typicallythe most expensive purchase, the PC itself, mail orderhas a lot going for it. PCs usually come preconfiguredand setting them up is a simple exercise. You have tobe careful how you make the purchase: like manyothers, I have been caught out in the past when a PCfirm went bust between accepting my order anddelivering the goods. Because I had placed the orderwith a credit card, my Visa company refunded the loss.Otherwise I would have been left scrabbling for cashwith the other debtors.
Of course, an absolute beginner may be unhappy witha box dumped on the doorstep, but however effectivethe assistance from a superstore, it is not going to turnyou into a confident user. A short course or a fewevenings with an expert friend are more likely to help.Software, similarly, is a straightforward purchase. Choosethe package you’d like with the help of a suitablemagazine, and order it. Installation is rarely a problemthese days. There’s little reason for bearing the cost ofthe high street.
It’s the middle-ground, secondary hardware like aprinter or a new hard disk that demands more support. Inthe first place, you need to get the equipment in place. If
you don’t feel confident about opening upyour PC, most superstores offer an installationservice. There might be some doubt aboutcompatibility — again, avoid mail order.PCMCIA cards, for example, are notoriouslyfussy, running in some machines and notothers. When I recently bought a CD-ROMfor my laptop I noted the stern warnings inthe mail-order listings that they did not sendproducts out on trial. When I pointed out thepossible incompatibility at PC World, thesalesman had to check whether I could return the item,but agreed that I could.
With other kinds of purchase, it’s not always obviouswhether the superstore or the mail-order merchant willprovide the best assistance. I recently enquired at asuperstore about the cost of ink cartridges for a printer itwas selling. Despite the salesman’s enthusiasticattempts, he couldn’t find them in the store and had nomeans of looking up the price on computer.
Again, when I asked about an external hard drive, adifferent salesman searched for a while, decided they hadbeen moved and couldn’t tell me which products theystocked. Mail-order firms answered these questionsimmediately. A few weeks beforehand I had wanted tobuy an internal tape drive. I had read of problemsobtaining suitable drive rails to mount the drives. Themail-order firm couldn’t help at all. PC World staff thought
I didn’t need drive rails, but if I did, they had a handful ofthem labelled for a different manufacturer’s machinewhich they thought might work. In the end, with a littleingenuity, I got the drive in without rails, which wasprobably just as well.
You pays your money and you takes your choice.Where you need help with installation or there is somedoubt about compatibility, the superstore is attractive.In other circumstances, it’s a bit like taking out anextended warranty. It may give you peace of mind, butmany of us would prefer to underwrite our own risk andsave the money. B r i a n C l e g g @ m s n . c o m
B u s i n e s sM a t t e r s
W
W h a t ’s the best way to purchase a PC in the shoppingjungle — mail ord e r, the high street, or a superstore ?T h e re ’s good and bad in all of them, says Brian Clegg.
Brian Clegg
CYAN•MAGENTA•YELLOW•BLACK PERSONAL COMPUTER WORLD
instruction pairing). The MMXPentiums have a bigger on-board cache, one extra stage inthe pipeline and better branchprediction. This accounts for the10-20 percent improvement inperformance, but is hardlyradical.
MMX also adds some newinstructions that operate on setsof eight bytes, four words, twodouble-words or one quad-word at a time. They’reorientated towards signalprocessing, and re-use the FPUregisters to provide instructioncontrol and repetition.
Working like this is calledSingle Instruction, Multiple Data.
SIMD is not a separate “newprocess” (as shown in thearticle) but just a description ofhow the new instructions work.It’s been around on chipscosting tens of dollars (nothundreds) for years now.
A DSP chip (or a goodDSP/CPU hybrid) can work withmore than eight bytes at once.This is the technology in moderngraphics accelerators, soundcards and modems. It’s why youcan buy a 3D graphics card,video RAM and all, for less thanthe price of a Pentium chip.
A 200MHz MMX Pentium isunlikely to be able tosimultaneously act as a
33.6Kbps modem, wavetablesound card and 3D graphicsaccelerator — and also run theoperating system andapplication. Multi-player gamesand interactive 3D web sites arejust two applications I can thinkof that require this.
Yes, MMX means thesecards can be made morecheaply, but only at theexpense of eating into thatprized processing power youspent all that money on buyinga Pentium for in the first place.
MMX is a good idea forgraphics applications likeCorelDraw, Photoshop andVideo for Windows, and it’sgood that the chips arebackwards compatible withPentium motherboards. Butdon’t fall for the hype: it doesn’tturn the Pentium into a DSP andit won’t replace real multimediahardware.Sam [email protected]
www.tcp.co.uk/~edge
Compatibility bluesMy daughter recentlypurchased a Lexmark 1020colour printer and I purchasedsome Express Softwareeducational CD-ROMs, bothfrom well-known high-streetstores. The advertising both innational newspapers and in thestore gave no indication thatboth would not run on the family386 PC. In fact, the CD-ROMbox stated that they would rununder Windows on a 386.
The printer was a joy toinstall and was operating fromWindows in minutes, but theCDs were not so good. Our PCwith Windows 3.1 was notcapable of running the CDprograms and careful reading ofthe leaflet packed inside the boxstated: “Make sure thecomputer is running DOS eitherfrom Windows or a C> prompt”.So the CDs are fine direct fromDOS until we want to print fromthem. You then find that the
printer has no DOS driver socan only print from Windows.
Thus you are up against theclassic non-compatibilityproblem: both are okay on theirown but they cannot talk to oneanother. Having spent most ofmy working life struggling withthis problem, the first recourseis to helplines. Unlike the majormanufacturers, the PC lineshave only two states: engaged,or not replying with occasionallapses into answering. Suchslots finally managed toelucidate the reply: “Tough luck,not our problem”.
I am writing to ventilate aproblem I know fromprofessional consultations iscommon in the domestic PCmarket, and to ask if there isany way to make suppliersclearly mark their products withits performance, like “Best rununder DOS” or “Only worksfrom Windows”, allowingpurchasers to know what theyare buying. Perhaps you couldrun an “honest supplier” index?David GreenBedford
The numbers gameThe article on paying by creditcard over the internet (StraightTalking, PCW March) wasinteresting in that no amount ofencryption would have solvedany of the problems outlined byBarry Fox. Once a firm has yournumber, they can charge twiceor thrice, as Barry says, and justapologise for an “administrativeerror” to customers who detectthat this has happened.
One solution would be forbanks to issue sets of numbersto their customers, each ofwhich would be used once only,like cheques. When orderinggoods from a firm, thepurchaser would give them anumber and notify the bankelectronically at the same timethat this number had beenissued to Firm X for an amountnot exceeding, say, £100. Firm
Refreshing changeI note that in the Table ofFeatures section of the MMXgroup test in the March issue ofPCW, the Iiyama Pro 9017Emonitor is quoted as having amaximum refresh rate of 75Hzat 1024 x 768. I use one ofthese monitors with a MatroxMillennium card with a refreshrate of 85Hz at 1152 x 864 in24-bit colour. At least, that’swhat is reported by both themonitor and the Windows 95software.Ian Ford101765.2712@compuserve.
com
No more Mr Nice GuyThe baby’s head/fork incident: Ithought it was quite tasteless,offensive and utterly vulgar. Butthen again, so am I, so I found itrather amusing. Don’t let theGoody-Two-Shoes Brigade getyou down!Malc Smithmalcolmsmith@compuserve.
com
Here’s to you, Mrs RobinsonIn your Letters page in theMarch issue, there were somecomments about the ChipChatthing that involved a fork beingstuck into a baby’s head. Mostcorrespondents said theythought it was in bad taste, butthese people should have takenit for what it was — a joke.
Obviously these people havenothing better to do than sitaround and moan about thingsthat don’t have any significance.They’re all probably boardroombigwigs with nothing better to
do. You know the type, AnneRobinson’s fave people.Lindsay Taylor106414.370@compuserve.
com
Modulation mattersIn his “Rant corner — baud andbps” (PCW March, p304) RogerGann describes asembarrassing “the number ofotherwise knowledgeablepeople who use the terms baudrate and bits per secondinterchangeably”. It’s alsoembarrassing to complainabout other people’s gaffs whilecommitting your own.
Modulation does not mean“to encode digital data intoanalogue waveforms”, as Gannwrites. That process has beengiven the quite transparentname of “digital-to-analogueconversion”. Modulation is atechnique in which data signalsare used to modify theamplitude, frequency, or phaseof a carrier wave by means ofmodems (modulator/demodulators). The carrier wavechosen is of a suitablefrequency for transmitting overthe specified channel.
The last time I brought thiscommon error to your attention,the columnist attempted toexcuse himself with the claimthat making technologyintelligible to the masses callsfor a degree of simplification. Ifthat were true, your magazinewould be able to explain therecent increase in maximumtransmission rate over thepublic telephone network from33.6Kbps to 56Kbps. This has
not been satisfactorily explainedin the several articles whichhave attempted to address theissue. The reason is clear:nobody at PCW understands it.Gabriel [email protected]
Lost in timeYour MMX news story(Newsprint, March 1997) states:“Intel’s Multimedia enhancedMMX chips were launched to aresentful world last month”.Now that would be February,but I am writing in January.Must this pretence continuemonth after month? It’s not as ifyou take ages to get into print.See page 34: “So January saleshave been more successfulthan the pre-Christmas run-up,but it lasted for two weeks ofJanuary only”, and I am writingthis only two weeks later.Jim Mann Taylor [email protected]
Don’t believe the MMX hypeI’m amused that Adam Evanshas been taken in by Intel’shype about the MMX processor(“New technology: All aboutMMX”, PCW March, p178).
He says that “MMX is themost significant change to thebasic architecture of the PCprocessor for ten years”.Hogwash! The improvementsare hardly as significant as thechange from 8086 to 286(protected mode, 16Mbmemory), 286 to 386 (32-bitaccess, 4Gb memory, virtual 86mode, on-board MMU) or 486to Pentium (64-bit data, on-board cache, pipelining,
Letters
Personal Computer World • April 1997 • 55
LettersSend your letters to:
The EditorPersonal Computer WorldVNU House32-34 Broadwick StreetLondon W1A 2HG
Crash and blow dryI bought a Packard Bell from PC World at the end of November.When you spend £2,000 on a computer, you expect it to workfor more than a few weeks. Considering I’ve been out of thecountry for four of those weeks since my purchase, it was onlyup and running for a short time.
Well... My HDD broke last weekend. An engineer came roundand told me I had lost everything. I’m a writer, and not being themost diligent person in the world at backing up, I was distraught.
The engineer didn’t have the right replacement so he wenttoddling off. The next day a friend of mine who “fixes” computerscame round for a look. He also told me that I had lost everything.After a couple of glasses of wine I said: “Please, just have onemore go.” He did. When I said it sounded like the drive was cold,he jokingly said: “Get your hairdryer.” I did. We warmed the poorlittle thing up and hey presto! It began working, long enough toretrieve everything. Modern technology, who needs it? Sell me ahairdryer instead, any time.Bethan Davies [email protected]
Personal Computer World • April 1997 • 57
X would not be able to claimthe payment unless theyquoted the same number to thebank through the clearingsystem, and since it would onlybe valid for one transaction itwould be of no value to hackerseither.
This would not solveCustoms problems, though. Iordered two boxes of cardsfrom the Metropolitan Museumof Modern Art in Boston, USA,via CompuServe. Customs andExcise intercepted the packageand charged me £7.50 forhaving done so.Dr R D TurnerNorth Yorkshire
TV timesI’m a confused computer user;but then, aren’t we all? Thecoverage of computing by themedia is really getting medown. By and large, the qualityof the written word in computermagazines is pretty good, theonly problem being that they allseem to be testing the sameitem of kit at the same time.One does an article comparingmonitors, they all do an articlecomparing monitors.
The news media normallygets things wrong and, ofcourse, tries to make things asdramatic as possible. Forinstance, that all our computersare going to fall over on 1stJanuary 2000 and we’re alldumping our 200MHz Pentiumsjust because they don’t haveMMX. The coverage that reallygets me down is that given bytelevision, both terrestrial andsatellite. The BBC gives us TheNet, which is on late at nightand normally has a very shortrun, and British SkyBroadcasting gives us TheComputer Channel for twohours a day. Do computerusers have amazingly shortmemories? The ComputerChannel seems to think so, as itrepeats the same items overand over again. During its first
few weeks it even repeateditems in the second half of theprogramme which it hadalready shown in the first! It alsoseems to assume that allcomputer users are completemorons. I know that new usershave to be catered for, but youreally can take this too far. Andthey have.
The site from NBC, also onsatellite, was quite good when itstarted, but unfortunately theytoo seem to have run out ofideas and have gone the way ofThe Computer Channel,repeats now being the order ofthe day. NBC also gives us acouple of hours during theweekend, but again most of theoutput has been seen before.
So are we ever going to getan up-to-date programme withnews, reviews and decentinformation, or are we expectedto put up with the rubbish weare getting now? I live in hope.John Godfrey-ParkinsSomerset
We look forward to the daywhen “The PCW Channel” islaunched. With the comingdigital TV revolution, it may yethappen!
Still in touch with touchpadsWe are all familiar with themouse and trackball, butwhatever happened to thetouchpad? Some time ago Icame across one of thesegadgets attatched to a desktopcomputer and, having had theopportunity to try it out, itimmediately became a “musthave”. I searched the pages ofPCW but couldn’t find anymention of this nifty gadget. Ieventually located one, an AlpsGlidepoint, under the counter ofa shop in Tottenham CourtRoad. Although quiteexpensive, relative to themouse it replaced, it took upmuch less space on thedesktop (about three inchessquare). It has three
programmable buttons, the left-hand one rarely being usedbecause a quick double-tap ofthe screen does the same job.With only a small movement ofthe forefinger, the cursor movesswiftly and precisely around thescreen.
When I upgraded mycomputer, I needed to changethe pad from PS/2 type toserial. Having triedunsuccessfully to obtain anadapter, I wrote to themanufacturer in America foradvice. They replied by sendingme a complete upgraded unitwith their compliments. WhatBritish supplier would giveservice like that?
With mice and trackballsapproaching the price level ofthe touchpad, why aren’t thesedelightful little devices moreavailable over here?Thousands of people don’tknow what they’re missing.P GabbitasEast Sussex
Help! I’m dealing withMicrosoftIs Microsoft getting too big forits boots (and the customer’spocket)? I had a problemconnecting with MSN (soundsfamiliar?). I called the helpline,who said that it was Win95related and I would have to call01734 271000.
Upon doing this, I waspromptly advised that since Iwas out of my 90-day freesupport period, help could onlybe obtained to the tune of £30per problem plus VAT. Havingpaid a whole year’s subs toMSN, I protested that anysavings thus made would bewiped out by such a charge.“Sympathy” was expressed,but I was told that this wascompany policy and wasreferred back to MSN on thegrounds that they should beable to solve the problemanyway. MSN referred me backto Microsoft, saying that my
Letters
p59
Personal Computer World • April 1997 • 59
particular problem did not fallwithin their brief. Resigningmyself to what seemed theinevitable, I rang Microsoft back(this was on Friday night, 1700hours) to be told that they werenow closed, and this meant Ihad no chance of correcting theproblem until the followingMonday during working hours,the time when it is most difficultfor me to make contact as I amteaching.
CompuServe and otherservice providers wouldpresumably have attempted tocorrect the problem, not havingother departments to fob theirproblems onto. Am I thereforebetter off using the latter in thefuture, or would they also be indifficulties if the problems wereWin95 related? I triedcomplaining to MicrosoftFeedback but received no reply.Trevor [email protected]
What millennium disaster?In view of the concern over thecoming millennium problem, Ihave carried out a number oftests and have found that all myolder computers will handledates into the millennium.
I have set my computerdates to 31/12/1999, let themroll over to 01/01/2000, turnedthem off and on again, and loand behold, the systemregisters a date from back in theeighties. However, if I set thedate of the system to01/01/2000 and turn off thesystem, the millennium date isretained.
I have carried out tests usinga number of millennium dates(up to 30 years into themillennium). The systemrepresents the correct day ofthe week to correspond withthe date, and recognises leapyears, too.
In view of these tests, will mysystems handle the millenniumor have I missed something? Ifmy findings are correct, why all
the hype about computerdisaster in the millennium? Karen [email protected]
More on file sizesI read with interest the debate inyour Letters pages concerningfile sizes and I have somethingto add to this.
I carried out the followingsteps in Microsoft Word 7,saved the file after each processand found the file size:• I created a blank document(11Kb); • typed in “Hello World” (11Kb);• inserted a 100Kb .bmp image(140Kb); • removed the image (146Kb);• deleted the text, leaving ablank document (146Kb); and • saved this file as a differentname (11Kb).
Rough and readyI was surprised that in DylanArmbrust’s review of thePanasonic CF-25 (PCWFebruary) he mentioned howeasily a laptop broke when youdropped or banged it.
I had a colour DX2/50 laptopand accidentally dropped itdown a flight of stone stairs inmy college. It fell on its side, itsfront, down about 25 stonestairs, and guess what? It wasperfectly all right, apart from afew keys that had come out. Itbooted up first time!
This is not the first time mylaptop has been subjected tobad treatment. I haveaccidentally dropped earth allover the keyboard and after abit of shaking it was fine.
Why spend an extra £1,000on something a bit moredurable, when you could buyinsurance for a fraction of thatprice?Ben WayCompuServe 71333,2330
Letters
Most innovative softwareBest software suiteBest software application (excluding suites) Best creative softwareBest internet browserBest utilityBest CD-ROM reference titleBest CD-ROM kids titleBest game
Best Internet Service Provider (ISP)Best content provider (not including ISPs)Best UK web siteBest web site on the internetBest use of interactivity on a web site
Your chance to vote in the seventh annual Personal Computer WorldAwards and win a super Sony Mini Hi-Fi and £100of Virgin vouchers in thePCW Reader Awards.
The Sony system features CD player,dual tape decks, FM tuner, 30Wsuper-woofer and full remote control.One lucky person will win this fantasticprize when the draw is made from allentries received by 25th April 1997. Fifteenrunners-up will receive £50 Virgin vouchers.
The Personal Computer World Awards are about rewardingexcellence and attention to service. The categories this year cover theindustry like never before, with new awards for Hardware, Software and anextended list of Online Awards, reflecting the growing importance of theinternet in business and home computing.
And your votes really count. We want to know which companies out thereare supplying you with the type of service you’d want to recommend tosomeone else. We have split the Reader Awards into nine categories, in an attempt to cover the areasof service and reliability that affect you. The Reader Awards are decided solely by you, and are highly
valued by the companies advertising in the pages of PersonalComputer World.
In the other categories, your nominationsare discussed by an expert panel ofjudges (see left) to produce a winner andtwo runners-up.
To make sure you are in with a chanceof winning, fill in the categories on the formfacing this page, tear it out, fold along thedotted lines and pop it in the postbox.We’ll even pay the postage!
Vote on the WebThis year for the first time you canvote via the internet. Just go towww.pcw.vnu.co.uk and follow thelink to the online voting form.
Most innovative hardwareBest PC system for businessBest PC for the homeBest notebookBest laserBest budget laser — under £350Best inkjetBest budget inkjet — under £300Best modemBest graphics cardBest gadgetBest handheld/palmtop
Personal Computer World • April 1997 • 6362 • Personal Computer World • April 1997
Awards categories
Name Job TitleCompanyAddress
PostcodeTelephone Fax
The closing date for nominations is 25th April 1997. Please tick the box if you do not wish to receive promotional material.
PCW Awards 1997 Fill in as many categories as you want, complete your personal details, fold the form and post it to us (or fax it to 0171 316 9313).
Ben Tisdall Group Editor
PJ Fisher Managing Editor
Clive Akass News Editor
Gordon Laing Features Editor
Eleanor Turton-Hill Technical Editor
Adele Dyer Reviews Editor
Simon Rockman Associate Editor
Dylan Armbrust Senior Staff Writer
Adam Evans Staff Writer
Lynley Oram Staff Writer
PCW Technical Writers
Mark Baynes
Terence Green
Tim Nott
Tim Anderson
Paul Begg
Mark Whitehorn
Roger Gann
Nigel Whitfield
VNU European Labs Judging Panel
Wisse Hettinga European Labs Manager
George MacDonald Labs Manager
Jonathan Ricks Labs Testing Editor
Judging panel
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3132333435
Hardware awards
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Your details
The publisher of Personal Computer World, VNU Business Publications, will donate 20p toOxfam’s International Appeal Fund for everyentry sent in. So, the more of you that enter, themore money VNU will be able to give to Oxfam.
Best high-street retailer
Best software dealer
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Most reliable PC
Best advertisement
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Personal Computer World • April 1997 • 67
Gadgets Reviews
66 • Personal Computer World • April 1997
GadgetsPCW Gadget Photography by David Whyte
Measuring a mere 74 x 262 x 396mm when folded, andweighing 4.2kg, InFocus’s LiteGo 320 is the world’s mostportable multimedia projector. It’s little larger than anotebook computer and should slip into most carryingcases. When you are ready to project, the unit unfoldsfor action. The image is produced with a 6.4in LCDpanel and a 410W lamp. The 320 is compatible withPCs and Macs running at resolutions up to 800 x 600pixels. and can display PAL, NTSC or SECAM video.Built-in rear-facing powered speakers complete the multimediaexperience. Price: £5,281.63 (£4495 ex VAT). InFocus UK 0181 213 2100
A great-quality sound card is no good without great-quality speakers, so anyone feeling that theirPC’s sound could do with a bit of a boost may be interested in Multimedia Labs’ range of poweredspeaker systems. The PC Amp TC1680 comprises a pair of stereo speakers, reinforced in the bassdepartment up by a sub-woofer unit. Also part of the package is the “Spatialiser”, a slim unit which
sits beneath your monitor and, thanks to some nifty 3D processing, simulates surround sound withoutthe need for extra speakers.
The amplifier supplies22W per channel RMS
(those are real Watts)and should keep
anyone happy, fromserious business users
to hardcore gamesaddicts.
Price: £222.08 (£189 ex VAT)
Evesham Micros 01386 765500
Following JVC’s GR-DV1 featured in last month’sGadgets is the GR-DVM1. Both are handheld digitalvideo cameras with ten-speed optical zoom lens. Thesymmetrical vertical design allows right or left-handedoperation and viewing through either eye. The GR-DVM1 is equipped with an LCD screen and is availablethis month. The DVM1 is slightly larger than the DV1,the world’s smallest and lightest digital video camera.Nevertheless, the DVM1 only measures 59 x 156 x94mm and weighs 730g with tape and battery. Price, under £2,000 (or £1,702.13 ex VAT)JVC UK 0181 450 3282
Years ago, Sony brought us the CM-R111, ananalogue mobile phone which fitted the palmof your hand. A boom microphone sprung outfrom the side to reach your mouth. Fans ofStar Trek-style communicators loved it butlonged for a digital version with a display. Well,here comes the new CMD-Z1, which is basedon a similar concept but operates on the digitalGSM 900 system and boasts an enormous,detailed, display. It sits in your left hand, withyour thumb hovering above a jog dial to selectand execute its wide range of functions,leaving your right hand free. The Z1 is easy touse, works brilliantly and looks great. It will beavailable next month for between £150 and£200, with a suitable subscription to Cellnet orVodafone GSM. A 9,600bps PC mobile datacard with built-in 33.6Kbps modem will beavailable later. Sony 0990 111999
Looking for a notebook PCready to take some knocks andhits, yet not go down for thecount? The Adams Rocky couldbe the champion you’re waiting for.The Rocky is Adams’ solution for adurable notebook which is suitable foruse in The Great Outdoors. A waffle-likerubber jacket protects the case, while the interior isdual-chambered to reduce the penetration of dust and water. It will evencope with a half-metre fall. Prince Naseem, watch out! Price: £3,583.83 (£2,999 ex VAT) Adams Technology 0161 283 1000
There’s gold in them thar fax/modem cards. Psion Dacom has plated25,000 of its new Gold Card Global GSM-ready fax/modem cards inreal gold. This marketing ploy is not as expensive as you may think: itseems that coming up with a paint that looked like gold would cost asmuch as the real thing. The card offers a 33.6Kbps fax/modem with anoptional mobile data upgrade; you’ll also need a data-capable digitalmobile phone. The standard modem card has a list price of £245.58(£209 ex VAT). Upgrades to support avariety of mobile phones cost £163.33(£139 ex VAT): the exception is forNokia phones, £186.83 (£159 ex VAT). Psion Dacom 01908 261686
Multimedia Labs PC Amp TC1680
JVC GR-DVM1
Sony CMD-Z1
Adams Rocky
Psion DacomGlobal Gold Card
InFocus LiteGo 320
p73
FirstImpressions
First impressionsReviews First impressions Reviews
Personal Computer World • April 1997 • 7170 • Personal Computer World • April 1997
oshiba’s latest addition to itsnotebook range is the first in theUK (and on the market,
according to Toshiba) to feature Intel’s newMMX-enhanced Pentium processor. Thereare other MMX-based notebooks promisedin the near future from IBM, Compaq andFujitsu, and we’ll be reviewing the NECMMX offering in the next issue of PCW, butfor now, the Tecra is it.
Fitting portables with the MMX makes alot of sense, as the chip is good atimproving the speed of audio and videodecompression and playback which form amajor part of notebook-based present-ations. The MMX’s low internal operating
voltage yields benefits in terms of lowerheat generation, with the “mobile” versionoperating at just 2.45V at its core, althoughexternally it still runs at the standard 3.3V.
The Tecra’s other distinguishing featureis its 13.3in TFT screen, which pretty muchfills the available lid area and is as big asscreens are going to get withoutabandoning the A4 format. The panel canoperate at 1024 x 768 resolution, which isas far up as you can go without increasingthe screen diagonal to produce a larger,more readable image. The only thing youcould do to improve this impressive andusable screen would be to increase thecolours it can handle, but the current
65,536 maximum is plenty for thereproduction of 24-bit photographic andrendered images without significantdegradation.
Even taking into account dealerdiscounting of about 20 percent, the Tecraisn’t exactly cheap, but it does pack aspecification that puts plenty of desktopPCs to shame. The 166MHz MMX isbacked up by 256Kb of pipeline burstcache and 16Mb of EDO RAM, and you geta voluminous 2.1Gb hard disk which isremovable for easy storage, security, datasharing or even multiple OS usage.
In addition there’s a ten-speed CD-ROMdrive, integrated 16-bit audio with built-in
stereo speakers and microphone, and 2Mbof dedicated video memory allowing 16-bitcolour operation at 1024 x 768 resolution.The finished product will incorporate a
28.8Kbits/sec modem with fax and voicecapabilities, giving the Tecra fullcommunications facilities. Expansion isprovided by twoType II PC Card slots withfast 32-bit CardBus support and capable ofbypassing the processor during video I/Ooperations to boost system performance inaccordance with the Zoomed Videostandard, and there’s a high-speed IrDA 1.1compliant (4Mbits/sec) infra-red serial port.
The floppy and CD-ROM module areinterchangable thanks to a
multi-purpose bay in thefront of the machine,
and there’s anadaptor forconnecting up the
floppy driveexternally if it is
needed at the sametime as the CD-ROM.
We weren’t too keen on the keyboard,which appeared to be the standard Toshibaoffering and suffered from the usual lack of
solidity. The keytops were loose and theaction didn’t have much character orresilience. The baseplate sagged andbounced during typing, which jarred with thetop-quality feel of the machine.
As this was a prototype it would be unfairto publish benchmark results, but all theindications are that the Tecra will be fast bynotebook standards. Running time willdepend on the application, but it looks likethe Li-Ion battery will last for two to threehours with the higher figure needing just lightuse of the CD-ROM and audio features.
Dominic Bucknall
Perfect for big-screen presentations, this MMX portable ushers in a new generation of notebooks.
Toshiba Tecra 740CDT H a r d w a r e
VNU Labs tests coverevery kind of hardwareand software. Thetests are continuallydeveloped and
enhanced to reflect hardware andsoftware developments. Our tests closelysimulate real-world use. For example, oursuite of PC benchtests uses completeversions of industry-standard Windows95 applications — currently Word, Excel,WordPerfect and FoxPro. We also run agraphics re-draw test using CorelDraw 6,and a Doom 2 frame rate test which is agood indication of games performance.
Application tests are the backbone ofall the VNU Labs system evaluations butit’s nearly impossible to pin an applicationresult to a specific machine component.Only system-level tests (also known aslow-level tests) can reliably tell thedifference. VNU Labs’ system-level test
suite, Euromark, is mainly Windows-based and is used to isolate specificcomponents like hard disks, graphicscards and CD-ROM drives. To make them easy to read at aglance, all graphs in PCW are drawn sothat the bigger the bar, the better theresult. Normally we’ll also include theoriginal data we worked from: forexample, the time in minutes andseconds to print a page in a comparativetest of printers.
We have a pair of Toshibas under scrutiny, one of which is theTecra (below), an MMX notebook, and the SD-M1002 (p76),PCW’s first review of a DVD-ROM drive. There’s a couple ofprinters from Epson (p83) and two digital cameras from Sony(p80). Software calls on Borland Delphi (p86), Dr Solomon’sHomeGuard (p84) and MacroMedia Flash (p93).
70 Toshiba Tecra 740CDT73 Armari Arcturus 200MMX R3D75 HP Vectra XA76 Toshiba vs Hitachi DVDs78 Sony digital cameras80 Epson Stylus 800 & Stylus 600 83 Lexmark 2030 Jetprinter83 Yamaha SW60XG85 Dr Solomon’s HomeGuard86 Borland Delphi 3.088 HoTMetal Intranet Publisher90 Adobe Persuasion 4.093 MacroMedia Flash95 Cleansweep 3.0,
rmari says the Arcturus range isits attempt to create a PC asfutureproof as possible. This
model is aimed at the “high-end homeuser” — translation: keen games player —and is a real powerhouse, featuring an Intel200MHz MMX processor, 32Mb RAM andtwo top-of-the-range graphics cards.
The Arcturus has a nicely styled mini-tower case which is easy to open. Theinterior is tidy and holds a Tyan Tomcat3motherboard with the Triton 430HX chipset.There is 512Kb of soldered-on secondarycache and there are five ISA and four PCIslots (one shared), all of which canaccommodate full-length boards. Two ISAand two PCI slots are filled, which stillleaves plenty of room for expansion. Thereare two spare 5.25in drive bays and amounting for an additional hard drive. Thefitted 32Mb RAM occupies two of the eight72-pin sockets which can support a hugemaximum of 512Mb. However, thearrangement of the cabling and drivecasings means that access to four of theSIMM slots is rather tricky. Themotherboard supports USB and Armarisays it will be supplying the sockets soon.
The hard drive is a 3.2Gb QuantumFireball and the CD-ROM is a 12-speedPioneer. Also supplied are a DiamondSupra Express 33.6Kbps voice modem, aKeytronics keyboard (nice action) and aMicrosoft Intellimouse with the little wheelbetween the buttons. The audio side is wellspecified, with a SoundBlaster AWE 64sound card and an excellent pair ofYamaha speakers. Considering the systemis aimed at the games player, it’s odd thatArmari didn’t see fit to include a subwooferwhich adds a lot to the bangs, booms andcrashes. A groovy space-age Creative Labsmicrophone is also supplied.
The Arcturus comes with the MatroxMillennium graphics card with 4Mb WRAM(upgradeable to 8Mb), a popular card inhigh-end systems. The Iiyama Vision MasterPro 17 is an excellent monitor and has asharp display with bright, well definedcolours and easy-to-use on-screen controls.
So far, so good. We’ve got a high-endmachine with quality components that
should run anything you throw at it fasterthan a rat up a drainpipe. But why is Armaritargeting the games player? The answer isthe Orchid Righteous graphics card, basedon the 3DFX Voodoo graphics chip. This isa dedicated 3D card with 4Mb EDO RAMthat slots in alongside the MatroxMillennium. The Righteous 3D won theEditor’s Choice award in our recent 3DGraphics Cards group test (PCW January)and produces spectacular results withspecially written 3D games.
Software includes Windows 95 and aselection of 3D games (most of which arelimited in some way) including Descent II,Mech Warrior 2, Fatal Racing 3D, ActuaSoccer: Semifinals 3D, Scorched Earth,Hellbender, and Monster Truck Madness.Written for the Righteous card, they go likethe clappers with all the details on full.
Even the most ardent games player hasto return to the real world from time to timeand, after all, what’s the point of having aPC if all you’re going to do is play games onit? It would have been nice to receive some
applicationsoftware. As shown by
the test results, it’s too good amachine to waste on just games. But
maybe I’ll have just one more quick sessionbefore it has to go back...
Adam Evans
Armari Arcturus 200 MMX R3DThis machine is tailor made for big games players — if you’ve got the wallet to match, that is.
A
H a r d w a r e
Price £2859.95 (£2434 inc VAT)
Contact Armari 0181 810 7441
Good Points It’s full of high-quality componentsand goes like a bomb.
Bad Points A subwoofer and some applicationsoftware would have been nice.
Conclusion A great machine if you’ve got thecash.
Performance results
Windows 95 Office application benchmarks
Doom 2 benchmark (frames per second)
4.86
4.82
Armai Arcturus Panrix Thunder 200X
0 2 4 Faster
75.49
75.5
0 20 40 60 Faster
Heaven for games
players: the Arcturus 200
MMX R3D
Details
Personal Computer World • April 1997 • 75
First impressions Reviews
p76
erformance isn’t usually a termassociated with a corporate PC,but with the introduction of the
Intel MMX chip, Hewlett-Packard appearsto have moved in this direction. Add to thismix a raft of new features such asintegrated LAN connectivity, internetsoftware, a desktop management interface(DMI) and Universal Serial Bus (USB), andyou find that the HP Vectra XA is a serioushigh-end corporate PC.
The Vectra XA we looked at is an ITmanager’s dream. It came with a Pentium200MHz CPU with MMX technology,Matrox Millennium graphics card with 2MbWRAM, Creative Labs SoundBlaster 16sound card, 10/100 Base-T EthernetController, 32Mb of EDO RAM, 512Kb L2cache, 2.5Gb Quantum TM2550A EIDEhard drive, and Hitachi eight-speed CD-ROM. Our Vectra XA also came with an HPUltra VGA 1280 17in monitor, but this isn’tincluded in the purchase price.
The desktop case isn’t small but it issturdy. There’s a simple set of slidinglatches to allow for easy access to theinterior. Inside there are four slotspositioned on a vertical riser board: oneISA, one ISA/PCI and two PCI slots (oneoccupied by the graphics card). On theopposite side of the riser board is thenetwork card supporting 10/100 Base-Tconnections. There aren’t any USB devicesavailable yet but HP has included two USBports for a bit of futureproofing. The interioris cramped but well arranged.
Hardware is fine and good, but twoconcerns sweeping IT departmentsare Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)and remote management. Accordingto a landmark study by the GartnerGroup, the cost of running a singlePC, after purchase, ranges frombetween £5,000 and £8,000 a yearonce helpdesk, training, andmaintenance are factored in. Multiplythis by several hundred or thousandPCs and you have a hefty IT cost.
HP is focusing its efforts to
address this issue withthe implementation of itsremote LAN support andintegrated desktopmanagement interface(DMI), called TopTools 2.Both of these are meantto allow a networkmanager to remotelyaudit and administer aPC via a LANconnection, thusreducing support costs. Wewere unable totest the fullnetworkfunctionality ofthese features butHP contends thatan administratorshould be able to turn on a PC, updatesoftware, re-flash the BIOS, run a remotehardware audit, and discover andtroubleshoot any problems, such aspotential hard drive failure, all from thecomfort of their own desk. We did runTopTools 2 locally and were impressed withit. Everything, from CPU type and graphicscard serial number to every IRQ and DMAsetting, was scanned and available foranalysis. As expected, there are built-insecurity features controlling conditionalreboots and passwords.
HP has bundled Netscape Navigator 3.0and Microsoft Internet Explorer 3.0, plus
McAffee’sWebscan and VirusScan 95 so
the Vectra is fully internet ready. On the performance side the Vectra XA
has done well, scoring almost five timesfaster than our benchmark CompaqDX4/100. This is a respectable score whencompared to a similarly specced,traditionally faster, high-end consumer PClike the Gateway 2000 P5-200 MMX PCwhich scored 4.79 in our Labs benchmark(PCW March).
Dylan Armbrust
HP Vectra XACorporate style and power are incorporated inthis impressively endowed IT manager’s dream.
P
H a r d w a r e
Price RRP £2526.25 (£2150 ex VAT); with 17in monitor add £733.20 (£624 ex VAT)
Contact Hewlett-Packard 0990 474747
Good Points Fast. Good remote managementfeatures.
Bad Points Nothing worth complaining about.
Conclusion Definitely a must-see for IT managersand budget makers.
Performance results
Windows 95 Office application benchmarks
4.86
4.77
0 2 4 Faster
TopTools 2 is for network administration and management
Details
HP Vectra XA Panrix Thunder 200X
76 • Personal Computer World • April 1997
First impressionsReviews
p78
fter all the talk, the first DVD-ROM drive has finally arrived inthe guise of Toshiba’s SD-
M1002. For those few in blissful ignoranceof DVD, it is a high-density version of CD-ROM, carrying up 4.7Gb of data or acomplete high-definition, multi-channeldigital-sound movie. This new generation ofdrive is set to replace CD-ROM “sometime”in the next three years.
Since Toshiba believes that most firstbuyers of DVD-ROM drives will want to playmovies, it is supplying the drive as apackage with a PCI MPEG2/DVD videoplayback card. This particular drive wassupplied with Quadrant’s CineMaster DVDdecoder card, still at the pre-productiondevelopment stage.
The drive itself doesn’t look muchdifferent to a standard Toshiba CD-ROMdrive, the only giveaway being the DVD logoon the front and the extra DVD lead.Connections are absolutely standardATAPI, and with Windows 95 is simply amatter of pulling out the CD-ROM drive andplugging in the DVD-ROM drive.
The DVD video card was only marginallymore complex. The PC’s monitor staysconnected to the SVGA card andCineMaster feeds the video image to theSVGA card via the PCI bus. This does
mean that the PC must support PCI busmastering and the SVGA boardalso has to support DCI,Direct Draw or DirectXcompatible drivers —i.e. the current rangeof better 2D/3D cards.
Quadrant hasloaded the back planeof the card with a stereomini-jack for the audio and a choice of anS-VHS connection and a standard(composite) video out on a phono. As apre-production sample it had no digitalaudio out, but the final version will have anSPDIF socket to extract the Dolby AC-3digital audio stream for decoding into truedigital 5.1 channels. All these extra outputsare absolutely essential: DVD video is onlyworth having if you are going to play it outof your PC and onto a decent-sized TV witha big surround-sound system.
From the desktop, the SD-M1002functions just like any other ROM drive, theonly nifty feature being when you load aDVD disc, the drive’s desktop icon switchesto the DVD logo. Put in an ordinary CD-ROM and it performs with the data transferand access times of a seven-speed ROMdrive. The only thing it won’t do is play CD-R
discs. That willhave to wait until
another generation of drive.CineMaster came with no playback
software, although a user interface to playall types of videodiscs will be supplied in thefinal version. A trusty Media Player broughtthe card to life, putting video on both thePC monitor, a TV and a surround system.On a limited range of software, the imagequality on the TV output is pretty damngood with none of the “blocking” thatmakes MPEG1 sub-VHS quality.
The images are crisp and certainly closeto the best laserdisc standard, but it was adifferent matter on the monitor — noblocking, but a very lined image duepartially to the way Direct Drive scales theimage for the VGA board. It proved adisappointment, as there was little obviousdifference between DVD video and wellencoded MPEG1.
Some of these problems may be sortedout by the release date (May) but it looks asthough DVD video on the PC may have arough ride in the early days.
Tim Frost
Toshiba SD-M1002 DVD driveIf you’ve been divided on DVD, these reviews should convince you they’re the last word in drives
Conclusion Marks the start of DVD-ROM, andstops you having to shell out a further £600 on aDVD-Video player. Best to wait till the autumn forthe drives to settle down in price and the teethingproblems with the cards to be sorted out.
Details
A
H a r d w a r e
Hitachi GD-1000Not to be outdone, Hitachi managed to getus a sample of its GD-1000 DVD-ROMdrive just before we went to press. Like theToshiba, it plugs into the PC with ease,simply replacing the existing ROM driveand using a standard EIDE controller. Thetwo drives look much the same, the onlyovert differences being the GD-1000’sslightly slimmer tray front and the use ofjust one LED to indicate that a DVD dischas been loaded.
The GD-1000 behaved impeccably onDVD-ROMs and, if anything, wasmarginally faster than the Toshiba on CD-ROM, although not enough to besignificant in any real application. Like the
Toshiba, it came bundled with theCineMaster card to check the drive’sfunctions with DVD-Video. Hitachi says itwill not be selling an own drive/cardpackage. Instead, it will supply the driveand leave it to others to create packages.
This version of the card came withmarginally later drivers that seem to go along way to resolving the line problem onthe monitor view (the TV picture was stillexcellent). But that doesn’t mean thesetypes of cards are not going to be a bitunpredictable for some time to come, soagain it’s thumbs up for the DVD drive, butwatch it on the decoder card.Expected price £400Contact Hitachi 01628 585000
ou wait ages for a Sony digitalcamera to arrive, then two comealong at once. To be honest, the
higher-end DKC-ID1 beat the consumerDSC-F1 by a few months, but I won’t letthat get in the way of a cliché.
Sony has two very distinct styles andthese cameras are perfect examples ofeach. Shouting consumer gadgetry all overthe place is the DSC-F1, while the DKC-ID1conservatively assures the serious user andheralds from Sony’s Broadcast andProfessional UK Division.
The £1,499 DKC-ID1 is a large, flatcamera weighing 750g with the suppliedrechargeable battery, measuring 128 x 65 x145mm and shaped not unlike Kodak’sDC-50. Like the DC-50 it features amotorised zoom lens, but Kodak’s threetimes is easily beaten by Sony’s huge 12times, a range equivalent to a 38–460mmzoom on a 35mm film camera. You’ll needto hold steady when completely zoomed in,and bear in mind the built-in flash is onlyeffective over small distances. Sensitivity isequivalent to 100 ASA (ISO) film.
The viewfinder is a colour LCD, similar tothe ones found on camcorders, and despiteflickering, indicates exactly what you’regoing to get, or already have got. In use theDKC-ID1 feels much like a cross between astill camera and a camcorder. Focus andexposure are manual or automatic, withshutter speeds between 15th and 4000thof a second. Closest focusing distance is0.8m at any zoom setting.
Resolution is 768 x 576pixels and the
quality’s good. Images are stored in JPEGformat on Type-II PC (formally PCMCIA)Cards, with either 42 or 158stored per 10Mb memorydepending on compression.TWAIN-acquiring drivers aresupplied for Win95, 3.x andMac, and images can betransferred by physicallyremoving the card orconnecting to the built-in SCSI-II interface.
Moving swiftly on to theutterly gorgeous DSC-F1, whichimmediately wins over anyonewho has a go with it — Sonyreally is a master at consumergadgetry. It measures 102 x 78 x41mm, weighs 135g with its suppliedrechargeable battery, and is finished in alovely silvery coat.
Like the Casio cameras, Sony’s DSC-F1features a lens section which can rotatethrough 180 degrees for self portraits, or atits halfway position is handy for shooting atlow heights. Also like the Casios, the Sonyfeatures a colour LCD screen on the rear forcomposing or reviewing images. Unlike theCasios, the Sony boasts a flash, built intothe rotating lens section and operatingbetween 1m and 3m. Do bear in mind thatLCD panels drain batteries very quickly.
The autofocus lens is fixed focal length,equivalent to 35mm on a 35mm filmcamera. A macro mode will focus as closeas 0.08m. Image resolution is 640 x 480pixels, and the 4Mb built-in memory can
store either 30, 58 or 108 pictures atthe three levels of JPEG
compression. Image qualityis as good as the best
640 x 480 pixelcameras wereviewed in ourFebruary grouptest.
Sony has alsotaken the lead in terms
of connectivity. The DSC-F1 features a serial port for wired
links to PCs or Macs, an IrDAcompliant infra-red port, and even a
compositevideo output for
display on TV orvideo — you could use a
DSC-F1 and TV forpresentations. Particularly cunning is
the £400 optional dye sublimation minicolour printer, which produces 6in x 4inprints and talks to the DSC-F1 by infra-red.
At £595, the DSC-F1 is considerablymore expensive than other 640 x 480 pixelLCD viewfinder cameras, but knocks themall into a cocked hat in terms of quality,features and sheer good looks. It is simplyadorable and comes highly recommended.The DKC-ID1 can’t compete in looks, butoffers excellent quality and a huge range ofoptions — ideal for the more serious user.
Gordon Laing
Sony DSC-F1
Price RRP £699.12 (£595 ex VAT)
Contact Sony IT Group 0990 424424
Good Points Great design, features and quality.
Bad Points Pricey compared to its (inferior)competitors.
Conclusion The best consumer digital camera.
Sony DKC-ID1
Price RRP £1761.32 (£1499 ex VAT)
Contact DirekTek 01494 471100
Good Points High quality, large zoom andadvanced facilities.
Bad Points Not particularly user friendly.
Conclusion Better suited for pro applications.
78 • Personal Computer World • April 1997
First impressionsReviews
p80
Sony DSC-F1 & DKC-ID1The undisputed master of consumer gadgetry is spot on with these digital cameras.
Details
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First impressionsReviews
p83
hese two printers are the latestadditions to Epson’s Stylusrange, replacing the Stylus Pro
and the Stylus 500 respectively. Epson hasupped the colour dpi output from theprevious maximum of 720dpi, to1,440dpi. Both models are dual-cartridge four-colour printers.
Costing less than theirpredecessors, these latestprinters show a markedimprovement in colour output.The increased dpi is due to arefinement of the Micro Piezoprinthead, which forces the ink out fasterand in smaller droplets, and a new driver,which employs AcuPhoto Halftoning. Thenew Quick Dry Ink is worth a mention, as itreally does live up to its name.
Epson promises that these printersdeliver crisp, laser-sharp mono text andthey do, but only when using 720dpicoated inkjet paper. At this resolution, onepage took almost a minute to print, and the paper costs 12p (RRP, inc VAT) persheet. On plain photocopier paper, textwas blurry and feathered with noticeableink bleed. But if you’re looking for colouroutput, these printers produced excellentcolour images.
The Stylus 800 is aimed at the high-endSoHo market but will be most applicable forsmall businesses. It’s more stylish than itspredecessor, the Stylus Pro, and has afootprint of 630mm x 470mm with thepaper trays fullyextended. It isnetwork capable— an ethernetcable will setyou back
£359 (RRP, ex VAT) — and has a data transfer rate of 1.8Mbits/sec.
The single motor previously used hasbeen replaced with three motors, and whata difference this has made. The 800 lappedthe Pro in the text/speed test, performingan incredible 32.65 seconds faster whenprinting ten pages. The motors do makethis a noisy printer, definitely not the sortyou’d want work close to. Even a print runof ten pages will drive staff in a small,crowded office up the wall.
The colour images produced by theStylus 800 are excellent whether at the full1440dpi on glossy film or at 720dpi oncoated inkjet paper. At 1440dpi the imageis marginally cleaner and sharper, bettercapturing the fine details, and obviously theglossy paper makes images look muchmore impressive. But if you are on a budgetthe coated paper images are still startlinglycrisp, either at 720dpi or 1440dpi.
The Stylus 600 is more suited toprofessionals who work from home andcomes bundled with Sierra Print Artist andAdobe Photodeluxe, along with an extra100 photos and 25 fonts. The data transfer
rate has been increased to900Kbits/sec. It’s quieter than its bigsister, the Stylus 800, so it won’t wakethe baby.
Despite the extra nozzles in theprinthead, the Stylus 600 performedabout the same as the older Stylus 500in the text/speed test. A full-page colourphoto took almost thirteen minutes to print
at 1440dpi on glossy film. The paper feedhas been improved and now ejects sheetssmoothly, without sticking.
Epson printers are fussy when it comesto paper, and for best results it’s advisable touse Epson’s own brand paper. Photo QualityInkjet paper costs £12.33 (£10.49 ex VAT)per 100 sheets, and Photo Quality Glossyfilm costs £27.01(£22.99 ex VAT) per 15sheets. New on the market, Photo QualityGlossy paper falls somewhere between thetwo in quality and price. Cartridges cost £19(RRP, ex VAT) for three colour, and £18(RRP, ex VAT) for three black.
Lynley Oram
Epson Stylus 800 and Stylus 600Fine colour output distinguishes both these printers, ideal for small business and home use.
T
H a r d w a r e
Stylus 800
Price RRP £480.58 (£409 ex VAT)
Contact Epson 0800 289622
System Requirements Windows 3.1, 95, NT;Macintosh. Emulation: Epson ESC/P2, IBM X24E,Epson Remote, PostScript Level 1 & 2.
Good Points Good colour, quick-dry ink, easy touse, stylish.
Bad Points Far too noisy.
Conclusion Perfect for doing presentationdocuments on.
Stylus 600
Price RRP £329 (£280 ex VAT)
Contact Epson 0800 289 622
System Requirements Windows 3.1, 95;Macintosh. Emulation: Epson ESC/P2, EpsonRemote
Good Points Quiet, quick-dry ink, easy to use.
Bad Points Doesn’t print crisp black text on plainpaper.
Conclusion Not bad for a home printer. Could beuseful for printing colour newsletters and the like.
Performance results
Text printing speed test (seconds per page)
Text printing speed test (seconds per page)
50.47
17.82
Stylus 600 Stylus 500
0 20 40 Faster
31.02
33.74
0 10 20 30 Faster
Stylus 800 Stylus Pro
Details
80 • Personal Computer World • April 1997
Personal Computer World • April 1997 • 83
First impressions Reviews
p85
he latest addition to the Lexmarkstable fits neatly in beside the1020 Jetprinter (reviewed in
PCW November 1996) at the lower endof the company’s printer range. Thedifference between them is that the 1020is a single-cartridge printer, while the 2030is a dual-cartridge printer. Unlike otherprinters of a similar price range, the topresolution of the 2030 is only 600 x300dpi,which some may feel is alittle low.
Setting up is relatively easy. You need toalign the printheads when installing thedrivers, or your prints will end up running offthe edge of the paper.
The main development has been in thetype of cartridges used. The 2030 uses atechnology which Lexmark has named“hexacolour”. This basically uses twocartridges — one standard CMY colour
cartridge, and a blackcartridge with two extra
wells for diluted cyan anddiluted magenta. These added colours areintended to import pastel shades, so arebetter for sky and skin tones, details andhighlights. Unfortunately, this newtechnology does little to enhance theprinter’s performance. The output inphotographic mode is distinctly dull andlacks smoothness and crispness. To addinsult to injury, a full-page colour
photograph came out with banding, thesame fault repeating no matter how manytimes we printed it.
In graphics mode for illustrations,however, the output is much better. Butbe warned: the ink does take some timeto dry, and although there is a box in thedrivers for a “dry time delay”, if you want
to print quickly the ink will smear and bleedand the paper will be very wet.
Adele Dyer
Lexmark’s “hexacolour” technology is a feature of this printer, but performance is disappointing.
Lexmark 2030 Jetprinter
T
H a r d w a r e
aughterboards offeringwavetable synthesis are nothingnew. By fitting one piggy-back
style to an existing sound card, MIDIplayback is elevated from the embarrassedefforts of FM synthesis into the rich andrealistic realms of sampled sounds. At least,that’s the theory, but unless the existingsound card has a suitable connector, awavetable daughterboard can’t be used.The solution used to lie in chucking the oldsound card away and buying one that eitherhad a daughterboard (or “waveblaster”)connector or wavetable synthesis built in.Yamaha has now provided a neatalternative in the shape of the SW60XG.
The SW60XG is based on Yamaha’senormously successful DB50XG wavetabledaughterboard but has a cunning twist.Rather than fit physically onto an existingsound card, the SW60XG is a 16-bit ISAcard and so only needs a vacant slot.
The half-lengthSW60XG isn’t forgames players — itdoesn’t offer FMsynthesis orSoundBlasteremulation andhas noMIDI/joystickport. This doesmean, however, that itdoesn’t need an IRQ or DMA channel, soinstallation is extremely straightforward.
The SW60XG (like the DB50XG) usesYamaha’s extensions to the GM (GeneralMidi) standard, called XG. XG is upwardlycompatible with GM but offers improvedvoice editing, sophisticated effects controland a larger set of voices — anything from480 up, and the SW60XG has 676. XGsupports real-time effects for external inputsand the SW60XG has three 24-bit DSPs.
The sound quality of the SW60XG isnothing short of excellent. Its 4Mb ofwavetable ROM and 18-bit D-to-Aconverters make for impressive playbackeven with standard General Midi pieces.With a custom XG MIDI piece, however,wavetable synthesis is taken to a new level.A CD-ROM sampler of XG MIDI piecesranging from the Eurythmics to Jimi Hendrixis supplied, and vocals aside, playback isalmost indistinguishable from the original.
Yamaha SW60XGThis daughterboard really does make sweet music, taking wavetable synthesis to a new level.
D
Price £149 (£126.80 ex VAT)
Contact Yamaha 01908 366700
Good Points Simple installation, sound-cardindependent, fantastic sound.
Bad Points None.
Conclusion Superior wavetable sound simplycannot be had for this price. Superb.
Details
r. Solomon’s iswell-known for itsAnti-Virus Toolkit,
widely regarded as one of theleading anti-virus products.But the Toolkit is expensivecompared to many rivalsaimed at the home market. Toaddress this, Dr. Solomon’shas launched HomeGuard, acut-down version which sellsat an attractively low price.
Most anti-virus products,even budget ones, have twoseparate components: an on-demand scanner that you runwhen you want to check forviruses, and an on-accesschecker that runs in thebackground and ensures thateach file is virus-free beforeyou load it. The advantage ofthe on-access checker is thatit’s automatic, so there’s norisk of loading a file whichhasn’t been virus-checked.
However, HomeGuarddoesn’t include an on-demandscanner (virus-savvy readers,throw up your hands inhorror). The result is thatHomeGuard users have no way to overtlycheck that the file they were given by afriend, or downloaded from the internet, isfree of viruses before they use it. Inpractice, this isn’t as bad as it soundsbecause HomeGuard’s on-access checker,WinGuard, is every bit as effective as a top-class on-demand scanner and won’t allowyou to load or run an infected file.
WinGuard works only while Windows isrunning, so if you boot to DOS your systemmay have no virus protection. The packagedoes include VirusGuard, an on-accessDOS virus checker, but this isn’t the idealsolution for the home user and it’s not aseffective. The memory it consumes may notleave enough available for some games torun, so users may be reluctant to install it.
WinGuard’s only interface is a statuspanel (normally hidden) from which you can
access a couple of configuration dialogs.These enable you to change the text ofwarning messages, specify what disks andfiles are scanned, and choose whether tolog detected viruses to a file. One option, toscan on writes, should be the default,especially for those with internet access asit allows infections to be detected when filesare extracted from email messages and ZIParchives. Configuration changes take effectonly after Windows has been restarted:fortunately, the options are not things youwill need to change very often.
At installation time you must choosewhether or not you want WinGuard to repairinfected files on the fly. With this option, allyou will normally see when you load aninfected file is a message telling you thatvirus X has been removed from file Y. This isa particularly convenient way of dealing with
Word macro viruses. In tests,WinGuard cleaned nearly all ofour virus samples and almost100 from a larger sample of morethan 600 types. However, someof the cleaned files weren’trepaired to their original state,and a few crashed when run.
The problem of imperfectrepairs is one that affects mostanti-virus products, though thosethat use integrity checking (whichWinGuard doesn’t) generally do abetter job. WinGuard’s repairfacility is worth having butdeleting the infected file and thenrestoring a clean copy from abackup is a safer option.
To clean up widespreadinfections and check outmachines that won’t loadWindows, HomeGuard includesthe Magic Bullet, a bootable diskcontaining a DOS virus scanner.You put the Bullet in drive A,reboot the PC, and choose anoption to scan only, or scan andrepair the system. In theabsence of an on-demandscanner the Magic Bullet is theonly way to check your entire
hard disk for viruses. It’s also an extremelyeasy and foolproof way to clean aninfected PC. Note, though, that the versionwe tested did not support the new FAT32file system available in some versions ofWindows 95.
Julian Moss
CYAN•MAGENTA•YELLOW•BLACK PERSONAL COMPUTER WORLD
Personal Computer World • April 1997 • 85
First impre s s i o n s R e v i e w s
p 8 6
This inexpensive cut-down version of Anti-Virus Toolkit will bite the bugs for Windows users.
D
S o f t w a r e
Dr.S o l o m o n ’s H o m e G u a r d
P r i c e £29.95 (inc VAT); one free upgrade included
C o n t a c t Dr. Solomon’s Software 01296 318800
System Requirements Windows 3.1 or Windows 95.
Good Points Automatic. Easy to use, top-classvirus detection.
Bad Points No on-demand scanner. Limited DOSs u p p o r t .
C o n c l u s i o n Inexpensive, effective virus protectionfor Windows users
Details
T o p WinGuard’s interface consists of a couple of configuration dialogs
that you’ll rarely need to touch
B o t t o m With the automatic repair option, this is all you see when you
load an infected file
CYAN•MAGENTA•YELLOW•BLACK PERSONAL COMPUTER WORLD
86 • Personal Computer World • April 1997
he heart of Delphi is its VisualComponent Library, or VCL, aPascal class library that
encapsulates the Windows API (ApplicationProgramming Interface) into a series ofcomponents which you can snap togethervisually. Delphi components perform welland can easily be enhanced using standardobject-orientated techniques.
In the past, the only problem with Delphicomponents has been that they onlyworked in Delphi. Now, a new ActiveXControl expert lets you convert a VCLcomponent. So, you can take a Delphicomponent, make it into an ActiveX controland use it in Visual Basic, Word, InternetExplorer, or any other ActiveX client. Anenhancement to the TOleComponent nowallows you to display ActiveDocs orD o c O b j e c t s ,another keyA c t i v e Xfeature.
I r o n i c a l l ythough, oneof Delphi’sbest featureshas alsoproved to bea weakness.Unlike VisualBasic, aD e l p h ia p p l i c a t i o ncompiles into a standalone executable thatdoes not require runtime support files. Itsimplifies distribution and version control butmakes for large executables becausesubstantial chunks of library code arebundled into them. However, Delphi 3.0incorporates packages. In our tests a simpleapplication which compiles to 200Kb withoutruntime packages, reduces to 11Kb whenpackages are used. Larger applicationsbenefit less but you can create your ownpackages if you want to share runtimecomponents between apps. It also speedscompilation and saves resources at runtime.
ActiveX and packages are the two majornew Delphi features, but there are otherenhancements. Although it was not working
properly in this beta, an Access driver hasbeen provided for the database engine.Judging by its name, IDDAO32.DLL, it callsMicrosoft’s JET engine through DataAccess Objects. There is support for
FoxPro memo fields and CDX indexes. Borland will no longer be developing
ReportSmith, the unwieldy reporting toolpreviously shipped with Delphi, and hassub-licensed its development to a thirdparty. The focus seems to be shifting to thebundled Quick Report, also a third-partytool but written in native Delphi. Both Delphiand the Borland Database Engine havenew multibyte character features forinternational language support.
Several new components have beenadded. TCoolbar has toolbars like those inInternet Explorer, and flat buttons whichturn to 3D colour under the mouse.TAnimate shows an AVI animation. TSplittercreates splitter windows and TThreadList is
a thread-safe list. There are some changes in the editor,
too. An “Evaluation hints” debugger optiondisplays the value of any variable orproperty as tooltips in the editor window. A
k e y s t r o k ecombination in theeditor summonspop-up codetemplates whichautomatically enterc o m m o nstructures like“while” statementsand exceptionblocks. Assertionshave been addedto the language, aw e l c o m ed e b u g g i n genhancement. Net
developers will find new components fordeveloping web server applications likethose which generate HTML in response todatabase queries. Microsoft and Netscapeservers are supported.
Borland has done the right thing withDelphi, bringing it fully into the ActiveXuniverse. Delphi’s great strength is as anall-round development tool, combiningvisual development with low-level languagefeatures when required, but it is notnecessarily the best choice for client-serverdevelopment. For general-purposeWindows development, though, Delphidoes look increasingly attractive.
Tim Anderson
ActiveX and other new features make this a more attractive Windows development tool.
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First impre s s i o n sR e v i e w s
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Borland Delphi 3.0
P r i c e Learn To Program version £49.95 (£42.51ex VAT); Standard version £89 (£75.74 ex VAT);Professional version £468.82 (£399 ex VAT);Client/Server version £1,526.32 (£1,299 ex VAT)
C o n t a c t Borland 0800 454065
System Requirements Windows 95, Windows NT3.51 or higher.
Good Points Full ActiveX support. Runtime libraryoption. Slick new components.
Bad Points Weak ODBC support. Not portable toother platforms.
C o n c l u s i o n The best Windows development tool.
Details
A b o v e S e l e c t i n g
the ActiveX tab
for a new project
shows a full
range of options
L e f t T h e
T C o o l B a r
component lets
you create
applications with
the Internet
Explorer look and
f e e l
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88 • Personal Computer World • April 1997
f you believe the hype, theinternet is old hat. The realaction is going to take place on
the intranet: internal company networks,where useful information will bedisseminated to employees via webbrowsers so that all have easy access tothe information they need to do their job.Cynics might say there are, perhaps, onlythree companies which will do that, butSoftQuad believes there will be many more,and its HoTMetaL Intranet Publisher (HiP) isdesigned to make it as easy as possible toprovide information over an intranet.
HiP is based around the HoTMetaLHTML editor andthere are two othermain parts to thesystem: the HiPInformation Manager,and the HiP Viewer.The InformationManager is at theheart of HiP; itprovides you with anoverview of your“project”, which is acollection of webpages, style sheetsand associatedinformation. You canlaunch the editor toupdate a page, or automatically transfer aset of pages to a remote server with asingle button. There’s also a tree view ofyour site, and a Cyberbolic (yes, really!) viewwhich shows all the links between pagesand indicates whether any are broken.
So far, so good; but what’s thedifference between that and an applicationlike MS FrontPage? HiP provides tools tocreate pages that will be easier and moreuseful for people on intranets. The moststartling addition is User-DefinedExtensions. These are extensions to HTMLthat you can edit in the InformationManager and then use when you createpages in the editor. It sounds like an oddidea at first, but it’s actually quite powerful.The page shown in Fig 1 lists magazines,article titles and synopses. Each of these
can be given a user-defined tag. Not onlydoes it make it easier to mark-up pagesconsistently, but it also enables views —one of HiP’s most useful features. And thisis where the HiP Viewer comes in. It’s aplug-in for both NetScape and InternetExplorer which reads the extra informationthat HiP embeds in your pages to provide asplit screen (Fig 2); on the left you haveviewer controls and a table of contents,while the page itself appears on the right.
The views option uses style sheets toprovide different views of your page. Forinstance, the “Summary” view of our testdocument (Fig 2) makes article synopsesinvisible, so you only see the titles. You canhave as many views as you like, allowing asingle document that can display differentinformation depending on the view that’s
been selected. Automatic tables ofcontents can also be created for yourpages, specifying, for instance, thatMagazines and Articles be listed. And youcan also provide pop-ups which give extrainformation about specific items in the text,or “multi-links” which provide a single pointfor a whole menu of links. With the HiPMonitor, which runs on your web server,you can also arrange for people to receiveemail when a page that they’ve “subscribedto” changes, and for adminstrators toreceive notification of other events.
HiP is a comprehensive tool. Theaddition of pop-up text and automatictables of contents to web pages will allowyou to create easier-to-use intranet pagesthan standard HTML. But does yourcompany believe in sharing information?
Nigel Whitfield
Present information straight from the HiP on intranet pages. Some of the views are Cyberbolic!
HoT M eta L Intranet Publisher
I
First impre s s i o n sR e v i e w s
p 9 0
P r i c e £351.33 (£299 ex VAT)
C o n t a c t SoftQuad 0181 387 4110
System Requirements Windows 95 & NT (HiPEditor & Manager), Windows NT, Sparc Solaris,HP-UX (HiP Monitor).
Good Points Adds great flexibility to intranetpages, with the ability to create different views ofi n f o r m a t i o n .
Bad Points Some of the concepts can be hard towork out at first. No Macintosh viewer yet.
Conclusion If you have a PC-only network, thenthis is a great way to put together information thatneeds sharing.
Details
S o f t w a r e
Fig 1(left) The HiP
editor is based on
HoTMetaL Pro with
additional support for
user-defined tags,
pop-up text and
multi-link lists
Fig 2 (below, left) T h e
Viewer is a plug-in for
both NetScape and
Microsoft web
browsers, and allows
you to select different
views of the
information on a page
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90 • Personal Computer World • April 1997
ersuasion will be familiar to Macusers, and the enhancements inthis new version make it a
worthy competitor to Powerpoint. Aredesigned interface makes the job ofcreating presentations much easier byproviding an environment consistent inappearance to other Adobe products likePhotoShop. Persuasion now integrates wellwith other Adobe products, but thisintegration goes further than dropping in theodd picture from Photoshop. You can nowwork on a drag-and-drop basis with nativefiles from Photoshop and Illustrator, so youcan keep your layered images intact andthere’s no need to keep two copies ofeverything.
Persuasion isnow web-friendly.Web-site authorswho want to linkpages with aP e r s u a s i o npresentation cando so easily bydragging anddropping linksand URLs fromthe title bar of abrowser (or viaAdobe’s HTMLauthoring tool,PageMill) ontothe text within aPersuasion slide.Or, Persuasion presentations can be madeinternet and intranet accessible byconverting them to Acrobat pdf format(Acrobat Distiller and the reader areincluded). Links management has beenintroduced to the Mac version andenhanced in the Windows version.
Working within Persuasion it is possibleto create a straightforward, no frills 10-slideshow in about as many minutes. Anyonewho has used Powerpoint or otherpresentation packages will have noproblems adapting. Small buttons in theupper right of the edit window take you intothe outline view (key in the text for thewhole presentation and slides are created
to style), the slide edit window (work on apage at a time), the slide sorter (thumbnailsof everything), a preview of the currentslide, and the player.
The edit window is where most of thecreative stuff happens, so when this isselected half a dozen palettes becomeavailable. These provide control overeverything from type size and colour todrawing tools, to layer control. ButPersuasion falls a little short on effect andanimation tools. The basics are there, butanything more sophisticated would have tobe produced in something like After Effectsand incorporated as a QuickTime movie.
Persuasion looks almost identical on the
Mac and the PC. Cross-platform operationis good, making it an ideal tool for a mixedplatform environment or, say, where youwant to create on a Mac but play on a PC.Adobe provides both versions with a duallicence so you can install it on both Macand PC. You can even pass the secondcopy to someone else if you don’t need it.
With its improved integration andmultitude of new features, Persuasion 4 iswell worth looking at, either for first timersor those wanting to upgrade. As anincentive to Powerpoint users to migrate,Adobe provides a Powerpoint-to-Persuasion conversion utility so you can,with a little tidying up here and there, pull inPowerpoint files and continue to work onthem in Persuasion.
Ken McMahon
Be persuaded by this new version with cross-platform compatibility for presentation creators.
Adobe Persuasion 4.0
P
First impre s s i o n sR e v i e w s
P r i c e Street £222.08 (£189 ex VAT); Upgrade £81.08 (£69 ex VAT)
C o n t a c t Adobe Direct 0131 458 6842;w w w . a d o b e . c o m
System Requirements Mac, Windows 95 or 3.1.
Good Points Integration with other Adobeproducts. Dual Mac/PC licence. Cross-compatibility. Free Acrobat Distiller.
Bad Points Needs support of other Adobeproducts to create truly eye-poppingp r e s e n t a t i o n s .
C o n c l u s i o n An excellent choice, especially forthose already using Adobe products.
Details
S o f t w a r e
R i g h t F l o a t i n g
palettes keep
everything close to
h a n d
B e l o w L i n k e d
graphics are being
pulled in from
PageMill. The links
are maintained
when the
P e r s u a s i o n
presentation is
converted to a pdf
document using
Distiller 3.0
lash has been around for a whilein the guise of FutureSplashAnimator. A buy-out by
Macromedia should see this excellentproduct reaching a larger market.
Flash is designed to produce animationsand interactive interfaces for web sites. Butunlike many of its competitors, it is actuallyeasy to use and the files it produces areremarkably small. Better still, the plug-inrequired to view Flash animations is lessthan 100Kb in size, so even the mostchurlish of web surfers shouldn’t object toomuch to downloading it.
The program comes on a single CD-ROM which works on Mac, Windows 95and WindowsNT. The freeN e t s c a p eN a v i g a t o r/Internet Explorerplug-in works onWindows 3.1machines but thea u t h o r i n gsoftware doesn’t.The standardi n s t a l l a t i o nincludes theprogram and aset of interactivelessons, availableat any time fromthe menu bar: agood idea, andone that’s well executed; you can actuallytry out ideas from within the lesson as youwork through a particular tutorial.
Creating an animation is relatively easy.The program’s drawing tools are good, andalthough some work slightly differently tothose with which you might be familiar, itdoesn’t take long to get the hang of them.Everything is a vector object in Flash, so it’seditable at any time. Even when the finishedpiece is being played via your web browser,you can zoom in and out of the picturewithout any loss of resolution.
Flash has plenty of options to make lifeeasy for an animator. It will interpolate (or“tween”) between keyframes, and objects
can be set to move along a user-definedpath. It also supports “onion skinning”several frames, showing a fainter version ofthe previous and next few frames, so youcan see where the object was and where itis going to be in your animation. Manypeople are already creating simpleanimations using animated GIFs but Flash isa good alternative to those: often the Flashanimation is smaller in size and, because it“streams”, it starts playing as it isdownloading rather than the viewer havingto wait for the whole thing to appear.
Although the basic animation is good, itis probably in the area of interfaces whereFlash will be most used. It’s very easy to
produce things like pop-up boxes when thecursor passes over a given object, orbuttons that highlight in sequence.Microsoft has already standardised onFlash for its MSN home pages atw w w . m s n . c o m, and plenty of others aredoing likewise. Flash-enabled home pagescan look really good and the programmakes creating them a matter of minutes.
If it sounds as though I am going overthe top about this program, well, maybe Iam. But it’s nice to see a really great plug-intechnology that could have a significanteffect on the look and feel of the web, whileremaining small and fast to download. Thefact that the creation software is relativelyeasy to use only adds to its appeal. If you’recreating web sites, you need a copy ofFlash. And get one soon — yourcompetitors will.
Ian Wrigley
P r i c e £269.07 (£229 ex VAT)
C o n t a c t Macromedia 0181 358 5857
System Requirements Win95 or Windows NT.
Good Points Small player. Produces smallanimations. Easy to use.
Bad Points Hard to think of any.
C o n c l u s i o n Great plug-in technology that couldhave a significant effect on the look and feel of thew e b .
CYAN•MAGENTA•YELLOW•BLACK PERSONAL COMPUTER WORLD
Personal Computer World • April 1997 • 91
First impre s s i o n s R e v i e w s
p 9 5
M a c romedia F l a s hAdd a flash of brilliance to your web-site animations or interface with this easy-to-use program.
Details
F
S o f t w a r e
L e f t A full drawing
package is
included so you
don’t need a
s e p a r a t e
i l l u s t r a t i o n
p a c k a g e
Below, left F l a s h
includes a
c o m p r e h e n s i v e
set of
well produced,
useful, on-line
l e s s o n s
CYAN•MAGENTA•YELLOW•BLACK PERSONAL COMPUTER WORLD
Personal Computer World • April 1997 • 95
First impre s s i o n s R e v i e w s
p 9 7
n e wf e a t u r ei n
Cleansweep 3.0,Update-It, letsinternet usersaccess theQuarterdeck website and downloadupdates to thea p p l i c a t i o nKnowledge Base(and CleanSweepitself). An improvedInstall Monitorhandles systemchanges as theyo c c u r .CleanSweep employs a colour-codedsystem to guard against accidental deletionand insists on creating a backup. Itperforms all the usual move, archive and
transport tasks. My only criticism is thatonce an application has been uninstalled,the uninstallation routine must be restartedto delete another application: irritating if youwant to eliminate four or more applicationsor demos you’d downloaded from the netor taken from a magazine’s cover CD.
Some uninstallers don’t gather sufficientfile location information, and uninstallationcan be incomplete. But PowerCleanergoes through all the files on your hard diskat installation time checking theirassociations and is thus very efficient.Other than this, it is a fairly basicuninstaller. It will preview changes beforethey are made, so you have a chance tocorrect mistakes and it will undo them ifany slip through. It has the usualoptimisation tools: finding duplicate files,unused files, and adding or removingWin95 Files and Accessories.
Currently, PowerCleaner seems to bethe most efficient uninstaller and is fairlyversatile for hard-disk optimisation. Wellworth considering.
Uninstaller 4.0 uses SmartLinks to scanyour existing system configuration andidentify the relationships of files, scanningthe system three times faster than previousversions. A new automatic InstallationMonitor generates a report so you can seeexactly what changes were made, and
where. Other new features include GroupDelete, which lets you delete all theprograms in a folder, and Self-extractingTransports, which allows applicationstransported as zip files to another PC to beextracted by double-clicking on thetransported applications. There’s a usefulBackup Reminder which alerts you to oldbackups so you can delete them, and thereis a new Undo facility which lets you restorean application at the end of an action. It hasall the usual disk management features. Overall, these products have differentstrengths yet all match one another. In theend, it comes down to personal preference.
Good Points Fast. Easy to use. Internet updates.Version 2.0 included for Windows 3x users.
Bad Points The deleting process has to berestarted from scratch.
C o n c l u s i o n A good choice.
P o w e r C l e a n e r
P r i c e £24.95 (£21.23 ex VAT)
Contact DataBecker 01420 22707
System Requirements Windows 95.
Good Points Excellent file cleaning.
Bad Points Interface not as slick as the others.
C o n c l u s i o n Well worth looking at, especially ifprice is a consideration.
Uninstaller 4.0
P r i c e £39.99 (£34.03 ex VAT)
Contact Roderick Manhattan Group 0181 875 4444
System Requirements Win95 or Windows NT.
Good Points Plenty of safety measures. Greatautomatic Installation Monitor and ReportGenerator.
Bad Points Perhaps rather slower than itscompetitors, but nevertheless quick to use.
C o n c l u s i o n Uninstaller does an acceptable joband does it neatly and safely.
Details
A
S o f t w a r e
T h ree n e w u n i n s t a l l e r s …
A b o v e PowerCleaner: Choose from registered
software or monitored installations
B e l o w Cleansweep’s smart opening screen
B o t t o m Uninstaller 4.0 categorises all the files
on your hard disk by type
CYAN•MAGENTA•YELLOW•BLACK PERSONAL COMPUTER WORLD
Personal Computer World • April 1997 • 97
First impre s s i o n s R e v i e w s
ronically, hard-driveutilities are often as likelyto destroy your hard
drive as they are to save it. Butthere are great advantages topartitioning. You can run differentoperating systems on your PC, orkeep all your data in a 100Mbpartition so you can backup to yourzip drive with ease.
The benefit to a decent-sizeddrive is smaller partitions and smallerclusters. Essentially, the benefit of smallerclusters is that they make more spaceavailable; up to 40 percent more on anunpartitioned 1-2Gb FAT drive, accordingto PowerQuest, but the increase ismarkedly lower on non-FAT drives.PartitionMagic includes a comprehensiveguide, which is essential if you’re anewcomer to partitioning. Once you’ve read
this, the software is remarkably easy to useand despite several hours of creating,resizing, moving and deleting partitions ofall shapes and sizes, together with installingmultiple operating systems, it performedwell and didn’t fall over once.
UnInstaller Mover is included, whichoffers to clean up your files and attempts tosimplify moving installed software from onepartition to another. There is also
DriveMapper, which tries to updatereferences to drive names that have beenaltered. IBM Boot Manager and PQ Bootare included to help you to manage multipleoperating systems on your PC.
Adam Evans
PowerQuest PartitionMagic 3.0
P r i c e £70.44 (£59.95 ex VAT)
C o n t a c t POW! Distribution 01202 716726
System Requirements Windows 95, Windows3.1, DOS 5.0 (or later) or OS/2 2.1 (or later).
Good Points Simple to use. Reassuringly stable.
Bad Points None really, but there’s always a riskwhen you mess about with your hard drive.
C o n c l u s i o n If you want to partition your hard drive,this is a great piece of software with which to do it.
Details
S o f t w a r e
I
No sweat: Give your hard drive a work-out using this stable partitioning software.
DriveMapper automatically updates
references to changed drive names
any internet access providersoffer free disk space forsubscribers to put up their own
web pages. But creating visually stunningweb pages isn’t easy because HTML codeis more like the archaic computerlanguages of a decade or two ago than theslick visual programming tools you wouldexpect nowadays: no wonder professionalweb-page designers can charge between£300-£600 a day! For this reason, anumber of tools are available for creatingyour own web pages without having todelve into the intricacies of HTML. Amongthe latest of these is WebPublisher.
WebPublisher uses a questionnaire-typeinterface: choose from various options andcomplete the relevant boxes. In this way,you can design your web pages in six easysteps and, provided you have preparedyour images and text beforehand, youcould finish six pages in half an hour or so.
The program is on a CD containingdifferent sets of theme templates, includingheader designs, banners, buttons and soon, with Java-powered graphic elementsand buttons that highlight when you wavethe mouse over them. There are 20 s e t s —not 20 individual templates — eachcontaining different layout options. Havingcompleted your pages, the application
converts them to HTML and transfers themto your net provider’s site or web server.
WebPublisher is simple to use and theclip-art is of high quality. Asymetrix plans torelease add-ons with more design themes,and tools for audio and video.
Panicos Georghiades and Gabriel Jacobs
Asymetrix WebPublisher 1.0
Price £69.33 (£59 ex VAT)
Contact Asymetrix on 01923 208425
System Requirements Windows 95 or NT 3.51.
Good Points Cheap. Easy to use. Fast. Resultshave visual impact.
Bad Points Design limitations: it won’t doe v e r y t h i n g .
C o n c l u s i o n Good value for a small business or ani n d i v i d u a l .
Details
Choose your options and create your own good-looking web pages without using HTML.
MDesign your web pages easily by selecting
options from the preset templates
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C D - R O M s R e v i e w s
p 1 0 0
C D - R O M sR e v i e w s
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tlases on CD-ROM are betterthan their paper-basedequivalents. Not only do you get
a good selection of maps, a gazetteer andlots of geographical and demographicinformation, but you can also hear nativelanguages and national music, watchvideos, and access more colour picturesthan would be economical for a publisher toinclude in a book. There are many atlasesto choose from, and each has its strengthsand weaknesses. Prices also vary, rangingfrom about £10 to nearly £60.
3D AtlasThis is not so much an atlas as acomputerised globe. Three Main Globespresent environmental, physical andpolitical views of earth and nine OtherGlobes each focus on a physicalcharacteristic.
The Environmental Globe usesthousands of satellite photographs to showthe earth as it appears from space. ThePhysical Globe looks at topography andthe Political Globe displays internationalborders. Among the Other Globes, theBiosphere Globe shows changes invegetation, and Continental Drift Globedisplays the movement of the continentsover 600 million years.
There are several Interactive Exhibits,among them a collection of satelliteimages of Bombay, London, Moscow,New York, San Francisco and Tokyo.Eleven environmental issues are studiedin the Stories section and Time-lapsedemonstrates the progressive effects of
natural and human-induced phenomenaover time.
Map Pins let you add text andphotographs, there are two ways ofmeasuring distances, and there’s a host ofstatistics in eight categories: Agricultural,Economic, Energy, Environmental, Global,People, Physical, and Transportation. Thereis a trivia challenge game called Around theWorld and a selection of projects called “20Really Cool Things To Do”.
Attica Interactive World AtlasClick on the opening map screen to zoomin on the country that interests you. T h ebest feature is the Suitcase, a storage areafor add-on modules. These have to bedragged from the Suitcase to the menu barbefore they can be activated. The Atlascontains three modules with additional oneson the way. The three modules include TheWorld (spinning globes with statisticalinformation like infant mortality or foodconsumed per person around the world)while Data has a glossary of geographicalterms, a list of abbreviations, informationabout international organisations and a toolto calculate distance between places.
You can access multimedia: there areloads of photographs, most of impressivequality and covering various aspects of acountry. A collection of UK photos include aMetropolitan Policeman and a traditionalBritish pub, along with the more orthodoxplaces of interest and beauty spots.
Compton’s Interactive World AtlasAs the obvious competitor to Encarta,Compton’s Interactive Encyclopedia at first
glance looked disappointing. The maps arelacklustre and the CD itself is unexciting touse. First looks can be deceptive, though,because Compton’s is actually jam-packed. The information ranges fromgeopolitical data to statistics like birth andmortality rates, and GNP. Another sectionlists cultural information, plays nationalanthems and other music and provides alibrary of educational videos.
There are three types of map: political,showing the borders of each country;elevation, displaying the topography; andsatellite maps, showing the earth froms p a c e . Most information is in the Profilesection and is divided into categories andsubcategories. The categories are CulturalSnapshot, Pictures, Movies, Music,Language and Olympic Facts. Statisticaldata covers everything from averagehousehold size to daily newspaperc i r c u l a t i o n .
Other sections look at naturalphenomenon around the globe, some of themore common global weather systems, andtime zones. There are plenty of pictures,good videos and animations. The 3D flightsection lets you fly over a 3D-renderedrepresentation of the Alps, the Rockies, thedeserts of Australia — wherever you l i k e !
Encarta 97 World Atlas World English Microsoft states that World Atlas is themost comprehensive atlas ever published,be it on paper or CD-ROM, and thereseems no good reason to dispute theclaim. There is certainly no question butthat it is the best CD-ROM atlas you canbuy. The maps are good and themagnification is excellent — at its highestresolution the map features over one million
Small world, innit? No, not really: there ’s a whole world of learning and information in these CDs.
Atlas r o u n d - u p
A
place names, more than any other publishedatlas. The maps excellently render hues ofgreen and brown “earth tones” to illustrateelevation — dark green represents areasbelow sea level, paler greens denote thel o w l a n d s .
There is a selection of map styles. Thecomprehensive map of the earth includesthe items common to any topographic map:watercourses and water bodies, shadedcontours, and elevations and depthsmeasured with respect to sea level. Thepolitical map shows the political divisions,the physical map is divided into tectonic andnatural features, the satellite map shows theearth by day and by night. The natural mapdisplays eco regions, temperature andprecipitation, and the human map depictspopulation and time zones.
Having chosen a country, you have achoice of articles including culture (articlesabout the people — their population,language, religion, greetings and gestures),lifestyle (family, diet and eating, social life,recreation, holidays and celebrations,commerce) and society (government,economy, transport and communication,education, health and welfare).
Altogether there are over 1.5 millionwords of text, more than 2,900 images, 350world music selections and over 3,000pronunciations. And, of course, it has beenspecially designed for the UK market.
Small Blue Planet — Real Picture World Atlas (v3.0.2)Real Picture World Atlas has been aroundfor a while but is updated to take account ofrecent changes such as the new nationswhich have emerged out of the old USSR. It is a nice atlas offering various map views— political, relief and the recently addedHammond, none of which are very detailed.There’s an Antarctica political map, a globecharting time changes, and a globe lookingat earth from space. In the satellite galleryare photos of the earth taken by satellitesand NASA aircraft.
The core of this CD is a goodgazetteer that is blindingly fast. Click onthe map and the information in a textbox changes instantaneously to theappropriate country, and there is aselection of phrases which you canhear in over 100 languages. Thealmanac is full of useful data, although i t
hasn’t been anglicised and some information,like the GNP, is given in US dollars: a bigminus. As is the price. Given the quality ofEncarta for the same money, this title needsto drop in price by at least £10.
World Atlas and Almanac 6.0There are several types of map on World Atlasand Almanac 6.0: satellite, political, relief,language and climate. They are colourful anddo the job, but they are let down by the poormagnification. Shame: the maps are whatdistinguishes an atlas from a gazetteer.
The almanac contains an enormousquantity of information, though not all of it isthat easy to find. The detailed text includesland area, natural resources and endangeredspecies, plus information about the people,
There are some useful tools, including atime and distance option which lets youspecify two locations, then calculates thedistance. A time and date button allowsyou to calculate the time anywhere in theworld, and you can see the flag of acountry and hear phrases spoken in thenative language. A nice touch is the built-innotepad which lets you attach your ownthoughts, ideas and memos to a specificmap. There are pictures too, many ofexcellent quality, and videos of many cities.
Paul Begg
3D Atlas
P r i c e £39.99 (£34.03 ex VAT)
C o n t a c t Electronic Arts 01753 549442
System Requirements Win 3x or Win 95.
Good Points Lots of information, interesting andfun to use.
Bad Points No detailed country maps and not up to date.
C o n c l u s i o n A good educational tool for the studyof the earth as a whole.
Attica Interactive World Atlas
Price £29.99 (£25.52 ex VAT)
C o n t a c t Attica 01865 791346
System Requirements Win 3x or Win 95.
Good Points A nice interface, reasonably detailedmaps, and the add-on module idea gives scope formany uses.
Bad Points Nothing immediately springs to mind.
C o n c l u s i o n A good-quality atlas.
Compton’s Interactive World Atlas
P r i c e £39.99 (£34.03 ex VAT)
C o n t a c t The Learning Company 0181 789 5626
System Requirements Win 3x, Win 95, Win NTWorkstation 4.0.
Good Points Packed with information.
Bad Points Poor maps and unexciting to use.Slight US bias.
C o n c l u s i o n Could be better.
Encarta 97 World Atlas World English Edition
P r i c e £49.99 (£42.54 ex VAT)
Contact Microsoft 0345 002000
System Requirements Windows 95.
Good Points Excellent maps, with superb detail.
Bad Points Windows 95 only.
C o n c l u s i o n The best atlas you can buy, on paperor on CD-ROM.
Small Blue Planet — Real Picture World Atlas (v. 3.0.2)
Price £39.99 (£34.03 ex VAT)
Contact BTL 01274 841320
System Requirements Win 3x or Win 95.
Good Points Fast. Good selection of maps.
Bad Points American, expensive, and the mapscould be more detailed.
C o n c l u s i o n Good as a budget CD-ROM, but foran extra tenner you can have Encarta.
World Atlas and Almanac 6.0
P r i c e £59.99 (£51.05 ex VAT)
Contact Mindscape 01444 246333
System Requirements Win 3x or Win 95.
Good Points Lots of information.
Bad Points The most expensive atlas reviewedhere. Poor maps.
C o n c l u s i o n A great gazetteer, but a poor atlas.
3D Atlas: Cities from space — in this case London, taken
from a Russian spy satellite
Above Compton’s: This is as detailed as the maps
get R i g h t Encarta looks good: its maps are very
detailed and magnification is excellent
Mindscape World Atlas: It looks great and
the maps are strikingly colourful
Small Blue Planet: A nice program, with a
blindingly fast gazetteer, but a little overpriced
Details
he Genius of Edison is part ofCompton’s Home Library seriesand is a comprehensive guide to
the American inventor, Thomas Edison. T h edesign mimics the typography of Edison’s eraand follows the theme through by using lotsof sepia tints, old black-and-white photosand silent-movie footage. While a lot of videohas been used, the makers have alsoincorporated animated photos and drawingsà la Monty Python, injecting a bit of fun intothe CD and making it enjoyable to use.
Edison seems to have been responsiblefor an enormous number of successfulinventions, so it’s heartening to discover thathe also came up with a few real turkeys,such as his talking doll. Inside each dollEdison placed a phonograph, and marketedthe toy as the Buzz Lightyear of Christmas1890. Unfortunately he didn’t invent bubblewrap, and 99 percent of the phonographs
broke during transportation.In order to make his inventions work and
to earn wads of cash, Edison also had tocome up with all the associated bits andpieces we take for granted. If you want tosell the idea of electric lighting you’ll have toproduce power stations, wiring, fuses,switches and, of course, meter boxes.
What makes this title work is the way it
places Edison’s life and works within anhistorical and social context. A nifty Timelinecharts the life and times of the man and hisfamily along the bottom of the screen, whilecharting what was happening in the worldacross the top. This includes events like thediscovery of penicillin, the invention of thetelephone, the publication of The Wizard ofO z, and World War One.
Lynley Oram
CYAN•MAGENTA•YELLOW•BLACK PERSONAL COMPUTER WORLD
100 • Personal Computer World • April 1997
onstruction of the InternationalSpace Station starts this yearand it is due to be inhabited from
mid-1998. Space Station Simulator lets youget one giant step ahead by creating aspacestation of your own, made from thecomponents that will be used for the actualstation. It is one of the first CD-ROMs to bewritten specifically for the Pentium MMX.
Designing the station involves stickingtogether modules into whatever formationyou fancy — it’s a bit like Lego but not aseasy to use. There are detailed 3D graphicsof all components which can be magnifiedand rotated with impressive smoothness.Despite being enhanced for the PentiumMMX, the movement of large assembledstations is jerky and the interior view issimilarly afflicted. There is a series oflocations with full 360-degree near-photorealistic views that are hotspotted toprovide information when you click on them.
It’s too easy to get disorientated when
you’re moving around this CD. It may be agood reflection of the difficulties of spacetravel but it’s annoying in software. With thegreen-on-black text, it means a lot of theinformation is hard to get at and to read.
Maris has included links to related websites which are full of detailed informationon the International Space Station. Oncethe thrill of building a station had worn off,
the web-based information proved to bemore interesting. Space Station Simulator isbeing bundled with new MMX PCs, with theretail version coming out on 1st May. Marissays this will feature more technicalinformation and a user-friendly interface.Unless the content is improved, you’d bebetter off putting the money towards aholiday in the 64-room hotel a Japanesecompany plans to have in space by 2020.
Adam Evans
What do you do if you see a space man? Park in it man! This CD is one giant step for DIY.
A guide to the life and work of Thomas Edison, in the style of his era and related happenings.
Space Station Simulator 1. 0
The Genius of E d i s o n
C
T
The big yellow nodules show you where to
stick your modules
C D - R O M sR e v i e w s
Price £34.99 (£29.78 ex VAT)
Contact Maris Multimedia 01932 781108
System Requirements Windows 95.
Good Points Some impressive graphics.
Bad Points A frustrating interface and poor use ofs o u n d .
Conclusion Worth a look if you’re really fascinatedby the International Space Station and don’t have aweb connection.
P r i c e £29.99 (£25.52 ex VAT)
Contact The Learning Company 0181 246 4000
System Requirements Win 95, 3.1 or Macintosh.
Good Points Great layout. Jam-packed with facts.Puts Edison’s work in the context of his era.
Bad Points The music — saloon-bar piano.
C o n c l u s i o n A nice way to explore history
The phonograph, Edison’s most famous
invention, made modern stereos possible
Details
Details
CYAN•MAGENTA•YELLOW•BLACK PERSONAL COMPUTER WORLD
K i d s R e v i e w s
With videos and kids’ favourite fauna from Farthing Wood, this adventure is a treat for all.
Animals of Farthing Wo o d S o f t w a r e
his referenceCD is designedfor children
aged 7 to 12 to use as ahomework aid, yet itdoesn’t set out to exciteand encourage them tolearn; rather, it assumesprior motivation. But it hasbeen well constructed,with good graphics andwhizz-bang type noises.
Children start in Zak’sbedroom where they clickon their chosen topic, eachwith a list of categorised subjects.
There are a number of ways to navigatearound this CD. While studying a subject,children can pull up a list of related articlesor look in the dictionary/thesaurus whereeach entry has hyperlinks to others, so theymay find themselves exploring subjects not
previously studied. Although the musicalpieces in this CD sound like they wererecorded using the keypad of a touch-tonephone, the title has many nifty features. Themost useful is that it can be linked to aword-processing application, so text orpictures can be downloaded into a
homework document. Presumably, thepublishers of this CD have assumed closesupervision of kids by their parents to avoidinadvertent plagiarism, even though theinformation included is very basic.
Lynley Oram
Personal Computer World • April 1997 • 103p 1 0 4
T
K i n g f i s h e r Learning ExplorerAn encyclopedia for kids who want to do their homework — it won’t inspire those who don’t!
his new CDfeatures thea n i m a t e d
characters from the BBC’sTV series. It pits children andtheir favourite animalcharacters against naturaland man-made disasters ina race for survival.
The object is to help theanimals of Farthing Woodreach the safety of WhiteDeer Park and escape thebulldozers and droughtwhich have ruined theirhomes. Along the way, they mustovercome obstacles like roads and riversand pass through various natural habitats.
To help the animals find their way,children must gather information fromnatural history video footage, picture clues
and audio hints, and accept help from theanimals themselves. When the child missesa clue or follows the wrong track, theprogram suggests how to retrace theirsteps. I found that children as young as fivemanaged the easy-level adventure despite
a recommended age range of seven to 11.The motivation for playing the game comesdown to using familiar skills. What childcould say no to building a log bridge over ariver or finding food for a starving animal?
Debbie Davies`
T
CYAN•MAGENTA•YELLOW•BLACK PERSONAL COMPUTER WORLD
102 • Personal Computer World • April 1997
S o f t w a r e
K i d sR e v i e w s
alling all Simpsons fanatics. Haveyou seen every episode onehundred times over? If so, throw
away those worn-out videos and forget SkyTV — make your own cartoon instead. TheSimpsons Cartoon Studio brings all themagic of Springfield directly to yourcomputer. The aim of the package is tocreate cartoon strips involving thecharacters from the popular series.
The concept is simple. Pick abackground from a range of scenes like thekitchen or the living room, and add someprops such as a table or the famousSimpsons sofa. Then choose thecharacters you would like to star in yourcartoon: perhaps Homer or PrincipalSkinner? Put the special effects and soundswith it and Bob’s your uncle! Or maybe not.
Okay, I said the concept was simple, butwhen you get down to it, it’s a bit baffling. I
started off by following the instructions inthe manual which gives you a step-by-stepguide to creating a standard cartoon. Thatwas fine, except my finished product didn’tturn out like the manual had promised itwould. I eventually gave up on theinstructions and began fiddling about with itmyself. And, I must say, some of mycartoons were quite good, even if they didlast all of five seconds.
You certainly need a knack for thispackage. If you want to produce a goodcartoon, you just have to stick with it and
keep trying, over and over again.There is little variation in the way you
work: there’s the drawing board in front ofyou and you can add and delete as youwant. I found myself adding things I didn’twant and not knowing how to get rid ofthem, or deleting things I d i d want and thennot being able to get them back. The“Editing Control Panel” was responsible forthis, consisting of six pictures of filmstrip indifferent “poses”. One hand pulling it fromthe left side, one hand pulling it from theright, two hands pulling both sides … It all
became terribly confusing, as you cani m a g i n e .
I loved the sound effects. Being able tomake Homer recite lines about waffles anddoughnuts all day was fabulous, and Apu’s“Thank you come again” was a favourite.
I’d sum up the package as a “stick at itand it will come to you” type of thing. Youneed patience to explore the possibilities forcreating different cartoons.
I would recommend Cartoon Studio toanybody who likes the Simpsons or thinksthey can do it that little bit better than theanimator, Matt Groening. The package issuitable for kids and adults alike. Bearing inmind it really is hard stuff, I wouldn’trecommend it to the under-16s.
Etelka Clark
Doh! Don’t be an “under-achiever and proud of it”. Get cartooning with Homer, Marge & Co.
The Simpsons Cartoon Studio
C
Price £34.99 (£29.77 ex VAT)
C o n t a c t Fox Interactive 01753 549442
System Requirements Windows 95, 3.1, 3.11and Macintosh
Good Points The feeling that comes with creatingyour own cartoon.
Bad Points The time it takes to do it.
Conclusion Come on! It i s the Simpsons.
Details
P r i c e £29.99 (£25.52 ex VAT)
C o n t a c t BBC Multimedia 0181 576 2112
System Requirements Win3.1 or Win95
Good Points A program to satisfy parents as wellas children.
Bad Points Best viewed in 16-bit colour.
Conclusion Like AA Milne’s P o o h s t i c k s, makesure this is in your collection.
Details
P r i c e £39.99 (£34.03 ex VAT)
C o n t a c t Liris Interactive 0171 306 1100
System Requirements Win3.1 and Win95
Good Points Great for helping kids with theirh o m e w o r k .
Bad Points Poor music quality. Could use morevideo clips.
C o n c l u s i o n Not a patch on the old-fashionedpaper encyclopedias when it comes to detail, butnevertheless quite useful.
Details
A b o v e
Mr Burns pays
Lisa a flying visit
L e f t
The editing
control panel is
c o n f u s i n g
Children can help their favourite characters to
overcome obstacles and reach safety
Zak’s bedroom may be a mess, but the
subjects and topics are tidily organised
CYAN•MAGENTA•YELLOW•BLACK PERSONAL COMPUTER WORLD
S o f t w a r e
R e v i e w s
ost of us are familiar with The Famous Five, abunch of boys and girls
aged between 10 and 12 years oldwho are allowed to roam thecountryside on their own and haveadventures, with never a responsibleadult in sight. You wonder why onearth their parents haven’t beenarrested in a blaze of “home alone”tabloid publicity.
The CD is crammed full of jollythings to do and has features thatenable it to be used as a teaching aid.Actress Susannah York narrates the book,but children can read it themselves. Thetext size can be enlarged and you canmake notes as you read the story.
It is beautifully illustrated with lots offifties-style drawings and clips from the TVseries, and it’s all jolly good fun. To reallyinvolve the kids in the story, there are
lashings of games and quizzes. These varyfrom crosswords to story-writing, and eveninclude a role-playing game. Hurrah!
Some of the activities, like the ones thataim to teach literacy skills, may smack toomuch of homework to really hold a child’sattention. Paradoxically, although it aims toteach subjects like literacy skills, the title isfull of author Enid Blyton’s grammatical
howlers, such as thanking kids for“adventuring with us”.
This is the first of many CDs planned forrelease by Systems Integrated Research, aBritish software company. Two further titlesare due for release soon.
Lynley Oram
104 • Personal Computer World • April 1997
K i d s
C y b e r p e s t
Five on a Tre a s u re Island
his is similar to otherCDs which provide a peton your desktop for you
to care for and play with, exceptthat this features a p e s t, designedto annoy you. However, the pest isendearing and didn’t annoy meenough for me to want to punish it.It inhabits a room with playthings init and likes to bury things, so placeyour ornaments on the top shelf.
Help is at hand for the pest’smental and physical development.Its personality depends on thehour of its birth (i.e. when you first load theCD). Mine was born at 3pm and wasmoody, anxious, and prone to biting andhiding. But help comes in the form ofadvisers like a Pest Vet and aPesterminator. The vet helps with problemsranging from fleas to constipation. The
Therapest advises you what to do aboutdepression, anxiety or introversion (in thepest, not you). If it gets manic, you’readvised to give it electric shock treatment.In extreme cases, the Pesterminator tellsyou to give it too much food so it explodes.Not at all pleasant.
The sound effects are good and thesense of humour is strong but a bit sick.
This CD is for adults and kids, butchildren will either quickly tire of it or growup with a distorted view of right and wrong.
Rachel Spooner
T
M
Billed as “the critter in your computer”, your pest needs food, water and (excessive) discipline.
When it’s raining and the children don’t want to play outside, this could be a spiffing wheeze.
P r i c e £14.99 (£12.75 ex VAT)
C o n t a c t Koch 01256 707767
System Requirements Win3.1 or Win95
Good Points An amusing way to spend breaksbetween work.
Bad Points S i c k .
Conclusion Good value if you like this kind oft h i n g .
Details
P r i c e £29.99 (£25.52 ex VAT)
C o n t a c t SiR 01773 820011
System Requirements Windows 3.1, 3.11 or 95
Good Points Lots to do. Good value for money.
Bad Points Some of the activities could be a bitmore exciting.
Conclusion Isn’t it a tad cruel to set kids up with aPC in their bedroom and then feed them CDsabout how much freedom children used to have?
Details
There are many ways to punish your pest,
from the sublime to the ridiculous
Yo, ho, ho! and a barrel of fifties-style fun on
Treasure Island with Dick, Julian and the rest
orks 4.0 is misnamed. It shouldhave been called “Office forKids”. The previous version (3.0)
was almost an “Office Lite”, and handledmost of the tasks needed in a smallbusiness. This version is similarly functionalbut assumes that if you don’t need themachismo of “Office Pro”, you must eitherbe a novice, or thick.
Your hand is held constantly, to thepoint where it becomes obstructive. TheEnvelopes function is a prime example.Normally, you write a letter, highlight theaddress and select “envelope”, expectingthe envelope size, return address and fontto be the default. Not so with Works 4.0.Instead, up pops a dialog with eight tabsand instructions on how to create anenvelope. Even after I clicked “envelope”and closed the ensuing dialog box, Works4.0 still asked if I wanted to create theenvelope! Remember when you were 16years old and your mum still tried to holdyour hand crossing the road? Well, that’show I felt when this happened. You canturn off the cue cards and you don’t have touse the wizards, but you can’t hide the“program for idiots” ethos.
At its core, Works 4.0 is an effectivepiece of programming. My installation tookup just over 20Mb on my hard drive,including the dictionary, thesaurus, andclip-art files, but with care you could prunethis to about 15Mb.
The database is merely a sophisticatedcardfile and the weakest item in the suite.Form design is straightforward with drag-and-drop labels and fields, but they’re flatfiles and fairly lightweight. I set up a simpledatabase of 1,000 names, addresses andnumbers with some date and yes/no fields,and discovered some limitations. Thenumber of queries which can be stored islimited and is made worse by the lack of amacro facility.
Sadly, the database emphasises designand presentation above the moreimportant functionality. It is frustrating tosee the duplication of information in a non-relational database.
The spreadsheet is better but it lacks
some of the functions of Office 95; mostpeople I know mainly use the simple mathsutilities. It’s intuitive to operate, with namedranges, auto-sum and auto-format. I likethe way I can set up a sheet to track myshare-holdings in five minutes flat, but thismay say more about my shareholdings thanthe spreadsheet. It’s so easy to use that Iwill happily knock up a quick-and-dirty one-off sheet to compare different Tessas withall their variations. For charts, just highlighta range and click.
The comms section is crude but usableand includes Zmodem and scripts.
The star of Works is its word processingutility. You can drag-and-drop sections ofdatabase and spreadsheets, insertpictures, drawings, notes and objects, anduse WordArt to jazz things up. You caneven write with it! The wizards are excellent,requiring little effort or thought to set upletterheads. The important word processingfunctions like print preview can be placedon the toolbar for quick access.
A new feature is Easy Text. Forexample, “Yours faithfully”, three blanklines and your name can be “easy texted”to typing “yf” and hitting F3. But as I like myname bold and underlined, the Easy Textmust be similarly formatted so it wouldneed two sequences of Easy Text. It’squicker to type and format it manually.There is a raft of pre-formatted Easy Text,
none of which I want as the function is tooinflexible for my needs.
Works 4.0 could easily be improved ifMicrosoft removed the hand-holding andadded macros. I would then regard it as areasonably-priced word processor withuseful spreadsheet and database functions.
David Thorpe
Personal Computer World • April 1997 • 109
Second Impressions Reviews
p110
MS Nanny for Win95, more like. Some nice features, but shame about all the hand-holding.
W
S o f t w a r e
MS Works 4.0 for Win95
Second ImpressionsReviews
108 • Personal Computer World • April 1997
his version of PFS Publisher isfor Windows 3.1 or later. I haveused it with Windows 3.1 and
Windows 95 and it doesn’t really changeexcept that it refuses to accept long filenames in Win 3.1. Publisher is supplied onthree 3.5in floppies and haslots of excellent clip-art, sometutorial samples, and a smallbut worthy collection ofbitstream TrueType fonts.
On launch you get a smallbut sensible toolbar. It’s notreconfigurable but you canedit the “QuickButton palette”,the other toolbar in a smallwindow which handles zoomand cut and floats on yourdesktop. If you click on the“new text frame” button onthe toolbar, you can instantlydrag out a frame and begintyping into it. Right-clickanywhere in the Publisherwindow and the toolbar willchange to another small butsensible toolbar with drop-down menus forall the font options. However, you do haveto go into the menus for items like tabs,spacing and drop caps. There’s a spell-checker and thesaurus, as well.
Initially, when typing, I found the wordprocessor a little slow to respond but haveadjusted to it over the past year. It willimport ASCII, RTF, MS Word, WordStar,AmiPro, WordPerfect, and PFS Works textformats. The word processor also offerssome interesting features such as anautomatic contents and index page maker.
Another useful feature is the NewWindow check box in the Open and Newdialog boxes: when you have finished withone document, you can un-check thisoption to automatically close it.
When setting up the page layout forpublication you discover a nice featurecalled Facing Pages which allows you toview the left and right pages of a booklettogether. It has a good “master page”feature which allows you to program
objects to appear in all pages that youspecify. Publisher also has a “MacroRecorder” option in the system.
The package comes with a selection oftemplates and a cataloguing system forthese plus any you make yourself. It has itsown cataloguing system for graphics files,but unfortunately not all file formats aresupported.
Publisher’s documentation is excellent onpaper but pathetic on screen. Essentially, allthe help file lists are the menu commands,which becomes annoying. However, help isavailable on the status bar when you floatyour mouse pointer over programmed “hotspots” such as toolbar buttons.
What surprises me particularly aboutPublisher is its system requirements. It only
requires Windows 3.1, DOS 3.1, a 286processor, mouse, 2Mb RAM, 6.5Mb ofhard drive space and EGA graphics. Thiscan only be described as a miracle for non-state-of-the-art machine users.
My major complaint is the Snap ToGuides and Snap To Rulerfeatures. When you zoom into 200 or 400 percent, youfind that these features haveonly roughly aligned theframes to the guides orrulers. To get them deadright you have to zoom in to800 percent, set your mouseto the slowest movementand arrange them manually.What a pain in the neck!
Another annoyance withPublisher is that it insists onhaving at least onepublication open at a time,and when all the publicationwindows are minimised, theFile menu cuts itself down toonly two items — Printer
Setup and Exit. Strange.So would I recommend this package?
It’s very good value for money: if you areshort of cash it’s a good choice, but only ifyou aren’t fussy.
Thomas Cumming
Desktop publishing at a bargain price for those short of cash or power on their PCs.
PFS Publisher 1.1
T
S o f t w a r e 1YEARTEST
Price £29.99 (£26 ex VAT)
Contact The Learning Company 0181 246 4000
Good Points Cheap. Easy to use. You can run iton your old 286.
Bad Points Poor “snap to” features. Poor on-screen help.
Conclusion It has served me well. A worthy yetaffordable package.
Details
1YEARTEST
Price £66 (£56 ex VAT)
Contact Microsoft 0345 002000
Good Points Decent spreadsheet and wordprocessing facilities.
Bad Points Too much hand-holding for my liking.
Conclusion A solid, basic, all-in-one suite thatdoes the job.
Details
Long Term Tests
How you can contributeto our Long Term Testssection
We welcome readers’ contributions to ourLong Term Tests section and pay for any wepublish. If you’ve used a piece of hardware orsoftware for some time, write a 300-wordarticle for hardware, or a 650-word piece forsoftware (with a Gif format screenshot), andsend it on disk in MS Word (Mac or PC) orASCII format to Dylan Armbrust at the usualPCW address, marking your envelope “LongTerm Test”, or email it to [email protected].
PFS Publisher 1.1: a simple interface for a simple, yet effective, DTP package
Arghh! Works
4.0 really
makes you
work hard to
print a simple
envelope
e tested the Multimedia Pro forour PC group test in PCW August’96. In our lab tests, the machine
turned in an average performance for aPentium 133MHz, with 16Mb RAM and1.7Gb hard drive. It then underwent a long-term test and wassubjected to asix-monthpounding. Itsurvived, and hasproved to besolid andsturdy.
The PCcame with 31CD-ROMs, aQuickShotjoystick, a microphoneand speakers. First-timeusers would appreciatethe variety of software.
All multimedia aspects were high quality.With an IBM Sound Miracle 28.8 ISA card,based on an Mwave chipset and enhancedby the Trust speakers, the sound was adelight. CD audio quality from the Azteceight-speed drive was good and oftenreplaced the hi-fi during long work periods.Modem and internet activities were
supported by theMiracle 28.8 cardwhose functionalityand reliabilityremained stable
over the test period.Solid graphics
performance camefrom a Matrox Millenniumcard and a 17in Daytek
monitor; a pairing whichwould not have
disappointed any gameror SoHo user.
It is difficult to fault the PC Science. Allthe components were of a high standardand it maintained respectable performance.The only weak point was the memory: thefour slots were all utilised and any upgradeplans would entail a complete SIMMreplacement. It coped with nearly every newsoftware package, two operating systemsand my favourite legacy DOS shareware.
Jonathan Ricks
110 • Personal Computer World • April 1997
y today’s standards, the CanonBJ-10sx Bubblejet seems slowand lacking in print quality. In
360dpi mode it can only manage 110characters per second andit’s not that quietwhen it’s runningfull bore. But to befair, three years agoits attributes were not below average.
It weighs justunder 2kg (withoutbatteries) andoccupies much thesame footprint asan issue of PCWon the desk. It isquite portable and this iswhere the Canon gains favour: it
seems to be a printer destined toaccompany a notebook PC on its travels.The BJ-10sx could be defined as a neatproduct for a niche market.
When in desk mode, the printer can bemated with Canon’s ASF 64200, a 50-sheet automatic feeder which clips onto theback of the machine. However, this means
the unit sits upside-down and back-to-front. This ungainly affair is intended toreduce the drudgery of loading papermanually but in practice the complexmechanism required to pass eachsheet between the two, fundamentally
separate, pieces of equipment canbe a bit temperamental.
Occasionally they jam, orat other times two or
three pages get fed throughthe printer instead of one.
After nearly three years of flittingbetween desks 100 miles apart, I havefound that the Canon BJ-10sx was aneconomical and reliable choice. Its pairingwith the ASF 64200 may be eccentric, butultimately the combination makes asuccessful compromise betweenportability, quality and speed.
Martin Cooper
Have printer, will travel. This bubblejet may chug along slowly but it is portable and reliable.
A solid PC for home or SoHo use which looks good, sounds great and won’t break the bank.
Canon BJ-10sx
B
W
H a r d w a r e
H a r d w a r e
Second ImpressionsReviews
3YEARTEST
Price (Discontinued item)
Contact Canon 0121 680 8062
Good Points Easily portable and cheap to run.
Bad Points Optional sheet feeder is rathertemperamental.
Conclusion Reliable and a pleasure to use.
Details
Price Then: £1,762 (£1,499 ex VAT). Now (approx): £1,400 (£1,200 ex VAT)
Contact PC Science 01423 323386
Good Points Great graphics. Complete homemultimedia bundle. Upgradeable.
Bad Points Full memory banks.
Conclusion Quality components in a solid PC. For the money, you can’t really go wrong.
Details
PC Science Multimedia Pro P1336MONTH
TEST
server, making one all-encompassing platform calledDomino Server 4.5 powered by Lotus Notes. Effectively,Lotus has combined the strengths of the internet with thesuperior security, application development andinformation management features built into Notes.
The Domino server translates Domino and otherexisting Notes databases into web format on the fly. Thiscontrasts with Lotus’s previous web solution, InterNotes,which could convert Notes databases into HTML filesand make them available to clients via a separate webserver. With InterNotes, the conversion process occurredat regularly scheduled intervals so that when a documentwas changed, or added to, on the Notes database theweb document would reflect this change after the nextscheduled publishing refresh. In order for this process tofunction at all, there had to be an InterNotes-enabledNotes server running and connected to the internet.
Domino is a kind of hybrid Notes server. It extends thecapabilities of the older InterNotes technology beyondthe one-way publishing solution. InterNotes was fine forpushing information out to a web server but useless as aplatform for building and deploying applications. Dominodoes more than just publish documents and fill out forms.It allows users to make use of Notes applications over thenet (or intranet) with little or no change to their design.
Security One of the great advantages of Domino is that it providesweb access to the many Notes security features. Accessto any database can be configured with securityrestrictions right down to the field level so that any of theexisting company workflow applications developed inNotes, which previously required a Notes client, can nowbe used over the web using an ordinary browser.
Before employing Domino, users must be assigned anHTTP password which is stored in Domino’s Name andAddress Book (NAB), the central repository for all user-login information. The various security features of access
control, authentication and encryptionare then implemented, but in adifferent way to the traditionalclient/server model. Domino opensup access to a whole world of net-connected browsers and this throwsup a load of security implications thatdid not exist in the old model.
Seasoned Notes administratorswill know that in previous versions itwas possible to set up anonymousaccess to a given database. Thisallowed users to read and write datawith no registered authentication, orrecord, of their access. If you want toprotect a database from this kind ofpublic access, the Anonymousparameter in the Access Control List(ACL) can be set to “No Access”.
The point is that this step has to beperformed explicitly. If the Anonymous
parameter is not set, then users are granted all theprivileges defined in a database’s Default Access. Thiskind of security issue is not so crucial under the traditionalclient/server model where access to databases can becarefully configured, but with Domino’s web access
architecture, data becomes far more vulnerable.In Domino, security can be defined on two levels. ACL
files can be defined for individual databases to limitaccess to specific users or groups. Your existing ACLsshould be thoroughly checked before you install Dominoas you may want to change your security policy. Then,when Domino has been installed, the NAB is updatedwith an HTTP password for each user so that requests toaccess specific databases can be validated against agiven user’s name and password. This provides exactlythe kind of security with which users are familiar, over theweb: simple usernames and passwords sent down thewire in response to access requests.
CYAN•MAGENTA•YELLOW•BLACK PERSONAL COMPUTER WORLD
Personal Computer World • April 1997 • 115
Lotus Domino 4.5 R e v i e w s
otus Domino is more than just an upgrade toexisting Notes software. It is a response to thefast-moving software market in which
“groupware” has undergone a process of radical change.In the past couple of years, the internet has providedbusinesses with a new, simpler, groupware model: onewhich allows users to embrace almost any type ofinformation using a single piece of common software, theweb browser. Hence the groupware market has shifteddrastically, and consequently, Notes has been forced toreposition. With the release of Domino Server 4.5, Lotushopes to re-establish its hold on the groupware market
by uniting the two worlds of Notes and the internet.Until recently, the one disadvantage of using Notes as
a groupware platform was that it required the support ofa client on the desktop. The architecture provedexpensive, not only because of software costs, but alsobecause of the expertise required for its configurationand support. Many people perceived Notes as complex,expensive, and intimidating.
To alleviate some of these concerns, and to re-p o s i t i o nitself as the leading groupware vendor, Lotus has madesome bold changes. In this release, the Domino 1.0 webserver add-in has been integrated with the Notes 4.x
114 • Personal Computer World • April 1997
Domino is not so much an upgrade; more a case of marrying Notes to the net.Eleanor Turton-Hill reviews Lotus’s bid to knock spots off the groupware market.
Lotus Domino 4.5
L
p 1 1 7
The Lotus Domino web site is a showcase for the product itself, set up to
demonstrate the powerful mix of the internet and Notes
The security
features built into
Notes are also
demonstrated on
the Domino web
site. Certain
areas of the site
are protected
with user names
and passwords
Higher-level security can be defined using SSLencryption. This ensures a higher level of protection for alltransactions between the client and the server. SSL isnow an industry standard supported both by NetscapeNavigator and Microsoft Explorer. It provides a high levelof confidence that network traffic is not being tamperedwith and that the appropriate messages are being sentback from the server side.
Client software The security features built into Domino for web accessseem impressive — so much so that it is difficult to justifythe existence of the Notes client software. So, howexactly does the client software now fit into Notes’ newarchitecture? The features and capabilities, which havebeen passed on to the web browser, are now socomprehensive that the traditional client software seemsvirtually redundant. So why would anyone spend the timeand money on a traditional client/server setup?
The first, and probably overriding justification forimplementing the traditional architecture (especially forlarge corporations) is security. With traditional clientsoftware, there is still a far finer control over accessprivileges, controlling security right down to field-levelencryption. Second, certain workgroup applications likecalendars, scheduling, and accessing mail offer muchhigher functionality under the client software.
There are many other capabilities that exist in the fully-fledged client software which are beyond the scope of asimple web client; like replication, for instance. If you area laptop user, often away from the network anddisconnected, you will need the Object store and
replication functions provided in the client software. WithHTTP retrieval now added to the client, you will no longerbe required to go through the Notes server for yourinternet access. You will be able to use Notes’ agenttechnology locally with processes configured toperiodically collect information from certain web sites.
Notes’ replication facility is one of its strongestfeatures, placing it in a unique position when compared
with another type of groupware.Notes lets you make a copy of yourdata on a laptop and then, even if youare not connected to a network, youcan work on it and update it. Whenyou return to the network andreconnect, Notes will synchroniseyour changes with the shared copy ofthe data, resolving any conflicts as itcombines the two versions.
There are several other significantweb-related improvements to thisversion of the client software. Forexample, users will now be able tolaunch Netscape or Explorer browsersby clicking on a URL in any Notesdocument. POP3 mail support is alsointegrated into this version so thatmailboxes hosted in Notes can beaccessed by any internet POP3 mailclient like Eudora, the Windows 95Inbox, or Lotus ccMail 7.0.
Tools for developers Notes is now compatible with mostmajor operating systems includingOS/2 Warp, Macintosh, various UNIX
CYAN•MAGENTA•YELLOW•BLACK PERSONAL COMPUTER WORLD
Personal Computer World • April 1997 • 117
Lotus Domino 4.5 R e v i e w s
p 1 1 8
How does Domino work?
Domino works by translating constructs, which are specific to the Notesarchitecture, into HTML. This translation, which is done in real time,enables Notes databases to be displayed in a web client. So all theelements which make up a Notes application (i.e. text databases,formulas, views and links) become web constructs and ultimately theybecome dynamic interactive web sites.
As a developer, you need have no knowledge of this translationprocess because it is completely transparent. All the building blocks,which you use in Notes to create applications such as links or Actionbuttons, are translated into URLs in the web client. When Dominotranslates Notes constructs into HTML, it also creates URLs whereneeded. So as the application designer, you need have no knowledge ofthe web page creation process.
For example, setting up links with Domino is achieved simply bycreating Link Hotspots as you normally would in Notes. URLs are createdin the web documents on the fly, and the HTML links created in Dominoare much more stable than typical web page links. Because ordinaryHTML links are file-based, when a file is renamed or moved, the link isbroken. Notes links work differently because they depend on uniquelyidentifying the object of the link. A document could be reclassified, ormoved, and the link will still be maintained. This is a typical example ofhow Domino combines the best functions of Notes and the internet.
To protect your Notes database from users who are not in the Public Address
Book, “No Access” is assigned to the “Anonymous” parameter and this causes
Domino to challenge all users who attempt to access the database for their
name and password. Here, the security settings to the VNU Labs Notes server
are viewed from Microsoft’s Internet Explorer
CYAN•MAGENTA•YELLOW•BLACK PERSONAL COMPUTER WORLD
platforms (including IBM’s AIX, Sun Solaris and HP-UX )and Microsoft Windows and Windows NT. A whole rangeof development tools are provided with Notes for buildinga p p l i c a t i o n s .
The language with which most people will be familiaris LotusScript, an embedded BASIC scripting languagewhich is common to other Lotus applications such asApproach 96, Freelance 96 and Word Pro 96.LotusScript is a simple language which has developedmore powerful functions over the past few years. Itprovides high-level functions forcontrolling and manipulating objectswithin Lotus applications.
One of the most significantimprovements in Notes 4.5 is itsability to execute Java applets; animportant capability for developersand for the computer industry atlarge. Java is, after all, a fast-growinglanguage with importantcharacteristics like platformindependence, security, and theability to divide processing betweenclients and servers; attributes whichhave been important in Notes’development right from the start.
The incorporation of Java appletsinto Notes applications has a two-foldeffect. First, it enhances the dynamicnature of Domino pages and extendsfunctionality on the client side.Second, at the server end Java canbe used to implement server-basedagents that talk directly to Domino’sback-end services. Java classes andapplets reside on the server andreferences are made to them fromDomino documents.
Also available to the developer isthe Lotus Components suite of
business applets designed specifically for Notes. Thesecomponents are, technically speaking, enhanced ActiveXcontrols which can be used by developers as buildingblocks when developing business applications. There areseven applets in all, including a spreadsheet, a chartingprogram, a file viewer and a template builder.
A C++ API is also built into Notes which providesdevelopers with an object-orientated interface and a setof C++ classes which allow application programs tocreate, manage and access Notes databases. Thisprovides developers with a consistent object modelsimilar to that of the Notes user interface, providingaccess to Notes-specific functions.
The future for NotesLotus Domino is an impressive piece of work and despiteany threat posed to the product by the explosive growthof the internet, the fact remains that Notes is a superiortool for implementing complex groupware systems.Unlike the internet, Notes was developed right from thestart to be a dedicated groupware tool with a secureshared database structure, integrated email, and a richdevelopment environment which can be used to buildyour own custom applications.
The web, despite its provision of easy and openaccess to information, still has a lot of catching up to dobefore it can provide the kind of facilities which Notesusers have taken for granted in the past. The decisionpoint for most businesses will centre on the level of
118 • Personal Computer World • April 1997
Lotus Domino 4.5R e v i e w s
C o m p r e h e n s i v e
support for
developers is
provided on the
Domino web site,
keeping you up
to date with the
latest news as
well as providing
d i s c u s s i o n
forums and
g e n e r a l
d e v e l o p m e n t
advice The intranet
The explosion of the internet had a big effect on Lotus Notes, although noteveryone was quick enough to predict it at the beginning. But gradually,as the internet began to be used in business, internet programs migratedonto internal networks, i.e. LANs and WANs using TCP/IP as a networkprotocol. The invisible network protocols that make the internet work areTCP (Transmission Control Protocol) and IP (Internet Protocol). Althoughtraditionally the preferred internet OS was UNIX, TCP/IP is totally platform-independent and can run any internal network alongside other networkprotocols. Consequently, the same programs you use on the net can beused on an internal network.
The growth of the internet led to the growth of the “intranet” and hencea whole new flurry of activity in the area of groupware. Users, as well asmanagement in businesses of all sizes, were eager to improve theircommunication and workflow using the simple browser interface as theirclient. People found (and still are finding) that this simple architectureprovided them with most of the functions they needed to do their jobs:they could instantly get hold of the information they needed and couldinteract with fellow employees.
One of the most important factors in the development of the intranetwas the hardware independence of the browser. In any organisation, asystem that is hardware independent provides an ideal infrastructure forconnecting all machines together, rather than just isolated groups.
An important point to remember is that a TCP/IP network works thesame whether the data resides on an intranet or the internet. If you arerunning TCP/IP you can access both without making any adjustments toyour software.
p 1 2 0
complexity they want in their workgroup systems. Many intranets are built on the assumption that all you
need for a groupware system is a web server, web clientsconnected via TCP/IP and maybe some CGI programsand security. But over time, the system begins to developand other tools are required for HTML editing, and formanaging links as they become increasingly complex.Then, as the information on the site builds up, thenumber of users starts to increase and you soon need toimplement a proper security system. As time passes andusers become more familiar with the system, they start to
search the server for specific pieces of data. In otherwords, demand increases for functions which requireapplication and form design tools, and eventually morecomplex workflow tools.
It’s easy to see how a humble intranet system endsup requiring a similar level of sophistication to that whichLotus has been cultivating in Notes groupware for manyyears. It is accepted by most industry critics thatcurrently-shipping web technologies aren’t as powerfulas Notes, but technical complexity does not guaranteesuccess. Notes is faced with a significant challenge if it isto regain its former dominance in the groupware market.
In a way, the future of Notes is outside Lotus or IBM’scontrol. Its success or failure depends on the dynamicsof a complex software industry in which trends grow anddevelop and fads come and go at a furious pace. Formost businesses, the crucial step is in their analysis ofwhat kind of groupware they are going to need and howthey think their system will grow in the future.
There is no reason, of course, why Notes and the webshould be mutually exclusive. The two technologieschallenge each other and ultimately the development thattakes place will be to the business customer’s benefit.The popularity of the web has certainly hastened thepace of Domino’s technical development, but this hasalso had a reverse effect: more complex workflow, emailand database application design tools are beginning toappear in rival web technologies. In the end, the overalleffect of this technological change will be good for themarket: you get more features more quickly, so onceagain the pace of change drives prices downwards.
Domino 4.5 costs £400 (£341 ex VAT) for a single processorversion; £1,861 (£1,584 ex VAT) for a multiprocessor version.C o n t a c t Lotus 01784 445808.
CYAN•MAGENTA•YELLOW•BLACK PERSONAL COMPUTER WORLD
120 • Personal Computer World • April 1997
Lotus Domino 4.5R e v i e w s
Lotus Components include six core applets: Chart,Comment, Draw/Diagram, File Viewer, ProjectScheduler and Spreadsheet, plus the LotusComponent Template Builder to customise the LotusComponents into business objects. These applets aredesigned to work within the Notes environment andare geared to two distinct groups: users anddevelopers.
For the end-user, these fast applets are intended astools to speed up common daily tasks which mightotherwise involve loading a separate applicationoutside of the Notes environment. With a spreadsheet,word processor, and other general office tools availablewithin Notes, documents can easily be created andattached to Notes documents.
For developers, the Lotus components are providedas programmable ActiveX controls designed to extendthe functionality of Notes applications. Each one can becustomised to the specific needs of an application andbecause of the high degree of integration between
them, data can easily be passed. As well as providingtheir own applets, Lotus is also supporting Java andhence the JavaBeans standard which defines a set ofcomponent APIs which enable developers to createmore powerful cross-platform web applications.
You may well be wondering where this leaves LotusSmartSuite? The way Lotus sees it, the componentapplets are cut-down productivity tools. They providevery basic functions which are geared towards theirintegration with Notes. Each SmartSuite application, bycontrast, offers full functionality. The distinctionbetween the two types of application seems clear, yetin practice their roles in day-to-day work are bound tooverlap and it remains to be seen how this will affectthe suite market.
There is, of course, a large degree of integrationbetween the new components and SmartSuite. Thecharting tool in the component suite has been deriveddirectly from Freelance Graphics, and Word Pro is nowa container for Lotus Components.
Lotus Domino enables current Notes users to extend the
reach of their Notes applications to any web client. Here
we’ve linked some of our existing Notes 4.0 databases with
Microsoft’s Internet Explorer on the client
Lotus Components
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126 • Personal Computer World • April 1997
sk most people what the Japanese companyCanon makes and they’ll probably saycameras, copiers or bubblejet printers. But
there is a lot more to this company than meets the eye.In fact, cameras only account for around eight percentof the company’s sales. Copiers and computerperipherals took about two thirds of Canon’s £14 billionsales in 1995. The company is also heavily involved inoptical products, solar energy, biotechnology andprojects that could change the face of personalcomputing. These include high-density memories, flat-screen displays and high-speed optical networks.
The secret behind the success of many Japaneseelectronics companies is simple: they invest a lot ofmoney in research and development, keep one eye firmly
on the future, and will radically change direction to stayahead of the game. Canon invests over ten percent of itsbudget on R&D and, in 1995, filed 1,087 new patents inthe US, second only to IBM with 1,383. Canon’spresident, Fujio Mitarai, says the company is nowpreparing for a new age: “The backbone industry of the21st century will be the information industry,” he says.
Hiroshi Tanaka, Canon’s vice-chairman, takes up thetheme: “We’re entering a multimedia era in which threeindustries will dominate: the platform industry, thedistribution industry, and the content industry. We needto acquire other technologies if we are to be a leader.”Hence the drive to develop new products.
Canon’s Research Centre in Kanagawa is a largecomplex housing 229 researchers. The place is more
Famous for printers and cameras, Canon actually has its finger in lots of pies.When George Cole travelled to HQ, he found diverse plans for the next century.
Work in progress
A
informal than you might expect from a Japaneseworkplace. Many of the staff are casually dressed andoperate a flexi-time system which lets them choose thehours they work. Workers recline in easy chairs in a brain-storming room and bounce around ideas. After work,there’s a games room where people can relax, have abeer or play the popular Japanese board game, Go.
One of Canon’s biggest projects involves 80 workersdeveloping a new flat-screen display. Many of the majorJapanese electronics companies are investing much timeand money in flat-screen systems such as LCDs, gas-plasma, plasma-addressed liquid crystals and all mannerof exotic technologies. Major markets envisaged for flat-screen displays include PCs (notebook and desktop), in-car navigation systems and wall-hanging televisions. Forsome time now, Canon has been working on ferroelectricliquid crystal displays (FLCDs).
As the name suggests, FLCDs have a similar structureto ordinary LCDs. The FLCD molecules are sandwichedbetween glass plates and polarising filters. When avoltage is applied, the FLCD molecules change theirorientation and, depending on the switching direction, willblock light or let it pass through. FLCDs offer a number ofadvantages over conventional LCDs. They offer fasterswitching which means better contrast and resolution.They offer a wider viewing angle and are only severalcentimetres thick. What is more, they retain their memorywhen the power is switched off: you can switch off yourPC monitor without losing the last screen display.
Canon began selling 15in FLCD monitors for PCs andworkstations in Japan in January 1995, but at a cost ofover several thousand pounds each they’re not cheap.Canon admits FLCDs are too expensive when comparedwith ordinary LCD screens (which in turn cost far morethan a conventional Cathode Ray Tube — CRT — display).Hence the move to a new type of flat screen display: theSurface Conduction Electron Emitter Display, or SED.
An SED works by coating electrons with an ultra-thinPalladium Oxide film and placing them on a quartz orsodalime glass substrate. On top is placed an array ofphosphors, similar to ones used by conventional CRTdisplays. By applying a voltage, a stream of electrons areproduced and these hit the phosphors, producing light.
SEDs offer some advantages over LCDs. They requirea lower drive voltage and so are less power-hungry, andthey have a wider viewing angle. An ordinary CRT displayuses special circuits to focus the electrons on the correctline of phosphors, but SEDs don’t need a focusingsystem so are simpler to construct.
Canon has developed a 3.1in SED prototype which,at present, requires a trolley-full of electronics to make itwork. Using pictures sourced from a video-disc player,the SED device looks impressive. But more impressive isCanon’s goal to convert this crude prototype into acommercial product by the year 2000. By this time, thecompany aims to launch a 40in SED set, which will bejust ten centimetres deep and weigh around 18kg.
In the computer world, it seems you can never be toofast or have too much memory. When floppy disks
became too small, CD-ROMs arrived, and higher-densityDVD-ROMs look set to supersede these. Canon is lookingbeyond optical disc technology for a new generation ofmemory systems which could store the equivalent of 200CD-ROMs on a chip the size of a finger nail.
Like many new technologies, it’s based on an oldidea. Canon is using a substance called Langmuir-Blodgett (LB) film, which was discovered over 60 yearsago. LB film is composed of organic molecules which aresimilar to those formed when soap floats on water. Anultra-thin film forms on top of the water, and when this isplaced on a substrate you get an LB film.
In the mid-eighties, Canon discovered that byapplying a voltage to certain types of LB films you couldcreate a memory device. The voltage alters theresistance of the LB film,which is reversible,producing a switchingmemory. The LB memoryuses an incredibly smallprobe which looks like arecord-player stylus. Theneedle tip is atomic size andplaced just above thesurface of the LB film. Avoltage is applied creating aminute recording spot thatmeasures just tennanometres across (ananometre is one millionth ofone millimetre). As a result,one terabit (one millionmillion bits) of data can berecorded in one squarecentimetre, some 10,000times greater than therecording density of a CD.
Don’t throw away yourCD-ROM or DVD-ROM driveyet, though. Canon hasmanaged to develop LBmemories that store kilobitsof data rather than terabits.And the LB system won’t becheap either. Although LBmemory devices open theway to storing large amountsof music and video on achip, Canon thinks a morelikely market will be for high-quality image processingand offering higher memorycapacities for notebook PCs.But don’t expect to see LBdevices on the market for atleast five years.
Another technology onthe horizon is a high-speedLAN, delivering multimedia to
Hive of industry:
C a n o n ’ s
Research Centre
in Kanagawa,
J a p a n
p 1 2 9
Bubblejet heads in
p r o d u c t i o n ,
employees involved
in a brainstorming
session,
a n d Canon’s HQ
C a n o nF e a t u re s
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C a n o n F e a t u re s
p 1 3 1
the desktop. These networks will use fibre-optic linksoperating at speeds of up to 156Mb/sec. By comparison,ISDN offers speeds of up to 128Kb/sec. Canon isdeveloping a multimedia LAN that will serve up to 32 PCswith video, sound, graphics and animation, but it won’treach the market for several years.
One technology that h a s arrived is a new bubblejetsystem which can be used for fabric printing. Canonlaunched its first bubblejet printer in 1981, and makesmachines for Apple and Hewlett-Packard. Bubblejets usean array of ultra-fine nozzles, each one about half thethickness of a human hair. The nozzles are filled with inkwhich is heated. The heat causes a bubble to form, whichexpands and is then ejected from the nozzle. Each nozzledischarges 6,000 ink droplets a second. For comparison,a hummingbird flaps its wings 100 times per second.
“When we first developed the bubblejet, we wanted itto replace the dot-matrix printer,” says Takashi Saito,director of Canon’s Bubblejet Product Group. The speedat which inkjets (which includes bubblejets) have come todominate the printer market is testament to the format’sability to offer near-laser print quality at affordable prices.
Around 60 million PCs were expected to be sold
around the world in 1996, along with 42 million printers.Dot-matrix printers were forecast to sell around six toseven million units, laser printers seven to eight million,and inkjets, a massive 30 million units. Inkjet technologyis also used in faxes, photocopiers, electronictypewriters, standalone word processors and evennotebook PCs with built-in printers.
Now, bubblejet technology is being used by the textileindustry. Canon has invested about £30 million on thetechnology which can print on fabrics including cotton,silk, nylon, wool and polyester. Tests are also being doneon leather and sheepskin. The bubblejet fabric printer is amassive machine which looks like a modern paperprinting press and costs around £700,000.
The fabric printer prints at 360dpi and uses 9.6cm-wide print heads, each of which has 1,360 nozzles. Thereare eight ink stations and sixteen print heads arranged intwo groups to allow two-way printing. The system offersup to 250 gradations of colour and prints at speeds of upto one metre per minute. The fabric printer can also printon materials up to 1.65 metres in width.
The fabric printing system uses special image transfersoftware which has a palette of 16.7 million colours. The
The PC market in Japan
n 1994, fewer than one in ten Japanesehouseholds had a PC. But in 1997, this figure isexpected to reach one in five. As has happenedin many countries around the world, the PC has
turned into a consumer electronics item. Take a strollaround the Akihabara, the computer and consumerelectronics centre in Tokyo which makes London’sTottenham Court Road look like a market stall, and you’llfind loads of PCs, peripherals and software outlets — somedepartment stores sell nothing but software. There aremany Japanese hobbyists who like nothing more thanbuilding their own PCs, and at Akihabara you’ll find everycomponent you could need.
Around eight million PCs were sold in Japan in 1996and, unlike many other territories, sub-notebook andnotebook PCs sell well, accounting for about one third ofthe market. Around three quarters of home PCs have CD-ROM drives, and this year [1997] will see the arrival of thefirst DVD-ROM drives. DVD movie players went on sale inJapan in November 1996.
The PC market is dominated by the Japanesecompanies NEC and Fujitsu, which account for 40percent and 18 percent of the market respectively. Thetop-selling Western PC brands are IBM (ten percent) andCompaq (less than four per cent). The Apple Macintoshhas around 14 percent of the market. But when it comesto software, Microsoft rules, with Windows 95, Office andWord being some of the biggest-selling programs.
Another top-seller is a program called Ekispert(sounds like expert) which is used to calculate travellingexpenses. Many Japanese employees spend aconsiderable time commuting to and from work,especially to major cities like Tokyo and Osaka. Ekispert presents users with an on-screen graphicaldisplay of train stations, and users simply click on thestations they use. The program then automaticallycalculates the cost. Eikspert is so popular that it comespre-loaded on many home PCs.
Japanese consumers have also taken to digital
cameras, with around one million units expected to havebeen sold in 1996.
The internet has also exploded in Japan, with internetcafés springing up in major cities. According to CyberSpace Japan, there were over 200 ISPs in Japan at thebeginning of 1996. The biggest group of internet users areaged 20 to 29, and 97 percent are male. Around threemillion people use online services.
Many consumer electronics companies are alsooffering products that span home computing and homeentertainment. Sharp and Sanyo market televisions withbuilt-in web browsers, with the latter selling around 2,000units a month. Hitachi has developed a digital camerathat records both still and moving video images on a PCCard. The 260-megabyte PC Card hard disk can store2,800 still images, 18 minutes of MPEG-1 video, or aboutfour hours of audio.
The Japanese electronics giants, Sharp and Fujitsu,have joined forces to launch a new type of onlinetelevision guide called InterTV. The system offers anelectronic program guide which displays the channelinformation in the form of a table on a PC screen. Userscan customise the tables so that, for example, theydisplay programmes by time, channel or genre. It is alsopossible to link up to web pages devoted to televisionpersonalities or television channels.
Fujitsu has developed special software that allowsInterTV users to program their video recorder from theirPC. Once the video timer has been sent, the data can besent from the PC to the video recorder via an infra-redcommunication port.
Hitachi has developed the Interdisc, a CD-ROMwhich stores a mix of video clips, web pages andNetscape Navigator. The video clips use VHS-qualityMPEG digital video, but PC users do not need a specialvideo board to view them as all playback is done withMPEG software on the disc. Hitachi hopes thatcompanies selling similar products or services will puttheir web pages onto an Interdisc CD-ROM.
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design artwork can be scanned into the system or takenfrom a CD-ROM or other storage medium. A PC carriesout colour matching, editing and manipulation. Thesystem runs under Windows and handles images fromAdobe Photoshop.
Canon says that one of the system’s big advantagesis its speed. A production cycle, from design to printing,can take three days, compared with two months whenusing conventional fabric printing methods. Takashi Saitosays that while Canon’s system is in competition withrotary and flat-screen printing systems, it’s not designedto replace conventional printing technologies: “If youwant a fast turnover then our system is good,” he says,“For instance, if you need to respond to fashion changesquickly. And if you are producing small orders of up to 50metres, then our system is cheaper than traditionalmethods.” He adds that the fabric printer is moreenvironmentally friendly, as there is no waste ink or water.
But Saito admits that Canon’s fabric printing systemhas drawbacks. The actual printing process is slow,which means higher costs. Saito says it’s currently two tothree times more expensive than other mass productionsystems but there are plans to halve this by increasingthe printing speed. Vivid colours are not yet possible, andon some fabrics there is a small risk of ink rubbing off.
Even so, the Japanese company Kanebo is selling ties,scarves and other goods printed with Canon’s system,and the Japanese designer, Issey Miyake, has producedleather coats printed with the bubblejet technology.Canon adds that several European companies are alsointerested in the technology. Another Japanese company,Okasei, is using bubblejet technology in card-vendingmachines on street corners which people use to make uppersonal and business cards.
New technologies like digital cameras andcamcorders need good-quality hard-copy systems, andSaito showed what the next generation of bubblejetprinters could be offering. Handing around large colourglossy prints made on a bubblejet, Saito asked the pressto examine the quality. The resolution wasn’t as good asthat from a 35mm print but it was pretty damn close. Thistype of picture quality should be available in about a year.
Looking further to the future, Saito (who already hasfour bubblejet printers at home) foresees a time whentelevisions will have built-in web browsers for surfing thenet: “Your television could also include a built-in bubble-jet printer, for printing out reports from electronicnewspapers,” he says. It’s the ability to generate lateralthinking like this that shows why Canon is likely to remaina major force in the multimedia age.
Ichiro Endo, the man who discovered the bubblejet
f researchers were paid royalties on theirdiscoveries which became commercialproducts, Ichiro Endo could have retired yearsago. In 1977, Endo accidentally placed a
soldering iron against a syringe full of ink and noticed thatthe ink squirted out. This led to the bubblejet printer.Bubblejets are Canon’s fourth largest revenue earner,accounting for over £1.5 billion of sales. Today, Endo ismanaging director of Canon’s New Products division,whose brief is to to come up with products for themultimedia age.Q How is the computer industry changing?A In the past when people talked about computers andcommunication, the computer was the main part of thesetup. But in the era of internet, intranets and extranets, thesituation has changed. The computer is now part of anetwork and has started to merge with peripherals and AV[audio-video] equipment. The computer is becoming moretransparent, and the input/output (I/O) device is becomingmore critical as it becomes the interface between the userand the computer. Canon of course makes many I/Odevices, such as scanners, printers and digital cameras.Q We hear a lot about the paperless office. Will it happen?A I think paper-based information and electronic-basedinformation will remain, but people will want them to beseamless. Today, people copy documents onto paper anddistribute them, but I think the model proposed by Hewlett-Packard, whereby people distribute documentselectronically and print them locally, is more likely to grow.Q How important are industry standards?A We want Canon products to connect to each other and toothers, so of course standards such as NetWare andWindows NT are important.Q Who will be your main competitors in the multimedia age?A In terms of Japanese companies, it will be giants likeToshiba, Hitachi and Matsushita [Panasonic/Technics/
JVC]. In our traditional markets, ourconsolidated sales are alreadyhigher than Xerox. I feel Hewlett-Packard is a strong potentialcompetitor, although it is also animportant partner.Q You didn’t mention any softwarecompanies in your list, such asM i c r o s o f t .A My personal view is that theWintel companies [Microsoft andIntel] are somewhat tied to the PCbusiness, while others such as IBM,Sun and Oracle are moving towards the NetworkComputer. I’m not sure which will win the battle, perhapswe will see next year.Q But in your model of the evolving computer, the PC wouldappear to be outdated.A Maybe that’s one interpretation, but at the same time, weshould not underestimate the power Wintel has. In allhonesty, we do not care who becomes the winner, as longas the I/O devices enjoy good business. What’s moreimportant is how we shift towards the human-centric side ofc o m p u t i n g .Q What is being developed by the New Products Division?A We have already produced a digital camera which is onthe market [the PowerShot 600] and we are also developingan internet camera that can be linked to a computeranywhere in the world via the internet. So you could be inJapan and yet control a camera that was in Europe. Anotherproduct is the digital document distribution system (DDD)which will work with our digital copiers. After a documenthas been scanned, the software will govern where it is to bedistributed. We are also developing flat-screen displays.And there’ll be other products, but it’s too soon to talkabout them yet.
I
his machine differed from the rest of the PCs in our testas it came with a ten-speed Acer CD-ROM, rather thanan eight-speed. This CD-ROM was quieter than theothers we reviewed and had a slightly superior build
quality. The asking price for this PC was one of the highest and itwould be a matter of personal preference as to whether it wouldbe worth paying a premium for these features in particular.However, it is a fast machine and achieved second place in ourVNU Labs test.
The short tower case, a design which also houses the ParagonIntel P133 (see p140), is stiff and required some effort to get inside.Some of the cables obscured the RAM, which was a shame as therest were neatly tied up out ofharm’s way. The 16Mb of RAMleft two SIMM slots vacant,plus one empty DIMM slot.
Both the graphics card andthe motherboard were made inTaiwan by TMC. Themotherboard had been fitted with a Triton II 430VX chipset, and had256K of on-boardpipeline burst cache. TheCELP slot was leftvacant, making itpossible toupgrade thecache atsome timein thefuture.
A 1.2Gb Quantum Fireball hard drive completed the sub-system. Only one of the three spare PCI slots will take a full-length card.
The soundcard, a SoundBlaster 16 from Creative, filled one of theISA slots. Even though it may be possible to fit a longer ISA cardinto one of the two remaining slots, this probably would not bedesirable as the card would be pushed up against the processor. Itwas disappointing to find no software included.
Monitor The 14in monitor, from AOC, is Energy Star compliantand MPR II rated. It had all the usual buttons, apart from degaussing.
Group Test: Budget PCsGroup Test: Budget PCs
Personal Computer World • April 1997 • 135
n December we looked atwhat sort of PC system youcould get for around £1,300
(ex VAT). This time we’ve gone one stepcheaper, and rounded up a group of PCspriced at around £850 (ex VAT). This is aremarkably cheap price tag for a PC, butnevertheless represents a largeexpenditure. The same money could buyyou a decent little second-hand car that’srelatively rust free, starts every time, andgets you from A to B with nounscheduled stops. In the pages thatfollow, we’ll see if the metaphor can beapplied to our PC contenders.
We asked manufacturers for a machinewith a specific price tag, which had a133MHz processor and 16Mb of RAM.We requested, but did not always receive,a starter pack of software. And we askedfor the best monitor available within ourbudget. So if your dreams of owning atop-of-the-range PC are scotched by areality check on your bank balance, andprice is more of a consideration thanperformance, the ten systems we’vegathered together here will show what youare likely to get for your money.
134 • Personal Computer World • April 1997
If your bank balance is having a prohibitive effect on your
PC purchasing power, a budget model might do the trick.
ELS P133138 Fox Premier P133138 Innovations Direct ID
3D2000 P133140 Paragon Intel P133140 Roldec Pro P133144 Stak Trading
Diamond Discovery144 Tiny P133 Multimedia
System145 VNU Labs Report145 Performance results148 Editor’s Choice151 Table of Features
Compiled by Lynley Oram
Budget PCs Contents
ytewise, based in North London, has been making PCsfor the last seven years. It is a small company, with astaff of seven and an annual turnover of about £1m.
Unfortunately, the Swift’s parallel and serial ports arefitted to blanking plates which are in the way of two of the free PCIslots. Although Bytewise hasn’t blocked off all the PCI slots, onlyone has a free blanking plate. This makes it difficult to install PCIcards at a later date without some serious tinkering.
A full-length card could be fitted into one of the two remaining“free” PCI slots. One slot is already occupied by the graphics card.
A 16-bit sound card, from BTC, took up one of the four ISAslots. There is one free, forward-facing 3.5in bay. Before installinganything into the spare 5.25in forward-facing bay, though, youneed to remove a lump of cabling that’s bound and storedthere.Despite tucking most of itaway, there is still enoughspare cabling to obscure theRAM. A little dig arounduncovered 16Mb taking up twoof the four SIMM slots. Therewere also two vacantDIMM slots, although it’scurrently notrecommended to mixSIMMs with DIMMs.
The Abit motherboardmakes use of a Triton430VX chipset andhad 256Kb ofon-boardcache.Although there
is an empty CELP slot, it could be difficult to use: a fairly taut cable,linked to the processor’s heatsink, ran right across it.
The magnetic shielding on the Juster speakers was minimal.Placing the speaker with the power pack next to the monitorwrought havoc with the image.
Monitor The CTX wasn’t bad for a budget 14in monitor. It onlyneeded a little tinkering to remove the flicker. The plug-and-playmonitor was Energy Star compliant and MPR II rated.
BBytewise Technology Swift P133
Hardware Bundle Juster MultimediaSpeaker System.Software Bundle Toplevel CompleteWorks.Warranty Terms Three years RTB. On-siteoptions are available.Technical Support Toll-free support line,and fax support.Price £910.63 (£775 ex VAT)Contact Bytewise 0171 275 8853 Good Points A good price. Room forexpansion and updates.Bad Points More attention could havebeen paid to the build of this PC.Conclusion A mediocre machine thatdeserved more attention during itsmanufacture.
Software Quality
Build Quality
Warranty
Overall Value
Details
Hardware Bundle Juster computer mediaspeaker system.Software Bundle None.Warranty Terms 5-year RTB (first yearparts and labour).Technical Support Fax only.Price £1,056.33 (£899 ex VAT)Contact Choice 0181 993 9003. Fax 0181 993 9936Good Points Ten-speed CD-ROM. Vacant CELP slot. Bad Points Stingy with the software.Conclusion We would have preferred alarger monitor rather than the faster CD-ROM. A bit more thought should be putinto the future of this machine.
Software Quality
Build Quality
Warranty
Overall Value
Details
T
Choice Systems Ultra Multimedia P133
Low and behold
odems are getting cheaper, so it was great to see thatat least one of our budget PCs came ready to hook upto the internet. The Choice modem used had a speed of33.6Kbps and was BABT approved. To get us browsing
the web, a couple of net sign-up trials had been included. The short tower casing made a definite style statement. We’d
be happy to see the lilac buttons go, but recessing the LED displaylights inside slots was an inspired move. The resultant soft glowevoked images of lounge lizards in smoking jackets, relaxing toBurt Bacharach music.
On the negative side, although this machine had some nicefeatures, its performance let it down; it came last in our VNU Labstest. And, while its insides were not the messiest we saw, ExpressMicro could nevertheless improve its housekeeping.
Unnecessary cablingmade it difficult to get to theRAM. And, with the powercable for the processorrunning directly over theCirrus Logic graphics card,fitting cards in thefuture would be fiddly.
With variouscomponents clutteringthe area, there is reallyonly enough room to fithalf-length ISA cards.But if size is yourthing, there’sroom forlarger PCIcards. The
motherboard had 256Kb of pipeline burst cache fitted into a CELPslot, and an Opti Viper chipset.
Frustratingly, Express Micro had forgotten to include a powerplug in the PC’s box. It’s an easy item to leave out, but a vitalcomponent. It’s rather like taking delivery of your new Ford Fiestaand discovering the manufacturer had forgotten to fit the ignition.
Monitor While the 15in monitor from Videal looked good andhad a flat screen, the image was badly focused and it didn’t fare aswell in testing as some of the 14in monitors in the group.
Personal Computer World • April 1997 • 137p138
Group Test: Budget PCs
dge normally ships this PC with a Cyrix P166 processor,but in order to meet the specifications of our group testthe processor supplied was an Intel Pentium 133 (theselling price remains the same).
The software that arrived with this PC was impressive. Thebundle included Mechwarrior 2, Earthworm Jim, Pitfall: The MayanAdventure, and Lotus SmartSuite 96 (whichwas in the box, but not loaded on the PC).
Any good feelings we had about thisdesktop evaporated when the casing cameoff. The innards were incredibly cramped andmessy. The four SIMM slots were buriedbeneath layers of cabling, all of which wouldneed to come out if you wanted to get to the16Mb of RAM.
There were four ISA and three PCI slots, ofwhich only two were occupied. Edge has made itdifficult to use the remaining PCI slots,as all the adjacent blanking plateshave been used for the parallel andserial ports. This effectively blocksthe PCI slots, so you would need tobe handy with a screwdriver if youwanted to fit any cards in here. Withthe remaining space filled with theprocessor and heatsinks, there is noroom to fit anything other than half-sized cards into the ISA slots.
The sub-system comprises aDiamond Stealth 3D 2000graphics card with 2Mb of RAMand a 16-bit Sound Adapter
sound card from KTX. The 1.2Gb Seagate hard drive sounded likethere were pebbles rattling around inside.
Mitsumi made the keyboard, mouse, and the 8x CD-ROM drivethat came with the machine. The KTX motherboard used a Triton IIIVX chipset and had 256Kb of on-board cache.
Monitor The KTX 14in monitor suffered fromnoticeable flicker, even when we altered itscontrols. Its power-saving feature meets EPArequirements but we could not find any MPR IIrating.
E
Edge Conquistador P166+
Hardware Bundle Advance speakers.Software Bundle Mechwarrior II,Earthworm Jim, Pitfall, Lotus SmartSuite 96.Warranty Terms Two years, back to base.Technical Support Toll-free phone line andfax support.Price £974.08 (£829 ex VAT)Contact 0181 232 8811. Fax 0181 232 8600Good Points Good software bundle.Bad Points Lacked future-proofing.Conclusion A product quality rethink isoverdue at Edge. It would not have takenmuch effort, and not a lot more time, tohave turned this PC into a good little runner.
Software Quality
Build Quality
Warranty
Overall Value
Details
Hardware Bundle Arowana speakers.Software Bundle Lotus SmartSuite.Warranty Terms One year on-site. Optionfor three years on-site.Technical Support Fax support.Price £996.40 (£848 ex VAT)Contact Express Micro 01909 530866. Fax 01909 530966Good Points At least the effort was madeto include a 15in monitor even though thequality wasn’t brilliant. Modem. Bad Points Could be faster, tidier, and a bitless cramped.Conclusion This PC has great potential. Italso has features, such as the modem, thatwe would like to see more often.
Software Quality
Build Quality
Warranty
Overall Value
Details
M
Express Micro Rapier ELS P133
his machine was let down only by its lack of speed,ending up second to last in our VNU Labs test. Apartfrom this, Innovations Direct has done a competent jobof putting together a budget PC.
Things really improved once we got inside. Cables were neatlyarranged and tucked out the way. The four SIMM slots were clearlyvisible and easy to get at. Two were occupied with 16Mb of EDORAM, and these popped in and out with ease.
None of the motherboard’s components were in the way of thethree PCI slots, making future upgrades to full or three-quartersized cards a doddle. Unfortunately, only one of the four ISA slotshad room for a longer card. None of the slots were shared.
The sub-system consisted of a Diamond Stealth 3D 2000graphics card and aFlagpoint FPS E1868 soundcard. The Protacmotherboard has 256Kb ofpipeline burst cacheand made use ofan Intel Triton III430VX chipset.
We wereworried aboutthe size of theSanyo Denkiheatsink, whichwas almost halfan inch smallerthan theprocessor.However, wewere assured that
it would be able to do its job, despitebeing “horizontally challenged”.
There was a reasonable amount of room left for extras. Thecompany had opted to install a 5.25in 1.2Gb Quantum hard drive,leaving one empty forward-facing 5.25in bay. Of the three spare3.5in bays, two were internal.
Monitor An extra inch may not seem like much, but the IiyamaVision Master 15 is miles ahead of the rest of the pack. The screenis flat, it is Energy Star and MPR II rated, and controls are on-screen and include all the adjustment controls you would expect.
Group Test: Budget PCs
138 • Personal Computer World • April 1997
he Premier P133 had a Cyrix P133+ chip running at amodest 110MHz. Fox was the only supplier to chooseCyrix for its machine and deserves a pat on the back,because the Premier outperformed most of the Intel
chips and came fourth in our VNU Labs test. Fox has been generous with the software
bundle, including a Microsoft Entertainmentpack which contained MS Golf, Encarta 96,MS Works and Money, Creative Writer, and aMagic Bus CD-ROM for the kiddies.
Space is always at a premium in a desktop,yet there was no need for Fox to have clumpedthe cables together and jammed them into thegap between the graphics card and the powersupply. Getting at the RAM and the four SIMMslots is almost impossible. Even with the cablesout, installing extra RAM would probably havetaken the skin off our knuckles, because one ofthe SIMM slots is awkwardly placed underthe power supply.
The 256Kb of pipeline burst on-board cache can easily be upped to512Kb as the Abit motherboard has avacant CELP slot. Otherwise, there isvery little room for expansion. None ofthe three PCI or four ISA slots will takecards longer than half size.
The 1.2Gb hard drive, fromQuantum, had only beenpartially placed in its 3.5in bay.It had been pushed back fromthe front of the case by the
positioning of the power button, preventing the installation oflengthy cards nearby. Really, there is insufficient room to fit more3.5in devices in the case, although it could be done if you weredetermined enough.
Monitor At even its best settings, the 14inSamtron suffered a noticeable flicker. It is MPRII rated, and has a power management circuit.
T
Fox Premier P133
Hardware Bundle JS Jazz J201 speakers. Software Bundle MS Entertainment pack:MS Golf, Encarta 96, MS Works andMoney, Creative Writer, and Magic Bus.Warranty Terms Five years back to base.First-year parts and labour. Last four yearslabour only. Options for second and thirdyear on-site.Technical Support Standard phone call.Price £994.44 (£846.33 ex VAT)Contact Fox 0990 744500. Fax 0990 502207Good Points Room for increased cache.Bad Points Cramped, messy and with littleroom for expansion, for either cards ordevices.Conclusion Not an ideal machine for thosewho want to add extras at a later date.
Software Quality
Build Quality
Warranty
Overall Value
Details
Hardware Bundle Labtec LCS950speakers.Software Bundle None.Warranty Terms Five years RTB, plusadvance replacement option.Technical Support Fax.Price £1,056.33 (£899 ex VAT)Contact Innovations Direct 0181 923 6666.Fax 0181 923 6655Good Points Some space for upgrades,and for fitting extras. Long warranty.Bad Points Quality control not up toscratch: the supplied power cable wasfaulty. Lacking in software.Conclusion Definitely worth paying morefor the larger monitor.
Software Quality
Build Quality
Warranty
Overall Value
Details
T
Innovations Direct ID 3D2000 P133
p140
Group Test: Budget PCs
140 • Personal Computer World • April 1997
p144
here is nothing intrinsically wrong with this PC, but thereis nothing to get excited about either. If price is your soleconsideration when buying a computer, then Paragonhas put together the ultimate no frills budget model. It’s
not a fast machine, but then, this PC wasn’t built for speed. We were puzzled about why the 1.2Gb Seagate hard drive and
Samsung 8x CD-ROM drive were connected to the same EIDEchannel, leaving the second EIDE channel connector vacant: inpast tests, we have found that this arrangement can slow harddrive performance while the CD is in operation.
Most of the components were inexpensive yet fairly respectable.The Intel motherboard uses an Intel 430VX chipset, and there’s256Kb of pipeline burst cache in a CELP slot. The Opti sound cardis 16-bit SoundBlaster compatible and thegraphics card has 1Mb of videomemory. There’s enough roomto fit three-quarter length cardsinto some of the PCI and ISAslots. Serial and parallel portshave been inconveniently placedin one of the PCI blanking plateswhich will have to be movedif you want to make use ofthe two spare PCI slots.
Paragon has been a bitcareless with its cables;they were hastilybundled andobtrusive. Wecould just aboutget to the RAMwithout having
to remove any cables. Of the four SIMM slots, two were occupiedby 16Mb of RAM.
If you think you may want to spend more money in the future,there’s room inside for a couple of extra devices. The short towerhas two spare forward-facing bays (5.25in and 3.5in).
Monitor The 14in Targa monitor is MPR II rated and Energy Starcompatible. On a negative note, the power cable had to be jiggledabout before the display would work.
T
Paragon Intel P133
Hardware Bundle Multimedia speakers.Software Bundle None.Warranty Terms Three years return to base(first year with parts and labour; second andthird years, labour only). Option for threeyears on-site.Technical Support Free lifetime telephoneand fax support.Price £880.08 (£749 ex VAT)Contact Paragon 0181 478 8700.Fax 0181 478 0001Good Points Excellent technical support,backed by a good warranty.Bad Points Single channel for the CD-ROMand hard drive. Ports in the PCI blankingplates.Conclusion An inexpensive machine, okayfor a first-time buyer, but could have been abit more generous with the software.Software Quality
Build Quality
Warranty
Overall Value
Details
oldec has set out to make a sturdy budget PC, and it ison the right track with this model. From the point of viewof configuration it doesn’t particularly stand out from thecrowd, but in testing it performed well, taking third place
on our Labs test chart. Roldec hasn’t lavished money on the casing: one of the screws
was badly threaded and had to be coaxed off, and the caseneeded a few thumps to get it back on.
The machine came with Lotus SmartSuite ready-installed. Theinnards were tidy, if a little cramped. Out of the four ISA slots,there’s really only room to fit one full-sized card. It may be possibleto squeeze in two, three-quarter sized, cards.
The sound cardoccupying one of the ISAslots was a respectableSoundBlaster Vibra 16from Creative Labs,and a DiamondStealth Video 2500graphics card hasbeen fitted into aPCI slot. That lefttwo PCI slots spare,and three ISAslots free, withone shared.
Twoof thefourSIMMslots were
occupied by 16Mb of RAM. These were easy to get at but not soeasy to get out. The machine was fitted with 512Kb of cache.Externally, the computer had one spare forward-facing 5.25in bayand a spare external 3.5in bay.
The keyboard certainly rates a mention. It was nicely contouredand stylish but, more importantly in these days of RSI awareness, itcame with a clip-on wrist rest.
Monitor The image from the Princeton 14in monitor was easy onthe eyes, and the screen was Energy Star compliant and MPR II.
R
Roldec Pro P133
Hardware Bundle Juster multimediaspeakers. Software Bundle Lotus SmartSuite. Warranty Terms Two years RTB, with oneor two years on-site options.Technical Support Free phone support.Fax support.Price £998.75 (£850 ex VAT)Contact Roldec 01902 456464. Fax 01902 452592Good Points Monitor. Keyboard.Software.Bad Points Lacked the room for longerPCI and ISA cards.Conclusion A good, if unexciting,machine.
Software Quality
Build Quality
Warranty
Overall Value
Details
ost of the computers in this test had Intel chips but thiswas one of two that didn’t. Instead, Tiny has gone for anAMD K5 PR133 processor,with a speed of 100MHz.
Despite the slower speed, this PC stillmanaged a respectable sixth place inour VNU Labs test.
The company hasn’t been stingywith the software. This machine camewith a whole bag of software goodies,from MS Works to Actua Soccer.
We had to invest a lot of elbowgrease in removing the casing. There’sone screw to remove and the casingshould then just slide off — at least,that was the theory. In reality, ittook two people to open it.Once in, though, there was awhole pile of cabling to bemoved out of the way beforewe could get at the RAM. Twoof the four SIMM slots had beenfitted with 16Mb of RAM, with aDIMM slot left vacant.
The VideoLogic Grafixstar400 card had been fittedinto one of the two PCIslots (there were four intotal) that would take alonger than half-lengthcard. There were three ISA slots, one ofwhich was occupied by a Crystal 16 sound card. The
motherboard was one of Tiny’s own, a Spear SR-M504, and hadbeen fitted with 256Kb of on-board pipeline burst cache.
There were two spare 5.25in bays, one of which was internal.Forget fitting any 3.5in devices though: there’sone internal bay spare, but we would have had totake out the 1.3Gb Fujitsu hard drive to get at it.
Monitor The SM483C 14in monitor, made inKorea by Samsung, produced a good picture andwas Energy Star compliant.
144 • Personal Computer World • April 1997
Group Test: Budget PCs
aving seen so many examples of sloppy workmanship,this machine was a joy to behold. It had been puttogether with care and we liked the way themotherboard had been arranged. It had twice as much
cache as most other PCs in this group, with half of the 512Kbcache on-board and half installed in a CELP slot.
A quick glance at our VNU Labs test results shows that this PCwas the fastest in the group. Oddly, Stak has opted to connectboth the CD-ROM drive and the 1.6Gb hard drive to the same EIDEchannel and, as could be the case with the Paragon (see p140),this may slow down the operation of the hard drive. There is aspare EIDE connector vacant.
All the cables had beenglued into position to keepthem in place during transit.According to the company,the glue should just peel off.This wasn’t as easy as itsounded and needed a flat-edged tool. Therewere four PCIslots, with onlyone occupied andnone shared. AVideoLogicGrafixstar 400graphics cardtook up oneof these,and itwould bepossible
to fit a full-length card in here. A three-quarter sized card is as large as will fit inthe ISA slots. The 16Mb RAM could beremoved with ease and along with the four SIMM slots there was aDIMM slot. Stak gained status by including a Logitech Pilot mouseand Creative speakers, and the software bundle is substantial. Monitor For its size, the 14in monitor from ADI produced one ofthe best images in our test. The screen regulation was excellentand the picture was flicker free.
H
Stak Trading Diamond Discovery
Hardware Bundle Creative CS120speakers.Software Bundle MS Encarta 96, ActuaSoccer, Disney’s Toy Story, andHunchback of Notre Dame.Warranty Terms 1-year RTB; no options.Technical Support Customer servicenumber. Fax supportPrice £998.75 (£850 ex VAT), as a specialoffer to PCW readers only; use our Buyer’sCharter order form (p346).Contact Stak Trading 01788 577497. Fax 01788 544584Good Points Cache. Performance. Mouse.Bad Points Glue. Single channel for theCD-ROM and hard drive.Conclusion A good machine for beginners,and offers future potential for moreexperienced users on a tight budget.
Software Quality
Build Quality
Warranty
Overall Value
Details
M
Tiny P133 Multimedia System
Hardware Bundle Unbranded speakers.Software Bundle Encarta , MS Works andMoney, MS Dangerous Creatures, plus 3Dgames: Mechwarrior, Terminal Velocity,Havoc and Actua SoccerWarranty Terms One year back to base;options for first, second and third years on-site.Technical Support Fax support.Price £962.33 (£819 ex VAT)Contact Tiny 01293 821333. Fax 01293 822514Good Points Software.Bad Points Messy and cramped inside.Conclusion Not a bad machine, but coulddo with more room inside for fitting extradevices.
Software Quality
Build Quality
Warranty
Overall Value
Details
Personal Computer World • April 1997 • 145p148
Group Test: Budget PCs
VNU Labs Report: How we did the tests
ifferent types of applicationsmeasure different aspects of aPC’s performance, so it is
important to use more than onebenchmark to gain an accurate androunded picture of each machine. Witheach successive PCW group test newtechnology appears, therefore our testsare continually enhanced to reflect thesechanges.
Each of the ten machines reviewedhere has been put through two separatetests. The first is a standard system-leveltest designed to closely simulate real-world use. Complete versions of industry-standard Windows 95 applications areinstalled (currently Word, Excel,WordPerfect and FoxPro) so thatperformance can be assessed in the three key areas of word processing,spreadsheets and databases.
A collection of macros is then run ineach application and every process istimed and recorded. When a copyoperation in a spreadsheet is about totake place, the application macrocontaining the COPY instruction will firsttrigger the stopwatch. When the copy hascompleted, the time taken is written into adatabase file. Each test is run three timesto provide a consistency check, and theperformance score recorded for eachapplication test is averaged out toproduce one overall figure.
The second is a low-level benchmarktest run in DOS (native mode) measuringthe frame-rate performance from Doom 2.You can try this test on your own PC. QuitWindows or shut down and restart inMSDOS mode, set up Doom 2 to run full-screen (no status bar or sound), then exit.At the command prompt in the Doom
directory, type DOOM2 -TIMEDEMODEMO1 which starts oneof Doom’s demos.It runs for a shorttime and then exits,producing two figures. Divide the first bythe second and then multiply by 35. Thefinal figure is a measurement of framesrendered per second (see the Resultsgraphs, below) where bigger is faster andbetter.
The Doom 2 test is an important low-level test which particularly stresses thegraphics card, processor and hard disk,and gives a good impression of how themachine will perform while running gameswhich are resource intensive.
Eleanor Turton-Hill
D
Windows 95 Office application benchmark test results
1 1.5 2 2.5 3
2.35
2.33
2.09
2.06
2.02
2.01
1.94
1.82
1.78
1.67
Stak
Choice
Roldec
Fox
Edge
Tiny
Byte
Paragon
Innovations Direct
Express Micro
Manufacturer Totals
Doom 2 benchmark test results (frames per second)
30 35 40 45 50 55 60 65 70
60.6
60.1
59.8
59.3
59.0
58.4
51.5
48.0
46.8
44.1
Tiny
Stak
Choice
Edge
Byte
Innovations Direct
Roldec
Paragon
Express Micro
Fox
Manufacturer Totals
FA
ST
ER
FA
ST
ER
148 • Personal Computer World • April 1997
p151
Group Test: Budget PCs
Editor’s Choice
his group test taught us a thingor two about budget PCs. Wewere surprised at the variablequality of the machines and the
sort of features a computer from the lowerend of the market could offer.
Of course, we’re not talking about state-of-the-art 3D graphics cards or Zip driveshere. We were pleased enough that one ofthe PCs came with an internal modem,and that a couple of companies opted for15in monitors.
When we first drew up thespecifications for this group test, we weregoing to ask for a 120MHz processor.However, many companies we approachedhad dropped that model and wereinstalling 133MHz chips into entry-level machines. There was a bit ofvariety here, with eight of themachines using Intel chips, oneopting for Cyrix and anotherchoosing an AMD processor.
Typically, these budget PCs came with a1.2Gb hard drive, 256Kb of Level-2 cache,a basic 16-bit sound card, 8x CD-ROMdrive, average 14in monitor and very littlesoftware. There were a few exceptions.Express Micro managed to get an internalmodem into its machine; a definite plus, andone we’ll hopefully be seeing more of at thislevel. Choice installed a slightly faster 10xCD-ROM, and there were a couple oflockable cases from Bytewise and Fox.
The winner of our Highly Commendedaward, Innovations Direct, went for a 15inmonitor which in our opinion is a wisechoice. Several manufacturers tend to use14in and 15in respectively as code for pooror good quality monitors. Innovations Directcame close to getting our Editor’s Choiceaward, but was let down by its speed andlack of software. What did push it to the topof the heap was its lengthy warranty — fiveyears return to base. The advancereplacement option could prove to be veryhandy if you were relying on this machine tohelp run a small business.
Both Roldec, and the winner of ourEditor’s Choice award, Stak, had opted to
T
How not to build a PC: These photos show an
alarmingly common mistake made by several of
the manufacturers featured in this group test.
Right Despite being able to mount the serial
and parallel ports directly onto the case, they
have instead been fitted to blanking plates and,
worst of all, screwed into the gaps of the spare
PCI slots. These plates would have to be
removed and relocated to fit more PCI cards,
and that’s if you can get past the maze of
cabling. Far right Notice the serial and parallel
ports on blanking plates next to the video card
where other PCI cards should go, and the
tragically unused punch-out holes in the case
install 512Kb of cache. Performance alonedidn’t influence our decision as there wasvery little difference between the top speedof Stak’s machine and the second fastestperformance of Choice’s PC.
What really clinched the award for Stakwas the care and attention that had goneinto putting its system together. Someonewho’s opting to buy a budget PC probablywon’t be spending much more money onreplacing peripherals. Stak has thought ofthis and has included some goodies, like aLogitech mouse and Creative speakers.
For regular readers of PCW, who droolover the latest gear but haven’t got themoney to match, Stak’s PC has somefuture-proofing features. The insides weretidy, with easy access to its components,and there was room to fit extras. Anotherplus was the Western Digital hard drive,which had a sizeable 1.6Gb-worth ofstorage space. What also appealed to uswas the something-for-everyone softwarebundle that came with this machine. For theultimate software package though, Edgecame up trumps, including Lotus SmartSuite
as well as somestonking games likeMechwarrior II and
Pitfall. We were bothered by the level of build
quality encountered with most, although notall, of these PCs. Unnecessary and messycabling that, in various machines,obstructed access to the RAM, covered aCELP slot, or blocked in a graphics card.Serial and parallel ports unnecessarily fittedto the PCI blanking plates. A missing powercable. Cramped motherboards with noroom to fit longer cards. Dodgy casing… thelist goes on. Although most people wouldnot expect to be able to buy a top-of-the-range item from for £850 (plus VAT), we donot think it is unreasonable to expect a PCto have been competently put together.
The overall impression given by all this isone of companies not willing to waste theirtime for such relatively trifling sums ofmoney. This attitude sells the companyshort as well as its customers. After all,these are customers who may think theyonly want a budget PC today. But oncebitten by the bug, who knows what theycould end up buying tomorrow.
Manufacturer Bytewise Technologies Choice Systems Edge Express Micro Fox
Model Swift P133 Ultra Multimedia P133 Conquistador P166+ Rapier ELS P133 Premier P133
Software supplied Lotus SmartSuite 96 MS Encarta 96, MS Works & Money,
Actua Soccer, Disney’s MS Encarta 96, Havoc,
Toy Story, and the Dangerous Creatures,
Hunchback of NotreDame Mechwarrior, Terminal
Velocity, Actua Soccer
Standard warranty 5-yr RTB 3-yr RTB (1st, parts & labour; 2-yr RTB 1-yr RTB 1-yr BTB
2nd & 3rd, labour). Free lifetime
technical hardware support
Warranty options Advance replacement 3 years on-site 1- or 2-year on-site options 1, 2 & 3 yrs on site
Tech support line
Fax support
Company turnover * n/a £3m £7.5m £8m £100m
Number of staff n/a 9 51 25 330
Personal Computer World • April 1997 • 153
Group Test: Budget PCs
Table of Features
KEY Yes No * (most recent figures available)
G roup Te s t : Accounting software
CYAN•MAGENTA•YELLOW•BLACK PERSONAL COMPUTER WORLD
CYAN•MAGENTA•YELLOW•BLACK PERSONAL COMPUTER WORLD
Personal Computer World • April 1997 • 157
nce, it was clear cut: large corporations used largecorporate software at large corporate prices. One-manbusinesses made do with a cheap, cashbook-only,
program. Small businesses could use a mid-range, integratedpackage. All three categories of software are still available but thedistinctions have become blurred.
The idea of what constitutes a mid-range package is now quiteelastic. On a comparison of features, several packages thought ofas being at “entry level” are capable of providing all theaccounting functions needed by small businesses. Competitionamong mid-range, integrated software can only widen thechoices available, eating into the position hitherto held by themodular systems.
The cost of computerising your accounting functions can beheld down if you forswear Windows and choose DOS-compatiblesoftware. Accounting is one of the last bastions of DOS computing,with plenty ofproducts available.
We areconcerned withsoftware which hassome pretensions tob u s i n e s saccounting. All thepackages reviewedhere offer the facilityto record incomeand expenditure,and allocate them tovarious headings oraccounts. All allowyou to producem a n a g e m e n tinformation andstatutory accounts.Most add furtherfunctionality for day-to-day operations.Most software letsyou choose yourown accountsheadings foranalysis, and someeven includes typicaldetails for broadcategories ofbusiness, as well asforms of businesslike partnerships orlimited liability. Soread on to see justwhat is available.
James Taylor looks at choosingsmall-business accounting softwareand reviews ten packages.
O
1 6 3 M.Y.O.B v61 6 4 Pegasus Capital1 6 6 QuickBooks v31 6 8 Sage Instant Accounting1 7 5 A B C 41 7 5 Access Intro1 7 6 Money Manager1 7 6 M A P Pastel Accounting1 7 7 Sterling Financial Controller1 7 7 TAS Books 2
1 5 8 Choosing the right package1 5 8 Glossary of accounting terms1 6 0 Personal finance software1 7 8 The desktop bank1 7 8 Keeping up to date1 8 1 Case study: TAS Books 2 at
Avery Dimension1 8 1 Case study: The ABC of
photo -journalism1 8 3 Case study: A friend to St Francis1 8 3 Case study: Capital takes the load1 8 5 Editor’s Choice1 8 5 Modular systems1 8 6 Table of Features
A c c o u n t i n g software
Contents
Buy while stocks lastGreat buyGood buyThere’s a better buy somewhereBuy it and weep
Ratings
p 1 5 8
M o n e yta l k s
G roup Te s t : Accounting software
CYAN•MAGENTA•YELLOW•BLACK PERSONAL COMPUTER WORLD
158 • Personal Computer World • April 1997
p 1 6 0
Choosing the right package
ost accounting packages willaccommodate the different formsof business — sole trader,partnership or limited (corporate)
company, although it’s worth checking thatsoftware of foreign origin has been endorsedby UK legal and taxation specialists. Theaccounting software trade organisation isBASDA, which may be able to advise you.
Ask your accountant’s advice: if youraccountant is an ICAEW member you mightbe able to benefit from special offers onsoftware or training. Base your selection on ease of use andfeatures for your business, remembering thatprice is not necessarily an indication ofsuitability. Get a demonstration disk, ifa v a i l a b l e . Draw up as complete a specification as youcan. The cost of software is nothingcompared with the time it can take to set it upproperly and you only want to do it once. Ifyou only use a cashbook, don’t buy a multi-module major package. On the other hand,don’t reject fully-featured software if it’s easyto use — you can always ignore the bits youdon’t need. Almost all programs can account for VAT,but it’s worth checking if you want to operateVAT cash accounting or are involved with anyof the special schemes or sales in Europe. Make sure the nominal ledger gives youenough different categories (like sales,travelling, or telephone) to analyse yourexpenditure and income in sufficient depth. Some software lets you carry outsecondary analysis, such as allocating salesby territory or expenditure by executive. Allsoftware should provide an audit trail. Not all accounts software offers a stock-control function, so if you keep stock thiscould limit your choice. A good stock-controlmodule will enable you to list stock items,quantities, re-order levels, prices anddiscounts and allow you to reserve, use, orreplace stock. Consider whether you need sales-order orpurchase-order processing — not the same
as the sales/purchase ledgers. Thesefunctions allow you to generate instructions toyour works/stores or other departments or toyour suppliers, linking to your ledgers andstock-control module as appropriate. Somesales-order routines will make up finalassemblies, or at least picking lists, fromstock components and automaticallygenerate invoices. Not allb u s i n e s s e shave thes a m eo p e r a t i n gp r i o r i t i e s ,which is whynot alla c c o u n t i n gp r o g r a m soffer the samerange off e a t u r e s .Among someof thea d d i t i o n a lf a c i l i t i e sv a r i o u s l yavailable are: Fixed assetr e c o r d i n g /depreciation V a r i a b l ea c c o u n t i n gperiods Retail orPOS routines Job costing C a s h - f l o wforecasting L o a ncalculations Budgeting B a n ki n t e r e s tchecking
These functions can also be found onseparate programs, which may bestandalone and/or may integrate with themajor accounting packages.
Personal finance software
• Accrual VAT accounting — The normalmethod of accounting for VAT whereby theVAT is due as soon as your invoice is issued,whether or not you have been paid by yourcustomers. VAT on purchases can also beoffset as soon as your suppliers’ invoicesarrive.• Aged balances — Unpaid invoice values,grouped according to how long they havebeen unpaid, as an aid to chasing settlement.• Audit trail — A list of all the transactionsmaking up a set of accounts, errors included.Ideally, it should not be possible to delete oredit any entries.• Cash VAT accounting — An alternativemethod of accounting for VAT, whereby theVAT is only paid once you have been paid byyour customers. Of most use to a business
which offers credit terms to its customers.VAT on purchases is also deferred until youpay your bills.• Cash flow forecast — Predicted income,expenditure and calculated balances for afuture period.• Corporate organisation — A businesstrading as a limited company (Ltd or Plc), asopposed to a sole trader or partnership, andwhich exists in its own right.• Integrated package — Software in whichall functions are provided in one program.• Modular package — Software in whichdifferent functions are provided by different“add-on” modules.• Nominal ledger — Where all accountsinformation is stored, analysed by user-defined categories of income, expenditure,
equity and so on.• Period end — A convenient time to “close”the books in order to consolidate that period’strading figures: typically, at year-end andmonth-end, the latter being optional in manyp a c k a g e s .• Purchase ledger — Where expenditure isrecorded, usually by supplier, then by invoice.May also be analysed by categories of goodsor services.• R e p o r t — A listing produced by theprogram detailing aspects of your businessaccounts, such as sales, purchases, bankingsand balance sheet, usually at period end.• Sales ledger — Where income is recorded,usually by client and then by invoice. May alsobe analysed by categories of goods ors e r v i c e s .
Glossary of accounting terms
M
G roup Te s t : Accounting software
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160 • Personal Computer World • April 1997
few years ago, when peoplewere asked what they thoughtthey might use a PC for, acommon answer was: “To
reconcile my cheque book.” And indeed, suchwas the development of consumer softwarethen, that this was all the available softwarecould handle. You paid out half a week’swages for a program that let you enter a date,cheque number, a very brief comment and theamount, and the computer gave you back alist to check against your bank statement.
A few years on, it’s no longer half a week’swages but can nevertheless amount to asignificant sum. The software still lets youreconcile your cheque book but incorporatesa bit more functionality, too.
One of the principal improvements, mostlydue to the Windows graphical screen, is theease of entering information in a familiarcolumn format (payments, deposits andbalance) while simultaneously viewingprevious entries for verification. Usually the“transfer” of money to both the payee and the
expense category is eased by using an on-screen representation of a cheque book. Thismakes keeping the data up to date less of achore. And of course, it’s only after you havebuilt up a personal financial history that youcan use the software to analyse past patternsand make any worthwhile forecasts.
The other principal advantage is thecapacity to use several different accounts atonce, including different forms of income. Youcan therefore keep track of your current,savings, deposit, credit-card, loan andbuilding-society accounts simultaneously, withthe better software being able to consolidatethese and other figures like your fixed andcurrent assets, to calculate your net worth.Current assets are things you own and canquickly convert into cash (like jewellery), whilefixed assets are things you own but can’t
Personal finance softwarePersonal finance software
convert quickly (such as your house).Many of today’s personal-finance
programs are cut-down versions of smallbusiness-accounting software. Theyincorporate business features like dozens ofcategory codes enabling you to closely analyseyour expenditure. They may also have a VATtracking facility which is useful for micro-businesses, clubs and so on, which don’tneed full three-ledger accounting (even thoughit’s there, lurking under the structure). If you’rejust starting out as a sole trader, such aninexpensive package might be all you needinitially, after which you’ll know a lot morewhen you come to choose a bigger system.
Other facilities available include standingorders, direct debits and post-dated cheques.You can also set up budgets against whichyou can judge your expenditure, forecast
cashflow to see when you’ll be able to affordthat new Corniche, estimate your tax liabilityand evaluate loan proposals.
Some programs have particular featuresexclusive to them. Microsoft Money 97, forinstance, offers online access to your bank viaits Home Banking facility. At the moment, onlyBarclays is included and its service is only justdue to be launched. Barclays’ customers withMoney 97 will be able to carry out assortedfinancial transactions from home.
Quicken has its own exclusive feature too,at least in its deluxe Home Pack version. Withits home inventory you can keep detailedrecords of your possessions, noting downpurchase prices and replacement values:useful in the event of a robbery (unless yourcomputer is stolen), the list can be importedinto the Quicken personal-accounts programas a record of your assets.
A b o v e Even if you’re not interested in home
banking, Microsoft’s new Money 97 has a lot
to offer
L e f t Some software (this is Quicken,
illustrated) is equally adaptable as either
personal or simple small-business software
p 1 6 3
A
A selection of personal finance software
• Money Manager Personal Edition (DOS)
P r i c e £39.95 (£34 ex VAT)
C o n t a c t Connect Software 0181 743 9792
• Quicken deLuxe Home Pack (Win3.x)
P r i c e £69 (£58.72 ex VAT)
C o n t a c t Intuit 01932 2578501
• MS Money 97 (Win95)
P r i c e £30 (£25.54 ex VAT)
C o n t a c t Microsoft 0345 002000
Details
CYAN•MAGENTA•YELLOW•BLACK PERSONAL COMPUTER WORLD
Personal Computer World • April 1997 • 163p 1 6 4
G roup Te s t : Accounting software
M.Y.O.B v6
his is the brand-new version 6 ofM.Y.O.B. Yes, it does stand for“Mind Your Own Business” andyes, it is a silly name. The software
itself, though, is very serious. It’s a full three-ledger system: nominal, sales and purchase,offering integrated double-entry accounting.These three ledgers, plus stock control, a cardfile of addresses and your cheque-bookrecords, form the main modules of thesystem. There’s a “Command Centre”interface (context-sensitive hierarchical flowchart) to help you navigate, but the standardWindows menu is still there if you prefer this.
Among the enhancements to version 6 areoptions to customise reports: to select whichfields appear on the report, to drag and dropfields into a preferred order, to add colour(displaying negative numbers in red, forinstance) and to drill down to the details.There’s also a new job-management facilitywhereby jobs can be organised under jobheaders and details, and include importantinformation like start and completion dates,project manager andclient contact.R e i m b u r s a b l eexpenses can belinked to specific jobsand even invoiceda u t o m a t i c a l l y .
Other additionsinclude cue cards tohold your handthrough some of theless frequent andtrickier transactionslike dealing withbounced cheques,importing data fromQuicken andexporting data tospreadsheets andword processors.
Otherwise, it’sbusiness as usual.The nominal ledgeroffers eight types ofaccount: asset,liability, capital (or equity), income, expense,cost of sales, other income and other expense— that should be sufficient. There are also upto four levels of account nesting, each levellinked to the one above, giving you plenty ofcategories with which to closely analyse yourfigures. Help in choosing your initial list ofaccounts is facilitated by about a hundred pre-defined sets, ranging from freelance writers tofuneral directors, from computer dealers tocobblers (or should that be cobblers tocomputer dealers?) or you can define yourown. It also knows about VAT cashaccounting. Updating is instantaneous andcompulsory, so if you need to operate batchposting, this is not for you.
The sales ledger lets you assign bothdefault and customer-specific credit terms,and you can, if you so choose, calculate andimpose finance charges on overdue accounts.As well as invoices and credit notes there are“pending” or pro-forma invoices, the issue ofwhich has no effect on ledgers or stock andso can be used as quotations or
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Price £229 (£194.89 ex VAT)
C o n t a c t Best!Ware UK 01752 201901
Good Points Childishly easy to use withoutforfeiting sophistication.
Bad Points Nothing obvious.
Conclusion A big-business accounting systemat a small-business price.
Details
acknowledgements. As well as openingindividual customer accounts, you canestablish any number of jobs for eachcustomer, each job’s income and expenditurebeing separately tracked.
Purchase orders can be formatted forgoods, services or “professional” layout. Stockcontrol is handled automatically, stock levels(and values) being reduced as you invoicesales and increased as you send out purchaseorders. And you can adjust stock manually toaccommodate those inevitable stock-takingdiscrepancies. All stock can be individuallypriced (at cost or selling price), although youcan override those figures for individualtransactions. Stock items can be groupedtogether to allow automatic parts assembly.
M.Y.O.B incorporates a record card file forcustomers and suppliers which, together withits To-Do List, gives you simple contactmanagement albeit at a level of sophisticationequal to that of a real card index. You canassign up to ten single-letter identifiers to acard, enabling you to categorise your contacts
for anything from credit control tosales prospecting. You can makenotes of your conversations and seta follow-up date.
Should you make a mistakeentering data, you can rectify itseamlessly as long as it hasn’t yetbeen saved, but if it has there’s aroutine for that, too. It is easy toaccess detailed information usingdrill-down techniques, right back tothe original entry if necessary.
M.Y.O.B comes with a fullcomplement of reports (about 100),
which include customer/transaction historiesallowing you to analyse and list everything youneed to know about your business. Reports,together with invoices and their derivatives,statements, purchase orders and cheques,can be customised for fonts, fields and layout.This is particularly useful if you elect to print onplain paper or on your own letterhead, insteadof the pre-printed M.Y.O.B forms.
A b o v e There’s more than one way
to view MYOB’s data, including
d r i l l - d o w n
L e f t MYOB can be extensively
customised to suit your way of
w o r k i n g
CYAN•MAGENTA•YELLOW•BLACK PERSONAL COMPUTER WORLD
164 • Personal Computer World • April 1997
p 1 6 6
G roup Te s t : Accounting software
Pegasus Capital
egasus is one of the UK’s majorpublishers of accounting software,perhaps better-known for itscorporate-level modular systems.
In Capital, it looks as if the company may haveintroduced its own competitor for the lowerreaches of that market. Capital is not as well-specified as, say, Senior, but it does pack a lotof the average modular package’s essentialfunctionality into a relatively inexpensive,integrated system.
Running under Windows, Capital offers theusual sales, purchase, and nominal ledgers,cash book and invoicing, and there is stockcontrol together with sales-order andpurchase-order processing. Capital makesclaims to no particular small-business niche,being configurable for product and/or servicebusinesses, and it accommodates soletraders through partnerships to limitedcompanies. In response to customers’demands, the sales ledger in the latest versionnow supports up to £9,999,999.99 on a singlepaying-in slip and bank reconciliation handles£ 9 9 , 9 9 9 , 9 9 9 . 9 9(we should be solucky!). Thepackage can alsooffer a choicebetween 12 or 13accounting periodsin a year.
A Set-upWizard helps youcreate anappropriate set ofaccounts for yourp a r t i c u l a rc i r c u m s t a n c e s ,which you canmodify, includingnominal accountsand analysiscodes. Day-to-daytransaction facilitiesinclude postings forinvoices, creditnotes, receipts andpayments. Files areupdated as soon as postings are made soenquiries, which include routines to viewaccount balances, stock levels and otherbusiness information, always show the up-to-date situation. Batch processes take care ofsuch periodic functions as automaticpurchase payments, while items like standingorders and direct debits are looked after by arecurring journal update function.
One of Capital’s less usual (in this pricerange) but more welcome features is sales-order processing. This facility, which storesand processes details of sales and purchaseorders from reception to despatch andinvoicing (however long that may take) isparticularly useful to contracting,manufacturing and similar organisationswhose projects may run for a long time andinvolve considerable mass. Most of theinformation needed can be entered from yourcustomer’s order, and if it is a previouscustomer, Capital will add information from thecustomer-account record, including credit limitand current balance. It also automatically
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allocates the next sales-order number, notesthe date on which the goods are due to bedelivered, and remembers any settlementdiscount already agreed as well as any overalldiscount to be applied to the whole, and thecarriage details. You receive a stern warning ifyou try to release sales orders when therelevant customer account is on hold, over itscredit limit or about to exceed it.
When you come to total the items ordered,the program retrieves all the relevant productinformation including stock levels, description,price and customer line discount. The ordertotals already include any carriage chargewhich has been entered. The program checksstock levels and advises you if they drop belowcritical levels. Printing an invoice automaticallyupdates the ledgers with the invoice details,including the customer’s account and therelevant accounts in the nominal ledger.
Reporting facilities include options to printand view reports and to export information tospreadsheets or word processors. Cashflowforecasts, aged debt, customer, supplier and
product turnover can be illustrated byone of the built-in graphs andexported to your word processor.Plus, there is a VAT Return option tocalculate and print your VAT100 form.
Pegasus runs its own software andbook-keeping training courses atvarious UK regional centres, or youcan buy training from authorised,independent Pegasus trainers. ServiceCover provides you with telephone
support direct from Pegasus and your first 90days are free.
There’s a lot in Capital for small- tomedium-sized businesses with manufacturingor contracting interests. When things get toocramped, there’s an easy upgrade path to the(DOS) Opera software by the same publisher.
A b o v e All Capital’s operating records
are easily changed to reflect new
c o n d i t i o n s
L e f t Capital’s on-screen information
includes the Status display which
gives you a picture of your business
balances, at a glance
Price £646 (£549.78 ex VAT)
C o n t a c t Pegasus Software 01536 495200
Good Points Almost everything the averagesmall business needs in accounting functions.
Bad Points You need a basic grasp ofaccounting first.
Conclusion A versatile accounting suite,particularly cost-effective for those who needsales-order processing.
Details
CYAN•MAGENTA•YELLOW•BLACK PERSONAL COMPUTER WORLD
166 • Personal Computer World • April 1997
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G roup Te s t : Accounting software
QuickBooks v3
he best-selling QuickBooks is abasic three-ledger double-entryaccounting system, although it’sdeliberately designed so non-
accountants won’t know that. It avoids thoseterms, as it does words like debit and credit.The sales ledger becomes “accountsreceivable”, the purchase ledger becomes“accounts payable”. This will suit those whoare not, and don’t particularly want to be,accountants. Money to be paid out is enteredon an on-screen representation of a cheque(as is cash paid out which, initially, can beconfusing). Invoice details are entered intofields laid out as the paper form.
Invoices and purchase orders can makeuse of goods or service item descriptions pre-defined by you, and include all the necessaryVAT categories and analysis codes. All the
usual nominal analysis codes are possible: onsetup you can choose from over 20 pre-defined sets, depending on the type ofbusiness you run. You can, of course, add andamend. Invoices may not only be issued toparticular clients in the usual way, but alsoagainst specific jobs for that client. Threedifferent invoice layouts (professional, serviceand goods) let you add, drop or rename fieldsuntil the information on the form is exactly whatyou want. You can do the same thing withcash-sale receipts, credit memo forms andpurchase orders.
When invoices haven’t been paid by thedue date, you can add finance charges,choosing your own percentage interest rate orcharging a fixed sum. Although everyone s a y sthey want this facility to penalise late payers,few seem to use it when they’ve got it.
Your “cashbook”, which includes incomeand expenditure, both in total and analysed, islisted in QuickBooks’ Registers, which issearchable by date and amount. It can also beinterrogated using drill-down and can bedirectly edited. You get a separate register for
T
each bank/cash account, which shows yourbalance too. Additionally, there is a separateReminder window which can be set to appearon startup, showing your bills and invoices due.
Payments, in and out, in settlement ofoutstanding bills or invoices can be applied tospecific outstanding amounts. As well assettling bills in this way, you can also recordother cash and cheque payments, eitheragainst the cheque number or a voucherreference. After incoming payments havebeen allocated to particular invoices, you canrecord your banking deposit against yourpaying-in slip number, so everything is easilyt r a c e a b l e .
QuickBooks includes an integrated stock-control and stock-reporting facility which, whenactive, gives you a “stock part” item categorywhich you can increase by making purchasesand decrease by making sales. There is no“parts explosion” facility but you have theoption to turn stock control off, when it revertsto being an equally useful Invoice Item whichcan be applied to service invoices.
Another optional feature is the audit trail
which is implemented so that the original entryand any subsequent changes appear on the listtogether. You do not have to use it if you don’twant to, but if you do it is password protectedagainst disablement.
Monthly accounting and managementinformation reports are predefined but you geta wide variety of options. Sales report, forinstance, can be listed by item, by customer orby sales area or representative. Managementreports include cashflow forecast, project or jobreports and missing cheques, as well as theusual profit and loss, balance sheet and trialbalance. Certain reports can be converted intographs (which can be printed out) for a betterappreciation of your finances.
You might find the monthly Collectionsreport useful in that it analyses your invoices bytheir (variable) settlement periods to produce alist of what you can expect to receive andwhen, so you can phone your customers tofind out why you haven’t had it yet.
Together with its personal financestablemate, Quicken, QuickBooks may fairly besaid to have considerably influenced the marketfor “non-accountant” accounting software andit remains one of the best implementations ofthat philosophy. What’s more, its price makes itdoubly worth investigating.
A b o v e The QuickBooks Register and
Reminder keep you up-to-date with your
f i n a n c e s
L e f t The QuickBooks Collection Report helps
you chase your debtors
Price £146 (£124.25 ex VAT)
C o n t a c t Intuit 01932 578501
Good Points Extremely easy to use, with all thebasic features.
Bad Points Probably won’t suit an accountant.
Conclusion QuickBooks is a competentbusiness tool which should be perfectlysatisfactory for most small-business/sole-traderu s e r s .
Details
CYAN•MAGENTA•YELLOW•BLACK PERSONAL COMPUTER WORLD
168 • Personal Computer World • April 1997
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G roup Te s t : Accounting software
Sage Instant Accounting
careful mixture of old and newaccounting practices, Sage’sentry-level business-accountingsoftware for Windows, Instant
Accounting, retains some of the traditionalaccounting controls including an authoritativeaudit trail. Despite this, it makes usefulconcessions to non-accountants who arecomputerising their business for the first timeand who probably make up its main market,by allowing easy, if limited, correction ofmistakes (including the reversal of mis-postings) without resorting to double-entryledger transfers.
Immediate updating of bank and otheraccount balances is possible, but forcompanies where accounts are maintained byclerical staff who prefer to prepare invoices,credit notes and statements in batches (forlater checking by senior personnel), this optionis available too. Invoices generated by thesystem can be product or service-based, thelatter accepting free text. Invoices producedmanually, and already sent to your customers,can be logged at any time. Actually, you canperiodically “clear down” Instant Accounting’saudit trail, too, removing completedtransactions (preferably having first taken acopy for your accountant).
The essential features on offer includesales and purchase transaction recording:cash and credit-trading facilities (includingcredit cards), cash and accrual VATaccounting, and financial and managementreports. There is no stock control but you areunlikely to attempt to run a complexmanufacturing operation on an £84 package.You can maintain a descriptive list ofproducts, including pricing. This is thenpresented, during invoicing, as a drop-downlist from which you can make your selection,knowing that the details will be accurate.
These days, a drill-down traceability facilityis practically mandatory and InstantAccounting has one. You can analyse atransaction into the individual items thatcomprise it by double-clicking on a line of thereport. This covers transaction activity reportsfor customers, suppliers, nominal or controlaccounts.
Equally useful, if you are not anaccountant, are Instant’s wizards which holdyour hand through awkward, if little-used,procedures like transferring money from onebank, cash or credit-card account toa n o t h e r .
As with all Sage’s products you getimpressively versatile document-customisingfacilities, allowing you to produce invoices andreports on your own pre-printed forms, plainpaper (laid out however you wish) or Sage-supplied stationery. Reporting contentcan be quite extensively customised for aproduct in this price range. You can decidewhich periods will be used in reports (eithercalendar months or the number of days),include transactions dated after the reportdate and automatically group consecutivetransactions of the same type on yourstatements (for instance, those that share thesame date or reference).
Transactions themselves can be assignedto up to 999 different departments and you
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get 999 different product categories foranalysis purposes. You can also select reportdata using criteria you define yourself for suchmatters of interest as customers, suppliers,nominal accounts, product records andinvoices. You can set up and save frequently-applied criteria for re-use. Instant Accountingwill also write “begging letters” to yourcustomers, asking to be paid, and you canmailmerge any fields in your records.
Data entry is aided by vivid representationof actual forms on-screen (an effect pioneeredby Sage, but nowadays everybody is doing it),so, for example, payments are recorded on arepresentation of a cheque. The VATcalculation, too, is presented on a realistic-looking replica. Such familiar metaphorscertainly make it easier for the novice.
Instant Accounting is one of the fewpackages to be certified by the Institute ofChartered Accountants in England and Wales.It also qualifies for free initial telephone supportfrom Sage: on the box it states 30 days but wehave been told 90 days.
When you are ready to upgrade, therecommended Sage upgrade path is to itsown Sterling package which incorporatesextra facilities such as stock control and orderprocessing. And you may like to know thatInstant Accounting shares its menu formatand icons with Sterling for Windows.
A b o v e I n s t a n t
A c c o u n t i n g ’ s
interface is
easy enough to
u s e
R i g h t V i e w i n g
and analysing
your data can
be carried out
using your own
s e l e c t i o n
c r i t e r i a
Price £99 (£84.25 ex VAT)
C o n t a c t Sage Group 0191 255 3000
Good Points User-friendly interface. Versatileprinted document layouts.
Bad Points No stock control, so not reallysuitable for manufacturing or distributiono p e r a t i o n s .
Conclusion Sage’s baby business book-keepermakes a useful starting point for service-orientated businesses.
Details
Price £347 (£295.31 ex VAT)
C o n t a c t Access Accounting 01206 322575
Good Points Useful base module with pick-and-mix extras building up to a practicalblend of features.
Bad Points Will defeat owner-installers, who willalso be better with a little accounting experience.
Conclusion Traditional structure, ideal foraccountants. Expensive unless you want most ofthe extras.
ccess Intro, a cut-down version of themulti-modular Accessv3, is sold only
through dealers. The dealer willinstall it for you (for a fee), which isa good job because there is acunningly executed deadfall whichwill absolutely guarantee theprogram won’t run (it can be fixedby delving into the File Propertiesbox). When you do get up andrunning, you’ll probably find thatthe help file appears to bemissing, too. These things do notmake for a confidence-inspiringstart, for owner-installerc u s t o m e r s .
Access Intro gives you astandard three-ledger system (sales,purchase and nominal) with a cash book.Stock control, job costing and invoicing/sales-order processing can be had for more money,as can a multi-user licence and the facility torun more than one company or data file.These are not supplied separately but are“unlocked” from your original purchase.
The sales ledger offers the usualtransaction recording, including invoices,credit notes and receipts, and you can definecontract terms and EC VAT rate. If you wantVAT cash accounting, there’s a differentversion (at no extra cost). The ageddebtors/creditors list can include several lines
of information for each customer or supplier,plus all their outstanding transactions. Youcan also put defaulters on “stop” (you can’tsend goods or raise invoices).
As well as using the usual nominalaccounts, you can analyse certaintransactions by department and project. Andwhen reconciling your bank account, you canreconcile any other nominal accounts too.
Sales orders are used principally toallocate stock and immediately generatedocumentation like despatch notes, pickinglists and invoices, making the feature ideal fordistributors. Contractors and bespokemanufacturers will find the project/cost centre
facility in the costing moduleuseful too.
Having the advantage of alow starting price, the fullyexpanded Access Intro is directlycompeting against the likes ofSage Sterling and should beuseful to a wide range ofbusinesses. It’s just a shameabout the imperfect conversionfrom its bigger brother.
CYAN•MAGENTA•YELLOW•BLACK PERSONAL COMPUTER WORLD
Personal Computer World • April 1997 • 175p 1 7 6
G roup Te s t : Accounting software
ABC4
BC4 is DOS software.It’s unusual, comingcomplete with a “typing”module, a filing module
and a spreadsheet: in fact, a simpleoffice suite. The “typing” function is abasic word processor for letters,reports and quotations, “filing” is asimple flat-file database able to store,sort, select and print information, and“Calcsheet” is a basic spreadsheet,good for cashflow forecasts. There’sa label printer and a phone book too.
Apart from mailmerge, anaccounts-viewing window and a cut-and-paste facility, the separate programs offeronly limited integration. Neither do theycompare in sophistication with similarmodules from the heavyweight office suites.But they do provide all the functionality thatmany small companies are likely to need. Thebiggest limitation is the small number ofprinters offered (four). True, you can edit orcreate printer tables, but these days youshouldn’t have to.
The accounting function offers a three-ledger, double-entry integrated book-keepingsystem with sales, invoicing and credit notes,statements, cash, banking and VAT, plusstock control. There’s a proper audit trail andformal period-end procedures. You getroutines for nominal journal adjustments(transfers), bankings and reporting, including
trading (P/L), balance sheet, VAT and ageddebtors. There is also an option to use CashVAT accounting.
Useful touches include a warning messageif your customers exceed their pre-set creditlimits (it can be ignored) and the facility topost-date your invoices. Individual invoicescan be treated either as pre-paid or VAT-inclusive. In allocating money to invoices, youcan choose to dispose of awkward balancesby writing them off as discounts, saving manytedious journal entries.
As a mini-suite, ABC4 offers a more usefulset of modules than the “big three” suites,although each section could do with moresophistication and, above all, integration.Nevertheless, it seems to have its share ofsatisfied users. There’s an active user group
and a periodic newsletter as well.The combination of functions and
presentation seems to aim theproduct at business people whodon’t necessarily like computers, sothese people could be well advisedto consider it. More experiencedusers might like to wait for ABC forWindows which is promised for
some time this year.
A
Access Intro
A
Price £293 (£249.36 ex VAT)
C o n t a c t ABC Direct Sales 01257 480502
Good Points Frill-free and simple to use withoutstinting on functionality. Useful extra facilities.
Bad Points Help system could be better, somemenu items could be less cryptic. No tutorial ordemonstration data.
Conclusion Ideal for the computer-wary smallbusiness, especially if using older machines.
Details
A practical suite of ancillary
programs complements ABC’s
three-ledger accounting system
Flexibility in feature selection is
a keynote of Access Intro
Details
CYAN•MAGENTA•YELLOW•BLACK PERSONAL COMPUTER WORLD
Personal Computer World • April 1997 • 177p 1 7 8
G roup Te s t : Accounting software
CYAN•MAGENTA•YELLOW•BLACK PERSONAL COMPUTER WORLD
176 • Personal Computer World • April 1997
G roup Te s t : Accounting software
Money Manager
oney Manager forWindows BusinessEdition is now inversion 5, so it must
be doing it right. Also available torun under DOS, it’s impressivesoftware, particularly at the price,and especially when you considerthat it’s multi-company and multi-currency capable.
Money Manager certainlydoesn’t subscribe to the clean-screen philosophy and might beintimidating to computer tyros,especially non-accountants. Itmust be said, though, that half thescreen is often occupied by a listof analysis codes (where othersmight favour drop-down boxes),faintly reminiscent of a DOSproduct. You can have up to10,000 transactions per month, allocatedbetween account codes, sub-account codes,class codes, and “mark” codes.
Account codes define your major “control”accounts like bank, cash and VAT. Sub-account codes refine these by identifyingindividual customers and suppliers. Classcodes categorise expenditure or income, likemachinery, stationery or salary, and let youanalyse income/expenditure for particularclasses. Mark codes are optional and usefullabels which you can use to collate entries forfurther analysis such as separating petrol
M
MAP Pastel Accounting
ow established in theUK under the MAPimprint, PastelAccounting (as the
former Pastel Partner would like tobe called) has reached version 4.1a:version 4 is Windows-only and DOSusers must continue to use version3, which is both DOS and Windows.
Among the changes in version 4are improvements to the interface:customisable layouts includingcolumn positions in data tables,drill-down enquiries, better reportingand a remote monitoring program.Pastel is now multi-currency asstandard, handling up to 16currencies in addition to the pound.
Pastel owes much to traditionalaccounting practices like double-checking,batch updating and period closing. In additionto a general ledger, cash book, sales andpurchasing ledgers, invoicing, job costing,budgets and a report writer, you also get up to ten cash books, up to 30 separate tax types and up to 32 types of entry. You cancreate purchase orders and supplier invoices,and prepare and process quotations and sales orders.
In the UK you also get Pastel’s“manufacturing” module (an extra elsewhere)with bills of materials and parts build-up. Alinked codes function brings up all theinventory codes associated with an invoice
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Sterling Financial Controller
cknowledged as the largestBritish software company,Sage offers accountingsoftware covering all sizes
of business and most platforms. TheSterling range is no exception, boastinga progressive functionality, fromAccountant at £350 throughAccountant Plus at £500, to FinancialController (£650) reviewed here.
For your money you get the usualthree ledgers (sales, purchase andnominal) plus invoicing, sales andpurchase-order processing, stockcontrol, credit control, fixed assetmanagement and a wide range ofcustomisable management reports.There’s a separate payroll program availablefor £300 (plus VAT).
You can link Financial Controller to Sage’sown dedicated contact manager, TeleMagic,as well as to other business software like wordprocessors, spreadsheets and databases.You can produce invoices (and credit notes)for goods or services, the first includingquantities and rates. Raising invoices for stockitems automatically updates stock control.
You get multi-company and multi-userflexibility and the package claims readiness forthe year 2000 (but not for the euro). Batchinvoicing, better drill-down, free text invoicing,and bank reconciliation are new features. Youcan analyse your invoice entries by user-defined tax, nominal and department codes
A
TAS Books 2
here are two TAS Booksprograms. TAS 1 is thestarter program with itsthree ledgers, cash book
and invoicing. TAS 2 is the upgrade.Functionally it is identical, but addssales- and purchase-orderprocessing and stock control.Accredited by the ICAEW, it offers adrill-down facility to the ledgers anddaybooks and there’s a semi-automatic double-entry function plusmore flexibility in handling recurringt r a n s a c t i o n s .
The stock-control function canhandle standard products, non-stockitems, assemblies and consumables.Each item can be assigned acategory, and there is support forserial- and batch-number tracking (essential ifyou operate quality control). You can monitoritem movement history, stock valuation, stocklevels and stock taking. Purchase-orderprocessing handles over-deliveries and short-deliveries, including price and quantitymismatches, for contract and consumablematerials. Stock records are automaticallyupdated by the sales-order processingoperation, which will also look after back-orders and negative stock.
The order-processing function alsogenerates quotations, pro-formas, orderacknowledgements, invoices and creditnotes. It gives detailed sales analyses by
T
Price £94 (£80 ex VAT)
C o n t a c t Connect Software 0181 743 9792
Good Points High data-entries capacity. M u l t i - c o m p a n y .
Bad Points Potentially confusing screen layout.
Conclusion Flexible and versatile with excellentanalytical features.
DetailsPrice £763 (£649.36 ex VAT)
C o n t a c t Sage Group 0191 255 3000
Good Points Comprehensive and flexible.Excellent report and form layout formatting.
Bad Points May be overkill for many smallcompanies. Benefits from some accountancyk n o w l e d g e .
Conclusion If you need comprehensive financialcontrols, Sterling Financial Controller is one tolook at first.
Details
Price £410 (£348.93 ex VAT)
C o n t a c t Megatech Software 0181 874 6511
Good Points Good range of facilities, coupledwith traditional accounting procedures for thosethat need them.
Bad Points You really need to be an accountantto get the best out of it.
Conclusion Nicely suited to traditionalaccounting procedures, TAS Books 2 gives youa lot for your money.
Details
Money Manager gives you
plenty of options for analysing
your accounts
expenses between partners without havingseparate class codes. You get bankreconciliation, cheque printing on your owncheques and a good selection of reports.
You can, of course, enter invoice detailsbut there’s no invoicing in Money Manageritself (see Case Study, page 183) so it’s useyour word processor or look elsewhere .
Connect Software offers two add-onprograms you might find useful. At £49.95 (ex VAT), Final Accounts for Windows addsend-of-period reporting: producing your trialbalance, profit-and-loss report and balance
sheet as well as looking afterthings like fixed assetdepreciation, capital allowancesand tax. When installed, itintegrates with Money Manager(apart from having to switchmenus) to provide a reasonablyfeatured accounting system at areasonable price. The other add-on is Office Manager, offeringinvoicing, a stock database, lettertemplates, contacts lists andmore. But it runs under DOS only,which is a bit of a drawback for aWindows companion.
item — useful where given items are soldseparately and in standard packs orassemblies. As well as inventory item codes,Pastel also handles bar codes and binnumbers for inventory items. Bills of materialscan include labour and overheads as well ascomponents by description and quantity, withPastel calculating the finished cost, mark-upand selling price of the manufactured item.You can also break down a manufactureditem, recreating the original component items.
You can’t say Pastel isn’t feature-rich. Forinstance, it has a special date-limited price listfor seasonal items or special offers, individualprices for each inventory item (coded toindividual customers) and multiple delivery
addresses for each customer. Youeven get a card game, a puzzle anda doodle pad.
The manual, to quote Boswellquoting the 18th century Duke ofGloucester, is a “damned thick,square book” and all the better for it.And in addition to the normal helpfile, there’s a Knowledge Base oftips and techniques.
Choose to
navigate by Pastel’s
comprehensive System Navigator
or the standard Windows menus
either item-by-item or for the entire invoice.There are separate product categories, too.
To get the best out of Sterling you can (fora fee) take advantage of Sage’s support andtraining services via a network of over 2,000UK dealers providing specialist support forsmall- and medium-sized business customers.
Sage claims it will produce year 2000-compliant versions of all its Windows softwarepackages during 1997, so make sure you geta current copy. This will include the Sterlingrange of accounting and payroll products,Sovereign for Windows, TeleMagic contactmanagement software, and the Timeslips timeand fee billing package.
All Sage business-accounting software
products are accredited by theInstitute of Chartered Accountants inEngland and Wales (ICAEW).
Sage set the standard for small-business accounting software and is ayardstick by which others measurethemselves. Pricewise, particularly if youinclude support and budget for sometraining to make the most of its features,it starts to look a bit expensive.
customer, product or salesperson. Sales-order (and purchase-order) processingautomatically updates Intrastrat details if youdeal with the EEC.
You can use up to eight rates of VAT andaccrual and cash-accounting facilities. Youcan switch between them at any time or youcan ignore VAT if you are not registered.
Although incorporating period-endprocedures to advance your accounting year,TAS Books doesn’t actually close off anytransactions so you can bring up any item indetail from however long ago, thereby givingyou the best of both worlds.
TAS Books runs under DOS, which partly
accounts for obscure error messages:“Please run program 0.3.1” doesn’thelp if there’s no clue to which onethat is.
It cannot be denied that the swingis away from DOS, making TAS lesslikely to be acceptable to a first-timeuser with a new computer full ofWindows software. Megatech’sforthcoming version for Windows95/NT may rectify that, promising amedian between the functionality ofTAS Books 1 and 2.
A wide-ranging feature set is
available to users of TAS Books 2
Sterling’s invoices can be entered
from the keyboard or generated by
the sales-order processing function
Price £469 (£399.14 ex VAT)
C o n t a c t MAP Computer Products 0161 624 5662
Good Points Arm-long features list. M u l t i - e v e r y t h i n g .
Bad Points Assumes some accountancyk n o w l e d g e .
Conclusion A fully-featured system for almostany business as long as it has some accountinge x p e r t i s e .
Details
CYAN•MAGENTA•YELLOW•BLACK PERSONAL COMPUTER WORLD
178 • Personal Computer World • April 1997
G roup Te s t : Accounting software
The desktop bank
nline business banking has finallyarrived: the ability to interrogateyour bank account by computerand modem, pay cheques, change
standing arrangements and order new services.Over 68 percent of the UK’s working
population already benefits indirectly fromBACS, a form of online banking. The BankersAutomated Clearing Services (also known asCashless Pay, or Direct Pay, or Direct Credit)is the reverse of direct debit. Instead of givingsomeone your bank account number andauthorising them to subtract unspecifiedamounts of cash from it, you give them yourbank account number and let them put inunspecified amounts. BACS can be usedto pay suppliers of goods and services,even occasional ones, but its mainapplication tends to be in the administrationof payroll, pensions and expenses. Its mainbenefits are reduced risk of robbery,prompt and regular wages payments(because they’re automatic) and lowerinsurance premiums.
You need accounting software with aBACS capability and this tends to be thehigher-priced modular systems (Global,MAP, Pegasus and Sage). Or, you can usea payroll bureau instead. BACS can supplyleaflets and a demo disk, comprising apresentation and a benefits calculator.
For other services you should talk toyour own bank. Lloyds Bank offersLloydsLink, which also lets you interrogateyour bank accounts from your owncomputer. NatWest’s BankLine CashManager service gives you access to youraccounts from your own computer, plus aone-way email link to your “Relationship
O
Keeping up to date
s you will have noticed, there ismuch excitement about theimplications for computer softwarecome the turn of the century. The
year 2000 date change has been described asa ticking time bomb which could completelywipe out your business unless you take stepsto do something about it now. Yes, y o u.
Not only do you need to knowthat the integrity of your software issecure, but that your suppliers’software can be trusted, too. So startp e s t e r i n g .
The simplified explanation is this.Dating from the time when memorywas not so readily available,programmers saved a couple ofbytes on every instance of a date byassuming the century. Thus, 1996 isrepresented by 96 and 1999 by 99.
A
Manager”. You can move sterling and foreigncurrency between your accounts, as well asmaking payments. You can also calculateprojected cleared balances.
The Royal Bank of Scotlandoperates its Royline service, linkingyour computer to your bank. Roylinelets you administer your ownaccounts as well as being able totransmit your payroll details to thebank on pay day. Other servicesinclude multi-account reconciliationreports and credit-card processing.
As well as standard BACS and itsMid-Tel phone transfers, MidlandBank has its Hexagon service forcash management between yourown accounts, trade services(documentary credits) and marketinformation. Like many others,Hexagon will start up your computer,unattended, and communicate withyour bank at cheap off-peak times if
required. Many of these services runindependently of your accounting system,using software supplied by the bank. BACS 0800 191191
R i g h t The Cashless Pay
disk will prepare a
savings estimate based
on your own figures
B e l o w N a t W e s t ’ s
BankLine Checkout disk
will verify your
computer’s compatibility
When the millennium arrives, you might expect2011 to be represented by 11, except thatyour software will think you mean 1911 andprocess accordingly.
Users of packages like those reviewed herewill need to get a replacement from thepublisher (but don’t expect it to be free). Thatwill take care of future entries but what about
historical data, already sitting on your harddisk in two-figure format? If you sell date-stamped goods or services, you’ll need to getit all converted to four figures. Start now. Youraccounts data should be less of a problembecause you’ll simply close at the end of theyear and treat it as historical. You’ll have tocarry over any time-sensitive entries when you
start your new year, of course.The table shows which packages
are currently ready for the year 2000,although all publishers say, ofcourse, that by the time 2000comes, they’ll be ready for it.
The other significant date youneed to consider is earlier: 1stJanuary, 1999. This is when, if allgoes as planned, the euro will comeinto circulation. If the UK joins thatdubious club, your accounts willhave to be able to handle a dualbase rate (the euro and the pound)and be able to trade in either. This isn o t the same as having a multi-currency capability. Read our Tableof Features (page 186) to see whichpackages are ready.
There is plenty of general
information about the year 2000 on
the internet, although the content is
almost entirely American
CYAN•MAGENTA•YELLOW•BLACK PERSONAL COMPUTER WORLD
Personal Computer World • April 1997 • 179p 1 8 3
G roup Te s t : Accounting software
Case Study: TAS Books 2 at Avery Dennison
very Dennison (Ireland) is part ofthe Avery Dennison Corporation,a leading labelling and stationerycompany. During the past two
years, Avery’s adoption of a just-in-timesystem for its warehouse operation coincidedwith the introduction of new accountingsystems throughout the organisation, whichtogether have provided some dramaticdecreases in stock holdings. The accountingsystem chosen was TAS Books 2 byMegatech, and replaced a system based onan IBM System 36 minicomputer.
At its Dublin distribution centre, Avery hasimplemented all the system’s modulesincluding stock control, purchase-orderprocessing and sales-order processing. At itsmanufacturing plant in Cork, a similar systemmanages an operation producing ranges ofdocument folders and other products for theexport market. At both sites, four-user Novellnetworked systems are used by sales,purchasing and warehouse staff as well as byfinancial management.
According to Frank Morrison, AveryDennison’s financial manager, who isresponsible for both sites, the performancegain was considerable. “The report generatoris powerful enough to produce all theinformation we want very quickly,” he said. “Insome areas of the business, resources tied upin stock have been cut by more than 70
percent. It is impossible to attribute savings toindividual systems, but rapid access to salesand stock purchasing information, via TASBooks 2, plays an important part.”
At the Dublin warehouse, managed bywarehouse controller, Ray O’Brien, orders forreplacement stock are automaticallygenerated at pre-set stockholding levels.These “suggested orders” are then cross-checked with reports produced by TASBooks before issuing actual purchase ordersto suppliers.
“We use Low Stock and ProductMovement Reports generated three or fourtimes a week as the basis for actual orders,”explained Ray O’Brien. “But, by generatingsuggested orders, the system saves aconsiderable workload.”
TAS Books 2 is unusual in that it has real-time stock control with sales-order informationcommunicated to the stock control module atthe end of each line of an order. Many othersystems update the stock system in periodicbatches or at the end of a completed orderthat may include dozens of items. Real-timeoperation is of particular value whentelephone sales staff are competing for limitedstock of the same item. Equally important isthe facility to re-credit items to stock theinstant an order is cancelled or altered, thesalesperson simply hitting the cancel button tomake that stock immediately available forother orders.
From the financial management point ofview, Frank Morrison can quickly and easilyedit existing transactions like mis-allocatedfigures, on the days he visits the Dublin site.“The Account Processor avoids the need forcontra-entries, so it is quick, and accountsremain clear and uncluttered,” he said. “Thisall helps to ensure that we can always get aclear picture of the situation.” Once a changehas been made, all other aspects of theaccounts affected are immediately updated.
Avery Dennison discovered that learning touse TAS Books 2 proved relatively quick andeasy for all levels of staff. To simplify itsoperation, the system is tailored so thatoperations staff only see that part of thesystem they actually use.
A
Case Study: The ABC of photojournalism
ne Christmas, Tony Sleep wasgiven a Box Brownie camera.Within weeks he’d taken aphotograph which unaccountably
turned out well and he has had the shutter-bug ever since. Not that he turnedprofessional right away (he was eight yearsold at the time); he tried his hand at a varietyof jobs before deciding to embark on a careeras a freelance professional photographer.
Today, after the best part of two decades,he is a dedicated press photographer with anestablished clientele of magazine andnewspaper publishers; mainly the specialistconsumer and trade press. You’ll find his workin motorcycle magazines, for example (he’s abiker himself), medical journals, RNIBpublications and the AA magazine. Based in
London, he does editorial work for somecharities and housing organisations. Most ofhis business comes from referrals andr e c o m m e n d a t i o n s .
As a sole trader, with no employees andno statutory audit requirements, Tony doesn’tneed fully-featured accounting software.Nevertheless, he chose ABC. Tony’s beenusing ABC for ten years now and likes itprincipally for its flexibility, simplicity andspeed. He doesn’t use the Calcsheet orTyping modules any more, but does find theflat-file database useful in keeping track ofover 140,000+ negatives by subject, date,location and client. He can get at thatinformation from the Accounting module. Thedatabase facilities also enable him to designany report, labels, or CSV export he might
want, using theaccounts data, freeinghim from the confines ofstandard reports.
Ideally, Tony wouldprefer the Windowsenvironment butconsiders that “NothingI have looked at comesclose to ABC4’s clunkyold DOS accounts forspeed and simplicity”.
Most of Tony’s workis commissioned, whichmeans he gets thechance to discuss ratesand fees before
proceeding. Her e q u i r e sflexibility inhandling hisinvoice chargesbecause hisfees can vary(he does notc h a r g echarities at hisc o m m e r c i a lr a t e ) .S o m e t i m e s ,though, he hasto accept therate offered.ABC lets himset up several“stock” items, the codes for which he uses asservice descriptions, complete with rate orflat-fee charges. This considerably simplifiesthe invoicing procedure to his regularcustomers. One-off expenses can also beadded to his final invoice.
Tony uses the annual services of anaccountant to prepare his end-of-year figures.He closes his books at the end of each monthand calculates his VAT quarterly. As a non-accountant, he believes it is important andeconomical to use software which is simple tooperate, while at the same time presenting hisfigures in a form familiar to his accountant.
Tony Sleep 0181 840 3463; email h a l f t o n e @ c i x . c o . u k
O
Tony Sleep, photographer
CYAN•MAGENTA•YELLOW•BLACK PERSONAL COMPUTER WORLD
Personal Computer World • April 1997 • 183p 1 8 5
G roup Te s t : Accounting software
Case Study: A friend to Saint Francis
ormerly in practice providing aservice to small businesses, now aconsultant with Maynard Heady,Don Heady is a chartered
accountant, a member of the Council of theInstitute of Chartered Accountants in Englandand Wales and a member of that body’s ITfaculty committee. He’s the invited founderand, it has to be said, sole member of SPUD(Society for the Preservation of Users of DOS).He is honorary treasurer of the Saint FrancisHospice Development Trust and one of itst r u s t e e s .
Saint Francis Hospice, which is inHavering-atte-Bower, Romford, is a registeredcharity offering care to patients with cancer orother terminal illnesses. It offers in-patient andday care, a home-care service and has atelephone advice line. It’s also an education
and resource centre, teaching others aboutthe needs of patients who are seriously orterminally ill.
The Trust derives its income entirely fromdonations, with its expenditure, apart from itsown overheads, being by grants to thehospice, thus putting both sides of its day-to-day finances on a cash basis. On taking upthe office of treasurer, one of Don’s firstimprovements was to computerise its financialrecords which, until then, had been manuallymaintained. Being a Money Manager userhimself, and thoroughly familiar with itspotential, he installed that software — theDOS version 4. This provided the necessarycashbook and investment recording facilities.
The Trust needs to keep records ofexpenditure, all its sources of income andwhether donations are private or corporate.
Money Manager’sClass Codes take careof this. In addition, theTrust would like toknow who its individualdonors are, so MoneyManager’s “Marks”(additional and optionalcodes which canprovide an extra levelof analysis withoutaffecting or sub-dividing existinganalysis categories)provide the solution.
T h eW i n d o w sversion 5has nowb e e ninstalled tot a k ea d v a n t a g eof theg r e a t e ra n a l y s i sp r o v i d e d .
T h eh o s p i c euses bothversions ofM o n e yManager tomonitor its £2m income and a similar amountof expenditure, which requires a considerabledegree of analysis. The hospice persevereswith Money Manager for DOS because of itsspeed of data entry. It uses the Windowsversion for its drill-down facility which helpswhen examining monthly reports or year-endfigures. With both the hospice and its fund-raising trust using Money Manager,accountants at both organisations can befamiliar with each other’s systems, irrespectiveof whether they prefer DOS or Windows.
Saint Francis Hospice 01708 753319 Don Heady 01277 362905; email h e a d y @ c i x . c o m p u l i n k . c o . u k
F
Case Study: Capital takes the load
ased in Felixstowe, but drawingmuch of its business from NorthSea ports and terminals, PJ TrailerServices offers a repair,
maintenance and MOT-preparation service toRoRo (Roll-on-Roll-off) freight companies inEast Anglia. We’re talking about 38-ton, eight-wheeler, articulated flatbeds that take bulkgoods and containers around the country.Before setting off, each must undergo aservice and roadworthiness inspection, whichis where PJ Trailer Services comes in.
A family firm, now run by the founder’sson-in-law, Derek Crisp, PJ Trailer Serviceshas eight fitting staff: three of them, includingDerek, are directors. Derek himself was one ofthe East Anglian Daily Times’ 1994 BusinessPersonalities of the Month for rescuing thecompany from near-bankruptcy during therecession, ten years ago.
The books and other office duties areundertaken by Derek’s wife, Ann. Thebusiness is a mixture of establishedcustomers, most with long-term contracts,
plus a sprinkling of one-offrepairs. Altogether, thecompany reckons to MOTover 800 trailers a year,turning over about£360,000 a year whichmakes it one of thebiggest independent trailerservice companies in theregion. It operates a 24-hour emergencybreakdown service, withits own tractor (cab) unitsto fetch and return trailers.
To computerise theaccounting system, Derekand Ann chose Capital onthe advice of theiraccountant and were oneof the software’s firstcustomers. So far theyhave implemented the
sales andp u r c h a s el e d g e r s ,tracking theirlabour andc o n t r a c tm a t e r i a l s .And Capitalp r o d u c e st h e i ri n v o i c e s ,which are amixture ofg o o d s ,b o u g h t - i nservices andl a b o u rcharges. Although they keep stock(consumables and essential trailer parts) theyhaven’t yet implemented stock control, butthis is planned. They’re presently using Capitalas a final accounting record only for payroll.
The Crisps appreciate that with Capitalthey can use as much or as little of it as theyneed, and work up to the full system in theirown time. For instance, Derek still keeps hisworksheet and timesheet records manually,although there is no doubt that Capital canhelp. Overall, Derek feels Capital hasincreased his company’s trading potential bygiving him day-to-day financial control in away not possible with a manual system.
Derek Crisp 01394 277111
B
Don Heady, consultant and
founder of SPUD
Derek Crisp, director of
PJ Trailer Services
CYAN•MAGENTA•YELLOW•BLACK PERSONAL COMPUTER WORLD
Personal Computer World • April 1997 • 185p 1 8 6
G roup Te s t : Accounting software
Editor’s Choice
he criteria applied in assemblingthis selection of accountingsoftware were suitability for small-to-medium businesses (a wide
range) and ease of use (subjective). However,when selecting our recommendations, andkeeping in mind those either new tocomputers or new to accounting, we alsotook into consideration the additional criterionof suitability for use by those w i t h o u tprofessional accounting skills. This instantlynarrows the field, although not necessarilyonly to those programs usually thought of asbeing “entry level”.
The best-selling small-businessaccounting software is QuickBooks and it’sundoubtedly easy to use with a good range offacilities. For small businesses withoutmanufacturing or manufactured stockcomplications, and especially for small servicebusinesses, it remains a good choice. It hasbeen a while, however, since itwas upgraded and some of itslater competitors are lookingmore versatile.
Two packages knocking atthe door of Sage’s Sterling, themost comprehensivelyfeatured software considered,are Capital by Pegasus andMAP’s Pastel Accounting.Both include sales- andpurchase-order processing,enabling users to computerisemore aspects of their businessthan just the book-keeping.Partly because of thisversatility, they are not,perhaps, suited to the absolutebeginner without access tosome hand-holding.
QuickBooks v3 and MAPPastel Accounting are both HighlyCommended, but our Editor’s Choice is aprogram that is not only easy to get to gripswith but also capable of considerable use
T
Modular systems
f none of the integrated packagesdiscussed here satisfy yourrequirements, you may need toconsider a modular package. As
the name implies, modular packagescomprise several modules, each of which canbe bought separately. This allows you to buildup a software specification to suit your exactrequirements with no redundant elements,and usually offers functions not available in theintegrated software.
For many companies, changing up from aless sophisticated or manual system, modularpackages offer a gradual way of easing intocomputerised accounts.
Another attraction is that modular softwareis usually better-specified in terms of features.There will be a more powerful analyticalcapacity, coupled with more flexible reportingoptions, so your accounts data yields moreinformation not only as historical records butalso as valuable management information.
Additionally, modular accountingpackages are usually bought from VARs —Value Added Resellers, who have beentrained by the publisher in all aspects of itssoftware. This does mean, though, that theVAR probably only offers software from onepublisher. It will probably also have access tothe software’s source programming, and willhave experts on hand who are able to tailor itmore closely to the peculiarities of yourbusiness. In some cases, you can have extrafunctions added just for you or for interfacingto your other systems. Many modularpackages are capable of linking to industry-standard databases.
None of this comes cheap, of course, andthe cost of individual modules may wellexceed the total cost of an integratedpackage, pushing the price of modularsoftware into the thousands of pounds ratherthan the hundreds. A typical modular system,with a central core of the three standard
ledgers — sales, purchase and general ornominal — together with Invoicing and aCashbook, could set you back more than£2,500 for a single-user licence, rising to over£15,000 for multi-user capability.
Extra modules would start at about £500each and might include stock control, bill ofmaterials, sales- and purchase-orderprocessing, costing, BACS, job costing andestimating, as well as an asset register. Tothat must be added the cost of training yourstaff and of maintaining your bespoke system,which is as unlikely to be bug-free as anyother software.
You will probably discover that mostupper-end software is DOS-based, for thereason that it is often in full-time use enteringdata where GUIs (graphical user interfaces)get in the way of professional and expertkeyboard users. But there is an increasingnumber of packages being published as 32-bit Windows NT applications.
I
R i g h t
M . Y . O . B ,
our Editor’s
C h o i c e ,
o f f e r s
u n r i v a l l e d
v e r s a t i l i t y
B e l o w
B e g i n n e r s
could do
worse than
check out
Q u i c k B o o k s
before there’s any likelihood of it beingoutgrown. For a sensible selection ofaccounting features coupled with its useful,though basic, contact management facilities,and certainly for the money, we recommend
M.Y.O.B. It does without sales-order processing but its pendinginvoices and its job managementfacility do almost as good a job. Itwill also prepare your estimatesand manage your stock. You geta good range of analysis codesand user-definable credit control.It gives help with awkwardtransactions like reversingpostings which can otherwiseleave you in a horrendous tangle,and has reasonably pricedtelephone support. You canformat its output, helping to makea good impression on yourcustomers (and bank manager),and for input you can chooseflowchart or menu navigation. The
inclusion of basic contact management and itsdaily reminder list means that the only othersoftware many small companies might need isa word processor.
Name ABC4 Access Intro Pegasus Capital Sage Instant Accounting Money Manager
Price £293 (£249.36 ex VAT) £347 (£295.31 ex VAT) £646 (£549.78 ex VAT) £99 (£84.25 ex VAT) £94 (£80 ex VAT)
Nominal ledger
Sales ledger
Purchase ledger
Invoicing £100 £50
Stock control £100 with above
Sales order processing £249
Purchase order processing
Job costing £100
Payroll £99 £200
Multi-company
Multi-user £351 £200
Multi-currency
Euro-ready
Year 2000-ready
Accreditation BASDA/ICACW ICAW ICAEW
Initial support Free £120/12mths Free/90days Free/90days Free
Extended support Free £120/12mths £180/12mths £75/12mths Free
User club
Evaluation disk
Operating system DOS Win 3.1 Win 3.1 Win 3.1 DOS/Win 3.1
Min. memory 1Mb 6Mb 4Mb 4Mb 4Mb
Disk space 1Mb 10Mb 6Mb 10Mb 3Mb
Supplier ABC Direct Sales Access Accounting Pegasus Software Sage Group Connect Software
Web address www pastel.co.za iii.co.uk/intuit sagesoft.co.uk megatech.co.uk
Key: Y e s N o
Table of Features
You only getwhat you pay for, so theysay. Well, if you’re looking for anotebook PC, just what can you get for £2,500?Adele Dyer tested eight and was pleasantly surprised.
Personal Computer World • April 1997 • 191p193
Group Test: Notebook PCs
190 • Personal Computer World • April 1997
obile computing is facing a real dilemma.Are notebooks here to stay, or are theylikely to be swept away with the advent
of Windows CE on the latest crop of PDAs?Are PDAs with their small size and lightweight the way ahead, even though theyoffer limited computing power and are hell
to type on? Or will PDAs, in turn, simplybecome internet machines and glorifiedmobile phones? Or, at the other end of thescale, are fully-featured, full-power MMX
notebooks the way of the future? The answer is probably that there is scope
for all these machines in the market as they allserve very different needs. The large notebookis still useful for a few things: presentations,running power-hungry applications, or as a
portable alternative to a desktop machine. Whether you opt for a lightweight notebook
or a fully-featured desktop replacement, price isundoubtedly the limiting factor in the decision
process. If you have £5,000 to spare you canget some amazing machines, but we decided to
see what we could get for a more reasonable£2,500. We specified that this figure should be astreet price and exclude VAT. We insisted on 16Mb
of RAM but left it to the manufacturers themselvesto come up with the best deal they could puttogether. We were impressed with the machines wesaw and think you, too, will be.
M
Notebooks Contents
Buy while stocks lastGreat buyGood buyThere’s a better buy somewhereBuy it and weep
Ratings
193 AcerNote 970CX193 Brother Expression196 Evesham Quest196 IBM 365XD203 Opti Calibre Plus203 Samsung Sens Pro 500208 Sharp PC-9040208 Toshiba Satellite Pro 430 CDI
195 Table of Features198 Notebook screens205 Usability205 Ten top tips for choosing a notebook209 Mobile computing209 Connectivity210 Editor’s Choice210 Performance results
NO
TE
BO
OK
Pho
tog
rap
hy b
y D
avid
Why
te
Group Test: Notebook PCs
Making notes
Personal Computer World • April 1997 • 193
Group Test: Notebook PCs
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p223
Group Test: Notebook PCs
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he Acer is another of those“show-off” notebooks that justscream style, and thankfully it hasa screaming performance to
match. It has a grainy, matt, charcoal finishand the front is tapered to give a moresvelte appearance, even though the actualmeasurement of 30.7cm at the widest pointbelies this impression. As you open the lid,the notebook automatically switches on —quite a novelty.
The Acer is the only P150 in this testand benefits from 256Kb of synchronousSRAM L2 cache. It is surprising thatmore notebooks do not come withcache since it is almost universalin desktop machines, so it waspleasing to see it here. It alsohas 16Mb EDO RAM asstandard, a 1.3Gb harddisk and theexceptionally fastNeoMagic 128-bitgraphics chip, all ofwhich boost themachine’sperformance results.
The screen is a good 12.1inTFT with a maximum resolution of 800 x 600 in65,000 colours. It can run 1024 x 768 in 256 colours but willonly do so in virtual mode, so you don’t gain a great deal by pushingup to this mode. The colours are vibrant, and overall the screen issteady and even.
The keyboard is pleasant touse, with exactly the rightamount of spring-back, and it
can be tilted to a morecomfortable typing position. Theglidepad was not such adelight, however it was
configured. It was sticky andjerky at best and a downrightnuisance at worst. There is, thankgoodness, a Windows 95 key soyou can circumvent the glidepadaltogether.
The CD-ROM drive can beswapped with the floppy drive oralternatively they can be run off aseparate extension cable,enabling you to use both at once.
T
AcerNote 970CX
Price RRP £3,149 (£2,680 ex VAT). Street £2,812 (£2,393.19 ex VAT)Contact Acer UK 01628 533422Good Points Great design. Excellentperformance.Bad Points Jerky glidepad.Conclusion An excellent little mover.
Details
rother is not one of the most well-known manufacturers ofnotebooks in the UK. The companyadmits that its notebook range is
there more to complete its range of officeproducts than to take on the likes of Toshiba,Compaq and IBM.
The Expression is Brother’s latest productbut there is no ground-breaking technologyhere: “sturdy” springs to mind rather than“exciting”. Perhaps it is the sludge greencolour, or the small screen set in a heavilymoulded surround, that make you thinkit is intended for military use.
The screen is a mere 10.4in,something we are no longerused to seeing because mostmanufacturers now seem toopt for at least an 11.3inscreen except on theirlowest-pricedmodels. The screenquality wasdisappointinglyaverage, being alittle dull and lackingpizazz.
The keyboard is hard on the fingersand has no Windows 95 key, and the position ofthe keys is not ideal. However, the glidepad is easy to use,smooth to the touch and responds well.
The speakers on this model are by the top of the screen. Thesound is not superb, although it is simply muffled rather than tinny as
on many othernotebooks on themarket.
The CD and floppydrive are interchangeableand slide in and out easilyenough, although you willneed both hands to undothe catch. The hard disk isremovable, but both slots onthe bottom of the case arefilled.
There are no useful utilitiesloaded on the Expression, noteven for power management,although you do get a pre-loaded copy of SmartSuite(and on disk, too). Again, aswith almost all the notebooksin this test, there is a bundle ofonline services ready to set up.
B
Brother Expression
Price RRP £2,274 (£1,935.31 ex VAT).Street £1,985 (£1,689.36 ex VAT)Contact Kyodai 01279 416888Good Points Solid and robust.Bad Points No utilities. Screen a little dull.Conclusion A solid notebook at a decentprice.
Details
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Group Test: Notebook PCs
Manufacturer Opti International Samsung Sharp Toshiba
Model name Calibre Plus Sens Pro 500 PC-9040 Satellite Pro 430CDT
Maximum resolution 800 x 600 800 x 600 800 x 600 800 x 600
On-screen colours (800 x 600) 65K 65K 65K 256
Battery type supplied/claimed life Li -Ion/10 hrs NiMH/1.5 hrs NiMH/2 hrs NiMH/2 hrs
Dimensions (WxDxH) in mm 313 x 240 x 53 292 x 230 x 55 297 x 236 x 35 (nb only) 297 x 211 x 49
Weight with battery 4.2kg 3kg 2.5kg (nb only) 2.92kg
Software bundle Win95, MPEG player Win95, SmartSuite 96 Lotus SmartSuite
Basic warranty 1 yr swap-out 1 yr RTB 1 yr 1 yr
Warranty options Max 2 yr extension 1, 2, 3 yrs on-site 1, 2, or 4 yrs 1, 3, 5 yr extensions
Technical support National rate (0990 134348) National rate (01279 410330) National rate 24 hrs Helpware membership
Personal Computer World • April 1997 • 195
p196
Table of Features
Table of Features
Yes No
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196 • Personal Computer World • April 1997
hen Compaq introduced its Armada 4100model last year, it was obvious thatsooner or later the Taiwanese would startcloning it. So it was no surprise to see
Evesham’s latest notebook use the same idea of aslimline unit coupled with a media docking station,with a CD-ROM drive and extra speakers.
However, despite its slimline appearance, theweight advantage of the Compaq 4100 has notbeen replicated in the Quest. The basic notebookhas a floppy drive and speakers, plus the usualconnections and ports. Putting it on top of themedia docking station does make itexceptionally large, though. The extraspeakers do not make that muchdifference to the Quest’s mediocresound quality.
The notebook itself makesthe most dreadful noise; itsounds like an old vacuumcleaner buzzing awaydown the corridor. Thiswas obviously theproduct of an irritatedfan, and extremelyannoying.
The screen is an11.3in TFT. Overall it was crispand clear although the colours were alittle faded. Brightness is controlled from thekeyboard via the function keys, which is never verysatisfactory. There is no bar or other measure on-screen so youcannot tell to what extent you have increased the brightness.
The keyboard isfirm and feels entirelyrobust, my only gripebeing the small size ofthe function keys,especially the deletekey, which is the size ofthe nail on your littlefinger.
The performancewas less than inspiringfor a P133, which may beattributed to the lack of L2cache. However, it shouldbe noted that slimline
notebooks usually performless well than larger modelsbecause power is sacrificedto jamming everything into asmaller space.
W
Evesham Micros Vale Quest
Price £2,277 (£1,937.87 ex VAT). Only available direct.Contact Evesham Micros 01386 765500Good Points Slimline.Bad Points Slow performance. Noisy.Conclusion Only for those who cannotafford the Compaq 4100.
Details
he 365 ThinkPads are at thebottom of IBM’s range, below the760s and the slimline 560s. Yetyou’d never know that it’s low-
end. The 365XD we saw outperforms andout-swanks many other notebooks.
The screen was only a 10.4in TFT,although larger screens are available onother models. Nevertheless, it is still anexcellent screen, capable of running in65,000 colours at 800 x 600, and isvibrant and even. There is a brightnessknob next to the screen so you don’thave to faff about with function keys.
The 365XD is slim and elegantand, like the 760, it has a certainamount of modularity in itsinternal build. The keyboardcan be lifted to reveal thebattery and the CD-ROM drive, but onlythe battery can beremoved. Theseparate floppydrive is attached viaa dedicated port.
As with all IBMs,the 365 is loaded with amass of utilities: TranXit, IBM AntiVirus,CompuServe, ccMail Mobile, NetFinity, PC CardDirector, Emergency Recovery Utility (ERU), IBM Online,Diskette Factory, and ThinkPad bits and pieces including a powermanagement utility, personalisation utility, online manual, features
settings utility and atutorial. All this makes iteasier to handle thenotebook’s functionalityand performance andensures a smooth passageto getting online. Strangely,as in the Toshiba SatellitePro, power management is
set via IBM’s own Windowsutility and not in the oddlylimited BIOS settings.
The keyboard is firm butclatters a little, and thetrackpoint is easy tomanipulate. The feet on thebottom tilt the notebookforward at a rakish angle. Thesound isn’t good though, beingtinny and muffled.
T
IBM ThinkPad 365XD
p198
Price RRP£2,412 (£2,052.76 ex VAT). Street £2,190(£1,863.82 ex VAT)Contact IBM 0990 727272Good Points Lots of utilities. Good screen.Bad Points No internal floppy.Conclusion Another winning ThinkPad.
Details
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pti was the only manufacturer tosend us a DSTN (dual scantwisted nematic) screen; theothers opted for TFT. Although
TFT screens are becoming more common,many notebook manufacturers still offerDSTN screens as a cheaper option.
This particular 11.3in DSTN screendemonstrated the reasons why TFT isnow the technology of choice: it sufferedfrom bleeding and shadowing, caused bycrosstalk (see page 198). It runs at aresolution of 800 x 600, but only in256 colours, unlike its TFTequivalents which were capableof 65,000.
The build quality of theCalibre is reasonable,although it does looka little pedestrian.The CD-ROMdrive and thefloppy driveswap in andout but there isno external bayto run both at once.There is a catch at the bottom ofthe notebook which releases and pushesout the drives a small way, thus minimising wear andtear as you battle to get them in and out.
The RAM can be upgraded by unscrewing a plate at the back,revealing one free slot. But don’t be tempted to go poking around in
there; a huge noticewarns you that yourwarranty will be void if youremove the plate.
The keyboard is quitefirm to the touch but is alsonoisy, and although thetrackpad feels stiff at first,you soon get used to it. Butlike all too many trackpads, itis inaccurate and there is noWindows 95 key to make upfor this. Some of the symbolson the function keys are a littleobscure, which is unfortunatesince many controls (includingthe brightness and volume) are
operated from the keyboard.The sound is tinny but there is
no hiss, and you can get a decentvolume out of the speakers.
O
Opti Calibre Plus
Price £1,927 (£1,640 ex VAT). Onlyavailable direct.Contact Opti International 0181 507 1818Good Points Reasonable build quality.Bad Points DSTN screen. Poorperformance.Conclusion The bargain basement option.
Details
irst impressions of the SamsungSens Pro 500 are of an extremelystylish notebook; it is dark blue,very thin and flat. The 12.1in TFT
screen appears huge in its narrow surround.The quality of the screen is excellent, crispand clean with a bright colour quality. It canbe driven in 65,000 colours at 800 x 600.
The impression of style is reinforced bythe keyboard which is all one colour, but assoon as you start to use it the bubblebursts. Since the keys are all the sameshade it can be difficult for the non-touchtypist to see if they are hitting the correctkeys. The shift key, for instance, caneasily be missed if you aren’t careful.The keyboard itself is not as rigidas it could be, so you feel as ifyour fingers might pushthrough the centre of it atany moment.
The functionkeys are wellmarked, withwords rather thansymbols todenote their use,even though theyare very small. Thedelete key in the top right-handcorner is minute (about the size of yourlittle fingernail) so must be hit with precision.
The sound is not good — imagine a wind-up toy soldier
banging on a tindrum at the bottomof a well. It is tinny inthe extreme, itechoes, and it’s noteven that loud.
Having read this,you could be forgivenfor giving the Samsunga wide berth. But
keyboard and soundapart, this is otherwise avery good notebook.The CD and floppy areeasily swapped thanks toa nifty little flip-switch onthe back, and the batterycan be exchanged quicklyand easily.
F
Samsung Sens Pro 500
Price RRP £2,932 (£2,495.31 ex VAT).Street £2,697 (£2,295.31 ex VAT)Contact Samsung 0181 391 0168Good Points Excellent styling. Goodscreen.Bad Points Keyboard. Sound.Conclusion A notebook to impress yourfriends with.
Details
198 • Personal Computer World • April 1997
otebook displays vary widely in quality; from stunningto dire. The reason lies in the make-up of the screens.The two main choices are thin film transistor (TFT) or
passive matrix screens, also known as dual-scan supertwistednematic (DSTN). Both are liquid crystal displays (LCDs), so calledbecause they have a layer of liquid crystals sandwiched betweenlayers of filters. TFT screens are much higher quality but aredifficult to produce in high yields, and this is reflected in the price.
All LCDs are backlit, the light source usually coming from anarray of cold fluorescent tubes at the back of the screen. In frontof this is the first of two polarising filters. Infinitesimally small linesconstructed in the filters themselves only let through lighttravelling in the right direction, so filtering the ambient light intopolarised or coherent light. The lines in the first filter are arrangedvertically, and in the second, horizontally. If the light were allowedto pass directly from one filter to the other, it would all be blockedand the screen would remain dark. However, the layer of liquidcrystals sandwiched between them twists the light, allowing it topass through the second filter to the front of the screen.
In notebooks, the liquid crystals are rod-shaped or nematicmolecules which are aligned by grooves in plastic, so bendingthe light that passes through them. How much they bend can becontrolled by the amount of current passed through to them. Thetwist in the crystals determines the bend in the light. In theirresting state, crystals typically twist through 90 degrees, so withno current applied all the light can pass through the filters. Whenthe current is on, the crystals twist and block the light, darkeningthe pixels.
There are numerous ways of arranging the crystals.Supertwist Nematic (STN) screens have supertwist liquid crystalswhich bend light by 180° to 270°. Double Supertwist Nematic(DS or DSN) has two layers of supertwist liquid crystals back toback, so one bends light in the opposite direction to the other.Triple Supertwist Nematic (TSN) layers both sides of liquid crystalwith thin polymer films. Films absorb less light than doublesupertwist, so less light and therefore less power is needed.
Above each crystal there are red, green and blue filters and, inTFT displays, elements which add the colours. In a TFT screen,each pixel is made up of three cells, or sub-pixels, in red, greenand blue. The amount of light that passes through the filters andelements alters the hue of each colour, and so, as on your TV,millions of colours can be created using just three base colours.
The main difference between passive matrix and TFT screensis how the current is applied to the crystal. In the former, thecurrent is delivered via a grid system. The pixels are placed at theintersections of the horizontal and vertical lines. When the currentrises above a certain point, the pixel is activated. The maindisadvantage of this technology is that it is impossible to turn onone pixel without affecting those around it. This creates“crosstalk”, which appears on the screen as bleeding anddistortion. Contrast is reduced, the viewing angle is restricted,and colours are muted and less discernible. The grid system alsoslows the refresh rate of the screen, so flicker is common.
Some screens improve on the basic passive matrix design.DualScan splits a screen in half and gives each its own driver,
enabling a faster refresh rate, improved contrast ratio, andreduced shadowing and bleeding.
TFT or active matrix screens have the same grid ofconductors to control the current, but at each pixel there is atransistor which switches on or off depending on the current.Transistors are connected horizontally to form the scanning linesand vertically to form the signal lines. Horizontal lines areswitched on in turn, from top to bottom of the display, while thevoltage to vertical lines is varied. Each pixel is thus independent ofits neighbour, leading to greater clarity and sharpness. TFTs runat much higher refresh rates than passive matrix screens and insome instances outperform CRT monitors. A separate transistoris needed for the red, green and blue cells in each pixel, so for a1,024 x 768 screen you need a massive 2,359,296 transistors: if12 of these fail when the screen is tested after manufacture, thescreen is discarded. This is partly why the cost of TFT screensremains high. Typically, TFT screens run at a resolution of 800 x 600 in 65,000 colours, while DSTN screens are often onlycapable of 256 colours at the same resolution.
Although 12.1in TFT screens are commonplace, 13.3inscreens are expected to be available in the near future.
Notebook screens
NNEC passive colour display: How it works
Rear polariser
Four cold cathode fluorescent tubes
LCD matrix (between two glass panels)
RGB filters
Compensated twisted
nematic filter
Front polariser
Light
Linearlry polarised light
Light from LCD elements in their natural state
Colours
Colours, but with much leaked light filtered
Final image
Polariser
Polariser
Glass substrate
Liquid crystal
Colour elements
Glass substrate
TFT's
Light direction
Structure of NEC TFT colour LCD Spot the
difference:
the carefully
aligned
TFTs and
colour
elements in
the active
matrix
screen give
a sharper
picture than
the passive
matrix
screen
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Personal Computer World • April 1997 • 205p208
otebook users fall into two main categories: those whowant all the functionality of a desktop system in anotebook, and those who are looking for portability
over functionality. With the second group in mind, our VNUUsability Labs recently tested four different notebooks to see howthey performed on the move. Although these particular notebookswere not those reviewed in this group test, the results didhighlight some of the general problems you might encounterwhen working on the move.
Usability, or HCI (human computer interaction), is anassessment of six key areas: efficiency, intuitiveness, error rates,ergonomics, how quickly you can learn, and how quickly you canremember how to perform certain tasks. All these factors areessential if you want to work effectively.
The evaluators were business professionals, travelling fromLondon to Brighton by train. They all had to complete a series oftasks on each of the four notebooks using Microsoft Office andany pre-installed notebook utilities under Windows 95. They wereasked to assess seven areas: ergonomics (screen, keyboard,pointing device, build quality), power management (was it easy tounderstand, set up and change?), help (on-line and manuals),installation, weight, ease of use and modularity (by installingperipherals such as CD-ROMs).
The quality of pointing devices and keyboards is a highlyimportant issue in mobile computing. In a moving environment,the evaluators had more problems using touchpads than using
trackpoints on theirnotebooks.Judders, whetherthey are caused byturbulence in anaircraft or bumpingalong an unevenrailway track, willmake your hand
jiggle on the surface of a touchpad and in extreme cases canrender the device unworkable as the pointer movement becomestoo erratic.
Many notebook users do not generally understand powermanagement, and most leave the notebook’s powermanagement configured as supplied. They do not want to botherwith switching power-saving modes and require maximum batterylife with a minimum of fuss. As a result, systems with clear powerfacilities such as easily-identified function keys and intuitivesoftware, fared better than those that relied on BIOS settings.
The optimum weight for a notebook is purely a matter ofindividual preference. In our study, some of the evaluatorsconsidered that even the heaviest of the notebooks were quiteportable, while others found the lightest ones difficult to carryaround. So really, the only way to find the ideal weight ofnotebook for you, personally, is to actually lift it.
Jonathan Ricks
1. Decide what you want from the machine: do you need a desk-top replacement, or something light and portable? 2. What components do you need? If you are only going to use itfor catching up with your email and typing the odd letter, a CD-ROM drive and speakers are luxuries. Swap-out components, likeCD-ROM and floppy drives, can be a pain for regular use but saveon weight if you only need to carry one or other with you. 3. The weight of your notebook is a major consideration. If youtravel on public transport and carry a heavy 3.5lb machine, yourarms will end up stretched to the floor. It could be worth paying alittle more and sacrificing some speed for a lightweight model.4. Battery life should match your needs. If you are away from apower point for long periods, you may need to carry more thanone battery. Some notebooks can house multiple batteries, but asthey are just about the heaviest part of a notebook, you must payfor the convenience. Nickel-Metal Hydride batteries are cheaperthan Li-Ion batteries but they run down quickly and have to becompletely spent before recharging, to avoid degradation. 5. Most notebooks now have TFT screens but passive screenscannot not be ruled out; okay, they bleed and aren’t as crisp asTFT screens, but they’re cheap. 6. Generally, notebook sound quality is not good. Forpresentations, it’s worth investing in a pair of external speakers.7. Many modem manufacturers offer deals on PC Card modems.
These don’t always offer the best value so you might be bestadvised to shop around in the back pages of PCW. However, PCCard modems are difficult to configure, so choosing a modem youknow to be compatible with your notebook might save you hoursof frustration during installation.8. So you have decided on a spec: before you start lookingthrough the ads, decide how much you want to spend, thensubtract a few hundred pounds. It may sound like a strangesuggestion but advertised prices will probably be for minimumconfigurations; many notebooks will have only 8Mb of RAM. Bythe time you’ve allowed for an upgrade from a passive matrix toan active-matrix screen, put in a larger hard disk or a betterbattery and upped the RAM to 16Mb, you will have addedsignificantly to the basic price, so the notebook that at firstseemed a bargain is now worthy of a second mortgage.9. Where should you buy? If you buy retail, you will get a limitedchoice and will pay the “high street premium”. Buying direct cutsout the middle man and cuts the cost. Resellers can usually offergood deals on large quantities, and can provide their ownextended warranties and technical support. 10. Warranties are not something to take lightly, as notebookstake quite a pounding. Many manufacturers offer a three-yearwarranty as standard. It’s a good idea. Extended warranties areworth considering too, but it’s wise to shop around.
VNU Labs Report: Usability
N
Ten top tips for choosing a notebook
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harp has a wide range of portableproducts, from the handhelds like theZR-8000 and the ZR-5800, throughthe WideNote, to the 9040 and the
top-of-the-range 9300. The 9040 does not havethe same power as the 9300, although manyother features are the same, and it does nothave the compact size and impressive screen ofthe WideNote (reviewed in PCW, Feb). Butdespite all that, it is a contender in its own right.
Sharp is renowned for its screens. It is amajor manufacturer of flat screens and hasproduced its own, patented, Super HighAperture technology. But this active matrixscreen was not of the usual quality. Itsuffered slightly from bleeding and itseemed that there was some crosstalkgoing on (the fault may have been aone-off on this particular model).Nevertheless it was bright, withgood colour.
Overall, thecomponents are goodquality. The keyboard isexcellent, almost thebest in this group; quietand firm, but notspongy. The functionkeys are a good sizeand the layout is sensible.
The sound on this notebook is alsoamong the best in this test. It was a little thin but didnot overly suffer from tinniness and hiss as did most of the others,
and it handled bassand reverb well.
The floppy and CD-ROM drives are both
included in the mainbody of the notebook,although the CD-ROMdrive can be swappedout and a second batteryfitted in its place.
There were two othernice touches. First was thepower cord which can beplugged straight into themains without the need foran adaptor. And second, asSharp is part of the IrDAstandards committee, IrDA1.1 is supported at speedsof 4Mbits/sec.
S
Sharp PC-9040
Price RRP £2,701 (£2,298.72 ex VAT).Street £2,348 (£1,998.29 ex VAT)Contact Sharp 0800 262958Good Points Excellent sound. Secondbattery capacity.Bad Points Screen below par for a TFT.Conclusion Good notebook, marred by abad screen.
Details
he Toshiba range is divided intocategories according to how muchnew technology will be included onthe notebook. The Tecra range is
top of the pile, followed by the Protégé series.Just below this come the Satellite Pros.
This notebook is a solid beast, withfunctionality leading over portability. But thisis not too much of an issue because you getextremely high quality for your money. Thescreen is an 11.3in, 800 x 600 TFT runningat a refresh rate of 60Hz in a maximum of16 million colours. As you might expect, itis clean, crisp and bright.
The CD and the floppy can beswapped from the notebook into aseparate hard case, connected tothe notebook via a dedicatedport. In practice, this meansyou probably change thedrives less often,reducing wear andtear as well as theannoyance factor.
One of the bestthings about Toshibanotebooks are theutilities provided.MaxTime Manager enables you toplay around with the power andperformance settings, providing a good deal of scopeto achieve your exact requirements. You cannot get into the BIOSto change settings, but as many users feel more comfortable making
changes via Windows,and the utilities are sogood, this is no great loss.
The Satellite Pro doesnot have an internal modembut the pre-installedCardWorks utility shouldmake it easy for you to installa PC Card modem. Thereare two Type II slots or oneType III slot.
The sound is reproducedthrough one small speaker atthe front of the notebook,which carries a volume knob.Turning the volume right up inthe software as well as on thespeaker produces a reasonablesound, albeit a little metallic.
T
Toshiba Satellite Pro 430 CDT
Price RRP £3,167 (£2,695.31 ex VAT).Street £2,691 (£2,290.21 ex VAT)Contact Toshiba Information Systems01932 828828Good Points Outstanding build quality.Bad Points A little chunky.Conclusion An excellent notebook.
Details
Personal Computer World • April 1997 • 209p210
Group Test: Notebook PCs
t has taken a while to get the functionality of adesktop machine into a notebook. Althoughnotebook components must be squashed into a
smaller space, the real issue is one of power. Modern batteriesare not all they are cracked up to be, and if your battery onlylasts a short time you must squeeze as much life from it aspossible. If the desktop chips run at 3.3v, it’s going to eat up alot of the available power. Not only does a chip need toconsume less power, but it also needs to be able to control thepower in other parts of the system.
Another problem is heat. Pentium processors run very hot, soin a desktop machine they will have a fan or a heat sink abovethem. In a notebook you don’t want a fan consuming power, yetheat sinks use up too much space. Other components in thenotebook are cooled by devices like heat pipes and thermalsensors, and by using the system chassis to vent heat externally.Intel’s answer was to develop mobile Pentiums and house themin a Tape Carrier Package (TCP). Voltage Reduction Technologydissipates the heat by allowing the external pins of the processorto be powered at 3.3v while the chip itself runs at 2.9v, with thecore running as low as 2.45v. In this way, the chip can stillcommunicate with components operating at 3.3v. Thiscombination provides power savings of up to 40 percent overstandard processors. The chips are 65 percent smaller and weigh95 percent less than desktop processors.
The TCP is a thin piece of film with copper foil laminated ontoone side. The copper is photo-imaged and etched to make
traces andleads whichform theconnectionfrom theprocessor’ssilicon to thecircuit board.The traces aregold-plated tobond to the silicon and prevent corrosion. The silicon is thencoated with resin.
The latest notebook processors are MMX-enhanced with thelarger instruction set, 32Kb of Level 1 cache and eight 64-bitregisters. But Intel has ensured that they remain a small stepbehind the desktop models as the chips will only run at 150MHzand 166MHz as opposed to 166MHz and 200MHz in the desktopmodels. Yet the advantages of MMX in notebooks are moreexciting than in the desktop. The extra power allows moreprocessing to be handled by the processor, avoiding the need forextra hardware. Software modems are one example: once thesignal has been received and converted to digital data, the MMXchip can process it. Modems can then be added to the systemboard without fear of them lagging behind current communicationspeeds, as only the firmware would have to be upgraded.• Unfortunately we were unable to edit out the typographical errors in
the diagram above.
Mobile computing
I
he days of standalone working have gone, so having anotebook that cannot communicate with another PC isabout as useful as ice-skates in the Caribbean. But
help is at hand, and there are now countless ways to wire up yournotebook to the office network or the internet. The four main waysare by PC Cards, IrDA, built-in modems and mobile phone.
PC Cards are commonplace and there is now a wide range ofmodems (some with ethernet adaptors) costing from as little as£120, or £250 with a LAN adaptor. ISDN adaptors in PC Cardform are beginning to appear: expect to see more in the comingmonths. Another development in PC Card technology is CardBus,a 32-bit extension to the 16-bit PC Card peripheral interface. Itenables data throughput rates of up to 132Mbits/sec, but as yetthere are few cards on the market which support this standard.
PC Cards have some disadvantages. Firstly, they are difficult toconfigure and can have you pulling your hair out in frustration. Allthe workings of a PC Card have to be in software, so if you have aconflict there are no jumpers you can change to force it intosubmission. You may be unlucky and find that your PC Card willnot work with your notebook no matter what tricks you try.
You should make sure your modem is certified for use bywhatever country you are in. Almost every country in the world hasa different telephone system and modems that are not configured
to work correctly with a particular phone system are likely, at best,to play up, worst, to damage the phone line.
An increasing number of notebooks are coming with themodem already built in, so all you have to do is connect the wireand plug it into the telephone socket.
All the notebooks in this group test came fitted with IrDA (Infra-red Data Association), mostly complying to the older IrDA 1specification. But there are a few notebooks on the market whichfollow the IrDA 1.1 specification, notably from Hewlett-Packard,NEC and Sharp which are active participants in the IrDAstandards committee. IrDA 1.1 is also known as FastIR and has adata throughput rate of either 1.5Mbits/sec or 4Mbits/sec, whilestandard IrDA can only manage 115bps.
For mobile communications it is possible to connect a mobilephone to a notebook via a suitable PC Card and use it as amodem on the move. Whether you’re sitting in a train, a car or at aremote location, you can email, fax or browse the web, whereveryour phone has a signal. You’ll need a suitable digital mobilephone connected to Orange, one2one, Cellnet GSM or VodafoneGSM. Mobile data is reliable but operates at 9,600bps (maximum)and can drop lower under demanding conditions.
Remember that all PC Cards will drain your notebook’s battery,so remove them or activate sleep modes when not in use.
Connectivity
T
hoosing a notebook that is right for you is acomplicated business: not only must you hit the rightprice and the right components, but the machine
must also suit your intended purpose. There is no such thing as “the perfect notebook” so the
choices we have made are based on three criteria: speed, buildquality and ease of use. Let’s face it, if you are going to spend£2,500 on anything, you want to make sure it is going toperform well and will last the course.
Most owners have notebooks so that they can makepresentations and use a word processor, a spreadsheet andemail. For presentations you need to make an impact, and ifyour battered old notebook is not equal to the task, it can takethe edge off your image. Notebooks can take a good bashing asthey are humped around, so it makes sense to buy a sturdy,well-built product that will last the distance.
The clear winner of our Editor’s Choice, in terms of speed,has to be the AcerNote 970CX. This was the only machine tohave a P150 processor, which obviously made an impact in thetests, but it was also one of the few to include 256Kb ofsecondary-level cache. Also, the NeoMagic 128-bit graphicschip takes the strain off the processor, and this again shows inthe Windows applications results. Add to this nice styling andextremely long battery life, and you’ve got a winner.
The Toshiba Satellite Pro 430CDT is Highly Commended. It
is after all a Tosh, andwhen you look atnotebooks like this youfully understand whyToshiba is number onein the world.
This notebookis well built andachievedgoodscoreson ourbenchmarktests. Above all, it has excellentutilities which make it one of the most adaptableand easy-to-use notebooks on the market.
The IBM 365XD also receives our nomination as a HighlyCommended product. Like the Satellite Pro, the 365 is not atop-of-the-range product, but because it comes from theThinkPad stable some of the innovation and design excellenceapplied to the higher-level models has filtered down into thisone. The screen and its build quality are equal to that of moreexpensive notebooks and you get the usual armoury of utilitiesthat come with an IBM as a matter of course.
210 • Personal Computer World • April 1997
Group Test: Notebook PCs
Editor’s Choice
C
Doom II Results
0 10 20 30 40 50
40.52
32.35
35.87
42.95
28.79
36.88
37.14
35.25
Acer
Brother
Evesham
IBM
Opti
Samsung
Sharp
Toshiba
Manufacturer Totals FASTERSLOWER
Windows Applications Results
0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0
1.76
1.32
1.20
1.37
1.31
1.36
1.16
1.39
Acer
Brother
Evesham
IBM
Opti
Samsung
Sharp
Toshiba
Manufacturer Totals FASTERSLOWER
mes
per
sec
ond
CYAN•MAGENTA•YELLOW•BLACK PERSONAL COMPUTER WORLD
216 • Personal Computer World • April 1997
Cutting Edge Focus: Politics on the web
aking over an embassy andholding 74 people hostage isn’tthe sort of politics we’re
accustomed to in the UK, so when theTupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement(MRTA) did just that at the JapaneseEmbassy in Peru on 17th December 1996,the event predictably made headlines.
But if the kidnappers thought theiractions were a way to put across theirpolitical message to the world’s media, theywere mistaken. Not surprisingly, the newscoverage centred on the human story of thehostages in the embassy. More time wasgiven to the presence of Mariachi bands atthe embassy gate (hired by relatives of thehostages to boost morale) than to thedetails of the guerrilla’s demands.
But the MRTA had a secret weapon,enabling it to take its political message tothe public and bypass the traditional media.The day after the siege began at theembassy, it posted its Solidarity Page, VozRebelde (Rebel Voice), on the web. Thepage has since been used to issuedemands, conduct interviews and evenrelay pictures from the inside of thecompound: dramatic do-it-yourself imagesof the kidnappers, broadcast to the world.The guerrillas are the highest-profileexample of a recent trend among rebelpolitical groups to use the l a i s s e r - f a i r e e t h i c sof the web to communicate their views.
Before the MRTA, Zapatista rebels inMexico and the MRTA’s enemy, the ShiningPath, had used the web for similar ends. InSeptember 1996, the Revolutionary A r m e dForces of Columbia backed its offensiveagainst a military base with net reports, untilthe government pulled the plug. TheMRTA’s communiqués, which anyone is free
F reedom of speechAs the web is a place to canvass in the run-up to the general election, so extreme politicalgroups are taking advantage of the web to propagate their policies. Tim Phillips reports.
T
CYAN•MAGENTA•YELLOW•BLACK PERSONAL COMPUTER WORLD
216 • Personal Computer World • April 1997
Cutting Edge Focus: Politics on the web
aking over an embassy andholding 74 people hostage isn’tthe sort of politics we’re
accustomed to in the UK, so when theTupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement(MRTA) did just that at the JapaneseEmbassy in Peru on 17th December 1996,the event predictably made headlines.
But if the kidnappers thought theiractions were a way to put across theirpolitical message to the world’s media, theywere mistaken. Not surprisingly, the newscoverage centred on the human story of thehostages in the embassy. More time wasgiven to the presence of Mariachi bands atthe embassy gate (hired by relatives of thehostages to boost morale) than to thedetails of the guerrilla’s demands.
But the MRTA had a secret weapon,enabling it to take its political message tothe public and bypass the traditional media.The day after the siege began at theembassy, it posted its Solidarity Page, VozRebelde (Rebel Voice), on the web. Thepage has since been used to issuedemands, conduct interviews and evenrelay pictures from the inside of thecompound: dramatic do-it-yourself imagesof the kidnappers, broadcast to the world.The guerrillas are the highest-profileexample of a recent trend among rebelpolitical groups to use the l a i s s e r - f a i r e e t h i c sof the web to communicate their views.
Before the MRTA, Zapatista rebels inMexico and the MRTA’s enemy, the ShiningPath, had used the web for similar ends. InSeptember 1996, the Revolutionary A r m e dForces of Columbia backed its offensiveagainst a military base with net reports, untilthe government pulled the plug. TheMRTA’s communiqués, which anyone is free
to read on the web site,make fascinating reading.“The repression againstthe men and women ofthe free press has left onlyp r o - g o v e r n m e n tjournalism that puts a gagon itself as a means ofsurvival,” saysi n t e r n a t i o n a lrepresentative, IsaacVelasco, askingsympathisers to email thegovernment of Peru.Because the page ishosted outside Peru, thegovernment is powerlessto stop it.
It’s not just revolutionary guerrillas thathave taken to the web to explain theirpolitics. Everyone from the Natural LawParty to the Klu Klux Klan has a sitededicated to their political views. Of course,if politicking on the web really worked, thenno-one would have to take hostages to getthe world’s attention. With less than amillion people with internet access in theUK, the web has a limited effect on publicopinion. But it is influential enough —especially with those political prize voters,the kids — that few political parties ignore it.Also, the web has proved a method forpolitical organisations to issue rapidrebuttals, denials or policy statements. NewLabour has an area specifically dedicated torebutting unfavourable coverage. TheScottish Nationalists issue snapshotopinions on everything from a politicalassembly to the new Royal Yacht.
Politicians no longer have to wait forparliament to open or the press to call onthem before they give an opinion. At sometime before 22nd May, we’re going to havea general election — the first election of theinternet age. Not surprisingly, all the majorparties want to capitalise on the immediacyof the web to score a propaganda victory.All three mainstream political parties nowhave largescale web sites which are gearingup for the election (see page 218).
Among the smaller parliamentary parties,perhaps the best site — as professional asanything you’ll find from the “big three” — isthe Scottish Nationalist Party’s home page.Scroll down from the shot of leader AlexSalmond MP, and there’s a familiar face —it’s Sean Connery, right eyebrow quizzicallyraised. “What we seek for Scotland,”Connery says, “is the normal status of asmall ancient nation.” This small ancientparty has the nous to use the web
Focus: Politics on the web Cutting Edge
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Personal Computer World • April 1997 • 217
F reedom of speechAs the web is a place to canvass in the run-up to the general election, so extreme politicalgroups are taking advantage of the web to propagate their policies. Tim Phillips reports.
T
Left The MRTA
home page —
guerrillas with a
message for the
world. Well, quite
a few messages,
a c t u a l l y
Below M o r e
Nationalism, but
of a more savoury
kind. The Scottish
Nationalists have
a well-ordered
site with
mulitmedia and
an endorsement
by Sean Connery
p 2 1 8
CYAN•MAGENTA•YELLOW•BLACK PERSONAL COMPUTER WORLD
we find the anarchists. The internet is oftentouted as a state of anarchy, as peoplewillingly provide resources without an overall“governing body”, but compared to themushrooming of far-right activity on theweb, there aren’t many anarchist resources.Freedom Press, hosted by a politicalorganisation called the Media Collective, isprobably the largest anarchist resource. “Analternative world of creativity and freedom,”promises the blurb. “Educationaccompanies the transformation as theliving language flows among free people.”Despite the happy talk (a welcome breath offresh air after the fetid atmosphere of the
Cutting Edge
might safely be described as ironic. The far right is represented by only one
UK-based home page which claims noparty allegiance, instead calling itself the“British Nationalists Home Page”. It iscertainly diligent at combing the print mediaand the net for supportive comments, andthe page editors (who prefer anonymity)aren’t apologising. “We would not acceptthat we are outside the mainstream,” theytold P C W. “The media is largely a monolithwhich blocks all views outside a narrowapproved range.” The argument is, then,that other opinions are not heard becausethey are illegitimate or have no support.Noam Chomsky calls it “manufacturingconsent”, with self-censorship by journalistsrather than overt control. “What we saygenerally is thought by millions, even if theyare silenced by fear at the moment.”
While they grant that their views on theholocaust (they don’t believe it happened)would fall outside this silent majority, this is,they believe, only because people know toolittle to judge, which, of course, they aretrying to use the web to correct. Despitetheir opinions, which most internet userswould find unpalatable at best, the BritishNationalists epitomise a belief of many netusers that runs counter to prevailing politicalthought: that no matter what you think, onthe internet you have a right to think it, andto tell people about it.
This has tricky ramifications for thecensorship debate, currently centred aroundpornography (see page 220). The British
Nationalists are happy (even if they don’tsound overjoyed) with this state of affairs.“The coming big issue for society istotalitarian censorship and control, overt orindirect.” They add: “The web will play anincreasing role as the equivalent of the‘Underground Press’ during the sixties, if themedia refuses to admit a wider spectrum ofviewpoints. We are happy to see the left oranyone else put across their arguments onthe web. It is they who want to censoreveryone else. They are out of tune with thetimes, and particularly the web, whichpeople join specifically to speak freely.”
Leading the battle against the far right,
218 • Personal Computer World • April 1997
Focus: Politics on the web
CYAN•MAGENTA•YELLOW•BLACK PERSONAL COMPUTER WORLD
Cutting Edge
ambitiously, with information for outlyingScottish regions and even QuickTimemovies. Down and to the left, Plaid Cymruuses its web page to provide bilingualinformation: the home page is in Welsh, butyou can link to a mirror site in English.
It’s on the fringes of political activity,right, left and left-this-planet, that some ofthe most impassioned and surprisingpolitical information and invective can befound. If you have an opinion, someone outthere shares it. And at least six othersviolently disagree with it. The largest growtharea for politics on the web has been on theextreme right, especially among nationalistmovements. Whether or not you considerthis politics or just old-fashioned racism,
many people are using the web topropagate beliefs that have been excludedfrom the mainstream media. From theodious race-hate of the Voice of WhiteAmerica (“The White Man must retake hiscountry. There is no time for fear. We allmust stick together and rise”) through themore guarded assertions of “nationalist”organisations like Crosstar, the far rightluxuriates in the freedoms granted by thelack of political censorship on the web.
Richard Barrett, General Counsel for theAmerican-based “Nationalist Movement”(w w w . n a t i o n a l i s t . o r g) thinks that thetraditional media is becoming more hostileto his views, and the web allows him toexpound those views in a way that
otherwise he couldn’t. Surprisingly, for anorganisation that in the UK could beaccused of incitement to racial hatred, heisn’t anti-censorship; rather, he believes thatpeople who disagree with him should besilenced on the web. “The web has acontribution to make to politics, providedthat the discussion is not subversive orobscene,” he says, “We back laws whichwill ban subversive and pornographicmaterials on the internet entirely. Wesupport the Fist Against Filth Campaign, aswell as the Communications Decency Act.”He supports censorship of “subversive,communist, threatening, harassing,perverted” material, which in view of someof the comments of visitors to the site,
Personal Computer World • April 1997 • 219
Focus: Politics on the web
A cynic (this is politics, after all) might observethat the most remarkable feature of the threeweb sites hosted by the three leading politicalparties is how similar they are to each other.This doesn’t just apply to content, becauseafter all, that’s understandable: they’re alldealing with the same subject. What’s moresurprising — or significant — is that they alluse the same basic design and format: eventhe colour schemes are similar.
The Conservative Party site opens with awelcome from John Major, who wins theTechnology Chutzpah Award, claiming theinternet for the Tories. “Every breakthrough incommunications technology this century hasstarted under Conservative governments,” hewrites. “It’s not surprising the UK has morepeople connected to the internet than anyother country in Europe.”
You can’t argue with logic like that. Thesite has a collection of information aboutpolicy, people and the party organisation, butadds an online magazine called The
Messenger (at the time ofwriting this was severalmonths out of date) and,hidden away in a frame at thebottom of the page, amultimedia area. If you want towatch a video of the PrimeMinister answering questionsat conference, or watch PhillipOppenheim MP in action,you’re in the right place.
Labour’s web site couldbe branded the “Not TheConservative” web page.Larger than the “New Labour”logo on a restrained front pageare warnings about what theConservatives could do to us.A little deeper into the site, andyou think you’ve accidentally switched back tothe Tory pages: there’s the Union Flag flutteringagainst the same beige background of theConservative site. New Labour has less to offer
if you’re looking formultimedia, but it hasmore depth, more policyinformation, and morecontacts to reach byemail. There’s a shop too,and an area dedicated togiving Labour’s “spin” oncurrent news stories.
Labour knows therisks of running a website: in December 1996,hackers called the DigitalAnarchists broke into thesite and changed TonyBlair’s image to that ofhis Spitting Imagepuppet. Labour’sresponse to the budgetwas replaced by a livesex show, and theheadline to “New Labour-— same politicians,
same lies”. It may not have been the mostsubtle hack, but the Digital Anarchists arethreatening to hit other main political parties,which should liven up some of the moretedious pages on all three sites.
The least slick of the three, the LiberalDemocrats (again with a yellow background,although it i s their party colour) have a sitethat’s probably the easiest to navigate. “Weare on the web because it represents the futureof communication and information,” says arugged-looking Paddy Ashdown. According tohis spokesman for science and technology,Nigel Jones MP, Ashdown knows his stuff. “Ithelps having a leader who is computer literateand a visionary,” he said. “Liberal Democratthinking is much more advanced than that ofeither of the other parties.”
If this is true, there’s little evidence of it,apart from the fact that Liberal Democrats areby far the easiest to reach via email. The majorpolitical parties are using their web sites todisseminate information rather than pursuemore ambitious social or political projects usingthe net. But as the Digital Anarchists taughtLabour, the net can be a more demandingaudience, with its own way of v o t i n g .
Seconds out, it’s the general election
The Conservatives at home.......
......looking suspiciously like New Labour
The revolution
starts today,
says the
F r e e d o m
Press. More
details here
p 2 2 0
CYAN•MAGENTA•YELLOW•BLACK PERSONAL COMPUTER WORLD
cause ballot-box politics. Althoughhardly what you’d call “ready forgovernment”, political parties likethe Natural Law Party, theReferendum Party and the ThirdWay are using the web as a cheapway to disseminate information,leaving more money to pay for lostdeposits when it’s time to vote.Less threatening than the extremistpages, spanning views from theearnest to the charminglyeccentric, they all have one thing incommon: they regard the net as away to right the distortions andjibes of mainstream media.
Who typifies this more than theNatural Law Party, butt ofcountless Yogic Flying jokes in the 1992election? Stuart Withers, chairman for theNorth of England, who helps maintain theparty’s web site, is enthusiastic against theodds. “We can maintain a regularly updatedstatement about our policies andcampaigns. The international presence isbrilliant, as we exist now in 50 countries,” hesays. “It is sad that the media do not appearto like democracy, in the sense that they dovery little to present our case and are veryinaccurate when they do. As a result, veryfew people are aware of our platform.”
Withers sees the internet as a minorityinterest but one that attracts a high calibreof response, and potential activists. He’snot in favour of censoring the internet,preferring to try and solve the root problem.
“I can understand that some people areafraid of chaotic situations — they seedangers there. They are right, but they don’tunderstand the mechanisms. The cause ofthe chaos is incoherent nationalconsciousness. That’s why some countriesare affected more than others.” But what’sthe solution? “The solution is therefore tocreate coherence in nationalconsciousness, by establishing groups ofyogic flyers.” And if you want to know howto do that, you’ll have to visit the web page.
So is the web a potential world parliamentwhere we’ll thrash out all our problems,agree a solution, do away with governmentsand still have time for a quick game ofdeathmatch Quake, or is it a conduit forminority nutters who like to shout loudly?
While it’s a way to cut through theposturing and soundbite culture toexplore the background of worldpolitics, the web doesn’t do much tofurther political debate: when youvisit each site, you’re effectivelylistening to one opinion at any time.Because of this, many sites appealto those who already believe in whatthey propose — visit the chat area ofthe Voice of White America forconfirmation of this, which isn’t achat, it’s a yobbish, racist rant.
On the internet, the medium isn’t themessage. You can’t kiss babies, evadequestions or hog the limelight. In someways, it’s a return to the rough, issues-based politics our parents knew. Initiativeslike the online election for schools and SteveCoogan’s lesson in how to register to vote,mix politics and education. Whenconventional soundbite campaigningthreatens to send you to sleep in thiselection, the political areas of the web makecompelling, amusing, inspiring andappalling browsing. They remind you ofwhat the creators of the net wanted: freeand frank discussion. If they’re not the mosttechnologically innovative parts of the web,that’s because for most sites, content is stillmore important than packaging.
Personal Computer World • April 1997 • 221
F o c u s : Politics on the web Cutting Edge
CYAN•MAGENTA•YELLOW•BLACK PERSONAL COMPUTER WORLD
Cutting Edge
British Nationalists), Freedom Press’srepresentative doesn’t think the web willchange the world. “We are simply publishingthings on the web that have already beenpublished in other media, but I feel we arereaching more people we might nototherwise reach, like you for example. We
are perhaps more active in email, which weprefer.” Freedom Press doesn’t run a flashypage full of soundbites. “To be reported onby the media is simply to be part of thespectacle. We are not interested in passiveparticipation — we hope people will seek toact as a result of what they read and learn.”
Why not use the internet to makeconverts, like the right? Won’t the web havea long-term effect on politics? The answeris: “Who cares? The revolution is today”.
In case you wake up tomorrow and therevolution hasn’t happened, you mightfancy an excursion into the world of lost-
220 • Personal Computer World • April 1997
Focus: Politics on the web
but as LINX chairman, Keith Mitchell, admits,politics will be next.
“LINX policy is that its members shouldremain within the law, and that the laws forcyberspace should be as consistent as possiblewith laws for all other aspects of everyday life,”he says, “It was decided to tackle childpornography first because the media andpresumably the general public regarded this asthe most serious problem, and also because thelegal definition of child pornography was mostclear cut. It is the intention to extend reportingactivities to other types of criminally illegalcontent, which could certainly include incitementto racial hatred.”
The mechanism used in the UK is theInternet Watch Foundation (IWF), set up byformer Pipex MD, Peter Dawe, in December1996. Internet users report offensive material tothe IWF, who then ask participating ISPs not tostore the material on their servers and may passthe complaint to the police if the perpetratorsare UK based. It doesn’t take the material offthe net, it just makes accessing it harder.Already, IWF has passed on five reports ofillegal postings on Usenet to the police.
“If material published on a web site or in anews group breaks, for example, the RaceRelations Act,” Mitchell explains, “a member ofthe public could complain to IWF, who, if theyfelt there was a case, would notify LINXmembers and the authorities that there waspotentially illegal material being published. LINXmembers would then be in a position to decidewhether they wanted to take action to removethis material to protect their customers.”
While Mitchell claims that this will boostthe ISP’s claim to be a “common carrier”,
others see thisprocess as fatallyundermining it andfreedom of speech.Currently the bestexample of how theinternet can tie acountry’s politicalcensorship laws inknots comes fromGermany, where it isillegal to sanction, orteach others, how to
The internet isn’t governed by the laws of anyone country: its unique advantage is that itcrosses all boundaries of geography, culture,age, race and sex, allowing anyone to expresstheir opinions. Political freedom of expressionis long regarded as a good thing. But shouldthat freedom on the internet give a platform toracists, terrorists and revolutionaries, right andleft wing? Currently, it does.
This cherished freedom relies on the“common carrier” status of internet serviceproviders. That means an ISP is treated in lawlike a phone company, which cannot beprosecuted for the content of conversationsyou have on the phone because it has nocontrol over what you choose to say. A UK-based ISP would not be liable for the contentsof a neo-Nazi site, for example, but if the samestatements were published in P C W, themagazine could be accused in British law ofthe crime of “Inciting Racial Hatred”.
Kicking political extremists off the web isimpractical too. Who administers it? Whichcountry’s laws would be used? And mostimportantly, where do you stop? The MRTAhave broken Peruvian law by taking hostages:should they be given a platform to explainthemselves? Do you censor their guerrillaopponents, the Shining Path, too?
Many bodies, such as the Internet FrontierFoundation (w w w . e f f . o r g) take an anti-censorship position. The UK’s ISPs, generallyspeaking, are trying to be more pragmatic.Both the Internet Service Providers’Association (ISPA) and London InternetExchange (LINX) support the efforts of thepolice to encourage limited censorship. So far,this has concentrated on child pornography,
The thought police: do we need them?commit a crime. The result? Police havedecided to charge a left-wing politician calledAnna Marquardt for putting a hyperlink onher home page to the site of “Radikal”magazine. Radikal published informationexplaining how to sabotage railway lines.
This follows an earlier incident where theGerman police tried to prosecuteCompuServe. The crime? As an ISP, it offeredaccess to a Canadian Holocaust revisionistsite; denying the Holocaust is also a crime.The case was dropped. Ironically, Radikalmagazine itself is safe: its site is hosted justdown the road in the Netherlands.
U R L sMRTA Solidarity Page b u r n . u c s d . e d u / ~ a t s / - m r t a . h t mShining Path w w w . c s r p . o r g / c s r p . h t mMainstream UK politicsConservative Party w w w . c o n s e r v a t i v e - p a r t y . o r g . u k /Labour Party w w w . p o p t e l . o r g . u k / l a b o u r - p a r t y /Liberal Democrats w w w . l i b d e m s . o r g . u k /Fringe PartiesScottish Nationalists w w w . s n p . o r g . u kPlaid Cymru w w w . p l a i d - c y m r u . w a l e s . c o m /Referendum Party w w w . r e f e r e n d u m . o r g . u k /Lists of UK political linksUK Directory, government section — local andparty links for the UK w w w . u k d i r e c t o r y - . c o m / g o v / i n d e x . h t mUK Political Links — ordered by subject with asite of the week s u n 1 . b h a m . a c . u k / t u r n e r s j - / p o l l i n k s . h t m lJulian White’s British Politics Index — thebiggest and best, with more than 1,000 linksincluding temporary sites w w w . k e e l e . a c . u k -/ d e p t s / p o / t a b l e / b r i t / b r i t . h t m lE x t r e m i s t sBritish Nationalists Home Pagen g w w m a l l . c o m / f r o n t i e r / b n p /Crosstar w w w . n a t i o n a l i s t . o r gFreedom Press w w w . l g l o b a l . c o m / T A O / - F r e e d o m /Voice of White America m e m b e r s . a o l . c o m / t s a u k k i / w h i t e a m r . h t m lNew Communist Party of Britainw w w . g e o c i t i e s . c o m / C a p i t o l H i l l / 2 8 5 3 / h o m ep a g e . h t m lNatural Law Party w w w . u - n e t . c o m / ~ n a t l a w /Educational linksRegister to vote in Manchester: Steve Coogan and Caroline Aherne (Mrs Merton) show you how. w w w . m a n c h e s t e r . g o v . u k / - r e g i s t e r _ t o _ v o t e /Online election for schools w w w . c a m p u s . b t .c o m / C a m p u s W o r l d / e l e c t i o n 9 7 /
The Liberal Democrat site is probably
the easiest to navigate, even if it is
less slick than the other two major
party sites
The New
Communist Party
home page
CYAN•MAGENTA•YELLOW•BLACK PERSONAL COMPUTER WORLD
Personal Computer World • April 1997 • 223
Net.workshop: CGI Cutting Edge
ast month we looked at creatingsome basic CGIs for countinghits to a particular link on your
web page and redirecting users to anotherlocation. This time, we’ll take CGIs furtherand explore how to accept and processinput from a form — a commonrequirement, whether you’re implementingan on-line guest book (but please don’t,they are almost always filled with inane andpointless rubbish!), requesting comments,or creating a complete on-line shoppingmall. As with our examples last month, theCGIs presented here will be written in C,simply because it is probably the mostcommon language used for creating CGIs.However, do remember that you’re notrestricted to C — Perl is another commonlanguage, along with many others that areused. Another reason for using C is thatthere happens to be a rather excellent Clibrary, available free on the internet, that willmake your CGI-writing life much easier.
In the libraryThe library, called c g i h t m l and written byEugene Eric Kim, provides a ton of functioncalls to accept input from a form, parse it,and process the results. The library alsoincludes plenty of functions that will aidwriting out the HTML that you will produceafter you have processed the form; all in all,it’s an invaluable tool in the C programmer’srepertoire. You can find on-linedocumentation for the library ath t t p : / / h c s . h a r v a r d . e d u / ~ e e k i m / w e b /c g i h t m l /. The documentation tells youwhere you can download the actual code;it’s available in PKZipped, gzipped and UnixCompressed formats, so you should haveno problems obtaining and extracting it.
Once you have compiled the code for
D a t a c o l l e c t i o nIan Wrigley, on good form in part II of his teach-in on CGI, delves deeper into commongateway interfaces, explaining how to accept and process information off a web page.
L
p 2 2 4
your system, youare ready to go. Agood first trial ofthe system wouldbe to compile andtry out theprogram in Fig 1 ( p 2 2 4 ). Thisis a very simpleCGI which justprints out thee n v i r o n m e n tvariables passedto the CGI.Although fairlytrivial, you can seealready that c g i l i bprovides some useful features. All thestandard CGI environment variables arestored as constants, so you can accessthem easily from within your program. Justuse the g e t e n v() system call in C, orwhatever is the equivalent in your language.For a simple example, Fig 2 ( p 2 2 4 ) s i m p l yprints out the name of the server, which isstored in SERVER_NAME.
Notice that in both programs we haveincluded c g i - l i b . h, the header file for theroutines. In order to actually run theprograms, you need to store the compiledcode in your c g i - b i n directory and call it byaccessing the URL w w w . y o u r s e r v e r . c o .u k / c g i - b i n / y o u r p r o g n a m e. If you’re havingno luck, talk to your system administrator tomake sure that you are actually able toaccess CGIs, because some systems onlyallow access to a particular subset ofprograms. Additionally, it’s worth noting (atleast on a Unix system) that you may wellhave problems if you try to run either of theprograms directly from the command line.This is because until they are called via a
web server, the environment variables arenot set; so, at least on a SunSPARCStation, trying to run the programsdirectly results in a core dump.
Why on earth would you want to useenvironment variables such asSERVER_NAME? Well, consider a situationwhere you are dynamically creating URLs tobe written into an HTML page created byyour CGI; perhaps because the program isa search utility that has catalogued all thepages on your site. The URL needs to be ofthe form h t t p : / / y o u r s e r v e r . c o . u k / f i l e n a m e .h t m l. But if you hard-code the y o u r s e r v e r .c o . u k bit, your program is not at allportable; move it to a different system andyou’ll have to edit the source code. But ifyou use the environment variable instead,suddenly you can move the program to anyweb site you’re maintaining and it will stillwork. It’s all about portability.
On formsAccessing the environment variables can beuseful, but it’s in the handling and
POST method. This allows unlimitedamounts of data to be passed, and althoughit can be slightly more difficult to access theresults, the c g i h t m l library provides us withsome very easy-to-use function calls thatmake the whole thing very easy. In otherwords, the recommendation here is to usethe POST method for all except the simplestCGIs you write.
Fantastic functionsSo let’s take a look at the procedures weuse to read the data from the form in Fig 3.The CGI to process this data is in Fig 4( p 2 2 6 ) and since it’s more complex thanany of the ones we used last month, we’llgo through it step by step.
First of all, we include c g i - l i b . h, sincethat’s the c g i l i b header file we need. Ofcourse, since we’re printing things out, wealso need s t d i o . h. Step 1 in the listing is the first new idea:we define the variable i n f o r m a t i o n as beingof type l i s t. This is a data type defined inc g i - l i b . h and is basically a list that can storethe data read-in by the CGI. Don’t worry;we never normally need to access thisvariable directly, since we are given a set ofhandy functions that operate on thev a r i a b l e . After printing some basic stuff (don’tforget to output the c o n t e n t - t y p e l i n e ,otherwise your browser will complain) weget to Step 2, where we call ther e a d _ c g i _ i n p u t function. This function takesthe input supplied to the CGI (whether it’s
f i r s t n a m e = I a n & c o m p a n y n a m e = W i d e % 2 0
A r e a % 2 0 C o m m u n i c a t i o n s
Although languages like Perl can splitsuch entries into a list fairly easily (using thes p l i t() function, if you’re interested), C andothers will have a harder time. And we’vestill got to deal with the decoding of bizarreentities like “%20” which needs to be turnedinto a space.
The other limitation with GET, perhapsthe most major one, is that it can onlyreliably pass 255 characters to your CGI. Forthat reason alone, it’s far better to use the
processing of forms that c g i h t m l r e a l l ycomes into its own. Before we start, it’sworth taking a quick look at the creation ofthe forms themselves. Fig 3 ( p 2 2 6 ) c o n t a i n sa typical HTML form; this one asks for yoursuggestions on the quality of the web site.
There are a couple of things to notice.The first is that two different types of formelement are used: a text box for a single-lineinput, and a text area for multi-line input.The second thing is the line near thebeginning of the file which defines whichCGI will be called when the “submit” buttonis pressed, and how the data should bepassed to the CGI (the METHOD section).
METHOD mattersIt is worth taking a slightly more detailedlook at that METHOD tag. You have twobasic methods for passing data to yourCGI: GET and POST. The former is theeasiest to understand but it is rather basicand seldom used for anything but thesimplest CGI. If you pass your data to a CGIusing GET, it is placed in an environmentvariable called QUERY_STRING. But thingsaren’t quite that easy; before the data issent, things like spaces are encoded. Also,since all the form elements need to bepassed in the same string, they areconcatenated with an ampersand (&)between each “name=value” pair. Forexample, a form which had two simple textboxes, one called “yourname” and anothercalled “companyname”, would, whensubmitted via GET appear like this:
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Cutting Edge Net.workshop: CGI
Fig 2 Printing out the name of the server
/ *
* printservername.c version 1.0
* By Ian Wrigley
*
* Prints out the name of the server
*
* /
#include <stdio.h>
#include “cgi-lib.h”
int main(void)
printf(“Content-type: text/html\n\n”); /* To start the HTML */
supplied via the GET or the POST method),and places it in the variable i n f o r m a t i o n. Weneed to pass the function the address ofthe variable (hence & i n f o r m a t i o n) since afunction can’t directly alter its parametervariable. (If this doesn’t make sense to you,now is probably the time to take a quickrefresher in C.)
When r e a d _ c g i _ i n p u t returns, it passesback the number of entries it returned or azero if it didn’t read any. That is why we canput it in the i f statement and directly checkto make sure that at least one value wasreturned. Assuming this was the case, Step 3 callsa function p r i n t _ e n t r i e s, which simply printsout the name and value of each item in thei n f o r m a t i o n list. (A good example of asimple function that actually does somefairly hard work.) If no entries were read, the e l s e c l a u s ecomes into effect and in Step 4 we print outan error message. Then we just write theend of the HTML document.
A little more controlThis is all very well, but normally we’ll wantto do slightly more than just echo theresults of the form to another HTML page;for instance, we might want to take thevalue of individual form items and dosomething, depending on their contents.Fig 5 ( p 2 2 8 ) does just that: it reads in theform entries from Fig 3 and uses one ofthem (n a m e) to determine what to output.
Much of the program is very similar toFig 4, but we introduce a new function callin Step 1. This function is c g i _ v a l( ) and itsimply returns a pointer to the value of theitem named as its second parameter. In thiscase, the whole line states: “Take the list ofdata called ‘information’, find out where thestring returned as the data for the formelement ‘name’ is being stored, and makevariable ‘whoisit’ point to that location”. Inother words, when the line is complete,“whoisit” will be pointing to the nameentered in the form. It’s worth noting thatwe are not doing any error checking here,but in order to make your CGIs bullet-proof,you need to make sure that some data wasactually returned; if none was, the functionreturns the null string, so that’s what youshould check for.
The rest of the program is quite prosaic.The s t r c m p() function is a standard Cfunction call, which returns a zero if the twostrings match: if they do, then the HTMLpage will welcome you, otherwise it will tell
for, though, is to make sure that it hasreturned something useful, rather than thenull string: if someone doesn’t type any datainto the form, that’s what you’ll get; and if
you that it doesn’t recognise your name.The c g i _ v a l() function is extremely
handy, and is used all the time when you’rewriting CGIs. The real point to watch out
Fig 3 A typical HTML form
< H T M L >
< H E A D >
<TITLE>Comments please</TITLE>
< / H E A D >
< B O D Y >
<FORM ACTION=”/cgi-bin/processform” METHOD=POST>
<H1>What do you think of our site?</H1>
Your name: <INPUT TYPE=”text” NAME=”name”>
< P >
Your e-mail address: <INPUT TYPE=”text” NAME=”email”>
< P >
Your comments on our site:
<TEXTAREA NAME=”comments” ROWS=8 COLS=80>
< / T E X T A R E A >
< P >
< / F O R M >
< / B O D Y >
< / H T M L >
Fig 4 CGI to process data from a form
/ *
* processform.c version 1.0
* By Ian Wrigley
*
* Accepts data from the form in Listing 3 and creates
a new HTML page containing the results
*
* /
#include <stdio.h> /* Of course... */
#include “cgi-lib.h” /* Needed for the function calls we’re
demonstrating */
int main(void)
llist information; /* STEP 1 */
printf(“Content-type: text/html\n\n”); /* To start the HTML */
p r i n t f ( “ < H T M L > < H E A D > < T I T L E > R e s u l t s ! < / T I T L E > < / H E A D > ” ) ;
printf(“<BODY><H1>Your results</H1>”);
if (read_cgi_input(&information) != 0) /* STEP 2 */
print_entries(information); /* STEP 3 */
e l s e
printf(“No input!”); /* STEP 4 */
printf(“</BODY></HTML>”); /* End the HTML */
return 0;
p 2 2 8
isn’t done in 30 seconds */
Assuming your operating system handlessignals, supports the a l a r m() function calland recognises the SIGALRM signal, thesetwo lines of code basically call the d i e()function 30 seconds after the programstarts. Thirty seconds is far longer than anybut the most complex CGI will take, so if it’sstill running at that time, chances are youhave a problem in your code so you shouldexit as quickly as possible.
Writing out HTMLThe c g i h t m l library doesn’t just providefunctions for accepting input, though; cgi-lib’s companion library, h t m l - l i b, hasseveral functions which make writing youroutput page easier, too. Fig 6 ( p 2 3 0 )demonstrates a number of them, andalthough none are particularly earth-shattering, they do speed life up for you.
you don’t check, your program will probablycrash somewhere later on.
There are plenty of other function callsthat c g i h t m l provides to deal with inputfrom your forms; the on-line documentationlists them all and there are some exampleprograms included in the package to helpyou understand what’s going on. One worthnoting is the d i e() function. This allows yourprogram to exit elegantly if a problemoccurs, rather than crashing or runningforever in the background, taking upprocessor time and slowing you down.
Signal handling is not pretty in C, but it’svery easy to use in simple cases. Just put#include <signal.h>
# i n c l u d e < u n i s t d . h >
at the top of your program, and thefollowing lines in the body:signal(SIGALRM, die);
alarm(30); /* die if processing
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p 2 3 0
Fig 5 Reading form entries to determine output
/ *
* whoareyou.c version 1.0
* By Ian Wrigley
*
* Accepts data from the form in Listing 3 and creates a new HTML page.
* The contents are determined by the value of the variable ‘name’
*
* /
#include <stdio.h> /* Of course... */
#include <string.h> /* for the strcmp() function later */
#include “cgi-lib.h” /* Needed for the function calls we’re
demonstrating */
int main(void)
llist information;
char *whoisit; /* Pointer to be used later */
printf(“Content-type: text/html\n\n”); /* To start the HTML */
p r i n t f ( “ < H T M L > < H E A D > < T I T L E > H e l l o ! < / T I T L E > < / H E A D > ” ) ;
p r i n t f ( “ < B O D Y > < H 1 > H e l l o < / H 1 > ” ) ;
The first function call is to h t m l _ h e a d e r.This simply prints out the C o n t e n t - t y p e l i n efor you, so all your programs should includethis as the first thing they print. Next,h t m l _ b e g i n prints out the standard HTMLtags < H T M L > < H E A D > < T I T L E >, then thestring you supply to the function, then< / T I T L E > < / H E A D > < B O D Y >.
Graphical buttons in formsRather than using the standard buttons, it’spossible to use a picture instead. You dothis by using the < I N P U T > HTML tag, v i z<INPUT TYPE=”image” NAME=”
sendbutton” SRC=”sendbutton.gif”
ALT=”Send” VALUE=”Send”>
Here, we are saying that the image(s e n d b u t t o n . g i f) should act like a button;when clicked, it will send the data to theCGI. Just by using a technique like this youcan radically improve the look of yourforms, replacing the boring old buttons withcool icons. Even better, you can put two ormore graphical buttons on the page andgive each a different name. Then you canset your CGI to see whether a given buttonhas been hit.
But wait; how do we do that test? Well,it’s our old friend c g i _ e n t r i e s. But there’s acatch. When you click on a graphical buttoncalled, for instance, s e n d b u t t o n, what isactually passed to the CGI is informationabout where on that button the userclicked, in terms of the x and y co-ordinates. So you can’t just check to see ifcgi_val(information, “sendbutton”) is notnull — it always will be, since no entry calleds e n d b u t t o n is returned. Instead, two others(s e n d b u t t o n . x and s e n d b u t t o n . y) arepassed back, giving the x and y co-ordinates of the place the user clicked. Soto see if the sendbutton was pressed, youneed to use something like this:if (cgi_val(entries, “sendbutton.x
” ) )
/* sendbutton was pressed, so
do something */
Since sendbutton.x will only have a valueif the user clicked on this button, the if( )condition will be true and you can carry on.
230 • Personal Computer World • April 1997
Ian Wrigley i a n @ w i d e a r e a . c o . u k is managingdirector of web consultancy, Wide AreaC o m m u n i c a t i o n s .
Contact
Fig 6 Functions for easier writing of an output page
/ *
* whoareyou.c version 1.0
* By Ian Wrigley
*
* Accepts data from the form in Listing 3 and creates a new HTML page.
* The contents are determined by the value of the variable ‘name’
*
* /
#include <stdio.h> /* Of course... */
#include <string.h> /* for the strcmp() function later */
#include “cgi-lib.h” /* Needed for the function calls we’re
demonstrating */
int main(void)
llist information;
char *whoisit; /* Pointer to be used later */
printf(“Content-type: text/html\n\n”); /* To start the HTML */
p r i n t f ( “ < H T M L > < H E A D > < T I T L E > H e l l o ! < / T I T L E > < / H E A D > ” ) ;
p r i n t f ( “ < B O D Y > < H 1 > H e l l o < / H 1 > ” ) ;
Remember how your littlebrother would snitch to yourmother when you did somethingwrong? There is now anelectronic version waiting toinform your boss exactly whereyou have been on the internet.
Little Brother, produced bythe Kansmen Corporation, isclaimed to be the mostadvanced web-monitoringsoftware currently available. Itallows network managers to seewhich web addresses
employees visit and the size andidentity of any files downloadedfrom the internet. Plus, ifnecessary, access to individualsites can be blocked.
The company claims that byempowering individual control ofweb access it will preventgovernment action to bancertain web content — porn, forinstance. It also sounds like thekind of tool that megalomaniacnetwork managers have beendreaming of, with its ability to
identify who hasbeen where anddoing what onthe web.w w w . k a n s m e n .
c o m
N e t . n e w s Cutting Edge
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Personal Computer World • April 1997 • 233232 • Personal Computer World • April 1997
Cutting Edge N e t . n e w s
n e t .n e w sAround the web world with PJ Fisher.
p 2 3 5
Global Internethas announced thatit is to give itscustomers 3Mb ofweb space, free. Toaccess the pages,customers add theiruser-ID to apredetermined webaddress. They arethen guided througha tutorial for onlinecreation of webpages.
“We’ve made iteasy and costeffective for them tocreate their ownweb site,” saidLaurence Blackall ofGlobal Internet.w w w . g l o b a l n e t . c o . u k
ISPs are bidding to give China its first internet gatewaylinks to the rest of the world, but the country will have its
first nationwide intranet by the end of 1997 due to a dealbetween Bay Networks and Beijing’s state news agency.
The deal will cover 20 Chinese cities by the end ofthe year, expanding to 50 next year. The intranet systemwill be known as the China Wide Web, with servicestargeted at businesses rather than individuals.
The intranet will carry business information, email andsome web pages, but the construction of a Chineseinternet gateway will be awarded to an international ISPonce the bids have been assessed. Sources could not
confirm which companies were in the running. For the China Wide Web deal, Bay Networks will
provide the network design, hardware, software andengineers’ training, but the company refused to revealhow much the contract is worth.
Up to two million businesses would be interested inthe service, according to Michael McLeod, sales andmarketing director at China Internet, a companycontrolled by the Beijing state news agency.Implementation of the scheme should now be underway in Hong Kong, Shanghai, Beijing and Guangzhou.
James Harding, VNU Newswire
ISPs bid to link China
G l o b a lo f f e r sfree webs p a c e
Fans of JDSalinger werealerted to his firstnew book for over30 years by a buriedlisting for H a p w o r t h16, 1924 on thepages of A m a z o n .c o m, the web-basedbook store.
The publicity-shyauthor has bannedany form ofpromotion for thenew book, which isbeing published byan independentpress. The listing forthe new title wasamong Salinger’sother books,including his mostfamous, T h eCatcher In The Rye.
Hapworth 16,1 9 2 4 is not yetavailable but can bepre-ordered fromthe Amazon site.w w w . a m a z o n . c o m
‘ C a t c h e r’c r e a t o rc o rn e r e d
Following the trend oflarge software companiesswallowing innovative websoftware houses,MacroMedia has acquiredFutureWave and has re-launched Flash, its class-leading web-animation tool.It now joins MacroMedia’sgrowing stable of webdesign products.
Flash allows creation ofsmall animations thatdownload faster than thosecreated conventionally. It isdesigned to create andanimate high-resolutionvector graphics or importthem from other graphicdesign tools like AdobeIllustrator or MacroMediaF r e e H a n d .
For web usersthe Flash plug-inmeans thatanimations comedown the webmuch faster, andshould makeanimated sitesworth viewing forthose with limitedmodem access tothe internet.
One of thekeenest users ofFlash has beenMicrosoft: its MSN sitemakes considerable use ofit, as does CNET and theofficial “The Simpsons” site.
The Shockwave Flashplayer is 100Kb and freelyavailable to web users from
the MacroMedia web site.For developers, Flash isavailable now at a cost of£229 (plus VAT).w w w . m a c r o m e d i a . c o m /
s o f t w a r e / f l a s h /
The next step for “pushed” information across theweb will include Java-based applications as well as
the familiar stock-tickers and news headlines accessiblethrough PointCast and similar services. Two companies,Marimba and Dimension X, have joined forces to makethe creation and delivery of Java applications easier forsoftware developers who are keen to take advantage ofweb delivery.
Marimba has developed Castanet, a system forbroadcasting data and applications across the internet,direct to users’ personal computers. It also marketsBongo, a Java-based visual development environmentfor creating GUIs that needs significant Java experiencein order to build complete applications.
Dimension X has developed its Liquid Motion Prosoftware which offers point-and-click Java programmingto work with Bongo. Both companies hope that thecombination will make it easier for designers to createexclusive applications for delivery on Castanet.
This is more evidence of a gradual shift to Java-
b a s e dc o m p u t i n gusing theinternet orT C P / I P - b a s e di n t r a n e t s .Desktop userscan “tune in” toCastanet andthen select theapplications (or“ c h a n n e l s ” )they need froma menu.
Marimba claims that the Castanet protocol makes itpossible to distribute large, media-rich applications evenover a slow connection. Once applications have beendownloaded, they can be stored on local drives.
Corel is to deliver forthcoming beta copies of CorelOffice for Java via Castanet channel technology, makingit easier for testers to obtain the latest version.
A beta version of Bongo and the Castanet tuner areavailable from the Marimba web site.w w w . m a r i m b a . c o m /
w w w . c o r e l . c o m
w w w . d i m e n s i o n x . c o m
Castanet clicks with Dimension X
Geek Girl is a funky little site, set upby a self-confessed girl geek. As well asbeing funny, the site also hosts a wealthof techie information including acomplete guide to the mysteries of UNIXand beyond.
Geek girls and boys should rush overand thank Geek Girl profusely for such ashow of unashamed pride in being ageek. Oh, and by the way, geek boys…she’s attached.w w w . g e e k - g i r l . c o m /
n e t . s u r fPeek at the geek
MacroMedia plugs in toF u t u r e Wave and gets Flash
The managing director of an internetcafé in Cheltenham, called “Netscafe”,has run into trouble with the Swiss foodgiant Nestlé over its name. He hasreceived a fax from the Nestlé companywhich alleges infringement of copyright.
Managing director, Paul Alexandersaid: “I contend that this is not the case.Refreshments make up less than fivepercent of the business. I supply tea,coffee, soft drinks and refreshments; I donot serve Nescafé.”
He also contends that none of hiscustomers have made the mistake ofthinking that the café was in any wayconnected with Nestlé, despite thecompany’s claim that the café’s namecould confuse its customers. MrAlexander is now seeking further advice.w w w . n e t s c a f e . c o . u k
Trouble brewsdown at thenet caféLittle Brother is watching you
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Cutting EdgeN e t . n e w s
Hoping to demonstrate the practicalapplications of its own internet
products, IBM has opened a free public website holding two million US patent filingsdating back a quarter of a century.
The database was developed by IBM forinternal use by its own lawyers, to speed upthe process of patenting its own innovations.But it decided to open up the Patent Serverto outsiders as a demonstration of itstechnology and, it claims, as a public service.
The US Patent and Trademark Officeoffers abstracts of patents free of charge onthe internet, but charges a fee to make thefull text available. “[The Patent Server] savedus time and money,” said Marshall Phelps,IBM vice-president for intellectual propertyand licensing, “so we thought it would be avaluable resource for the public as well.”
At present, users accessing the serverat w w w . i b m . c o m / p a t e n t s can view amillion patent documents dating back to1987. Documents dating back to 1974 will
be added during the next few months, withthe eventual intention of offering patentsfrom 1971 onwards. Full text searchfacilities, international patent filings andlinks to other patent data providers will beadded over time.
IBM hopes that, if successful, the PatentServer will act as a practical demonstrationthat large databases can be hosted on theinternet to be shared by large numbers ofusers. The company has provisional plans inplace to post a second database, holdingfilings from the Federal Election Commission:in UK political terms, the equivalent of theregister of Members’ interests.
Meanwhile, at the Internet World 97 tradeshow in Canada, Mark Greene, IBM vice-president of electronic payments andcertification, predicted that the company’sinternet-related product lines would breakeven this year with e-commerce proving tobe the main driver.
Stuart Lauchlan, VNU Newswire
IBM files patents site
SoftQuad has released the final version ofits intranet package, HiP (HoTMetal IntranetPublisher). It moves the Canadian HTMLspecialists into the competitive groupwaremarket. Building on its experiencedeveloping industrial strength HTML andSGML tools, SoftQuad is pitching HiP as afully HTML-compliant intranet product fordocument distribution.
To turn standard HTML files into HiPdocuments, JavaScript is added to eachpage (which can be done using a batch filefor large sites) and this activates the HiPplug-in reader. It splits the browser window
into two panes: on the left is a Table ofContents (TOC) of the document, while theright-hand pane continues to display thenormal web page.
HiP allows context-sensitive searches ofthe document instead of a normal sequentialsearch on the web. Intranet users can getautomatic updates for the web site usingdifferent parameters. For instance, a topicupdate defined by the user would alert themto new changes anywhere on the site. Userscan also annotate documents after viewingthem, and redistribute them on the intranet.Documents can also be given an “effectivefrom” date or expiry date so that they onlyremain active on the site for a certain time.
For site managers HiP provides toolswhich are accessible remotely via FTP, anda colour-coded graphical representation ofthe site can be used to check broken linksand identify documents. The packageincludes a copy of HotMetal Pro for web-page creation. SoftQuad is now developingversion 4.0 of HoTMetal with a targetrelease date for the end of 1997. Pricing forHiP starts at £349, with a ten-viewer pack(the plug-in) at £125. w w w . s o f t q u a d . c o m
Intranet gets HiP with SoftQuad
p 2 3 6
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Cutting Edge N e t . n e w s
Asolution to the bandwidthlimitations currently restricting
development of net telephony andonline shopping could be the“bandwidth islands” idea, proposedby new media publisher and webdeveloper, Steinkrug.
The company sees potential forconventional content providers, likelocal newspapers andsupermarkets, which are eager to
tap into new markets selling servicesand advertising. While for thecommunity, low-cost video-conferencing across the networkcould, for example, link GPs withtheir patients at home.
Such “islands” would, in effect,be private networks or communityintranets with normal net protocolsbut, because they are isolated, notsubject to the bottlenecks and
bandwidth squeeze that afflicts theglobal internet.
Steinkrug’s Peter Kruger said: “Alocal business magazine is one ofthe first clients to whom we aretalking, and we have talked toseveral other newspapers.”
The idea for bandwidth islandsarose from research into communitynetworks, funded by the EU.w w w . g o l d . n e t / f l a m e s /
Web developer proposesbandwidth islands concept
Apple has released an implementation ofSun Microsystems’ Java Virtual Machine (JVM),the software set needed to run Javaapplications under MacOS. Called MacOSRuntime for Java 1.0, it includes a player forrunning Java applications and an API fordevelopers. This makes Apple and IBM theonly manufacturers to offer JVM compatibilityas part of their operating systems.
A QuickTime Plug-in for both NetscapeNavigator and Internet Explorer is now availablefrom the Apple web site. The plug-in supportsthe QuickTime VR “URL Hot Spot” feature aswell as offering web developers control overQuickTime playback. They can define exactvolume levels, movie scaling and localcacheing of files.w w w . q u i c k t i m e . a p p l e . c o m
Apple offers MacOSJVM compatibility
Lotus is the latestcompany to offer anoffline browser withits release ofW e b l i c a t o r ,available fordownload from theLotus web site. Butbecause of Lotus’work in developingNotes, and itsDomino web serverfor intraneta p p l i c a t i o n s ,Weblicator isdesigned to domore than just grabweb sites forbrowsing offline.Lotus sees it as away of boostingproductivity byallowing employeesto participate inw e b - b a s e db u s i n e s sapplications, offline.For example, groupworkers can pullapplications likespreadsheets orHTML documentsoff servers, modifythem, then put themback on the server.The changes can beassimilated by amanager andpassed on to thenext person in theintranet chain.
Weblicator alsooffers standard off-line tools, full-textsearches of webdocuments and anHTML-based userinterface, allowingusers to personaliseweb documents.
Weblicator is$29 and runs onWin95 and NT andany browser thatsupports frames. b e t a . n o t e s . n e t
Motorola claims success havingtested 200 CyberSURFER cablemodems across the ManchesterNynex franchise area. Up to 10Mbpswas available to subscribers on thisnetwork, making downloads fasterthan standard modems.
Now Motorola is aiming to extendthis service by making cable modem
access to the internet the norm. Anew trial is taking place among 100homes and small businesses inBasildon, Essex. The cable operatoris Telewest.
Motorola says the UK cableindustry is so advanced it could takea world lead in offering super-bandwidth to ordinary homes. The
UK has state-of-the-art hybrid fibrecoax pipe that supports bi-directional communication. Incomparison, only 18 percent of USnetworks are so equipped.
Bi-directional communication isimportant for developing interactiveweb applications like web TV, video-conferencing and home shopping.
Motorola trials faster cable modem
top ten websites1 Spice Girls2 F H M3 No Sex, No Money, Just Football FC4 The Computer Superstore5 Cheap Flights6 Damon Hill’s Formula 1 Home Page7 UK Laughter Links8 British Airways Global Check-In9 EasyJet Airline1 0 Exchange and Mart
Chart as at 23/1/97. For the latest chart go to w w w . y e l l . c o . u k.Yell’s chart is based on the most popular web sites that Yell’svisitors jump to.
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A. No. It’s quite unlikely that anything elseon your phone line would be interfering witha modem in that way. However, you shouldcheck the REN — Ringer EquivalenceNumber — of everything plugged in andcheck that it doesn’t exceed four, which isthe recommended maximum. Even so, theonly usual effect of exceeding a REN of fouris that the phone won’t ring properly. It’smore likely that you’re simply experiencingproblems with CompuServe, especiallysince you had fast access through theuniversity. It may be worth downloading thelatest version of the CompuServe software,which you can access via GO CIMSOFT.
Own-blend softwareQ . “I am having trouble finding an ISP whohas access in both the UK and Canada,and who will allow me to use my own blendof software. CompuServe said that it wouldbe against my contract to use my own
software. I am sure a lot of people have thesame problem. Can you help?”
A. You seem to have been rather misled bythe people you spoke to at CompuServe.The service can be used with any standardTCP/IP software — in fact, there’s even ascript on the Windows 95 CD that allowsyou to use Windows Dial Up Networking toconnect to the internet via the service.
If you’re after international access, youshould consider the Microsoft Network andthe IBM Global Network, both of which areavailable in the UK and Canada; although ifyou wish to use your own software, IBMmay be a better option. You may also wishto check with some smaller ISPs and seewhether or not you’ll be able to arrange thesort of access that you need by using adifferent company in each country.
If you collect your email via POP3,there’s no need to use the same provider,
“I am working on a web site andam encountering difficulties withframes. If I click on a link in a
frame, the site it links to turns up within theframe or in a separate window, nevercovering the same window whole.”
A. It sounds like you’re not using theTARGET attribute in your web pages,which tells the browser where to open alink. There are some special options thatcan be used with this attribute to tell thebrowser whether to open the document inthe current frame, a new window, or tocollapse the current frame set to a singlewindow.
Use the TARGET attribute like this, whenyou’re specifying a link:<a href=”http://some.place/page”
t a r g e t = ” t a r g n a m e ” >
Replace “targname” with the name ofthe frame that you want to load the pageinto, or “_self” to load it into the sameframe, “_top” to load it into the full browserwindow, “_blank” to open a new browserwindow, and “_parent” to use the parentframe set of the current frame.
Home Q “I am a new user of the internet fromhome, although I previously had the luxuryof a speedy connection through myuniversity service provider. Now that I amwith CompuServe, accessing web pagesfrom home can be painfully slow. Mytelephone line is shared with ordinaryphones and an answerphone/fax machine.Is it possible that the latter, which is activelylistening on the line during computermodem operations, could be slowing downtransmission rates?”
since you can pick up your messages fromanywhere, via any ISP. By shopping aroundfor an ISP in each country, you may find alow-cost option that suits your needs better.
Light outQ . “I currently use Eudora Light 1.5.2. whichwas supplied by my internet provider. As anewbie I only use it for simple messages,yet two irritating “faults” and one “lack” havegiven rise to the following wish list :1 . I wish I could Check Mail and Sendduring the same connection.2. I wish I could stop the prog determinedlyredialling until a connection is achieved(Stop button offered is ineffective).3 . I wish the system could flag that I havemail waiting to be collected, before Iattempt to connect.
Obviously, my frustration is in directrelation to the number of people also tryingto connect at the same time. Is there a mailsystem that would satisfy my wishes?”
A. To address your points in turn; you won’tbe able to find a program that actuallycollects mail and sends your new messagesat the same time, since the way that a mailprogram like Eudora works means therehave to be two distinct connections made.However, having said that, there are someprograms that give the impression of doingboth at the same time, including the InternetMail service for Microsoft WindowsMessaging. If you’re running Windows 95you can install this service from theWindows 95 CD, if you bought it with a newmachine, or download it from the FreeSoftware section of the Microsoft web site— choose “Product” then “Free download”and “Windows 95 Updates” from the main
page. When it’s installed, choosing the“Deliver now using Internet Mail” option willsend your outgoing messages and retrieveany that are waiting on the internetprovider’s computer.
The redialling problem isn’t strictlyrelated to Eudora. When the program triesto collect your messages, it opens aconnection to the mail server. With a dialupconnection, your WINSOCK.DLL file willautomatically try to dial the internet provider,before returning to Eudora and saying thatthe connection has been made (or couldn’tbe made). Until this happens, the Stopbutton won’t do anything, since control haspassed from Eudora to the networksoftware that’s opening the connection.
The real solution lies in configuring yourTCP/IP software so that it doesn’t redial asmany times to establish a connection,which will enable it to return control toEudora more swiftly so that the Cancelbutton is recognised.
Finally, checking how much email youhave before connecting isn’t somethingthat’s possible, although some programswill allow you to retrieve the headers ofmessages first and then decide which onesyou want to transfer to your computer. Oneis NetScape Communicator, which you candownload from h o m e . n e t s c a p e . c o m.
Trying to get throughQ . “I have only one phone line. Is there anysoftware that could inform me of a callertrying to ring me when I’m using the line formy internet connection?”
A . No, there’s not. The only way to knowwhen someone is trying to call you is to usecall waiting, but the tones that it produces
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Target p r a c t i c eNigel Whitfield explains the ins and outs of target attributes and how they tell the browserwhere to open a link. Plus erratic email speeds, where to chat and other net notes
Q
Cutting EdgeN e t . a n s w e r s
N e t S c a p e
C o m m u n i c a t o r ’ s
email can tell
you what’s in
your mailbox
without having
to download all
the messages
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disrupt modem calls and you’ll almostcertainly lose the connection.
An alternative is the CallMinder servicefrom BT, which can take a message fromcallers when your line is busy and will tell youwhen you finish your internet connection thatthere are messages waiting, but the realsolution to your problem is to have twophone lines. It may be worth checking withyour local cable TV company to see if theyare able to offer a cheap installation deal onan extra phone line.
Message received, but slowlyQ . “When I send email to my friends overthe internet, sometimes it’s really fast, but atothers it’s very slow. We’ve looked at theReceived: headers in the messages, andthe messages don’t even travel by the sameroute all the time. Why is this?”
A. When you send email over the internet,messages aren’t necessarily passed directlyto the computer that the address is on. Itmight not be a real computer, or it could beon a network other than the net, or it mightnot be connected at the time you send yourmessage, like a dial-up net connection.
To cover these eventualities, theinternet’s Domain Naming System (DNS)has a section called MX (Mail Exchanger)records. These say which computer on theinternet receives mail on behalf of anothercomputer, or a whole domain.
When you send email, the mail systemlooks up the MX record for the address thatyou’re trying to reach and passes yourmessage to the nominated computer. Mostaddresses on the Internet actually havemore than one MX record, and each onehas a preference. If the computer trying tosend email can’t reach the one with thehighest preference, it will try the othersinstead. Computers are often set up so thatwhen they have more than a certain amountof work to do already, they’ll refuseconnections for any more email messages.
It’s a combination of these factors thatresults in your messages taking differentroutes each time they’re sent. Often, aninternet provider will arrange to have at leastone MX record for his customers onsystems that are elsewhere, so that if hisnetwork is cut off, mail can be held withoutbeing rejected until the problems are fixed.
Taking all this together, it means thatyour messages are most likely beingdelayed because of heavy traffic on one ofthe main MX systems for the recipient,
resulting in them being routed to differentcomputers, introducing extra hops andconsequently slowing them down.
There’s not really anything to worryabout, unless they routinely take a longtime. The way in which different systems aretried is part of what makes the internetresilient, ensuring that the failure of a singlecomputer isn’t going to stop messagesgetting through, although they may take alittle longer sometimes.
Chat linesQ. “I’ve heard about the chat systems onthe net. How do I access them, and how doI find out where there are people chattingabout the topics that I’m interested in?”
A . The main chat system on the internet iscall Internet Relay Chat, or IRC. It’s dividedinto channels, each of which usually has adescriptive name. You need an IRC clientfor your computer, such as mIRC forWindows and Ircle for the Macintosh, andthen you have to tell the program which IRCserver to connect to.
IRC servers receive the messages thatyou type and pass them on to otherservers, where they’re sent on to peoplewho are using the same channel. Not all theIRC servers talk to each other, and there area number of different IRC networks. Thetwo largest are EFnet and IRCnet, of whichthe latter tends to have more people inEurope and the UK, while EFnet ispredominantly American. Although there aresome channels for UK discussions on bothnetworks, #gb for instance, they’recompletely separate: someone needs to beon both the same network and the samechannel to see what you’re typing.
When your IRC program asks for thename of a server, the one you choose willdetermine which network you’re connectedto. In the UK, Demon Internet runs two publicIRC servers: e f n e t . d e m o n . c o . u k is connectedto EFnet and i r c n e t . d e m o n . c o . u k i sconnected to IRCnet.
The first thing to do when you’reconnected is probably to use the helpcommand. All IRC commands begin with a/ and most programs access some of thesame ones. For instance, “/join #gb” willtake you onto the #gb channel. “/quit”finishes your session, and “/msg namehello, how are you” would send themessage “hello, how are you” to the IRCuser called “name”, rather than displaying itto all the other people on the same channel.
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POP goes the DemonQ . “I’m trying to choose an internet providerand I want to use the software that I alreadyhave, which collects email via POP. Friendshave told me that I can’t use that sort ofsoftware with Demon Internet, but I want totake advantage of their free web space.?”
A. Don’t worry too much about the webspace. Although there are a couple offeatures unique to Demon’s offering, if it’sjust size that’s important to you, then thereare a number of other providers that alsogive away five megabytes of space.
Your friends were correct in theircomments about Demon’s email service,which uses SMTP to deliver email instead ofPOP. That used to mean that if you wantedto use a POP email program to collect emailfrom Demon, you’d need an extra piece ofsoftware to collect the SMTP mail first.That’s no longer true, as Demon now giveseveryone the choice of collecting their email
via SMTP or POP3. If you want to use yourexisting mail software, just tell it to collectmessages from p o p 3 . d e m o n . c o . u k a n dsend them via p o s t . d e m o n . c o . u k . For youruser name, you should use the name ofyour Demon node, and your usualpassword. Doing that will retrieve all themessages for all the users of your Demonaccount. If you just want to collect messagesfor a single person, you can tell your softwareto use their name, followed by a plus, andthen your nodename when it connects to thePOP server. For instance, to collect just themail for n e t . a n s w e r s @ s t o n e w a l l .d e m o n . c o . u k, I’d use the user namen e t . a n s w e r s + s t o n e w a l l . Full details of thenew mail system are on Demon’s web site.
Figuring out Internet ConfigQ . “I’ve downloaded Internet Explorer 3 forthe Macintosh, and it offers me the optionof installing “Internet Config.” Should I installthis, and what does it do?”
A . Internet Config is an application thatsaves preferences for most internet taskslike email, news, ftp and web browsing. It’snot strictly necessary, but if you use it thenlots of different programs can pick up theinformation that they need from there. Forinstance, with Internet Config, if you changeyour email address, you only need to do itonce and all the programs that are aware ofit will automatically use the new one.
It can make things much easier to setup, but remember, you’ll still have manyoptions that can only be chosen in theappropriate applications, so it’s not auniversal cure-all.
Nigel Whitfield is a freelance journalist andmaintainer of several internet mailing lists. You cansend questions to n e t . a n s w e r s @ p c w . v n u . c o . u k,but a personal reply to every query cannot beg u a r a n t e e d .
Contacts
I n t e r n e t
Config is a
simple way
of setting
c o m m o n
options for
m a n y
M a c i n t o s h
i n t e r n e t
p r o g r a m s
and utilities
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B o o k s Cutting Edge
The book has a plot that MichaelCrichton would be proud of. It manages tostay just the right side of believable and itzips along. But the characterisation is weak.A review in The Bookseller describes P r e s sS e n d as Douglas Coupland meets NickHornby; but McClaren’s writing lacks the witor knack for cultural references of Couplandor Hornby. Most of the book is written indialogue but it’s thin stuff, and the maincharacters are a little too stereotyped to beconvincing. Nevertheless, it’s an easy readand in the right hands may eventuallybecome a great movie.
Ben Tisdall
hy Things Bite Back:New Technology andthe Revenge Effect
The Revenge Effects of authorEdward Tenner are the unforeseenand unintended consequences ofdeveloping new technology. Ascomputer users we are among themost vulnerable to such effects. Weall hold our breath when we bootour machines. Will the hard drivecrash today? How much morepaper will our supposed paperlessoffices spew out? Worse, will weget RSI or suffer the effects ofexposure to electromagnetismemanating from the monitor? Theseare just some of the alleged effectsof computer technology that we allknow about, and in this bookTenner makes a compelling case asto why advanced technology tendsto create such problems.
It’s not just computers: from sport topest control, the more complex thetechnology, the more pronounced the effect,according to the Princeton Universityp r o f e s s o r . It’s not a new problem: ThomasEdison is quoted in 1878 venting hisfrustration at the little faults and difficultieshe encountered as he developed histechnology. It just seems to be gettingworse. But as Tenner states: “Bugs,glitches, and crashes have a positive side.They are the machine’s way of telling us todiversify our attention, not to put all ourvirtual eggs in one electronic basket.”
The complex systems we now buildseem to have the propensity for failure, insome cases with fatal consequences: jets
ress SendVery few novelists manage to sellthe film rights for their first novel.
But John McClaren has sold his for$750,000 to Mike Nichols, director of,among others, The Graduate a n dPostcards from the Edge.
What makes McClaren more unusual ishis background. He puts his mediocredegree down to bad advice from TonyBlair’s father, Leo, his law professor atDurham University in the early seventies.After university McClaren worked as adiplomat for eight years before beingrecruited by Barings, which was looking forsomeone to run its Japanese office. After aspell in Tokyo he moved to Silicon Valley inthe mid-eighties. For the last nine years hehas been a successful merchant banker and director at Deutsche Morgan Grenfell in London.
Press Send is set in Silicon Valley in theworld of hi-tech start-ups and venturecapital. McClaren has used his knowledgeof the industry to make the technical detailsof the story as convincing as possible. Thehero, Hilton Kask, is turned down at the lastminute by a venture capital company for themoney needed to develop a revolutionarygenetic computer. (The description of thegenetic computer — the breakthrough inartificial intelligence that everyone is stillwaiting for — was based on a visit to the AIcentre at Edinburgh University.)
Days later, Hilton discovers he hasterminal cancer, but manages to plan hisrevenge from beyond the grave. He leaves amobile phone for his brother Conrad withthe instruction scrawled on a scrap of paperto “Press Send”.
B o o k sRead Press Send, the book, before it races on to the big screen. Plus, are crashes and
bugs technology’s way of telling us to resist becoming dependent on computers?
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Cutting Edge B o o k s
that fall out of the sky thanks to “failsafe”onboard computers being a stark example.
Tenner sees latent breakdown in allcomplex systems. Why has the universallyapplauded keyhole surgery resulted inincreased re-admittance, due to relatedproblems directly attributable to the initialprocedure? Why did the M25 exceed itsprojected traffic loads for the year 2001, bythe late eighties?
Tenner’s advice is to become morevigilant. As new technology demands moreconcentration, it is almost inevitable thatthings will go wrong. Users of whatever thetechnology, be it a tennis racket (be carefulof tennis elbow) or vacuum cleaner (watch
your asthma) must pay particular attention ifthey are to minimise their vulnerability.Ultimately, you may find that Tenner is toopessimistic by far, reading far too much intothe paradoxes he sees. The paranoid andthe neurotic are advised to give this book awide berth.
Dave Howell
nternet Dreams:Archetypes, Myths andM e t a p h o r s
Human society relies on myths andmetaphors to make sense of the worldaround it. Any paradigm shift in the waysociety is organised, or communicates, willbe understood by applying thesearchetypes to the new order. In I n t e r n e tD r e a m s, Mark Stefik looks at how we areattempting to understand the information
revolution, but notes that the metaphors weare using may be inappropriate andmisleading. Using the highway metaphor,for instance, may be a misnomer, andcompletely inappropriate to the internet. Ashe points out: “Relying on a singlemetaphorical analogy would deprive us of aricher range of meaning and possibilities.”The internet defies the use of one singlemetaphor to describe it.
Stefik concentrates on four metaphorsthat shape our current thinking: the digitallibrary, electronic mail, the electronicmarketplace, and digital worlds; these areall covered in depth, and he cites papersdating back 50 years in some cases tosupport them. He explodes what he callsthe Gutenberg Myth, and applies this to theinternet: as the invention of movable typedidn’t usher in a new age of literacy, so theinternet alone will not bring about arenaissance in communication.
An interesting comparison does emerge,though. As paper for early books wasexpensive, not everyone could afford toown the books that would deliver literacy.Today, access to the internet is limited tothose who can afford the hardware andoperating costs.
For much of the book Stefik offers hisviews and comments on key academicpapers he has identified. Each offers its ownunique perspective on how we canunderstand and come to terms with thechange we face. The last third of the booklooks closely at how we can understand thenet. Stefik concludes: “Our search forunderstanding of the I-way is ultimately asearch for ourselves, and the future wechoose to inhabit.”
Dave Howell
I
Press Send
A u t h o r John McLaren
Publisher Simon & Schuster
ISBN 0 - 6 8 4 - 8 1 9 1 9 8
P r i c e £ 1 0 . 9 9
Why Things Bite Back:
New Technology and the Revenge Effect
Author Edward Tenner
P u b l i s h e r 4th Estate
I S B N 1 - 8 5 7 0 2 - 5 6 0 - 1
Price £ 1 8 . 9 9
Internet Dreams: Archetypes, Myths, andM e t a p h o r s
Author Mark Stefik
P u b l i s h e r The MIT Press
I S B N 0 - 2 6 2 - 1 9 3 7 3 - 6
P r i c e £19.50
Contacts
1 The Internet and World Wide Web: Rough Guide 2.0 P e n g u i n £ 5 . 0 02 Creating Killer Web Sites H a y d e n £ 4 1 . 5 03 Inside COM: Microsoft’s Component Object Model Microsoft Press £ 3 2 . 9 94 MCSE Study Guide: Windows NT Server & Workstation 4 New Riders £ 7 0 . 4 95 Microsoft Windows NT 4 Server Resource Kit Microsoft Press £ 1 4 0 . 9 96 Microsoft Windows 95 Resource Kit Microsoft Press £ 4 6 . 9 97 Programming Perl, 2nd Edition O ’ R e i l l y £ 2 9 . 5 08 Inside The Windows 95 Registry O ’ R e i l l y £ 2 4 . 9 59 Rapid Development: Taming Wild Software Schedules Microsoft Press £ 3 2 . 4 9
1 0 Java in a Nutshell: Desktop Quick Reference O ’ R e i l l y £ 1 4 . 9 5List supplied by The PC BookShop, 11 & 21 Sicilian Avenue, London WC1A 2QH. Tel: 0171 831 0022. Fax: 0171 831 0443
Top Ten Books/CD-ROMs
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Cutting Edge Futures
Rumour has it that GCHQ (GovernmentCommunications Headquarters) regularlymonitors email traffic in the UK, and that inthe USA the giant supercomputers of theNational Security Agency scan email forhints of terrorist or anti-government activity.Those in a position to say whether this isreally going on are not telling.
Phil Zimmermann’s Pretty Good Privacy(PGP) program is perhaps the best-knownof the more secure coding systemsavailable on the internet. PGP uses the RSApublic-key system, which is also the basisfor the secure transactions offered byNetscape Navigator and Microsoft InternetExplorer. Although public-key systems areextremely hard to break, they have not beenmathematically proven to be unbreakable.
For some applications, this is not good
enough. There is onlyone kind of codewhich is 100 percentsecure, the so-called“one-time” system.The message ise n c r y p t e dmathematically, usinga numerical key (a
long random non-repeating sequence ofdigits). Using the same key, the recipient ofthe message can decipher it. Because adifferent, randomly-selected key is used forevery message, the encrypted messagecannot contain any inadvertent clues to helpa codebreaker crack it. It is the perfect code,used by spies for decades. But there is acatch: before the message can betransmitted, the sender and the recipientneed to know the key. How can the key betransmitted? By using a secure code, whichneeds a key… Catch 22.
Spies have traditionally solved the keydistribution problem using paper pads. Eachnumbered page lists a series of randomdigits, used as the key for a message. Tosend the secret message, Spy A chooses apage from his pad, encodes his message
ith the explosion of commerce onthe net, guaranteeing the privacyof data has become a crucial
issue. Today, none of the encryptionmethods currently in use on the internethave been proved to be watertight. Theyare good, and certainly extremely hard tobreak (so don’t worry, your credit card isquite safe) but they are not unbreakable.
A new technology promises security byoffering codes which are impossible to crackno matter how much computing power andingenuity is used against them. These arecodes whose unbreakability stems not fromclever mathematical techniques, but fromthe unbending laws of physics.
When it comes to security, the internethas more holes in it than a Swiss cheese. Ina study conducted at the end of 1996,computer security researcher, Dan Farmer,found that of 2,200 web sites he surveyed,almost a third had security weaknesses,rendering them vulnerable to attack.
Farmer is the author of the controversialSATAN program, which probes Unixmachines on the internet and checks themfor known security lapses. Not everyonelikes the idea of SATAN: although originallydesigned for systems administrators to findunwanted open doors on their machines,and rapidly close them, SATAN is also freelyavailable for use by malicious hackers.
Not only web sites are at risk. Email iseasy to intercept by “sniffer” programswhich monitor the net data passing througha system, or by unauthorised access tounencrypted email in in-box files.
with the key, appends the page number,then sends his message to Spy B wholooks up the key page in his copy of the padand decodes the message. This is secure,providing the enemy does not get its handson a copy of the pad.
For computer networks, the firstdemonstrable solution to the key distributionproblem uses a technique called quantumcryptography. It provides a method not onlyto send data securely, but also to monitorwhether anyone has been eavesdropping onthe communications channel. Withapologies to any physicists who may bereading this, it works something like this:Light comes in packets of energy calledphotons, each of which has a wobble calledits polarisation. There are two kinds ofpolarisation: up/down and left/right.
You can build a machine to read aphoton’s polarisation but it must beconfigured to read either up/down orleft/right polarisations. It cannot read bothkinds at once. A machine set to readup/down photons will only give ameaningful result (up or down) if the photonit is reading is the up/down kind. If it is aleft/right photon, the machine will give arandom, and therefore meaningless, result.
Suppose Alice wishes to send a key,secretly, to Bob. First, Alice and Bob have toagree how to use the polarisations ofphotons to represent bits. Let us supposethey agree on “up” = 0, “down” = 1, “left” =0, and “right” = 1. Alice creates a stream ofphotons, each with a polarisation chosen atrandom. She records the polarisation ofeach. The table above (Fig 1) shows thesituation where Alice has prepared eightphotons, labelled (a) to (h). She then sendsthe photons, in order, to Bob. When he
receives each photon, he randomlyconfigures his detector to read up/down orleft/right photons. He notes theconfiguration, makes the reading andrecords the result.
In Fig 1, Bob happened to choose aleft/right configuration for his detector to readphoton (a), so he got a random result: in thiscase, a 1. For photon (b), he happened tochoose left-right, which matched the type ofphoton and so correctly read the polarisationof the photon: a 1. For photon (c), thedetector did not match the photon and sothe reading was random: a zero.
When Bob has read all the photons, hetells Alice the configuration he used to readeach of the photons. He can tell her thispublicly, but he must keep the readingsthemselves secret. Alice then tells Bobwhich of those configurations matched thepolarisations of the photons she sent him. Inour example, these are (b), (d), (f) and (g).The values Bob obtained from each of the
f you have had all you can take ofkids’ TV programmes being co-presented by a bit of fur with
a hand stuck up its rear-end utteringstrangulated nasal noises, the future looksbleak. These fur monsters are going to give
F u t u r e s Cutting Edge
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Cryptic c l u e sQuantum cryptography promises total security and privacy of data on the net, evenguarding against would-be eavesdroppers. Toby Howard has had his ear to the ground.
W
I
A too n in ti m e. . .Tim Frost on the growth and benefits of real-time animationtechniques which will see off Saturday morning puppet TVpresenters in favour of fully-animated, interactive characters.
matching configurations, taken in order,spell out the secret key: 1001. All the otherreadings are discarded.
If, during the exchange of photons, Eve(an eavesdropper) listens in on Alice andBob’s communications, the laws ofquantum mechanics dictate that herattempts to read the photons in transit willactually change their polarisations. So Bobwill receive photons in a different state fromthose sent by Alice. Alice and Bob willnotice this and will know they have beeneavesdropped. They can try again. Oncethe key has been securely exchanged, Aliceand Bob can send their message,encrypted using a one-time method.
This example shows the principle, but inpractice it is more complex, for tworeasons. First, Alice and Bob will need toestablish a key, thousands of bits long; andsecond, according to the one-timeprinciples, their key is only good forencoding one message. They must repeatthe entire procedure for every message theywish to send.
This sounds like science fiction, but ithas been demonstrated in experiments byPaul Townsend, a researcher at BT’slaboratories in Ipswich. Richard Hughes, ofthe Los Alamos National Laboratory inCalifornia, has securely exchanged keysover a 14Km optical-fibre link. There areproblems to do with noise, but the methodworks. Hughes predicts the technology willbe commercially available by 2000. Wereported in Cutting Edge (Sept 1996) thatcomputers which work on quantummechanical principles, if built, may causethe downfall of public-key cryptography.Perhaps quantum cryptography will take itsplace. The codebreakers will not like it.
way to a mix of computer animation, motioncapture and electronic puppetry to put fully-animated characters on-screen, that canreact and talk with presenters.
The development comes from a mix oftechnologies used in various parts of the
The codebreaker’s
nightmare? Quantum
c r y p t o g r a p h y
technology could be
available by 2000, for
secure data
transmission on the net
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Fig 1 Code configurations
Alice’s Bob’s detector Bob’s Bits which make p h o t o n s c o n f i g u r a t i o n m e a s u r e m e n t up key marked *
( a ) ↑ ←→ r a n d o m 1
( b ) → ←→ → 1*( c ) ↓ ←→ r a n d o m 0
( d ) ↑ ↑ ↓ ↑ 0*( e ) ← ↑ ↓ r a n d o m 1
( f ) ↑ ↑ ↓ ↑ 0*( g ) → ←→ → 1*( h ) → ↑ ↓ r a n d o m 0
Donkey Kong:
Real-time animation
techniques have already been
employed in a project featuring
this well-known character
TV, film and games animation industries,where computers have done more thansimply change the way in which traditionalanimation is produced: they have createdcompletely new forms of animation. At thetop of the scale are the photorealisticcreations for Jurassic Park, but lessobvious are big-effects movies likeIndependence Day where you cannotsee the join between real action,filmed models and the computer-created elements.
At the other end of the scalethere are realistically moving, if notrealistic-looking, characters.Where animated cartooncharacters move in a stylisedway, the animator’s challenge isto impart a sense of life bycharacterisation, but in thegames and photo-realisticanimation worlds, thechallenge is to get thefigures to move asrealistically as possible. Todo this, studios haveturned to motion-capturetechniques, using realpeople’s movements todefine the animation’smovement and add thatreal action feel.
Originally, for motioncapture, actors dressed up in darkbody suits with reflective spots and lineswhich outlined the legs, arms, head andbody. As they went through the moves, avideo camera captured the movement ofthe reflective skeleton which was then fedinto the computer as vector movements.The simplified skeletal motion was used asan action template for the character,resulting in realistic-looking action.
There have, of course, been changes tothis technique over time. Instead ofcomputer animators taking the movingframe as a template to manually createmovement, the data can be fed into thecomputer to directly control the virtualcharacter. And video has given way to theuse of virtual reality body-suits to directlyinput movement into the computer. Put thistogether with Silicon Graphics boxesrunning commercial 3D animation softwareand we are looking at a version of VRcontrol to create on-screen characters thatcan work live, with real actors.
The slowest part of the job is firstdesigning and creating the character on the
SG platform as a wire-framewith surface rendering.How realistic thecharacter looksdepends on thereal-time
renderingcapability of the computer
system, but program makers canchoose to develop their characters
as cartoony or as realistically as thecomputer’s rendering power can deliver.
From there on, making animation is areal-time exercise with no frame-by-frameconstruction needed. Instead, the wireframe is directly controlled by the VR body-suit detectors that monitor the actor’sindividual key movements of arms, legs,head, hands and feet as well as theirgeneral body position. While the realpresenters work on-screen looking to ablank space, the suitably-suited actor isworking off-stage reacting to what is goingon by watching their VR alter-egos on amonitor, electronically overlaid onto thestudio picture.
So far so good. But a cartoon needsmore than simple body movement to cometo life; it needs facial expression andreactions that are not easily controlled byVR sensors. So in addition to the bodyactor there is at least one puppeteer withhand controllers that are set up to direct themovement of the mouth, eyes, eyebrowsand any other distinguishing features like
ears or tail. This type of remoteglove-puppetry has been usedextensively by Jim Henson’sorganisation to control motorsinside the heads of anythingfrom the Muppets to the
heads of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.It is a simple extension of this idea to linkthe controls directly to a computer-animated character.
The most immediate application for thereal-time animation is as a lower-cost routeto creating a new animation series. Theproduction speed is faster than any otherform of animation. All the animation for ahalf-hour slot could be recorded in a goodday’s work with live-action animators. Andthe actions are editable: should a facialexpression not quite work, the puppeteercan simply overwrite that particular set offace actions with new ones without altering,or having to re-perform, the body actions.
Developed originally in France, real-timeanimation has already been used onprojects featuring both Bugs Bunny andDonkey Kong. Traditionally, the developersdid all the work for the TV producers, but ithas now developed to the point where a TVcompany can buy the hardware andsoftware and a pre-made character or two,and then get on with it themselves in theirown studio with their own actors. Fromthere on it is a matter of adding artificialintelligence. That has got to be better thannone at all.
252 • Personal Computer World • April 1997
Cutting Edge Futures
Databases 2 8 5Mark Whitehorn fastens his grip on his buttonsand captions query from last month.
3D Graphics 2 9 8Now we know the world isn’t flat, how do we createa 3D globe on our PCs? Over to Benjamin Woolley.
Graphics & DTP 3 0 0Don’t huff and puff if a passer-by strays into yourline of focus. Gordon Laing shows how to erasethem to get the perfect holiday snap.
Sound 3 0 4There are more to gates than five bars and keepingthe cows in. As Steven Helstrip knows, they play abig part in today’s dance music.
P ro g r a m m i n g
Numbers Count 2 9 0And the beat goes on: Mike Mudge strikes achord with mod sequences.
Visual Programming 3 0 7Trust me, I’m a doctor... Tim Anderson finds thatnot all fixes are trustworthy. RegClean, available onthe Microsoft web site, is one example.
and the re s t . . .
Hardware 2 9 4Roger Gann takes the headache out of gettingconnected. Put your foot down rather than grinding toa halt on the net hard shoulder.
Networks 3 1 3Mark Baynes hogs the show as his server plays up.And, take a ride with him on the Netport Express.
Macintosh 3 1 8Whatever NeXT?Howard Oakley wonders what’son the cards with Apple and deals the dirt onwhat’s in your System Folder.
Hands On C o n t e n t s
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Personal Computer World • April 1997 • 255
Wo r k s h o p
Visual Basic 2 5 6No second-class deliveries here as Tim Andersonuses Word to fill in forms and write his letters.
Operating Systems
Windows 95 2 6 0Shift up a few gears — colour cycling doesn’talways have to be an uphill struggle. Tim Nottbrightens up your startup screen with DIYa n i m a t i o n s .
Windows 3.1 2 6 3Three blind mice? Panicos Georghiades andGabriel Jacobs find that faults and fixes oftencome in threes. And, don’t shut your eyes tomouse problems.
Windows NT 2 6 6Roll up, roll up for the main event. But don’t ignorethe event log because it, too, deserves some TLCand attention from time to time.
Unix 2 7 0The bad news is that Chris Bidmead gets stuckinstalling the CDE CD on his system. And thegood news? He stands his ground on past news.
OS/2 2 7 3Ring the bells of St Clements as Terence Greengets fruity with his Windows 32 apps on OS/2.
A p p l i c a t i o n s
Word Processing 2 7 6Do the high five with Tim Nott as he creates A5booklets in Word. Plus, tuning in to differentaccents, and coloured margins.
Spreadsheets 2 8 1Get your results onto your web page. Help fromStephen Wells and Excel 97 means it’s a prettysimple process.
Hands On is the place where readers can contribute to PCW and, as always, we’ll pay foranything we use. Macros, sections of code, and hints and tips will be rewarded with a £20book or record token (please say which you would prefer) and we will pay hard cash forlonger, more involved pieces. Please include relevant screenshots in .GIF format. All submissions should be emailed to the author of the appropriate section or snailmailed toHands On, Personal Computer World Editorial, VNU House, 32-34 Broadwick Street, LondonW1A 2HG. Questions and short hints and tips can be faxed on 0171 316 9313.We are constantly working to improve the contents of Hands On. If you have any suggestions, send them to the Editor at theaddress above, or email them to [email protected]
Fig 1 (left) T h e
letter wizard begins
by asking which
template is
needed. You can
easily add further
o p t i o n s
he “P C W Sports Club” iscontinually sending letters,reminders of coming events,
subscription invoices, sympathy for brokenbones and the like. The secretary has beenrunning the Visual Basic application to lookup the address and then using A l t - T a b t oswitch back and forth from Word while shecopies it across. It is time to make her life abit easier.
The first thought was to use VB’sC l i p b o a r d object to copy addresses. This iseasy: just add a C o p y A d d r e s s method tothe C P e r s o n class, as in Listing 1.
But Windows can do better than that. Itis possible to automate far more of theprocess of getting addresses into Word.Word has a mail-merge wizard that worksfine for bulk mailings, but for ad hoc letters acustom solution is needed.
Here, I will show you how to create aWord letter wizard for the sports club (seescreenshots, F i g s 1 - 4). The wizard is forWord 97, since earlier versions do notsupport Visual Basic. (As an aside, it ispossible to do something similar in earlierversions, using the WODBC.WLL Wordadd-in and getting at data through ODBC.Another possibility is to automate theWordBasic object from a VB application.But Word 97 makes it easier.)
The plan is to create a Word macro usingVisual Basic for Applications, accessing thesame SPORTS.MDB database.
Because this tutorial is based on VB 4.0,you cannot import the form in Word. Thegood news, though, is that the C P e r s o nclass module can be reused, as is. Theprocedure is as follows:1. In Word, open the Visual Basic editor.Choose Tools, References, and check theMicrosoft DAO 3.0 (or higher) object library.
Hands OnWorkshop: Visual Basic
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Hands On Workshop: Visual Basic
First class l e t t e r sWith VB you can use Word to create letters that virtually write themselves. Tim Andersonshows you how. Plus, how to delegate in Visual Basic to achieve the benefits of inheritance.
T
This enables Word to use the same dataaccess objects as VB 4.0.2. Insert a new module into the Normalproject. This means the macro will bestored in NORMAL.DOT. Call the macroG e t C l u b A d d r e s s and give it a Sub Main.3. Insert two new userforms. These will besteps one and two of the letter wizard.4. Name the first userform d l g S t y l e, and puttwo or more option buttons on it, along withO K and C a n c e l buttons. Give the form a
The M a i n procedure continues byopening d l g S t y l e to obtain a choice oftemplate, and then d l g N a m e to get the IDof name in the M e m b e r s database. At eachpoint, the user has an option to cancel. Thecode for the d l g N a m e dialog is almost thesame as that used in the main VB 4.0application, the main difference being thatVBA has no data control so you have tocreate a recordset in code. When amember ID has been retrieved, the record isloaded into the C P e r s o n object. 7. The final step is to start a new documentbased on the chosen template. Thetemplates must be pre-designed withbookmarks where the name and addressinformation is needed. The wizard finishesby inserting the fields in the bookmarkpositions and then exits. Controlling Wordfrom VB in this way is not difficult usingWord’s new object model. For example:
Fig 2 (right) The next stage is to
choose a name to write to
Fig 3 (below) In the third step,
the wizard has placed the
address details into a new
document based on the
chosen template
C h o i c e property using amemory variable and propertyprocedures. This is for choosinga letter template.5. Name the second userformd l g N a m e, and put on it alistbox, an editbox and threecommand buttons. This is forchoosing a name for the letter.6. In the Declarations section of
G e t C l u b A d d r e s s, declare a publicdatabase object. For the example code, Ihave also declared some convenientconstants. Then in Sub Main, open theSPORTS.MDB database using code like:Set db = DAO.OpenDatabase(sPath &
“ \ S P O R T S . M D B ” )
s P a t h is a variable to store the path tothe database file. (See below for how to getthis path from the system registry.) S u bM a i n also creates a new C P e r s o n o b j e c t .
Listing 1
Sub CopyAddress( )
‘ copies address to Windows clipboard
Dim sAddress As String
Dim cr As String * 2 ‘ fixed-length
cr = Chr$(13) & Chr$(10)
If mForename <> “” Then
sAddress = mForename & “ “ & mSurname & cr
E l s e
sAddress = mSurname & cr
End If
If mAddress1 <> “” Then
sAddress = sAddress & mAddress1 & cr
End If
. . .
Clipboard.SetText sAddress, vbCFText
End Sub
p 2 5 8
Fig 4
Editing the
VBA macro
from Word
is very like
w o r k i n g
w i t h
s t a n d a l o n e
V B
A common criticism of Visual Basic is that it doesn’t supportinheritance. If all your programming has been done in VisualBasic, which is probably true of the majority of VB programmers,this may not mean much to you. Fortunately, it’s easy to explain.A class, both in VB and other object-orientated languages,defines an object. In VB, every class starts from scratch withoutany properties or methods. By contrast, C++, as an example, letsyou begin a class definition like this:class monkey : public animal
The result is that the monkey class inherits the properties andmethods of the animal class. The monkey class just needs to addspecialised code that describes monkeys; the generic animalcode comes for free.
Although VB does not support inheritance, there are otherways of achieving some of the benefits. It is possible to containone class within another. Then you can implement properties andmethods of the parent class by calling the properties andmethods of the contained class. This is called delegation, and theproperties and methods of a class are called its interface. Forexample, the tutorial application has a CPerson class. Imagineyou wanted to create a CEmployee class which used theproperties and methods of CPerson. Here is how you can do it:1. Insert a new class module and set its name property toC E m p l o y e e .2. In the declarations section, put:Private m_person As CPerson
Private m_wage As Currency
3. In the initialise section put:Set m_person = New CPerson
4. Create a CEmployee interface that calls the CPerson interface.For example:Public Property Get surname() As
S t r i n g
surname = m_person.surname
End Property
5. Add new properties and methods specific to CEmployee. Forinstance, you must expose the wage property.
The fourth step (a b o v e) is tedious, but beats re-coding all thefunctionality of CEmployee in CPerson. It could be automated bya VB Wizard. In Visual Basic 5.0 this approach to object-orientation is built into the language, with a new Implementskeyword which guarantees that all the methods of the containedclass are implemented by the outer class. You can implement theinterface of any ActiveX automation server. Finally, there is nothingto stop you implementing several interfaces in a single class.
Delegation works, but it is neither as intuitive nor as elegant astraditional inheritance. For the moment, though, this is the VBway. It ties in with ActiveX, the component model which isbecoming more powerful and pervasive as Windows evolves. VB may not be the fastest or most thoroughly object-orientatedlanguage out there, but Microsoft does ensure that it stays up todate with the latest ActiveX developments.
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258 • Personal Computer World • April 1997
Hands On Workshop: Visual Basic
Tim Anderson welcomes your comments andqueries. Write to the usual P C W address, or emailp c w @ v n u . c o . u k.
Contact
Documents.Add (sTempLate) ‘ starts
a new document based on the given
t e m p l a t e
A c t i v e D o c u m e n t . B o o k m a r k s ( “ n a m e ” ) .
Select ‘ sets cursor to the “name”
bookmark in the new document
Selection.InsertAfter Trim
(currCustomer.forename & “ “ _
& currCustomer.surname) ‘ inserts
text at the cursor position
Problem-solving There are a few things to notice about this joint Visual Basic and Word project.Although Word VBA is downwardcompatible with VB 4.0, there are someobjects which are available in VB but notVBA. One example is the global Appobject which, in Word, is the Applicationobject.
The original C P e r s o n class usedA p p . P a t h to discover the location ofSPORTS.MDB. This strategy fails in anycase, when the code runs in otherapplications. A better idea is to use aregistry entry, using VB’s G e t S e t t i n g
Next month: Back to native Visual Basicfor the final stage in the PCW Sports Cluba p p l i c a t i o n .
Delegating your inheritance
command. The registry entry is created bythe main VB 4.0 application when it firstruns. This way, the data can easily be foundby any Windows application.
Another catch is that VBA has noClipboard object, so CPerson’sCopyAddress method does not compile inWord. The workaround is to declare apublic Clipboard variable as a D a t a O b j e c t:VBA’s private version of the clipboard. Todemonstrate, there is a Clipboard button onthe d l g N a m e s form which uses theDataObject’s P u t I n C l i p b o a r d method totransfer text to the read clipboard.
Enhancing the wizardThere are plenty of ways you can improveon the Letter Wizard. For instance, you canadd database fields for things like job titleand salutation. You could increase therange of templates on offer. For thesubscription template, you could writecode to check a person’s outstandingbalance and insert the amount into theletter. By adding the bulk of the code to ashared class module like CPerson, you caneasily reuse it in VB 4.0 or in other VBAapplications such as Excel.
Installing the examplecode from the P C W C D
When you unpack the tutorial code from ourcover-mounted CD, you will find a VB 4.0project and a Word 97 template. To install theexample code, copy PCWCLUB.DOT intoyour Word templates directory. Then start anew document based on this template. If youthen choose Tools, Macro, Visual BasicEditor, you will find the example macros.Choose Tools, Macro, Run, to run the macro.You can also copy the macros intoNORMAL.DOT if you want, by using Tools,Templates and Add-ins, Organizer. Finally,the macro will not run without a registrysetting for the data path. To create thissetting, run PCWCLUB.EXE.
S o d ’s law
It’s tip of the day time again. For those of youwho haven’t been following the saga, thecommunal goal is to create a set of suitablyamusing replacements for the Windows “Tips of the Day”.
Stephen Oman offered a generousselection including “Programming is an artform that fights back”. Dave Ives came upwith three including the oldie-but-goodie: “Itdoesn’t matter who you vote for, thegovernment always gets in”. But star of themonth is Peter McGarvey, whose examplegraces our screenshot (Fig 4, above).
His covering letter was even better: “ O n c eupon a time I wrote a program, in C, to display ashort piece of amusement, at random, from alarge text file of amusements every time mycomputer started. This program was written forMS-DOS, the greatest operating system in theuniverse. All my friends saw this program andasked for a copy.
“However, the next greatest operatingsystem in the universe, Windows 3, soonappeared. I wrote a program, in C++, to displaya short piece of amusement at random from alarge text file of amusements every timeWindows started. All my friends saw thisprogram and asked for a copy.
“However, the next greatest operatingsystem in the universe, Windows 95, soonappeared. Alas, the program written in C++started to misbehave and all my friends startedto complain. To placate them I hacked theWindows registry using a subset (180 out of2,000+) of the large text file of amusements torewrite the built-in ‘Microsoft Tips of the Day’.
“The next greatest operating system in theuniverse, Windows NT 4.0, has just appeared.However, all my friends, and Bill Gates, cansod off.”
developed strange properties:1. “Double-clicking the desktopicon reveals nothing: 0 objects, 0b y t e s .2. “DOS says there are 313 files inc : \ r e c y c l e d .3. “Choosing File, Empty RecycleBin elicits ‘Are you sure you want
to delete these 1041 items?’4. “With the Recycle Bin window open, anewly deleted item will appear in the Bin,but not after it’s closed and re-opened. Thenumber of files in 2 and 3 above are bothincreased by 1.”
The most likely causes are that one orboth of two hidden files in c:\recycled hasbeen damaged, or that someone hasmoved files to C:\recycled using FileManager or DOS. Although the Bin
bitmap editor. You can usesomething like CorelPhotopaint or AdobePhotoshop if you want to beposh, but I used PaintshopPro (Fig 2); there was a trialversion on February’s CD-ROM. It has the advantage
of being cheaper, easier to useand (a killer feature in this case)being able to import or export apalette as a plain text file.
You can use Windows Paint,but you won’t have much controlover what’s animated as youwon’t be able to edit the palette. You’ll needa hex editor and a sturdy anorak. For theformer, I used Hexedit (Fig 1): it’s old butsimple to use and there’s a copy on ourCD-ROM in Hedit.ZIP.
Catch your bitmap (preferably in 16million colours) and resize or crop it to 640 x400. Although the final image will be half aswide, it’s actually stretched to this sizewhen displayed, so you’ll be working inWYSIWYG mode. Do everything you want(like adding anti-aliased text that won’t
e’ve dealt before with changingthe Windows start-up screen,but just to recap, the trick is to
create a 256-colour .BMP file, 320 (w) x 400pixels (h), and save it as “LOGO.SYS” in theroot directory of the disk from which youboot (normally C:\). This doesn’t changeanything permanently; if you delete it, thedefault screen, embedded somewhere inthe innards of Windows, will return. Butwhat has hitherto eluded us, is how toachieve the animation: those jolly blueflashing bars at the bottom of the screenthat keep us amused while Windows isloading. Now, thanks to the efforts of JasonOzin, who wins a book or record token forhis pains, all can be told.
What you see isn’t, strictly speaking,animation. It’s a technique known as colourcycling. In a 256-colour bitmap, also knownas an “indexed” image, each pixel is storedas a one-byte number that refers to a placein a palette of 256 colours. The palette,stored in the same file, is optimised for theimage: a clouds-and-sky scene would havelots of shades of blue and white; anautumn-trees scene lots of shades of redand brown. This, incidentally, is why yousometimes see bizarre colour changeswhen viewing multiple images on a 256-colour display: the altered image is beingdisplayed in the palette of another image.
Each colour in the palette is stored inthree bits corresponding to 256 values eachof red, blue and green. Colour cycling scrollssome or all of the values in the palette, soeach pixel cycles through the rangeavailable. If the graduations are subtle, thisgives the illusion of a flowing “plasma” effect,as seen in the Chromazone screensaver(Hands On Win3.1, Sept 1996).
To create a cycling image you’ll need a
show the “staircase” effect) whilein this mode. Reduce the coloursto 236. In Paintshop, you can dothis by going to Colours/DecreaseColour Depth/X Colours. SelectNearest Colour and deselectInclude Windows Colours. Thiswill leave 20 spare colours foryour animation.
If you then go to Colours/EditPalette you should see that thelast 20 colours are all black andhave values of 0,0,0. Double-click on one of these and you’ll
be able to edit it, either by dragging thesliders or entering red, green and bluevalues in the boxes. This is the tedious bit,as you must make sure that none of thenew colours have already been used. Thereis an easier way: save the palette, from theColours menu, and you’ll find you can loadthis file into Notepad (Fig 3); you’ll see athree-line header, followed by a line foreach of the 256 colours in the form (forexample, 256 0 0 is bright red). The last 20should all be 0 0 0. I wanted some shades
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Personal Computer World • April 1997 • 261260 • Personal Computer World • April 1997
Hands On Windows 95
Cycling t o w o r kTim Nott explains the technique known as colour cycling, which you can use to “animate”your startup screen. And the History folder: web skeletons in your cupboard… revealed.
W
Hands OnWindows 95
p 2 6 2
Fig 4 Thank you, Peter McGarvey
Fig 1 (above) Enabling animation with a hex
e d i t o r
Fig 2 (left) Editing the palette in Paintshop…
Fig 3 (below) …but it’s easier to export it to
N o t e p a d
of red going to black, so I edited these toread 0 0 0, 10 0 0, 20 0 0 going up in stepsto 228 0 0. Make sure none of the coloursare already in the file. If it’s a photo this willbe unlikely, but if so, skip around them witha slightly different value. Save the file andwith the original image open in Paintshop,load the altered palette. Using only the 20new colours, create the bits you want toanimate (double-click on the foregroundand background swatches to choose).
I wanted to create a shaded circle effectbut you can’t use shaded fills in 256-colourmode. The workaround is to create a newfile in 16 million colours, create the shadedfill using the same start and finish colours(by double-clicking the swatches and typingin the RGB values), then use the ellipticalselection tool to copy and paste into theoriginal file. When you’re happy witheverything, resize the image to 320 x 400(Image/Resize), making sure that MaintainAspect Ratio is unticked. Save the file as a.BMP (Windows RGB encoded).
Copy the file to C:\ and rename it toLOGO.SYS. Load it into the hex editor andgo to byte 00000032. Change the value toEC (the hex equivalent of 236) which willmark the start of the cycling part of thepalette. Change the following byte to 00 or01: the former cycles through the coloursand jumps back to the beginning, the lattercycles up and back down again, smoothly.
Save, exit and restart the computer: yournew animated start-up screen should greetyou. To give you some idea of what can bedone, I’ve included two I made earlier onour CD-ROM (in Logos.ZIP). Bill.sys usesthe red shaded circle effect mentionedearlier, as well as some static text thatchanges colour. Psyched.sys is a slightlydoctored screen grab from Chromazone; inthis case the cycling starts at hex 85. Copyeither to C:\ and rename it LOGO.SYS.
Loony BinFollowing the exposé of the Recycle Bin(November 1996), Matthew Connor wroteto tell me that his Bin had recently
haven’t got a Windows 95 enhancedkeyboard, then you can use the Key Remaputility in Kernel Toys (on February’s CD-ROM) to make the right-hand Ctrl and Altkeys behave as if they were the Windowand Menu keys. Thank you, Ed Scrase. Martin Short wrote: “In Win3.1 programsrunning under Win95, the drive letter headsthe directory tree in Save As… This can befrustrating if I want to save some work onthe desktop. Is there a way to modernisethese trees?” In a word, no. Windows 3.1applications use the old, commonOpen/Save dialog which maps foldersdirectly to the DOS directory structure. Thiscan’t cope with the peculiarities of Win95,such as having C:\Windows\Desktop as acontainer for other drives. Kev Baldry asks: “When openingExplorer, drive C: is always shownexpanded. If I wish to browse, say, my CD-ROM on D: I have to scroll up drive C’slisting until I can contract it. Is there a way todisplay all the drives just as their icons andnot expanded when starting Explorer?” Yes,there is. Open the Start Menu folder, findthe Explorer shortcut and right-click on it.Select Properties, go to the Shortcut taband change the Target to read
C:\WINDOWS\EXPLORER.EXE /n,/e,/s e l e c t , C : \
Steve Luby writes: “When 32-bitprograms lock up in Win95, I usually pressCtrl-Alt-Del which brings up the CloseProgram dialog box. Instead of proceedingto press the End Task button to terminatethe program, just wait three or four secondsand press Cancel. For some reason thisseems to purge the affected memory areaand in a couple of seconds you are returnedto your application, complete with all thedata input up to the moment of lockup. Ihave tried this with several applications(most often with Word 95) and it seems towork very well most of the time.” Word 95locking up, Steve? Surely not! I’ve yet to trythis, but it sounds like it’s worth a go. A quickie, from Peter Smith — I thoughtwe’d had this before, but it seems not: “Ihave just realised that with Internet Explorerinstalled you can connect to web sites viathe Run command on the Start menu. Thisled me also to find that you can put internetshortcuts onto the start menu as well.”
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appears as a single entity, you get aRecycled folder on each hard drive orpartition (Fig 5).
If you look at C;\recycled in FileManager (Run winfile.exe with View/AllFiles ticked and View/By File Type…everything ticked) you’ll see a number offiles named Dcn.* where “c” is the driveletter, “n” is a number and “*” theextension of the original file.
There should be two other files with the“hidden” flag set (i.e. an “h” in the right-handcolumn) named “Info” and “Desktop.ini”.(There may also be Dcn.* files with the “h”attribute set, but this isn’t important.) TheInfo file maps the Dcn numbers to theoriginal file name. If it’s damaged, nothingmay show in the bin. Try deleting it.According to Microsoft it should berecreated when you start Windows,although this didn’t work for me.
Alternatively, it may mean one or more of the recycled files themselves aredamaged. If this is the case, Microsoftrecommends you create a copy of theRecycled\Desktop.ini file in another folder,then delete the entire contents of theRecycled folder. Next, restore the Desktop.inifile to the Recycled folder and repeat theprocess for each drive or partition.
Note that doing this permanently deletesall files in the Recycle Bin.
History lessonThose of you using Internet Explorer 3 willhave noticed that Windows maintains aHistory folder, listing the URLs of recently-visited sites. This is in addition to theTemporary Internet Files folder that cachesthe web pages and graphics themselves.Like the Recycle Bin, Fonts and others,these are special folders: if you open themin File Manager, you’ll again see a file calledDesktop.ini. You’ll notice, too, that thingsare not as they seem: under DOS or FileManager, the Temporary folder containsfour sub-directories and the History foldercontains, apart from Desktop.ini, just twofiles; MM256.DAT and MM2048.DAT. Theformer makes sense as it’s more efficient tostore and retrieve lots of small files in thisway, rather than all in one directory. Thelatter makes sense as it saves disk space: ifseveral hundred links were stored asindividual files, each would take a “cluster”of hard disk space (on a 1Gb partition,that’s 16Kb each).
Dig into the View/Options of InternetExplorer and you’ll find you can empty boththese folders. Or can you? Having clearedthe History folder, you’ll still find the twoDAT files in File Manager. Load these into atext editor and you’ll discover details of allthe URLs and searches you thought you’ddeleted. I’m not sure whether this is a grossbreach of personal privacy or a heaven-senttool for supervisors to crack down onunauthorised web browsing. But I think weshould have been told.
Quick tips and clever tricks Following January’s tip for shutting downthe computer without the confirmationdialog, Nick Mortimer and Tariq Atchiawanted to know if this shortcut could bemodified to restart Windows. I have toconfess that I haven’t been able to find out,although it would seem likely. However,there is a quick way to log on as a differentuser. Press the Window key + L. If you
262 • Personal Computer World • April 1997
Hands On Windows 95
Email Tim Nott at W i n 9 5 @ p c w . v n u . c o . u k
Contact
G rovel Stephan Freeman asks, re February’sHands On: “Does audio data really take up10Mb/sec? So a one-minute long recordingis 600Mb, and 72 minutes is 43.2Gb? Sorry, Ihad to point it out — I couldn’t resist it.”Thank you, Stephan. That should, of course,have been 10Mb/minute.
Concerning my comparison of Poledit witha well-known all-British motor vehicle, JackDobson complained: “Having just spent£9,000 on a new Reliant Robin, I am less thanpleased at your sneering remarks. For me, itspoilt an otherwise good article.” Sorry, Jack.I’ll add the Reliant Robin to my list ofpolitically incorrect subjects for humour.
Fig 5 (left) What’s in the bin? File Manager
gives a drive-by-drive view
Fig 6 (below) Connect to a web site from the
“Run” command
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ith standardisation on Microsoft-compatible mice, mouseproblems have lessened but
haven’t disappeared. Mice can still fail tofunction at all, be too fast, too slow, move incertain directions and not others, and workin some programs but not others.
Mouse matters come in threes. Thereare three types of mouse: Microsoft,Microsoft-compatible, and Microsoft non-compatible; three different ways ofconnecting them: via the bus, a PS/2-stylesocket, and a serial port; and they can beused in three types of application: 1. DOS applications, in which case theyusually require a driver loaded in theconfig.sys or autoexec.bat files. 2. Windows applications, in which case thedriver is provided by Windows, or aWindows driver is provided by the mousem a n u f a c t u r e r .3. DOS applications running withinW i n d o w s .
And, yes, there are three different causes of mouse problems:1. Hardware: the mouse isn’t plugged inproperly, it’s a bad or unclean mouse,there’s a bad mouse socket, a bad cable, aslippery or uneven mouse mat, or themouse is connected to the wrong port orwith a wrong or bad adaptor.2. Bad drivers: an older or incompatibleversion is being used.3. Conflicting software: your mouse drivermay not agree with Windows, or a particularprogram, or with some other programrunning at the same time like a TSR program,anti-virus software, or screensaver.
A classic situation is using too manydrivers. Manufacturers provide drivers forWindows and DOS (and sometimes forparticular DOS programs) and nowadays forWindows 95. Don’t install them all —
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Hands OnWindows 3.1
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The m o u s e t r a pYes, it’s a good old-fashioned whodunnit: when your mouse trips up while treading the, er,mat, you can help it get its act together. Panicos Georghiades and Gabriel Jacobs direct.
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Windows may not run properly if DOSmouse drivers are also there.
So, if you have a mouse behaving badly,first check for hardware causes — plug itinto another computer, or plug anothermouse into your computer. Next, establishthat the mouse works in DOS and inWindows separately. If the mouse doesn’twork in a DOS application under DOS, itwill not work in that application if you run itunder Windows. Install the DOS driversneeded in the autoexec.bat and/orconfig.sys files, as described in themouse’s documentation, and ensure thatall works fine under DOS.
If you have a Microsoft mouse, useversion 8.2 of the driver which comes withWindows 3.1 and, if necessary, expandmouse.sy_ and mouse.co_ (they’re on the
Adjusting mouse settings
Lowering the Sensitivity value in the Mousesection of Control Panel makes the mousemovements less jumpy. If the mouse is jumpy in Program Managergroup windows, lower the granularity settingsin the Desktop icon of Control Panel. If you’re using the DOS-based mousedriver mouse.com or mouse.sys version 7.04or later, add the /Y switch to the end of themouse command line
(c:\windows\mouse.com /y)
Note that erratic mouse movements maybe specific to the application, video card,machine BIOS, keyboard BIOS, or machinetype you’re using.
When problems strike, are you a man or a mouse? Take valuable advice on failsafe fix-its
and fax.wri. To prevent overwriting thetemplates, you have to Save As, not Save,and to avoid using Save by mistake, makeyour template files Read Only by changingtheir Attributes in the Properties option ofthe File menu in File Manager.
To use the templates you open Write,then use File Open to select a template, oryou can assign icons to each template soyou can open them with a double click. Todo this, start Write and the template in onego by editing Write’s Properties in the Filemenu of Program Manager. In the commandline of the Properties dialog box add thefilename of your template, so the commandline reads, for example, write.exe letter.wri.
Do this for all your templates by clickingand dragging the Write icon while pressing
the CTRL key tomake copies ofit, then editingeach one’scommand lineto include ad i f f e r e n tt e m p l a t ef i l e n a m e .Change thedefault Writeicon to anotherone by usingi c o n sembedded inProgman.exe.
To changethe default font
from Arial to something else, create an“empty” template. The only problem is thatthe template can’t be completely empty, so
you need totype aspace, say,then selectthat spacewith themouse, andfrom theFonts menuchange thefont to theone youw a n t .
Above Create your templates in Write and save
them as any ordinary Write documents
R i g h t From File Manager make the template files
Read only
B e l o w Create multiple copies of the Write icon
and edit each one to include the template file
name in the command line
R i g h t You will end up with multiple Write icons,
each one starting a different template
B e l o w To customise your templates even more,
choose a different icon for each one using the
icons embedded in Progman.exe, or any other
icons you may have
lies in an LPRINT statement (to printer) anda PRINT statement (to screen). There is noproblem with interpreted printed reports ordisplayed reports. I’ve tried two differentprinters — no difference. I enclose someoutput samples. My big fear is a virus, asthey are rampant here.”Leigh Bowden, Nigeria
The Microsoft Knowledge Base doesn’t listyour problem, but there are a number ofpossible causes.
We doubt a virus is the culprit — virusprogrammers tend not to target somethingas old as QBasic! We assume that you’renot trying to print while running the programin a DOS session within Windows, as thisdoesn’t work with all DOS programs.
The output samples you sent us showthat the text prints fine; only the numbersare wrong. This obviously implies that theproblem lies in calculations or statements todo with numeric data only — perhaps adifferent set of calculations is being used tooutput to the screen than to the printer.Programmers sometimes attach calculationstatements to PRINT statements, and sinceQBasic needs two different statements, onefor the screen and one for the printer, theset for the printer may contain errors.
Alternatively, it may be that certainformatting commands used for the printedoutput don’t work properly when compiled.In any case, check you’re using the rightversion of the compiler for the version ofQBasic you have, and that you’re settingthe right options for handling numbers forthe compilation. Also, have you checkedthe compiler documentation for supportedstatements and commands? Somestatements are supported by the interpreterbut not by the compiler.
The write fontA frustrated Bill Reid (m a i l t o : r e i d w@ n a c n . d n e t . c o . u k) mailed us about beingunable to change the default font inWindows Write. Each time you start Write,the default font is Arial: he wants it to beTimes New Roman.
Trying to answer this query hasprompted us to write about a method ofcreating templates for Windows Write, touse for letters, memos, and faxes, a featureavailable on all mainstream word processorsbut missing from Windows Write.
You can create your own designs andsave them as standard Write documents.Give them names like letter.wri, memo.wri
Windows disks) to your hard disk asmouse.sys and mouse.com by using theEXPAND command at the DOS prompt.You can test whether all works well using aDOS program which supports mousemovements such as Edit. Then disable theDOS drivers by placing the word REM infront of the lines referring to them in theconfig.sys and autoexec.bat files, andcheck the mouse works under Windows.
The Windows mouse drivers are setusing Windows Setup, and they appear inthe system.ini file in the [Boot] section.Normally there should be a line likem o u s e . d r v = m o u s e . d r v
To check you have installed the rightWindows driver, exit Windows, changedirectory at the DOS prompt to c:\windows,and type SETUP. If you get a messagesaying no mouse has been detected, selectthe Microsoft or IBM PS/2 option.
Note that some so-called Microsoft-compatible mice are more compatible thanothers, and you might have to use sometrial and error. In particular, try the driverswhich come with the mouse installation diskrather than the Microsoft drivers. If all theabove fails, try the following suggestions. Search the drive for multiple mouse.drvfiles. If you find any, rename them tosomething else, except for the one in theWindows System sub-directory. Test the mouse on a different port. Check that there’s only one mouse.ini file,and that the lineMouseType =
in the [Mouse] section of the file points tothe correct port. Try running Windows in standard mode. Ifall works well, try loading Windows bytyping win /d:x. If all is still okay, add thefollowing line to the [386Enh] section ofs y s t e m . i n i :E m m E x c l u d e = A 0 0 0 - E F F F
Finally, if you’re using a mouse that camewith its own drivers, try to borrow a mousethat uses the driver supplied with Windows.If that works, contact the manufacturer ofyour own mouse.
Out of Africa“I am doing voluntary work in Nigeria, andhave been working on a stock-control andtracking program using DOS 6.22 andQBasic (the v4.5 compiler), but thecompiled version of the program gives atotally incorrect output at the printer — thenumbers are all wrong. Inspecting the codedoesn’t reveal much, as the only difference
Hands On Windows 3.1
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Hands OnWindows 3.1
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264 • Personal Computer World • April 1997
If you have any queries or Win3.1-related topics todiscuss, contact Panicos Georghiades a n dGabriel Jacobs at W i n 3 @ p c w . v n u . c o . u k.
Contacts
A step-by-step guide to creating Write templates
(an .EVT file) and attempt to examine it onanother system. If the application thatcreated the records isn’t installed, you mayfind that much information won’t makesense. Depending on the network, you may
hen you want to know what’sbeen happening on your system,the NT event log is the place to
turn. It’s the central record for notableincidents and can help with problemdiagnosis, resource management andcapacity planning.
Each NT workstation or server has threeevent logs: system, security andapplication. The system log containsinformation about configuration problems,the state of the services and the use ofprinters. Application programmersdetermine what they consider importantenough for the application log andadministrators control most of what iswritten to the security log.
These logs are a valuable source ofinformation concerning what has happenedon a system and it’s a good idea to archivethem daily if you’re ever likely to want toexamine the historical behaviour of a system.
Records are written to the event log in aformat which, in part, is only understood bythe application that wrote them. When youview or export the logs, the system callsupon each application to format its ownrecords so you can make sense of them.This is great until you take a raw event log
also find that user IDs are displayed in theirinternal representation, which is a curiousstring of digits called a SID. There is asimilar danger when attempting to examinean old archived log. If applications havebeen removed from the system or usersdeleted, some log entries may reveal lessthan you’d like.
For these reasons, it’s a good idea toconsider the information you’re likely towant to extract from event logs beforechoosing your storage strategy. It’s alsoworth watching the size of the event logsyou generate. Large logs of tens or evenhundreds of megabytes per day on a busysystem are easily achievable if you’re over-zealous with auditing.
Because of the possibility of event logs
comes with NT is adequate for viewing rawevents but pretty hopeless for analysis.While it will export the logs in a comma-delimited format, you can’t automate theprocess and the resultant file might bedescribed as offering an interestingchallenge for analysis.
There is a tool in the NT 4 Resource Kitcalled DUMPEL that might have helpedsimplify getting the data out of the logs, butin spite of the help file suggesting otherwise,I couldn’t get a comma-delimited file out ofit. I’ll look at this again when I come toautomate the archiving of log records, butfor now I was happy to get the data out byhand, using Event Viewer.
The Server version of the Resource Kitincludes a copy of Crystal Reports that willread the event logs directly and produce a
Hands OnWindows NT
becoming useless over time or losing touchwith the applications creating them, long-term storage and most types of analysis aregoing to depend on a formatted export ofthe event log. I think there are three maintypes of uses to which the event log is put.The first is as a problem alert, although it’snot really designed for this: seriousproblems are already written to the consoleand sent as messages to registeredadministrators. Second is as a problemdiagnosis aid for when something isn’tworking properly and you need to find thereason. Lastly, as an audit trail, to recordwho’s done what.
As part of a capacity planning exercise, Ineeded to find out which printers on anetwork were being most heavily used andby whom. The Event Viewer application that
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Hands On Windows NT
The main e v e n tThe Windows NT event logs keep track of what’s happening in the system, but theythemselves need regular attention. Dale Strickland-Clark shows you how they work.
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Once the event log data has been massaged into a tidy comma-delimited format, Excel will
quickly turn it into a simple database
The Crystal Reports bundled in the Server Resource Kit provides exception reporting and basic
analysis of event logs
Excel’s PivotTable is an ideal tool for
interactive analysis. Here it summarises the
use of several printers
B o o k s
Managing Windows NT Server 4Author: Howard F. HillikerPublisher: New RidersPrice: £46.99 (incl VAT)This book bears a striking resemblance toInside Windows NT Server 4 ( r e v i e w e dJanuary 1997) by the same publisher. Manyof the subjects covered are similar, and I’malso suspicious of the number “4” in the title.Parts of the text have a distinct NT 3.51 ringto them and there are even screenshots froman NT 3.51 system. Worse, the consolecommand reference at the back of the bookmentions none of the extensions introducedin NT 4. Either this is a revised 3.51 book, orit’s been a long time in the making. Gripesapart, this is a solid, thorough volumecovering most of the issues concerning NTadministrators. The CD is a corker, with avast amount of demonstration NT softwareplus a free copy of Inside Windows NTS e r v e r in Acrobat format.
Microsoft Exchange Connectivity GuideAuthors: Rodney Bliss, Rebecca WynnePublisher: Microsoft PressPrice: £27.49 (incl VAT)The connection possibilities offered byExchange are many and even theexperienced administrator can findthemselves with a system that really shouldbe transmitting mail but stubbornly refuses.This book explains the large number ofparameters that affect message transfer andfills the very large holes left by thedocumentation supplied with the software. Itassumes little and explains setting up aserver to talk to the internet, X400 or MS Mailin networks of varying complexity. All the dialog boxes concerned are shown and each parameter is explained along withpossible problems you may encounter andwhat to do about them.
A very comprehensive and usefulr e f e r e n c e .
Whiz Bang Web Site F/XAuthor: Tom LockwoodPublisher: QuePrice: £32.99 (incl VAT)This book solves one of the great mysteries ofthe web age: how do you make a backgroundthat tiles seamlessly? Also explained is usingimage maps, creating animated GIFs, workingwith audio, Java and multimedia. CGI scriptsand VRML are explored along the way on thejourney to producing appealing web sites.
The book adopts the unconventionalapproach of listing very few of the codesamples on its pages, leaving you, instead, tofish them off the CD — which is nicelyorganised as a web site with links to relevantpages out in the real world.
The author knows his subject well andexplains it clearly. This is an ideal companion forsomeone already familiar with HTML but whowants to be more adventurous.
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Hands OnWindows NT
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variety of reports,but in the end Ichose Excel todo the analysisbacked by a littlePerl program tosanitise the data.
I exported thesystem log fromthe server intowhat the EventViewer programcalls a comma-delimited formatand ran it throughthe Perl program,c l e a n e v e n t . p e r l(see screenshots, page 266). Cleaneventadds a header record, identifying thecolumns so Excel will treat the data as adatabase. It merges the date and time fieldsfrom the log, it picks up all the trailingdescription fields that sometimes follow a
record and adds them to the end of theoriginal record, and, finally, it identifies therecords relating to printing. From these itpicks out the user ID, printer name and printsize, placing them in the general-purposefields, X1 to X4, on the end of the record. Ifthe output of cleanevent is written to a .csvfile and dropped into Excel, it willautomatically be split into individual cellsand is immediately ready for analysis.
I called upon a PivotTable (under theData menu) to do the analysis and finishedoff with a few charts to help illustrate theload on the printers.
The Perl routine could easily beextended to extract other interestinginformation, split the logs into smallerrecord sets or write it to a database forlong-term analysis.
Personal Computer World • April 1997 • 269
Dale Strickland-Clark is a journalist andconsultant on Windows/NT and the internet. Hecan be reached by email at N T @ p c w . v n u . c o . u kComputer Manuals 0121 706 6000
Contacts
Mouse moment
If you cast your mind back to the Januaryissue, you may recall my request that Santadeliver a new design of pointing device. Well,it wasn’t Santa but Microsoft that came upwith the goods, and while it’s not exactlywhat I asked for, we’re definitely heading inthe right direction. I refer, of course, toMicrosoft’s new Intellimouse. I’ve only beenusing it a month or so and already I’m lost ata PC without one. Now, with an ordinarymouse, I find myself scraping uselessly at thelittle gap between the two buttons andreceiving strange looks from uninitiatedonlookers. Scrolling has never been soeffortless. Nine out of ten points, Microsoft.I’ll save the extra one for when someonecomes up with a cordless version. (Are youlistening, Logitech?)
L e f t The poor
distribution of workload
is now evident. Mercury,
an overworked LaserJet
5P, might benefit from
swapping places with
Venus, a rather swift
Lexmark Optra Rt+
B e l o w Highlighting high
print users might
encourage economic
printing behaviour.
Sadly, it’s turned into an
ugly scramble for the
top position
introduction of the LaunchPad on OS/2, Isaid: “And the first of the promised COSEinterface features also arrives with version2.2 — a dashboard control based onHewlett-Packard’s VUE (Visual UserEnvironment), a point-and-click programlauncher and screen manager.”
Yes, the panel at the bottom of Fig 1derives heavily from VUE, but Andrew’scomplaint (“Why make these statementswhen, as I am sure you realise, CDE is infact a decedent of HP’s VUE WindowingSystem, an enhancement to OSF/Motifdeveloped in post-Apollo days andreleased prior to 1991 for HP-UX 8.0?”)seems to suggest that this is the wholestory. In fact, all the COSE members
couple of months ago Imentioned that CDE, theCommon Desktop Environment,
is now available for Linux, and I showed youa screenshot of it running on LinuxPro, theversion of RedHat Linux supplied by WGS(Workgroup Solutions) whose web page(unsurprisingly) is w w w . w g s . c o m.
I’d borrowed the screenshot from theWGS web site. But this is supposed to bethe Hands On section, so I made a vow tomyself that I’d follow through by gettinghold of the software and installing it on mynetwork. There’s some bad news aboutthis, some good news, some more badnews, but ultimately, I’m glad to say, somegood news.
Before we get into that, I’d like to dealwith some heated email from a reader whoobjected to my remark in the column thatthe CDE screenshot made LinuxPro look“uncannily like the AIX desktop — which ofcourse is the point of CDE”. When the majorUNIX manufacturers got together in 1993around an initiative called COSE (theCommon Open Software Environment), ofwhich CDE was to be the first component,the intention was to simplify things forsystem administrators and users by offeringa “look and feel” that would be similaracross all the UNIX platforms. One of thefirst manufacturers to implement this wasIBM on AIX, and as I happen to run AIXhere, it seemed worth mentioning ther e s e m b l a n c e .
Andrew Lehane seemed to think I wassuggesting IBM had invented CDEsinglehandedly. If my very brief mention inthe screenshot caption gave thatimpression, I’m sorry. Long-term readers ofthis column may remember that back inJanuary 1994, speaking of IBM’s
pooled their technologies to create CDE, asyou can see from the copyright notice inthe picture. As COSE was an initiativerather than an organisation in its own right— or as Sun’s CEO, Scott McNealy,famously put it, “COSE is a verb and not anoun” — the product needed to benurtured through the existing alliance ofUNIX manufacturers, the Open SoftwareFoundation (OSF) which has since beenrolled into The Open Group. Andrew’sloyalty to Hewlett-Packard (it turns out thathe’s working in its Telecom SystemsDivision) is commendable, and I’mdelighted that he reads and likes thecolumn, but I hope I’ve managed to deflecthis accusation of “inaccuracy”.
with this particular CD it was spinning itswheels, just at a time when I was desperateto install CDE and get a screenshot to you.Attempting to mount the CDE diskproduced the error message (after a longhang) “can’t read superblock”. Even before Itried mounting the drive, its flickering LEDindicated that it was labouring during thespin-up following inserting the CD. Oddly,the NeXT machine and the AIX PowerPChad no difficulty reading the CDE CD. It wasjust this combination of the Apricot driveand the CDE CD that was coming unstuck.After some experimentation — and I’m notgoing to tell you how many hours I spentmessing around with this — I was forced tothe conclusion that some drives, particularlyolder drives, just don’t like some CDs.
This was distinctly bad news, and Ifound myself wondering how long it wouldbe before I could free up another machine,reinstall LinuxPro on it, and then proceedwith CDE. I was about to pack away theApricot and sit down to write my excusesto you when I suddenly realised that thiswas the old, narrow, standalone-PCmentality that I’d supposedly escaped fromthree years ago when I started this column.The AIX machine, which had no troublereading the CDE CD, is networked to theApricot. Thanks to NFS, the Network FileSystem that comes with every UNIX underthe sun (or Sun, I should perhaps say), it’sa trivial matter to hook up the AIX CD-ROM
Hands OnU n i x
Good and badNow for that good news/bad news stuff. Assoon as I discovered there was a Linuxversion of CDE, I dropped an email to MarkBolzern, the Linux guru who runs WGS. Thefirst lot of bad news was that he was verynervous about sending me review softwarebecause, as it turns out, it costs him an armand a leg in royalty payments each time heships the product. I find it ironic thatsomeone whose core business isdistributing royalty-free software should beheld to ransom by the so-called OpenSoftware Foundation, which charges him$100 for the CDE and Motif components ineach CDE shipment.
It’s a tribute to Mark that he managed toget a package out to me, comprising thesix-CD set that makes up LinuxPro, alongwith the CD and manuals for CDE. This wasthe good news. The implementation of CDEhe uses comes from an outfit calledAccelerated X, mainly known for its souped-up commercial version of the X server forUNIX on PCs. Its CDE requires theAcclerated X server, which is what Markships with his LinuxPro.
I installed LinuxPro and was all ready togo on to the CDE when the shattering newscame through about Apple’s acquisition ofNeXT. I dropped everything and spent thenext week or so on the internet, newsgathering and chatting with gurus by emailfor some articles I was writing. After thedust had settled and it became clear thatGilbert Amelio may turn out to be the bestthing that ever happened to Apple andNeXT (although it’s a rocky road ahead) Ifinally caught my breath and went back tothe relative tranquillity of LinuxPro and CDE.Or rather, just LinuxPro. Because — thenext bit of bad news — I simply couldn’t getmy system to read the CDE CD.
I’d installed LinuxPro on the old ApricotXen LS-II. You may remember the trouble Ihad with SCO OpenServer not being able torecognise the Xen’s Sony CDU31a CD-ROM drive because it uses a proprietarynon-SCSI, non-IDE interface. There’s noproblem with Linux though — a driver forthe CDU31a is part of the standarddistribution. One of the Linux systemdevelopers, Mark Evans, has even written adriver for the rather obscure on-boardbusmastering ethernet port on the Xen.
The Apricot Xen LS-II had read theLinuxPro installation CDs perfectly, and asfar as I can remember had never shown anysign of trouble with other CDs before. But
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Hands On U n i x
The c o m m o n g o o d... and bad, unfortunately. But Chris Bidmead is in combative mood as he attempts to installthe Common Desktop Environment on his network, and defends a remark he made earlier.
A
Fig 1 This is the Common Desktop Environment. It happens to be running on top of LinuxPro,
but in theory it could be any UNIX and you wouldn’t know the difference. It’s not just a pretty
face — there are internal subtleties like drag-and-drop which I’ll investigate in later columns
The CDE desktop reconfigured with a different background and colour scheme. Here you can
see the icon editor together with a sample of the code CDE used to tie icons to executables and
ascribe particular behaviours to them
p 2 7 2
drive straight into the Apricot and treat it asthough it were a local drive. NFS is a client-server connection. Here, the AIX box is theserver and needs to expressly “export” thedrive in question. How you do this variessomewhat depending on the version ofNFS. Under AIX, I used Smit, IBM’s SystemManagement Interface Tool, to mount theCDE CD in the drive and then export thedrive — or rather, the directory I’d mountedit on — over the network. The directorydoesn’t actually go anywhere at this stage;it just gets added to a list of directiories thatthe NFS daemon advertises as beingavailable for network connection.
On the Apricot I then needed to mountthe exported directory onto a local, emptydirectory. I created a /mnt/NFS directoryand mounted the AIX CD-ROM there. If youread the manual pages for mount (you needto do this with the command “man 8mount”, 8 being the manual chapter thatdeals with system admin) you may comeaway reeling from the surfeit of optionsavailable. But the Linux mount command ispretty smart these days: if you just ask it tomount aixbox:/mnt/cdrom /mnt/NFS(mount this alien filesystem on this localdirectory), it should be able to figure out foritself that you’re talking about an NFSmount and that it needs to be read-onlybecause you’re dealing with a CD-ROM.
Having done this, I had the full contentsof my CDE CD available from the Apricot’s
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/mnt/NFS drive. I switched to this directory,ran the dtinstall script I found there, andCDE loaded itself on top of my LinuxPro,with the handsome results you see in Fig 1.Networking, modules and moreLinuxPro is based on the RedHatdistribution, with some refinements addedby WGS. Traditionally, Linux installationkernels come loaded with drivers for a hugenumber of devices and rely on autoprobingsoftware to find out which ones to activate.This can leave you with an overlarge kernel,which is sometimes a tight fit wherememory is limited. Once the installation isfinished, you’re normally recommended torecompile a slimmed-down version of thekernel tailored to your specific machine. Forbeginners, I should point out that this turnsout to be a lot simpler than it sounds.
My Apricot Xen LS-II has 16Mb of RAM,which is plenty of room for Linux.Nevertheless, I prefer to start with thesmallest possible kernel and add featuresas and when I need them. In the early daysof Linux you couldn’t do this, but newerLinuxes let you load “modules” which canbe drivers for physical devices, file systems,or translation code like the iBCS modulethat lets you run applications written forother versions of UNIX. Mark Evans hasmodularised the driver for the Apricot Xen’son-board i82596 ethernet controller, so Iinstalled a kernel that had no networkingenabled, made sure this was working, andadded the networking later. If you haven’tyet installed Linux I should point out thatmost Linux distribution CDs come with alarge variety of pre-compiled kernels in theform of disk images. You choose theappropriate image, transfer it to a floppy(where it appears as a bootable kernel anda bunch of vital support files) and use thatas the initial boot disk. During the installationprocess you get the opportunity to installthat same boot kernel onto your hard drive.
Typically, the installation process willmollycoddle you through procedures likesetting up the network. The upside of this isthat you get a working system with theminimum of effort. The downside is that youdon’t get to understand the fundamentals.Because I was starting without a networkdriver, the rest of the networking naturallyrefused to configure itself. Doing thismanually was instructive and, luckily, nottoo arduous.
I found myself telling reader MichaelButler <m . b u t l e r @ i c . a c . u k> about this atsome length, and what follows below is a
condensed version of that correspondence.Michael had written to me about the troublehe was having with his network card, andhe’d opened his mailing with: “I have beenconverted to Linux through reading yourcolumn in PCW. It’s a great column andworth the cost of the magazine alone!”. Thisis a great way of getting my attention.
Once the install of the minimal kernel iscomplete, I login as root and then checkthat there’s a set of modules, including theapricot.o module, somewhere among thelibrary files. In my present version of Linuxthis turns up under /lib/modules/1.2.13/net.
Linux comes with a number of tools forhandling modules, and you can get the fulllist with the command apropos modules.Among these is the insmod (insert module)command. This knows where to find themodules, and knows that modules are .ofiles, so the command line to add mynetwork driver is just insmod apricot
We’ve now installed the ethernet driverfor the device known as eth0, but it’s notyet doing anything very useful. You connectit to the network in two stages: first we needto give our eth0 a TCP/IP address, knownas the “dotted quad” address. We use theifconfig networking utility to set this up:ifconfig eth0 192.168.1.25
With my own small network setup this
means I’ve given this particular machine theidentifying number 25 on a network whosename is 192.168.1.0. (The full story is muchmore complicated, but let’s not worry aboutthat now.) The next step is to tell eth0where to find the network. For this we needthe route utility. Again there are all sorts ofcomplexities you can get into with route, asyou’ll see if you consult man route, but fornow let’s just go withroute add 192.168.1.0 eth0
And that’s basically it. If you now runifconfig and route without command lineparameters you’ll get a report on the stateof play. ifconfig gives something like Fig 2(there’ll also be an entry for lo, the loopbackinterface). The output from route shouldlook like Fig 3. To check that the networkreally is connected I can use the oldstandby, ping, to send test packets toanother machine and have them echoedback at me. For this I need the dotted quadaddress of the second machine ping 192.168.1.3
which should give something like Fig 4,confirming the network is now working fine.
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Chris Bidmead is a consultant and commentatoron advanced technology. Email him atu n i x @ p c w . v n u . c o . u k
Contact
Fig 2 Results of ifconfig
eth0 Link encap:10Mbps Ethernet HWaddr 00:00:49:20:26:2F
64 bytes from 192.168.1.3: icmp_seq=0 ttl=255 time=1.7 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.3: icmp_seq=1 ttl=255 time=1.4 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.3: icmp_seq=2 ttl=255 time=1.4 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.3: icmp_seq=3 ttl=255 time=1.3 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.3: icmp_seq=4 ttl=255 time=1.5 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.3: icmp_seq=5 ttl=255 time=1.5 ms
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everal readers have enquiredabout running Win32applications designed for
Windows 95 and NT. The fact is that forWin32 applications, you have to runWindows NT or Windows 95.
There are some exceptions, but if youabsolutely must run Office 97 or Office 95,you have no choice. However, it is not allgloom because there are some alternativepaths. Applications written to Win32s up toversion 1.25 will run on Warp. If you do alittle digging around you may even find thatsome supposedly Windows 95 applicationsare actually Win32s. And remember thatyou only have to run Windows NT orWindows 95 if you cannot find a suitableOS/2 application.
All the news seems to be aboutWindows, but this doesn’t mean that OS/2applications don’t exist. It’s only thatthey’re not likely to be reviewed or writtenabout in the popular press. Blame IBM’spast folly for that. At least now, if you’veupgraded to Warp 4 and seen theApplication Sampler, you know there areloads of OS/2 applications out there. You’dbe amazed at what you can find bysearching the internet.
Another course of action is to selectapplications that do not mandate Windows:Lotus SmartSuite 97, for example.SmartSuite runs on Windows and Warp,which gives you more flexibility —especially if you are supporting a mix ofusers. The Windows version is shipping inthe United States as I write and an OS/2version will soon be ready. Non-USversions will take a little longer and OS/2versions a while longer still, but the Warpversion of SmartSuite 97 should pitch upby about mid-1997.
Just add Citrix A more novel solution for running Win32applications on OS/2 is Citrix WinFrame 1.6or later. WinFrame turns Windows NT into amulti-user Windows applications server andsupports clients running a variety ofoperating systems including OS/2 version2.11 or better (Fig 1).
Win32 applications run on the WindowsNT WinFrame server and OS/2 clients viewthe display in a Warp Win-OS/2 session.Wyse and Insignia offer similar solutions forWindows clients using technology licensedfrom Citrix (w w w . c i t r i x . c o m) but only CitrixWinFrame ports OS/2 clients.
Citrix WinFrame is a specialised solution
that won’t suit everyone and isn’t cheap,but it’s very much in tune with the idea ofOS/2 as a networked client in a networkcomputing environment.
For the right applications and processes,the WinFrame model enables largecompanies to manage multi-platformnetworks more easily and to have morechoice over the client hardware. Instead ofequipping everyone with fast Pentiums withmulti-gigabyte drives and 32Mb RAM, youcan make better use of older hardware byserving up remote applications.
The WinFrame model is pretty similar tonetwork computing with Java except that itdelivers existing Win32 applications w h i l e
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p 2 7 4
C i t r i x f r u i tTerence Green finds a novel solution to running Win32 apps on OS/2, explaining how Citrix
WinFrame turns NT into a multi-user applications server. Plus, Warp 5 and the Domino effect.
S
Fig 1 With the Citrix WinFrame Plug-In for Netscape, it is even possible to work over the internet
with Windows applications that are running on a remote server
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Office 97 would have been a successfulbusiness decision.
Domino spottedThe Plug-Ins Hints and Tips page forNetscape Navigator for OS/2 Warp atb u d g e t w e b . c o m / o s 2 / p l u g i n s . h t m l is a mineof information and useful even if you don’tthink you’ll be using Plug-Ins (Fig 2).
The latest downloadable version of theLotus Domino web server, version 1.5a forOS/2 (and several other platforms), is on theLotus web site. There is a lot said andwritten about the difficulty of making moneyon the web but not much about savingmoney on the web by delivering timely andeffective support, let alone saving money byusing web-based support.
The “a” in the Lotus Domino Web Serverversion 1.5a refers to a security updatewhich corrects a problem in version 1.5where a web browser coming in from theinternet (not on a LAN) could impersonate auser. Lotus was informed via the web andused the same medium to deliver a fix andnotify users. It was a web problem, but aswith Netscape and Microsoft when theydiscovered security holes in their products,the web helped Lotus and its customers ina timely manner.
The other point of note about LotusDomino 4.5 (Fig 3) is that it is the add-onwhich devoured its host. Originally (lessthan twelve months ago) Domino merelyadded web protocols to the Lotus Notesserver. Now, Lotus has changed the name
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we’re waiting for Java to get real. Of course,when there are Java applications, they will bejust one more ingredient which can be addedto the mix available to network computingclients alongside WinFrame.
Warp 5.0 Java is coming along nicely. Java 1.02 isnow GA (or generally available — IBM’s wayof saying “shrinkwrap”) along with the Java1.02 Just in Time (JIT) 2.0 compiler forWarp 4. Java 1.02 for Warp 3 and for WarpServer is pencilled in for thissummer and Java 1.1 forOS/2 should be ready bythe autumn.
Shrinkwrap, as aphysical entity, is set toshrink as softwarecompanies begin to explorealternative software deliverymethods. With networkcomputing in mind,software is bound to reducein size and more packageswill become availableelectronically. In particular,IBM and Lotus areexperimenting with softwaredelivery via the internet andone of the plans is to offerWarp upgrades online (ashinted at by me in myprevious column).
IBM will deliver well overa dozen different updatesto Warp 4 this year. Thesum of the updates, whichincludes SMP support,TCP/IP 5.0 and Java 1.1,
will take Warp 4 to its next major version.Warp 5 is pencilled in for a 1998 release,about 18 months after Warp 4 shipped.
Users can choose which updates toreceive. An OS/2 user in a traditionalnetwork might concentrate on theclient/server enhancements to NetWare,Windows and Unix connectivity. Bycontrast, a network computing OS/2 usermight be more interested in the TCP/IP,Java and network security modules.
With effect from next month the servicewill be chargeable, available to any Warp 4user with a modem and internet access. It islike buying Warp 5 on an instalment plan.
Warp updates All the discussion of how few applicationsthere are for Warp, and how much choicethere is in the world of Windows, can makefor depressing reading, but more often thannot this ignores the fact that Warp is oftenthe first platform to have real leading-edgecapabilities. Put another way, Flash nowseems more popular but Jif was the first.
I was reminded of the way in whichOS/2’s advanced capabilities often gounsung when I read the header of someemail I received from a former P C Wcolumnist, now working for a rival publisher.
In the header of his message I noticed
that his organisation was using an OS/2SMTP mail gateway. As it happens, Lotusnow has a gateway that runs on WindowsNT, too, but it made me think of all thoseyears during which OS/2 provided thebackbone of that organisation’s emailsystem. I suppose in some ways, OS/2 isdoomed to be first!
Interestingly, IBM, through its Lotussubsidiary, is now cashing in on the widelyheld perception that Windows NT is the oneand only future direction of servercomputing, although it irritates OS/2 fan-club members no end. Because OS/2 usedto be the preferred platform for LotusNotes, it is now Windows NT that leads outnew Lotus releases. Naturally, Lotuscontinues to ship multiple-platform versionsincluding OS/2 Warp thereafter, so there isalways a choice of platforms.
There are sound business reasons forthis change. A lot of marketing money isbeing thrown at Windows NT and, as it isfree, it therefore makes sense for Lotus toutilise it. Additionally, it makes it easier forLotus to compete directly againstMicrosoft’s groupware and office suite, andfor users to compare the two.
Somehow, as much as I like Warp’sstability and user interface, I do not thinkthat facing-off SmartSuite for OS/2 against
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Hands On O S / 2
Terence Green can be contacted by post via theP C W office or at o s 2 @ p c w . v n u . c o . u k
Contact
Fig 2 This very useful Netscape Navigator for OS/2 support page helped me to get Plug-Ins running in Warp
Fig 3 Lotus Domino 4.5 runs on OS/2, all versions of Windows, the Mac and Unix systems
of its flagship multi-platform groupwareapplication development environment fromLotus Notes to Lotus Domino. FromRelease 4.5, the Notes name is onlyretained by the Notes desktop clients. Asthe pace of web development hots up, it isonly a matter of time before newerdevelopments like the IBM/Netscape link-up and consequent NetscapeCommunicator groupware web client,reduce the importance of Notes clients. I have received some Warp Server toolsfrom a reader with a very large network, andhave been given a pointer to a couple ofJava games, all of which I hope to be ableto bring you next month, plus somenetwork-specific advice for Warp and Warp 4 users.
On the CD-ROM
Having burnt my fingers on beta timeouts Iam now wary, so the follow-up to lastmonth’s cover-mounted CD is an OS/2 Dialerin version 1.0, a totally pointless Simpsonsguide and a pair of Novell updates, the OS/2Utilities for NetWare 3.12 and 4.10, plus thelatest NetWare OS/2 Client V2.12.The self-extracting ZIP (run it to expand ontoa drive from which it can be installed)requires in excess of 6Mb of free space.
Points of support
OS/2 Central on CompuServeGO:OS2CENTRAL has been started toprovide discussion and support for all areasof OS/2 Warp. One of the foundercompanies, Creative Systems, produces theCompuServe OS/2 offline reader, GoldenCommPass, and has acquired rights to theCompuServe Information Manager for OS/2(OS/2-CIM).
D r i v e r s• Epson Germany is developing drivers forseveral printers in Epson’s Stylus range. Thedrivers aren’t free. Send mail ton o v a s t a @ i b m . n e t for details. • If you have a WinTV card take a look at theWarpTV page at w w w . w d i . c o . u k / o s 2 t v /d o w n l o a d . h t m for the driver situation.
Layout select Different Odd and Even andchoose Different First Page in the Headersand Footers panel. Make sure Apply to: isset to Whole Document. Go to Margins andtick the Mirror Margins box. You’ll notice theLeft and Right change to Inside andOutside. Set Inside to 17.5cm, Outside to2.5cm. You can fine-tune this further, butthe principle is that the inner margin shouldhave 14.85cm (half the sheet) added to it.Close the Page Setup dialog and go toView/Headers and Footers. On the firstpage you probably won’t want either, so goto page two. Click in the header panel andtype “Cooking With Carrots”. In the footer,insert Page Number. On page three, put theauthor’s name in the header and right-alignit. Insert the page number in the footer, asbefore, and right align that. The remainingheaders and footers will be filled ina u t o m a t i c a l l y .
You’re now ready to print. Set your
he vexed question of A5 bookletshas bubbled away in thesepages for some time. Mike
Samuelson asks if anyone has come upwith a simple way of doing this in Word. Forthose of you who weren’t in at the start, theproblem is this. You want to print two pagesside-by-side on a sheet of A4 paper, andfold the sheet (or several sheets) in half tomake a booklet. In the simplest, four-pagecase, pages four and one are on one side ofthe paper, pages two and three on theother. With eight pages, it goes 8-1, 2-7 onthe first sheet, 6-3, 4-5 on the second. Andso on, with a sixteen-page booklet going16-1, 2-15, 14-3, 4-13 etc.
If you want a simple way, then heregoes. For argument’s sake, let’s say this isan eight-page booklet called “Cooking WithCarrots” by B. Bunny. Go to Page Setup,under Page Size choose A4 and underOrientation choose Landscape. From
printer to single-sheet mode, and from thePrint dialog Page Range panel, selectPages and type in “8,1,2,7,6,3,4,5”. Whenthe first page is printed, put the paperthrough again, the same way up. Then turnthe paper over, top to bottom and again putit through twice. Repeat with the secondsheet. And that’s it. You can experimentfurther, for instance centring the headersand footers or adding a rule with the bordertools. The only tricky bit is feeding the paperin the right way around.
In hope of a more hi-tech approach, Isearched various online sources of Wordwisdom and finally came across a set ofmacros on the Microsoft web site, datingfrom November 1994. This included theFormatFoldOverBooklet macro, which“allows you to print multiple pages on asingle printed page. The macro copies yourdocument text to a new document window,changes the formatting to two columns,
and switches theorientation to landscape.The appropriate pagenumbers are added beloweach column.”
This sounds just the jobexcept that first, there’s asyntax error in the macrothat has lain uncorrectedall this time, although afurther “application note”describes how to rectifythis. Having duly mendedthe macro, it then groundto a halt with a messagesaying the settings I’dchosen for the margins,
Turning the tablesLast month we took a hard look at Word’sinadequacies in the table department. Sincethen, I’ve got hold of a copy of the final buildof Office 97 and must admit there’s been animprovement. You can now align text top,bottom or centre of a cell and rotate itthrough 90 degrees without recourse toWordArt. This should solve the problem,mentioned last month, of the user whowanted to include a landscape full-pagetable in a document while keeping theheaders and footers in their default portraitposition. You can split and combine cellseither from a dialog box or by drawing anderasing lines straight onto the table.
Despite the addition of an Autosumbutton, the mathematical features are prettymuch unchanged and have a long way to goto catch up with WordPro or WordPerfect. Ireally had hoped that at least the formulaewould instantly update, as in a spreadsheet,but no — you still have to highlight the fieldand update it with F9 (or the right-clickmenu) or wait until you print the documentwhen all fields should be updatedautomatically. Make sure Update Fields isticked in Tools/Options/Print.
From the top...My other disappointment is with theunlovely File/Open… dialog, which remainsvirtually unchanged. I like being able tospecify a search string from the top level ofthe dialog. It’s especially useful when Iknow I’ve covered a topic somewhere in aPCW article, but can’t remember which of
column spacing or paragraph indents weretoo large for the page. It did this with avariety of settings in a variety of documentsin both Word 6 and Word 7. At this point Idid the sensible thing and gave up. Shouldyou, however, have more time to wastethan I do, the text of the macro is on thismonth’s CD-ROM in BOOKLET.TXT.
A commanding viewMoving on from a long Word macro thatdoesn’t work, here’s a short one that does.Sub MAIN
L i s t C o m m a n d s
End Sub
This produces a new documentconsisting of a table showing all the Wordmenu and keystroke commands togetherwith their menu location and/or keyboardshortcuts, including any keystrokecombinations you have assigned. However,there’s a rather more elegant variant. SinceListCommands is itself a Word command,you can add it to a menu. Go to Tools/Customise/Menus. From Categorieschoose All Commands; from Commandschoose ListCommands; from Change WhatMenu pick the menu in which you want topark it. Mine’s under “Help” but “Tools”would be equally appropriate. Change themenu position and name if you want to,then click on Add. Running the commandfrom a menu in this way gives you thefurther option of listing all the Wordcommands including those which don’thave a menu or keystrokes assigned, likethose commands used only within macros.
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B o o k m a k i n g for beginnersTim Nott shows you how to make five come alive as he presents a solution to the perennialproblem of producing A5 booklets in Word. Plus, coloured margins and the right accent.
T
Hands OnWo rd Pro c e s s i n g
Setting up the page for an
A5 booklet
The booklet ready for printing
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the 200-odd DOC files it might be in. Sowhy do we have to dig down into theAdvanced settings (or click the obscureCommands and Settings button) to searchsubfolders? Surely this checkbox shouldbe at the top level?
Unless you specifically save the search,the results are lost when you close thedialog. Word 6’s Find File… command atleast had the decency to re-open the lastset of results, so you could pick andchoose without having to repeat thesearch, or open all the files at once.
To boldly go…John Carrick was rather puzzled thatWord had suddenly started displaying
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This one’s for Word Pro running underWindows 95. As you may have discovered, inlayout view, you can set the margins to appearin a contrasting colour to the rest of the pagewith View/Set View Preferences/Showmargins in colour. What’s rather more difficultis to choose a colour other than the defaultgrey — but it can be done. It involves adding akey to the Windows 95 Registry, so the usualcaveats apply — back up USER.DAT andSYSTEM.DAT first.
First do the Word Pro bits. Go to File/UserSetup/Word Pro Preferences/General and hit the Markup Options button.Under Markup for Insertions, tick the TextColour box, then click on the down arrow bythe colour swatch to display the palette.Choose a colour, then hit the Make Defaultbutton. You may be wondering what this hasto do with the margin colour, but bear withme. Close Word Pro and start Regedit. Go toHKEY_CURRENT_USER\ Software\ Lotus\WordPro\ 96.0\ lwpuser.ini\ WordProUser,and you’ll see a load of user information andpreferences in the right-hand pane. Look foran entry named “RevInsColor” and make anote of its value. Now you see the problem.
You can contact Tim Nott by post c/o the P C Woffice at the usual address or via email atw p @ p c w . v n u . c o . u k
Contact
Department of obscure tips…
Instead of user-friendly names like Arctic Blue,colour options are stored in the Registry as anumber. Create a new String Value by right-clicking in the right-hand pane, and call itMarginsColor. Double-click on this new entryand give it the same number (including anyminus sign) as RevInsColor. I must confess Ihaven’t tried this with the Windows 3.1 version,but I would imagine something similar exists inLWPUSER.INI. Close the Registry Editor andrestart Word Pro: your margins will now be in thechosen colour, and you can re-set the Markupcolour to its previous value. If someone can tellme how to change the background colour, thearea “off the page”, to something other than thedismal default khaki, I’d be grateful.
And here’s one for WordPerfect 7 fans. Ifyou want to insert accented characters, orthose such as fractions, not normallyaccessible from the keyboard, thenInsert/Character pops up a scrolling box ofaccented and other exotic characters. Youalso get the option to choose from othercharacter sets, such as mathematical symbolsor Japanese characters. This is a little long-winded if all you want are commonly-usedsymbols such as °, Ω or the basic accentedletters. The keyboard shortcut Ctrl+W alsolaunches the character box, but you canfollow this with further keystroke shortcuts like‘e<return> produces an e-acute (é). These arethe more common symbols:
everything in bold type when a new, blankdocument was created. Stuart Melvillewanted to know how to force Word to startwith other than 10-point Times NewRoman as the default font. “I have a ratherelegant Garamond, but it’s a drag having toset this manually for every new document.”The answer to both queries is in theFormat/Font… dialog box.
If you change the font, style, size or otheroptions here, and hit the Default button, thisfont and options will become the default fornew documents. You do get a confirmationdialog, but it’s easy to miss if you’re in thehabit of closing dialogs with the enter keyrather than the mouse. This is probablywhat has happened to John, by accident.
To rectify this, or to choose a newdefault, choose the settings you want fromthe dialog box and hit Default again. Don’tforget to click Yes when asked to save thetemplate changes. For those of you whohave made the upgrade to Word 97, notethere’s also a Shadow font style as well asOutline, Embossed and Engraved. Thislooks rather like bold at normal font size,and it doesn’t have a button on the toolbar.
R i g h t The secret of finding out the
colour code
Top left Margins in any colour you
like — with a bit of Registry tweaking
A b o v e Beyond the keyboard in
W o r d P e r f e c t
creates a new HTML-coded page completewith header, footer and table. This can beopened in Microsoft Explorer or your otherfavourite browser.
Excel 97 also makes it easy to add anExcel form to your web site which can beused for collecting information for adatabase. This might be for taking ordersfrom users, or requests for information, orjust recording comments. You first createthe form in Excel with cells where users willenter their data. Then choose Tools,Wizard, Web Form to open the Web FormWizard which asks you to select those cellson your worksheet that you wish to have
Fig 1 (right) It is easy to save
a range of your worksheet as
an HTML-coded web page,
automatically, using the
Internet Asst. Wizard
Fig 2 (below) The Excel 97
Web Connectivity Kit
includes a template for
converting downloaded data
into charts
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worksheet which is speciallydesigned to accept data from aparticular web page is called a
Web Query. To run one, you choose Data,Get External Data, Run Web Query, thenselect the particular Query you wish to runfrom the Run Query dialog box. Excel 97includes four of them, as I mentioned lastmonth, but one of these is “Get More WebQueries”. At present, if you run that whenconnected to its source, you can downloadan active sheet with 36more Queries.
If you have your ownweb page, it’s easy to adda range of a worksheets: 1. Open the page with yourusual browser. 2. Choose View, Source,so you can see the HTMLcode. 3. Where you want the newworksheet data to appear,insert a blank line and then <--##Table##-->
4. Save this edited file. 5. Open your worksheet inExcel and select the range you want to addto the web page. 6. Choose File, Save as HTML (HypertextMark-up Language). This starts the InternetAssistant Wizard (Fig 1) and you follow a fewsimple steps. These include browsing toselect the .html file you’ve prepared foraccepting the data. When you’ve finished,the range will appear on the web page.
You also use this Wizard to prepare aworksheet as a web page. It works muchbetter now than when I previewed it lastOctober. If you just accept all the defaults,the Wizard selects enough of the first rangeof your worksheet to fill a web page, then it
the user fill in, and the labels you wish togive them. It then automatically produces anew .xls file and companion .idc, .htx, and.mdb files. You supply these four files to theweb page administrator and you can openthe new .xls file, which looks like youroriginal, with a Submit Info button added.This Wizard works best with MicrosoftAccess 97 and Microsoft Explorer 3.
On this month’s cover-mounted CD I’veincluded the complete Excel 97 WebConnectivity Kit. It’s the definitive guide todeveloping sophisticated web sites forExcel users. It also helps you to createspecial pages on Excel worksheets that willautomatically elicit information fromcompany intranets or specific internet websites. You can learn how to pull daily sales,stock or financial reports from a companyintranet server straight onto a worksheet.The Excel 97 Web Connectivity Kit includesan example of converting downloaded datainto charts (Fig 2).
Meanwhile, back in the office…The hyperlink capability of Excel 97 can alsobe used to improve links with files on anoffice network, or on your own disks: hard,
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Linking upExcel 97 offers a number of ways in which to exchange information between a workbook
and a web page; Stephen Wells explains how. Plus, Excel 97’s hyperlink capabilities.
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control the toolbars, menu bars, andshortcut menus in a workbook. Not onlycan you create and modify custom toolbars,menu bars and shortcut menus for a tailor-made Visual Basic application, but you canalso modify any of Excel’s own built-intoolbars and menu bar. You can presentthe features of your application as individualbuttons on toolbars or as groups ofcommand names on menus. Becausetoolbars and menus are both considered tobe command bars, you use the same kindof controls for both.
Having installed Office 97, you can findmuch of the information you need aboutthese changes in the vbaxl8.hlp file. Someuseful snippets are in the file xlread8.txt.
Office 97 includes an MS Query Add-Into convert external data ranges which are inExcel 97 format to Excel 5 for Windows 95format. This is not so much for makingExcel 97 data available to version 5/95users, as for allowing Excel 97 users to runmacros created in Excel 5 .
Right on the buttonI recently received a fax from Jeff Forrest,who is working in Paris for a company thathas internal email only. Jeff offers the tipthat if you run out of suitable button designs
for your macros inExcel, you can borrowone from Word.
If you have MSOffice 95 or 97, startExcel and Word. If youchoose View,Toolbars, Customise,Commands, All
Commands in Word, you’re offered a widechoice of button designs, any one of whichcan be dragged onto any toolbar(temporarily).
Right-click on this button and chooseCopy Button Image. Drag the button off thetoolbar to dispose of it, then switch toExcel. Whenever the Toolbars Customisedialog box is open, the same shortcut menuis available in Excel, so now you can right-click on the button which starts your macroand choose Paste Button Image. This newbutton will be stored in the Normal.dottemplate and will stay on the toolbar untilyou wish to remove it.
A case in pointIn his correspondence, Jeff also included amacro for changing the case of selectedtext. I entered and checked his module andit worked fine, but as I had covered thatsubject extensively (in my January column), I wasn’t going to mention it.
But then I received an email from AndyMale: “I read with interest your article onchanging the case of text within Excel. I’musing Excel 5.0 and have successfullycreated a macro button that will change thecase of a single cell. I am trying to amendthe macro so that I can change the case ofa single cell, or a selected range, butdespite hours of effort I have failed. Themacro I’m using for the single cell is:Sub titlecasecell()
ActiveCell.Value = Application.
P r o p e r ( A c t i v e C e l l )
End Sub”
So all of a sudden, Jeff’s macro becameimmediately useful. He had written:Sub MakeProper()
Dim myCell As Object
For Each myCell In Selection
If Left(myCell.Formula, 1) <> "="
T h e n
myCell.Value = Application.Proper
( m y C e l l . V a l u e )
End If
Next myCell
End Sub
I sent this to Andy, who replied: “Thanksfor your help — that cracked the problem. Iguess it’s simple when you know how!” Ihope they both see this so that Andy knowswhere the solution came from and Jeffknows that he did a good deed.
Keyboard conundrumRoy Small emailed me with an interestingdilemma. “I have a persistent keyboardproblem with Excel 7.0 and Word 7.0 .When I type a repeating comma (,,,,,,,) I getrepeating (.....) full stops. It only happens inthese two applications and I have triedreinstalling twice, but to no avail. In theTurnpike editor and in Wordpad there is noproblem. My system is an Escom P60 with16Mb and Win95. Word 5 and Excel 5 didnot have this problem. All the countrysettings are correct.
“I am loathe to delve into the registryunless I know what I’m looking for. I wouldappreciate a pointer in the right direction ifyou are aware of this problem.”
I replied: “If you’re getting correct resultswith other software, then it can’t be akeyboard mapping problem.
“You might check all the AutoCorrectand AutoText options. If anyone else hasused your PC, they might have changedsomething, either consciously orinadvertently. Also (and this is somethingthat often frustrates me) languages are setin every template. You can’t just set English(British) once. It can turn back to English(US) or, perhaps in your case, Swedish orsomething, in different templates.
“If it’s any comfort, it’s not a bug in Excel7 or Word 7 as nobody else has had theproblem as far as I know.”
He responded: “Brilliant, Stephen. I can’tthank you enough. It was indeed theAutoCorrect setting. I don’t understand whyor how it ever got set that way because onlyI use this machine and I have never foundthat setting dialog before. Changing thesetting in Word also affects Excel.”
Personal Computer World • April 1997 • 283
Hands OnS p re a d s h e e t s
CYAN•MAGENTA•YELLOW•BLACK PERSONAL COMPUTER WORLD
or mounted floppy. If you just want ahyperlink from one Excel worksheet toanother without the use of a formula, theeasiest way is to select the worksheet datain the destination workbook and then usethe right mouse button to drag theinformation to the worksheet cell thatcontains the text, button or graphic for thehyperlink. When you release the rightmouse button, click Create Hyperlink Hereon the shortcut menu (Fig 4).
It’s also easy to create a hyperlinkbetween a worksheet and a Worddocument or a PowerPoint slide. Say youhave the text, SEE REPORT, in a cell andthe report referred to is a Word document.Just select the cell and then click the Inserthyperlink button on the standard Excel 95toolbar (or press Ctrl+K). This opens adialog box where you can browse to findthe Word file. Click OK and that’s all there isto it. The words SEE REPORT are now anautomatic link which opens the Word filewhen you click them.
As you wereLast month I was saying that Excel 97allows you to use row and column labels asreferences, assuming that you’ve checkedthe “Accept labels in formulas” box underTools, Options, Calculation.
I mentioned that in the beta version Itried, this feature easily got confused whenone of my labels was “Current Assets” andanother was “Current”. I also said that if thecolumn heading was a formula, like =B1-1,instead of 1995, then I received an errormessage even though the sheet displayed
1995. I’ve sincereceived the finalversion (if there ever is af i n a l version) and canreport that both of theseminor problems havebeen corrected.
VBA changesThe Excel 97 Visual Basic object model hasextensive changes to support new andimproved features in Visual Basic forApplications in Office 97. Many objects,properties and methods have beenreplaced. To provide backwardcompatibility, most of the replacedcomponents have been hidden rather thanremoved. They don’t show up with theobject browser although the existing codethat uses the hidden components still works.When you write new code you should usethe new objects, properties and methods.
The first thing to get used to is thatmacros are not displayed on module sheetsany more although they are still stored withthe workbook. To create or edit a macroyou choose Tools, Macro, Visual BasicEditor (or press Alt+F11) and three windowsopen (Fig 3). Visual Basic now features asingle, consistent editing environment forOffice programs similar to working instandalone Visual Basic 5.0. Each Excel
workbook has a project associated with it.There is an improved code editor, ahierarchical object browser, a multipanedebugger, a Properties Window and aProject Explorer to help you view andorganise the code and objects in yourp r o j e c t .
If you open a workbook created in earlierversions of Excel, Excel 97 preserves macroand dialog sheets and converts modulesheets into modules in the workbook’sVisual Basic project.
You can run and edit Excel 4.0 macrosand Excel 5.0 and 7.0 dialog sheets. Toview them, just choose Tools, Macros (orpress Alt+F8). You can even add newmacro or dialog sheets by right-clicking asheet tab and then clicking Insert on theshortcut menu. However, it isrecommended that you create new macrosand dialog boxes in the Visual Basic Editor.
The three largest areas of change inExcel 97 Visual Basic are Shapes,UserForms and Command Bars.
Shapes are drawing objects. The ShapeObject is for formatting or modifying a singleshape. The Shapes Collection is formodifying all the Shape objects on aspecified sheet, such as AutoShape,freeform or OLE objects. The ShapeRangeCollection is for modifying a group of Shapeobjects which you specify.
A UserForm Object is a window or dialogbox that makes up part of a customapplication’s user interface. The UserFormsCollection is a collection whose elementsrepresent each loaded UserForm in anapplication. The UserForms collection has aCount property (which specifies the numberof elements in the collection), an Itemproperty (to specify a specific collectionmember), and an Add method (for placing anew UserForm element in the collection).
CommandBar Objects in Office 97
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Hands On S p re a d s h e e t s
Stephen Wells welcomes input on allspreadsheet matters. Write to him at P C W, oremail s p r e a d s h e e t s @ p c w . v n u . c o . u k
Contact
The Chart command on the Insert menunow starts the Chart Wizard. On step four ofthe Chart Wizard, you can specify whether thechart is inserted as an embedded object on aworksheet or on its own chart sheet. The Office Assistant has replaced theTipWizard from versions 5.0 and 95, andincludes Answer Wizard IntelliSensetechnology from version 95. When you needHelp, just click the Office Assistant button andask the Assistant a question in your ownwords. When a yellow light bulb appears in theAssistant, a program tip is available: click thelight bulb to see the tip. Cell notes are now called comments. Usethe Comment command on the Insert menu to create a comment. You can viewcomments in the same way that you used toview notes: by resting the pointer over a cellthat has a comment indicator (this is a redtriangle in version 97) in the upper right-hand
EXCELlent changes in Excel 97corner of the cell. The Info Window feature is no longer availablein Excel 97. To locate cells that provide data toformulas, use the Auditing toolbar. The Shared List command has gone fromthe File menu. In Excel 97 you can use sharedworkbooks to create and edit formulae,change formatting, create and change charts,and even add sheets. To share a workbook,click Share Workbook on the Tools menu. Sound notes have also been dropped fromExcel 97. To start the PivotTable Wizard, choose thePivotTable Report command on the Data menu. The View Manager command hasdisappeared from the View menu. Use theCustom Views command on the View menu tosave a custom view of a workbook. Customviews have been integrated into Excel 97 andthis command no longer requires an add-inp r o g r a m .
Fig 4 You can create direct
hyperlinks simply by
dragging a cell from one
Excel 97 worksheet to
another and right-clicking
Fig 3 The new Visual
Basic editing
environment is the
same in every Office 97
application and it’s all
graphically orientated
On the P C W C D - R O M
If you have Excel 97 and Word 97 installed onyour computer, you can use the Excel 97 WebConnectivity Kit described here. From thecover CD, copy the self-extracting zip file,WEBCNKIT.EXE, into the folder of your choiceon your hard disk and double-click on theicon to expand the files. Follow theinstructions in WebCnKit.doc to use thevarious sample files. Descriptions of the filesare in this document’s appendix.
CYAN•MAGENTA•YELLOW•BLACK PERSONAL COMPUTER WORLD
n the February issue I published aletter from Glen Rowe. Hewanted multiple buttons on a
form, all with different captions. Whenever abutton was pressed, a query would runwhich returned values based upon thecaption on the button. For example, if youpress the button labelled “Penguins” yousee the records which relate to Penguins:pressing the “Fish” button yields informationabout Fish. I produced a solution by buildinga query which snatched the caption from thebutton which had just been pressed.
I also wrote the following: “The obvioussolution at first is to try to pass the button’scaption to the query as a parameter. As faras I know (and I stand to be corrected) thiscan’t be done.”
James Talbut replied: “Passing aparameter to a parameter query in Accesscan be done, but it’s not very pleasant andmeans the you need to use DAO (DataAccess Objects), which can be good or baddepending on the circumstances.”
The solution that James then providesdoes, as he suggests, pass a parameter toa parameter query. What it doesn’t do ispass the c a p t i o n of the button as aparameter (which is still, as far as I know,impossible). In turn, this means his solutionis somewhat more awkward than the oneshown in the February issue because everybutton you add to the form must have itscaption a n d its OnClick property altered.With the February solution, all you had to dowas clone the button and alter the caption.However, James’s solution to the initialproblem is still well worth studying since itillustrates a very different way of solving theconundrum.
He continues: “Before I include all thebumf to show you how it’s done, I’ll just
interested in. The most simple example Icould come up with looks like this:
Table: “People”
I D N a m e V a l u e1 F r e d 12 J a c k 43 F r e d 9 4 H a r r y 1 65 A n a s t a s i a 2 56 B o b 3 67 M a r t i n 4 98 S t e p h e n 6 49 H a r r y 8 1
(See Fig 1. )
Personal Computer World • April 1997 • 285
Hands OnD a t a b a s e s
All buttoned u pMark Whitehorn presents another slant on last month’s buttons and captions query, whichis far from sewn up. Plus, the complexities of data entry in Access, and CUSTOMER care.
I
p286
mention the implications.“To actually access the resultant data
you need to use DAO to step through arecordset. If you have a large amount ofdata this can be inefficient (OK, it’s alwaysinefficient, but it’s more noticeable with alarge dataset), particularly if you areintending to perform some secondaryoperation/selection on the data. However,the query itself is still run by the JET engineso the main data manipulation routines arestill run as quickly as Access can do them.
“To control the parameters you need touse the Parameters collection of theQueryDef object for the query you are
Form, “People”:Six command buttons, each with theirOnClick property set to: =Button_Click(“Fred”)
with Fred replaced by the caption on thatparticular button. The buttons are labelledFred, Bob, Harry, Martin, Anastasia andStephen. At the bottom is an empty list boxcalled List10.(See Fig 2, page 285.)
“And that’s it. Hope it’s useful.”Very interesting, James. I have
constructed an example file (in Access 7.0)based on this example called TALBUT.MDBwhich is on the CD.
Next an email from Norway: “I have aproblem that I’ve worked on for severalmonths now, without finding any easys o l u t i o n ,” writes Tore Saetre, of Bergen.“I’ve developed and am maintaining aMicrosoft Access database that keeps trackof customers. The database contains twomain tables: Customer and Sales. Theproblem is that I need to have a field in theCustomers-table that shows how manyorders the customer has in the Sales-table.
“My first idea was to make a query thatcounts orders in Sales for each customer.The query lists each customer and howmany orders the customers has. I tried tomove that value to the Customer-table withan update query that updates a NoOrders-field in Customer through a link to the firstquery. The problem is that the first querycan’t be updated and the second querywon’t update my Customers-table.”
I receive many questions like this one,questions which hinge upon the desire tostore redundant data in tables. My initialreply to Tore was that, in general, storingderivable data is a bad idea because if thedata changes (as you make more sales), thedata in the CUSTOMER table goes out ofdate. It is normally preferable to use a queryto calculate the information you need:whenever you want to see this data, youcan run the query which shows you thecustomer details and the number of sales.
Tore was only partially convinced andreplied: “But data in the sales table is onlychanged and added to once a month. Therest of the month the user browses throughCUSTOMER’s 4,000 records and needs tosee as much data on each customer aspossible. Running a query for eachcustomer is too time-consuming. I see whyit can’t be done in a ordinary customer/sales database, but I still hope to find asolution to this problem.
“For an experiment, doyou have an example ofhow I can run a query tosee customer detailsbased on the customercurrently displayed in aform? Do I need to run acode, macro or functionand how do I get thequery to filter everythingbut the record on-screen?Thanks for your help.”
Okay, we’ll solve thisone both ways. There is a sample databaseon the cover CD (in Access 2.0) calledTORE.MDB. This has two tables,CUSTOMER and ORDERS. CUSTOMERcontains simple details of 4,000 mythicalpeople, ORDERS contains about 27,500orders. Each customer has at least threeorders to their name (or, in this case, totheir CustomerNo) and some haveconsiderably more. Fig 3 shows smallsamples from both tables.
The form called “Customers & Orders”(Fig 4) shows customer details and orderdetails. The main form is based onCUSTOMER, the sub-form (which is calledSub1) is based on a query which simply
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16Mb of RAM using Access 2.0.“Customers & Orders” opens almostinstantaneously, and you can scroll throughthe records at the rate of about 400 perminute. “Customers & Orders Count” takesabout 25 seconds to open, but once openyou can scroll through the records at therate of about 1,600 per minute.
To put this into simplistic terms, the firstone does the calculations for each recordas you ask to see it (which is adding about0.1 seconds to the scroll time betweeneach pair of records). The second one doesall of the calculations for all of the recordsbefore showing any of them to you.
These forms are simply based onqueries: no code or macros are required.As you can see, using the first form, it ispossible to see customer and order detailswith essentially no speed hit at all for thesenumbers of records.
The query called “Customers & OrdersCount” (the one which takes 25 seconds to
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Personal Computer World • April 1997 • 287
performs a join on the two base tables. Thisform displays one record for each of the4,000 customers.
The form called “Customers & OrdersCount” (Fig 5) again shows one record foreach customer. However, instead of listingthe details about each order, it simplyshows how many orders each customerhas placed. This form is based upon thequery called “Customer & Order Count”.
These two forms are variants whichanswer Tore’s request for an “example ofhow I can run a query to see customerdetails based on the customer currentlydisplayed in a form”.
I ran this database on a 486/100 with
run) can also be used, if required, to createthe base table that Tore requested. I haveincluded a Make-Table version of the samequery in TORE.MDB. If you run this, it willcreate a base table called CUST which isjust like CUSTOMERS except that itincludes a field which shows how manyorders each customer has placed.
In Tore’s case this could be run once amonth, and then CUSTOMERS replaced byCUST; in that case, the 25-second speedhit disappears. The downside is that we arenow reliant upon redundant data in thedatabase. If anyone forgets to renew thetables at the end of the month, then all ofthe users of the database start to work withinaccurate data. You pays your money, youtakes your choice — speed or security.
Q u i c k i e s Here’s a quick one from Gareth Wade:“When running a simple Report, I need toadd all the time lengths and give a running
Hands OnD a t a b a s e s
p 2 8 8
Fig 3 (right) S m a l l
samples from both
the CUSTOMER
and ORDERS
tables in the
database “Tore”
Fig 4 ( l e f t ) The form called
“Customers & Orders” shows
customer details and order
d e t a i l s
Fig 5 ( b e l o w ) The form called
“Customers & Orders Count”
shows one record for each
c u s t o m e r
Fig 6Private Sub LastName_AfterUpdate()
End Sub
Simply add a line so that it now reads; Private Sub LastName_AfterUpdate()
Me!LastName = StrConv(Me!
LastName, 3)
End Sub
Fig 8
Private Sub LastName_AfterUpdate()
Dim Length As Integer
Me!LastName = StrConv(Me!LastName, 3)
If Left(Me!LastName, 3) = “Mac” Then
Length = Len(Me!LastName)Length - 3)
Me!LastName = StrConv(Me!LastName, 3)
Me!LastName = “Mac” Me!LastName
End If
If Left(Me!LastName, 2) = “Mc” Then
Length = Len(Me!LastName)
Me!LastName = Right(Me!LastName, Length - 2)
Me!LastName = StrConv(Me!LastName, 3)
Me!LastName = “Mc” + Me!LastNameEnd If
End Sub
Fig 7
Me!LastName = StrConv(Me!LastName, 3)
CYAN•MAGENTA•YELLOW•BLACK PERSONAL COMPUTER WORLD
total. Easy enough; but when Access getsto 23:59, it reverts back to 00:00. Whatformat do I use to carry on past that magic24-hour mark ? I have tried all the manualsand help files but can’t find the answer.”
I don’t know the answer to this one.Anyone else care to solve it? And this one from Malcolm Rowley: “I findI am put off by the complexity required inAccess to solve simple problems, e.g. dataentry character formatting.
In Alpha I simply have to specify theword/character format I require, e.g. Upper,Lower, Word (first character upper case, therest of the data left as is) in the field rules,and this is applied to all data entry thattakes place and can be re-applied to allexisting data. This is ideal for data entry ofnames and addresses; the only difficultybeing the McCartneys (etc.) of this world.To have any simple form of formatting thatstores the data in an access table in aparticular format, do I really have to resort tocode? Is there a simple way of acceptingdata entry in Access and storing it as firstcharacter upper case, the rest left as is?
For example: macdonalds becomesMacdonalds / macIntyre becomesMacIntyre / 27 park avenue becomes 27Park Avenue. A simple solution would bea p p r e c i a t e d . ”
The answer is that you have to usecode, but only one line so it may just meetyour requirement for simplicity! Supposeyou have a form called Capital whichdisplays a field called LastName in a textbox called LastName. Switch to design,double-click on the textbox in question,select the Event properties, click on the onecalled “After Update”, click on the ellipsisbutton which appears (three dots) andchoose Code Builder. Between the twolines which appear (Fig 6) “Me” means thecurrent form, “LastName” is the name of thetextbox, and “StrConv” is a function (onlyavailable in Access 7.0 and above) whichconverts strings. The “three” tells the stringconversion function to do the type ofconversion that you asked for (capitalisingthe first letter of each word).
So, Fig 7 means “make the contents ofthe textbox called LastName equal to thesame as it is now, but with all of the firstletters of the words capitalised”. This willconvert: penguin penguinsson to PenguinPenguinsson / 23 the larches to 23 TheLarches / mcdonald to Mcdonald and so o n . On a slightly different tack, I haven’t usedAlpha for well over a year, but I agree that
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processes likethis one areeasier (andcertainly moreintuitive) inAlpha than inAccess. Infact, to quotefrom a review Iwrote at thetime of itsrelease: “…ofthese, theField Rules arethe mostimpressive, ifonly becauseAlpha copeswith them better than any other RDBMS Ihave seen.”
There is clearly a trade-off in designterms, which these two products exemplify.In both products, the designers identified ahost of commonly needed functions andmade them easily available from theinterface. This approach has pros and cons.The good news is that commonlyperformed processes (like designing tablesand building queries) are easy: the badnews is that if you happen to want afunction that the designers didn’t provide,you suddenly have to go to a more complexarea, such as coding.
One difference between the twoproducts is where the line was drawn. Inthis case, the Alpha designers decided toinclude capitalisation in the “easy” set andthe Access designers didn’t.
I have always found that, whateverproduct I use, I eventually reach a stagewhere I have to use code simply because itis impossible for the designers to put
everything into the “easy” set. On a happiernote, once you do start to use code, yourhorizons expand considerably. You can, forexample, begin to deal with unusuallycapitalised names like those you mention. Ifyou expand the code to that shown in F i g s9 a n d 1 0, this will change macdonalds toMacDonalds, and mctavish to McTavish.(Also see the Access 7.0 sample databasecalled ROWLEY.MDB.)
I am not suggesting that this is perfectcode. As usual in the sample code I give,there is no error trapping. In addition, thereare some people who prefer the letter afterMac or Mc to be left in lower case. Thiscode is simply provided as an example ofwhat can be done.
Mark Whitehorn welcomes readers’correspondence and ideas for the Databasescolumn at d a t a b a s e @ p c w . v n u . c o . u k
Contact
Fig 9 ( l e f t ) T h i s
single line of code
will capitalise all
distinct words
placed in the
FirstName field
(see Fig 10)
Fig 10 ( b e l o w ) T h i s
more complex
code capitalises
two of the more
complex surname
types in the
LastName field
are shown in Fig 1.All numbers less than 1,000 occur in this
sequence, for n less than 10,000,000, withthe exception of 204, 344, 614, 622, 876and 964. These first occur at:
I have not been able to find the firstoccurrence of X(n)=876, but if it does occurn is bigger than 75,000,000.
2. Special values of X(n) X(n)=0 for n = 1, 3, 79, 35, 431, 1503,2943, 6059, 6619, 18911 and 54223. X(n)=n-1, for n=1, 2, 8, 32, 46, 392,12230, 155942, 659488, 1025582,10471228 and 3437088 X(n)=n/2, for n=2, 78, 234, 430, 1502,2942, 6058, 6618, 18910 and 54222 X(n) and n end in the same last four digitsfor n=34875, 52363, 54975 and four othersless than 100,000, and with the last fivedigits of both the same, the only values of nless than 1,000,000 are n=389103, 469599and 742955.
3. Distribution of X(n) The most common occurring values ofX(n) are of the form 2^p-1, so that for nless than 1,000,000, the number 63occurs 47 times. The average value of x(n) is about n/4. There are no values of n greater than 1 sothat X(n)=X(n+1), but for X(n)=X(n+2) this istrue for n=6, 7, 12, 13, 24, 25, 174, 175,2448, 2449, 3072, 3073, 6768 and 6769. X(n)+1=X(n+1) is true for the values of n,
AMS, or Jonathon Ayres ModSequences, are believed to havetheir origins in Leeds in the
autumn of 1996. I am indebted to Jonathonfor the following presentation of the ideawhich both he, and I hope readers of thiscolumn, will find interesting and stimulating.
Mod sequencesThe mod sequence is defined as X(n) = (2*X(n-1)+1) mod n where n starts at 1 and x(0) equals 0. Thefirst few numbers in the mod sequence are0, 1, 0, 1, 3, 1, 3, 7, 6 and 3.
1. Occurrence of XWhen does a number occur in thissequence? The first occurrence of thenumbers 0 to 19 in the mod sequence
n=3, 5, 81, 237, 433, 1505, 2945… Fig 2 shows the first values of n so that
X(n)+a = X(n+1). All values of a, less than500, occur for n less than 10,000,000except for 205, 215, 345 and 391. For pairs of numbers x and y, y is at most2x+1. The values of x where y has valuesother than 2x+1, are x=1,3,6,7,13,14,15,1 6 , 1 7 , 1 8 , 2 0 , 2 3 . . .
Is there a formula which gives the n’thvalue of the sequence, without calculatingthe rest of the series? What happens for other sequences, suchas x(n)=ax(n-1)+b mod n or x(n)=(x(n-1)+x(n-2)) mod n?
Something differentThis item was taken from Computer Weekly
(19th January edition, 1989). Following up on the observation that
1 5 2 2 61 0 = 622517 and further that 9 9 4 8 11 0 = 184991 6 (where the subscriptdenotes the base in which the number isrepresented), find the lowest five-digitnumber (in any base). Generalise thisprocess to n-digit integers.
Answering back…Please send any investigations of the aboveproblems to Mike Mudge at 22 Gors Fach,Pwll-Trap, St Clears, Carmarthenshire,SA33 4AQ (tel 01994 231121), to arrive by1st July, 1997. All material received will bejudged according to suitable criteria and aprize will be awarded by P C W to the bestentry arriving by the closing date (an SAE isrequired for the return of entries). Eachcontribution should contain briefdescriptions of the hardware and codingused, together with run times and asummary of the results obtained.
General comments on the topic of J A M S would be welcome, together withany practical (or unusual) applications ofinteger arithmetic in number bases otherthan 2 and 10.
Hands OnNumbers Count
Q u e s t i o n s Do all numbers occur in this sequence,and also, do they occur an infinite numberof times? Is there always a value of n, for every a(positive or negative) so that X(n)+a =X ( n + 1 ) ? Is there a way of predicting when anumber will occur in the sequence?
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Personal Computer World • April 1997 • 291290 • Personal Computer World • April 1997
Hands On Numbers Count
Mods and rockersMike Mudge JAMS with mod sequences. No, he hasn’t joined a re t ro band; here he pre s e n t sa stimulating exercise in occurrences to get your feet tapping and your calculators clicking.
J
Mike Mudge welcomes correspondence fromreaders on any subject within the areas of numbertheory and computational maths, together withsuggested subject areas or specific problems forfuture articles. Email n u m b e r s @ p c w . v n u . c o . u k
On 6th December, Tony Forbes ofKingston-Upon-Thames announced hisdiscovery of a triplet of 1,083-digit primes,believed to be the largest known prime triplet.(Further details of these numbers and theunderlying theory/computation on request —M M . ) Anyone who knows the means of obtaininga “zooming Mandlebrot plotter” please emailG o g u l @ a o l . c o m. Anyone wishing to get involved in the“Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search”mentioned in P C W (Jan) should contact NigelBackhouse, Division of Applied Mathematics,University of Liverpool, M&O Building,Liverpool L69 3BX (Kevin Edge, please note). In response to frequent requests forreasonably priced (or free) software for longinteger manipulation: I can provide UBASICfree of charge on receipt of a suitablystamped, addressed, padded bag.
Gareth Suggett obtained successivelength records for the period of thecontinued fractions of the square roots ofthe non-square integers up to d=10,000,terminating with d=9,949 having cyclelength 217. However, Gareth discovereda program called “CALC”, written by KRMatthews of the University ofQueensland. The MSDOS version isavailable from the Mathematics Archivesftp site: f t p : / / a r c h i v e s . m a t h . u t k . e d u /s o f t w a r e / m s d o s / n u m b e r . t h e o r y /k r m - c a l c. On a 25MHz 386 PC, each ofthe 10-digit results quoted in the originalarticle can be obtained in about 20minutes. The final 11-digit result wasconfirmed on a 133MHz Pentium in 15minutes, producing a 6.8Mb output file!
John Borland observed that at sometime, “continued fractions were astandard topic in higher mathematics”.Readers’ experiences of instruction in thistopic would be most interesting, together
with their personally recommendedreference books both for numerical andfunction approximation theoryapplications.
This month’s prizewinner, however, isDuncan Moore of Birkenhead for hismajor contribution to “S o m e t h i n gDifferent”, spread over August 1993 andJanuary 1997. The total number ofsolutions now known is 30.
Also in relation to this problem, Henry Ibstedt reported (November ’96)finding one with three of p, q, r, s, tsharing one factor and the other twosharing a different factor. This solution isp=286, q=154 sharing the factor 2, andr=s=t=11 sharing the factor 11 with (2,11) = 1.
Henry points out that p and q alsoshare the factor 11 but that this was notexcluded from the question — there isstill a great deal of work to be donebefore this problem is fully understood.
Numbers Count (P C W, September ’96) — ‘Fraction Action’
precise needs, you may not have to fork outfor expensive new kit in order to do this. Infact, for most companies the expense willbe relatively trivial. There are basically twochoices available: email-only or full-blowninternet connectivity.
Email onlyI suspect most companies, even smallones, running even modest networks,rapidly appreciate the benefits of email,often provided as a standard feature in theirNOS (e.g. Windows 95 or Windows forWorkgroups 3.11) and soon findthemselves making heavy use of internalemail. So it makes a lot of sense to considerextending the existing email connectivity toembrace the internet — sending an email isprobably the cheapest method of globalcommunication available.
For email purposes you don’t need
guess a reasonably highproportion of Personal ComputerW o r l d readers regularly access
the internet from their PCs at home, using aV.34 modem and a normal phone line. Suchan act would have been rocket science afew short years ago, but today it’s a routineevent. For single users, this method, amodem plus a conventional phone line, is themost cost-effective internet access solution.But what if you wanted to give internetaccess to a group of users, say those on asmall network? Well, there’s absolutelynothing to stop you from scaling up thesingle-user solution and applying it toeveryone on the network, buying them all amodem, giving them all a phone line and theirown ISP account. It’s feasible, but it’s a lessthan desirable solution. Not only would it bea nightmare to configure and administer, butit would also be expensive to implement.
No, a much more elegant solution is tointegrate internet access into your network.The good news is that, depending on your
instant or continuous access to the internet,nor do you need a particularly fastconnection: emails tend to be reasonablycompact and the throughput offered by a33.6Kbps modem will be perfectlyadequate for most email traffic. However, ifyou get much email with large attachments,a faster connection is maybe worthconsidering. So, your hardware costs willbe negligible. You’ll also need a mail systemthat supports internet mail. A good,ubiquitous example of such a system isgood old MS Mail, which offers basic emailservices and is supplied free with bothWindows 95 and Windows 3.1x. It’spossible to configure MS Mail to initiate aconnection to your internet service providervia the modem at regular intervals, sayevery hour or so, to deliver new outgoingemails and to receive new incomingmessages. To do this you simply add the
on this month’s cover CD). LikeIMS, SLMail95 offers a completeimplementation of the InternetSMTP and POP3. With SLMailinstalled, your PC can function asa post office for popular internetmail clients such as FreeAgent,Pegasus, Eudora, Navigator andMS Mail/Exchange (with theInternet Mail add-on). The full-blown Windows 95 version costs$189: the Windows NT versioncosts $325. So, the software costneedn’t be great either.
So we’ve now got our internetmail software in place but there’s still onevariable to determine — does your existingemail account with your internetservice provider permit multipleemail addresses? The type of emailaccount varies from ISP to ISP.Some, for example, allow up to 99mailboxes from the one common-or-garden “tenner a month”account. This is certainly a cheapand cheerful solution but theprincipal drawback is cosmetic, thelack of a personalised emailaddress — it would be, say,r g a n n @ c o m p a n y . d e m o n . c o . u krather than the more [email protected]. Privatedomains cost extra of course, andyou’ll have to talk to your serviceprovider about what types ofaccount it has on offer andproceed from there.
In terms of hardwareconfiguration, a network emailsystem will be similar to a normalstandalone internet connection:you’ll just need a phone line and afast modem. Commissioning theconnection would be much thesame too. Note that as only the serveraccesses the internet, it will be the onlymachine on the network that needs to runTCP/IP. The workstations would continue tocollect their email in the usual way, viaNetBEUI or IPX. This makes life much easierfor the network administrator and alsoprevents the workstations from accessingthe internet during connections.
Full internet connectivityIn some ways granting complete internetaccess to the network isn’t much morecomplicated than setting up global email.Just two extra things are required — an IPaddress for each workstation (which willalmost certainly require a “corporate”-styleaccess account with your ISP) and rapidaccess to the internet. A permanentleased-line connection offers instantconnection while a V.34 modem takesabout 20 seconds to connect. The formeris expensive and fast; the latter is cheapand slow. A popular compromise solutionis offered by ISDN which offers the best ofboth worlds — a fast 64Kbps service (withthe possibility of 128Kbps) with theeconomy of demand dialling, plus fastconnections, typically just a few seconds,certainly a lot faster than the time taken byyour browser to load! For occasionalinternet traffic, ISDN is very cost effective,offering the speed of conventional leased
lines at a fraction of the cost. However,once you spend more than about fourhours per day online, a leased linebecomes viable.
You would use an ISDN terminal adaptoror TA to connect a single PC to an ISDN butfor networks you’d fit a single ISDN routerinstead. This device sits anywhere on thenetwork, watching the TCP/IP traffic that
Hands OnH a rd w a re
optional “Internet Mail” service to theExchange Inbox client in Windows 95.
Such a setup is just dandy forstandalone machines collecting their ownpersonal email but it can’t handle multipleinternet email addresses on the network.What MS Mail needs is a bolt-on externalmail package, one that can cope with POP3(Post Office Protocol 3) and SMTP (SimpleMail Transport Protocol) mail systemsoffered by most ISPs. With such an add-on,every time MS Mail connects with the ISP’smail server, it downloads everybody’s mailin one lump and then sorts it, placing theappropriate messages in the appropriatemailboxes. The result is transparencybetween internal and external email.
There are a number of these add-ons onthe market. The European MicrosoftWindows NT Academic Centre (EMWAC)based at Edinburgh University hasdeveloped EMWAC Internet Mail Servicesfor Windows NT (along with a whole slew ofother useful internet goodies). IMS is a suiteof server programs which lets you useWindows NT as a mail server for internetmail. IMS isn’t perfect — it requiresWindows NT, of course, and can be a bitdaunting to set up, but it does have theredeeming feature of being freeware. All theEMWAC goodies can be found ate m w a c . e d . a c . u k /.
Another alternative worth investigating isSLMail, developed on Bill’s doorstep bySeattle Labs. This is available for all theWindows platforms, and a Windows 95version (limited to six accounts) is availablefree from w w w . s e a t t l e l a b . c o m / (and is also
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Fraught in the netGetting connected to the internet can be a risky and potentially expensive business. R o g e rGann takes the worry out of it with a back-to-basics brief on what’s what and where to get i t .
I
Router altern a t i v e
Installing TCP/IP on a lot of workstations isenough to make a network administrator cry.Luckily, Bay Networks has an alternativeinternet access solution for those wedded tothe NetWare standard. Instant Internet 3.1 isan IP/IPX gateway server package, ahardware/software combination that allowsNetWare users to access the internet withouthaving to worry about configuring TCP/IP ontop of an IPX stack. It effectively permitsworkstations to access the internet using justthe NetWare IPX stack — only the InstantInternet server uses TCP/IP. The downside isthat it’s not particularly cheap — a 50concurrent user ISDN version is priced at£4,329 and it can be awkward to configure.w w w . b a y n e t w o r k s . c o m /
Complicated or what? You can telnet in to your ISDN router once it’s been configured, but as
you can see, configuration isn’t straightforward
This undocumented goodie is
supplied with Win95 and displays
your PC’s IP configuration, useful if
you use DHCP on the server to
allocate IP addresses
The ISDN router now becomes your gateway to the
internet — so don’t forget to add the IP address of the
router to the Gateway tab of TCP/IP properties
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passes by. It ignores traffic destined for IPaddresses on the internal network but assoon as it detects a network packet aimedat an external internet address, it initiates acall to the ISP and sets up an internetconnection. The line is dropped when theconnection is no longer required or timesout after a specified period of inactivity.
Users are spoiled for choice when itcomes to ISDN routers, although youshouldn’t necessarily buy the cheapest.Prices vary from about £750 to £1,500,which may sound dear but don’t forget todivide the price by the number of users toget the cost into perspective. How do yougo about choosing these exotic bits of kit?
ISP at your service A good place to start is your local friendlyinternet service provider — what routers dothey recommend or support? For example,many ISPs use Ascend routers at their endand so to simplify things they naturallyrecommend that you use something like anAscend Pipeline 25 or 50 at yours.However, there are other equally good if notbetter alternatives, for example the £1,415Gandalf XpressConnect LANLine 5250I orthe excellent £750 Shiva AccessPort. If at allpossible choose one that has an analoguephone socket (or two) — this lets you usethe ISDN line as a normal phone line for faxmachines or ordinary modems, for example.
Connecting an ISDN router to thenetwork is the easy bit: you just plug theISDN lead into the ISDN phone socket andplug in the network cable. Beware — this isusually a 10Base-T RJ45 which is the sameas the ISDN (or “WAN” socket), so don’t get
these two mixed up. Routers tend to bedisarmingly small boxes, no larger than amodem, and so can often be tucked awayin a comms cabinet or next to the server.
Configuring an ISDN router is a differentmatter and can be a particularly dauntingtask. They come with a range of tweakablesettings wide enough to make any networktechie jump for joy. However, if you’ve cutyour internet teeth by manually setting up aconnection using, say, Windows 95 Dial-UpNetworking, you’ll already be halfway up thelearning curve. Even communicating withthe router can be painful. Once configured,most routers let you telnet in to them formanagement and configuration tasks, butnot usually the first time around.
Most routers therefore typically feature aserial port which lets you hook up a dumbterminal or a PC running a terminal programwhich lets you access the router’s text-based configuration menu. One router Iinstalled wouldn’t even talk to good oldWindows Terminal: I had to download yeolde Procomm Plus for DOS, circa 1987AD,before it could be configured. Luckily, somerouters are a bit easier to configure — theDigi Retoura ST has an LCD control paneland keypad for direct configuration, whilethe latest Ascend Pipelines have Javaapplet-based configuration firmware,making them configurable from a browser.Most user-friendly of all is probably theWindows-based Shiva Monitor softwaresupplied with the AccessPort.
Once connected to your router you’llneed to enter such crucial details as theISDN number it has to dial, the IP addressof the router or gateway at the other end,
the IP address of this router, the DNS IPaddress, logins, passwords and securitylevels. This is just a basic list of data youcan enter; more sophisticated users willwant to configure things like the PAP andCHAP security protocols, data compressionand bandwidth on demand.
Checking that the installation works isfairly straightforward and most includecomprehensive diagnostics in the firmwareas standard. Once the installation haspassed this test you can use conventionalinternet tools, such as ping or even a webbrowser, to make sure that calls are beinginitiated and terminated as required.
The final step is to roll out TCP/IP to theworkstations, a relatively easy task if you’reusing Windows 95, less so if you’re stillusing Windows 3.1x. Your internet serviceprovider will have allocated you a range ofIP addresses, say 192.168.0.1 to192.168.0.25, and you then manually doleout one of these IP addresses to eachworkstation. This tedious chore can begreatly simplified if you’re running WindowsNT on the server, as you can install theDHCP (Dynamic Host ConfigurationProtocol) service. This lets you define a poolof IP addresses that are then dynamicallyallocated to each workstation as they log onto the network. So instead of specifying a“static” IP address for each workstation,you’d obtain the IP address automaticallyfrom the server.
Silence is expensiveA final word of warning: ISDN is completelydifferent to the usual PSTN phone systemwe hook our modem up to, and it’s easy torack up excessive ISDN phone bills unlessyou keep a close eye on it. The mainproblem is ISDN’s inscrutable “silence”: theabsence of the usual audible clues such asdial tones and negotiation whistles andnoise means you’re entirely dependent onsoftware to tell you if the line is up and datais flowing correctly, which is a scaryprospect. If you don’t want phone bills thatresemble telephone numbers (ho-ho, weakjoke) it’s essential to get BT to supply youwith completely itemised bills for your ISDNline so you can see exactly what your routergets up to when you’re not looking.
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Keeping a tight control on ISDN line charges is crucial. This little utility, ISDN Monitor, specifcally
monitors ISDN usage. It’s on the cover disk!
Roger Gann can be contacted by post c/o P C Wat the usual address, or via email ath a r d w a r e @ p c w . v n u . c o . u k
Contact
described the problems they haveencountered trying get their texture maps towork, so I thought this month I wouldconcentrate on this most perplexing area of3D artistry, and at one tool that claims tomake it easier.
Generally speaking, when you are tryingto create a 3D scene, the sort of project youare dealing with is the reverse of Mercator’s:you are trying to turn a 2D image into a 3Done, to take your flat map and wrap it rounda sphere or, more usually, an irregular,complex shape. If you take another look atFig 2, you can see quite clearly one of thefirst problems you encounter when trying todo this. Greenland’s shoreline is slightlyfuzzy, and there are two reasons for this.The first has to do with the size of the map:it has fewer pixels in it than there are on thesurface of the object as seen from thisperspective and at this size. You encounterthis problem regularly, most obviously whenthe 2D bitmap, the texture, is placed on awall or floor receding into the distance. Asyou can see in Fig 3, the bitmap is blurry at
he picture we have ofthe world is one thatis fundamentally
distorted because it is a two-dimensional version of a three-dimensional surface. If you look,for example, at the standardmap of the world, the so-called“Mercator Projection”, Chinaappears to be roughly the samesize as Greenland when in fact itis four times larger. Thisdistortion occurs because theland nearer the poles isstretched out to the width of theequator (to form the rectangularshape of the map), so countrieson the equator appear narrower than theyshould when compared to those closer tothe poles. You can see how this happens inFigs 1 & 2. Fig 1 shows a map of the world.Note how huge Greenland is compared toChina. Fig 2 shows the same map wrappedround a sphere, with Greenland nowassuming its proper proportions. (I createdthe globe using Fractal Design’s newDetailer package, of which more later.)
There have been various attempts toproduce more accurate projections (one ofthe best is said to be the Peters Projection,which makes Africa and other equatoriallandmasses look huge, and more polarplaces, like our sceptred isle, teeny — youcan have a look for yourself by browsingw w w . w e b c o m . c o m / ~ b r i g h t / t a b l e . h t m l), butnone of them can be perfect. In thetransition from 3D to 2D, something has togo, and in this case it is the true size andshape of each country.
As I have discovered from my emailinbox, such problems are not confined togeography. A number of people have
the point where the wall comes closest tothe point of view. The solution to thisproblem is to match the texture’s resolutionto the wall’s at the point closest to thecamera. This means actually working outhow many pixels there are down the edgeof the wall, and making the appropriateedge of the bitmap the same number ofpixels in size (in this case the bitmap is tiled,so I can divide the number of pixels in therendered scene by the number ofrepetitions of the texture across the heightof the wall).
The second reason for Greenland’sblurriness is that where the map isapproaching the poles, it is gettingprogressively scrunched up. There is noway of completely overcoming this problemunless you somehow manage to create abitmap with progressively lower resolutiontowards the top and the bottom of theimage. As far as I know, no image fileformat supports such variable resolution.
How, then, can you keep suchdistractions — “artefacts”, as they are
without bothering about technicalities likemapping co-ordinates. Which brings me onto Fractal Design’s Detailer.
D e t a i l e rWhen I first read the blurb about Detailer, Icould barely believe it. “Amazing 3D PaintProgram” proclaimed the press release. “Astunning new graphics application thatallows users to paint on the surface of 3Dmodels in real time.” This could be theanswer to all my prayers, I thought; 3Dpainting on the PC platform.
After spending a few weeks withDetailer, I have to say that it only partiallylives up to its promise. It c a n work in realtime, but most PCs will be stretched to thelimit to keep up. And the design is fussy,introducing a whole new set of terms andconcepts to a field already overburdenedwith both. However, I should point out thateven if it is not quite 3D painting in the full-blown sense, it does offer one crucial new
capability: it brings 2D and 3D together.Generally, when I am working with
textures, I have a paint package likePhotoshop and a 3D package open on thesystem simultaneously. I edit the image,save it, load it into the 3D package’s textureeditor, apply it and then render the object tosee what has happened. When, as isinevitably the case, I find the texture is toobig, too small, too bright, too dark, toowhatever, I have to start again. WithDetailer, these two functions are combined.You have one window showing the 3Dmodel being textured, another showing the2D texture. When you change the texture,you see the result immediately in the modelwindow. And there is another facility thathelps deal with the surface mappingproblem: being able to overlay a “mesh”that shows in 2D the surface (“implicit” in
Detailer parlance) map ofthe object being workedupon — the skin, if youwill. You can then paintover the mesh, building upa texture that mapsdirectly onto the surface ofthe object.
Fractal Design is aninteresting andincreasingly influentialcompany in the graphicsfield. Painter 4, Ray DreamDesigner, Poseur, andnow Expression (myfavourite: a program that
allows you to use drawing tools to paint)make up a more than adequate toolkit forthe budding computer graphics artist.Detailer will be a perfect complement to thisdeveloping suite once certain shortcomingsare dealt with: when there is some sort ofmechanism for importing surface/implicitmappings or, even better, deriving themfrom the geometry; when the interface andjargon is simplified; when you can exportthe flattened-out meshes of objects withimplicit mapping so you can use moresophisticated 2D packages to paint overthem. I hope this is not unreasonable. I onlysuggest it because Detailer so tantalisinglyholds out the prospect of making texturinga simple, even intuitive process.
Hands On3D Graphics
called in the business — to a minimum? Bygetting a grip on the way your 3D packageprojects or “maps” the texture onto theobject. In all 3D packages there arebasically three ways of mapping, usuallyknown as spherical, planar and cylindrical.Spherical mapping is the sort demonstratedwith the map of the world. Planar projectsthe texture onto the object as a film image isprojected onto a screen. Cylindrical windsthe image around an object like a labelround a tin of beans. You can generally usethese methods to texture simple objects: avase, for example, can be textured usingcylindrical mapping, especially if you use apaint program to stretch and contract theimage to correspond with the vase’scurves. However, some objects are just toocomplex to be textured using projectedmapping, which means having to resort to afourth method, surface mapping. A surfacemap is generated when the object isactually constructed, and if you think of theobject as having a skin, the shape of themap is the shape of that skin carefullypeeled off and laid flat.
If you are having problems getting asurface map to work, a weirdly distributedsurface map could well be the cause. Oneway of solving it is to create a texturecovered with a grid, using a gradation ofcolours so you can distinguish the positionof the lines. Apply this grid as a surface-mapped texture to the object and see if thatthrows any light on how the map isarranged. Another easier solution is, ofcourse, being able to paint and sticktextures directly onto the surface of objects
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World in motionIt’s a funny old world — or at least, it looks very different in 3D than the picture-book 2Dviews we’re familiar with. Benjamin Woolley sets his sights on a more accurate projection.
T
Benjamin Woolley, writer and broadcaster, canbe contacted at 3 d @ p c w . v n u . c o . u k
Contact
Fig 1 A texture map of the world. Note Greenland’s size relative to China
Fig 2 The texture
map in Fig 1
wrapped round a
sphere. Greenland
assumes its proper
p r o p o r t i o n s
Fig 3 The purpose
of this rather surreal
image is to show a
texture map being
stretched beyond
its resolution. Note
the blurring where
the wall is closest
to our point of view
today, particularly for multimediaapplications, should go for an MMX model.But the rest of us should be content to waituntil we’re running mostly 32-bit apps underNT4, then make the more significantupgrade to a Pentium Pro chip — soon tobe seen with MMX enhancements too.
Anyone seeking a major hardwareupgrade for graphics work should s t i l lconsider more RAM before plumping for afaster chip. The photo-retouching I describehere involved working on 28Mb files, using aPC fitted with 32Mb. By the time Windows95 and Photoshop had their share, thesystem almost ground to a halt. After onevery slow day, I took 32Mb of RAM from myhome PC to boost my work PC to 64Mb.The difference was amazing, with operationstaking mere seconds rather than minutes.
As my main subject this month involvesphotography, this is a good time to mentiondigital cameras. Users of Casio’s popular,but slightly toy-like, QV-10a and QV-100cameras may be interested in consideringthird-party lenses. The Kerridge ComputerCompany offers a kit for either camera,
his month, I finally get to boreyou with my holiday snaps, thinlydisguised as a feature on the
tricks and morals of photo-retouching. But first, the news. Intel’s Pentiums with
MMX enhancements have finally beenannounced, so in last month’s P C W w etested eight MMX PCs. We tried out AdobePhotoshop 4 and CorelDraw 7, bothfeaturing MMX code, on a Pentium 200MHzwith MMX. We timed filters, image rotationsand colour-mode changes underPhotoshop and a screen redraw of Corel’sSnowbarn file at a resolution of 1024 x 768in 16-bit colour. We then swapped theMMX chip for a standard 200MHz Pentiumwithout MMX, and repeated the tests.
The Photoshop results showed speedincreases of up to 45 percent, but Corel’sfaster redraw was thanks mostly to MMX’sdoubled Level-1 cache. Slightlydisappointed, we later discovered that thegraphics-card drivers will have to beupdated to make use of MMX chips, andonly then will we see redraw improvements.
Those wanting a top-of-the-range PC
featuring a 1.5X telephoto and 0.65X wide-angle lens for £64 (plus VAT). A 2X and 4Xmacro lens kit is also available for the QV-10a at £64 (plus VAT), while a 2X-onlymacro lens for the QV-100 costs £49.50(plus VAT).
Kerridge also offers a lighted base andstand, to photograph transparencies withthe aid of the optional macro lens. Wehaven’t yet had the opportunity to testthese products but those still making theirchoice of digital camera could do worsethan opt for Sony’s new DSC-F1, reviewedin this month’s First Impressions (page 70).It’s a 640 x 480 pixel model with flash,LCD display, infra-red port and the kind ofsexy styling at which Sony excels, for £595 (plus VAT).
The morals of manipulationWhen I was 14, I stopped mucking aroundand started taking serious photos. Iremember recoiling in horror when I firstsaw one of my photo pals use a filter:rendering the sky that graduated shade oftobacco so popular in those days. But now,
year I decided to use my PC to scan thefilms and print them out the next time I gotmy hands on a decent colour printer. At thesame time I could make any digitalenhancements I desired.
Admittedly, I’m still not keen on the ideaof selecting an overcast sky and replacing itwith deep blue (the guilt still twinges, deepdown). Nevertheless, I suddenly foundmyself to be not so bothered about man-made aberrations in my otherwise perfectfield of view: those horrible signposts,telephone wires, fences, tracks, or evenstray holidaymakers, could be easily wipedout using my PC.
Look — can you see the join?Of course, you should still try to make lifeeasy for yourself by trying to line up yourshot to minimise the amount of post-processing work required. For instance, Ionce came across an extremely long fencecrossing my entire field of view; I couldn’tclimb it, so instead I walked right up to itand pointed the camera along it. There’sstill a nasty fence to get rid of, but ratherthan crossing my entire frame, it onlymeasures a couple of millimetres wide.
I also saw opportunities to digitally jointwo photos to produce a panoramic shot.Here, the usual tips apply; try to use atripod, or lean on a fence to make sure theshots line up vertically. In one case I had tomake do without a support and discoveredlater, at the joining stage, that the shotswere about ten percent off so one of themneeded an extra portion of sky. But after alittle copying, pasting and smudgingbetween the joins, I am pleased with theresults I achieved.
Incidentally, there is an excellent tutorialon the CD that comes with Photoshop 4,which shows how to create a complex
his picture would be inaccurate! The eventhad not been recorded properly andanyone looking at the picture would befalling for a lie!
Suffice it to say, this extreme responsedisappeared as soon as I had a go myself.Suddenly, photography had become muchmore than just finding something nice-looking, pointing the camera at it andclicking. It had finally dawned on me, thenumber of ways in which a photographercould manipulate a picture without evenchanging position or lenses. More to thepoint, it became much more fun.
Later, I found myself spending muchlonger in the darkroom than outside takingthe pictures. Dodging and burning to bringout otherwise hidden details became anobsession. As regular readers will know, mydarkroom now resides within my PC andapplications like Photoshop, but theprinciples, goals and morals still remain.
A touch of professionalismDigitally painting out dirt and scratches canbe seen by all as beneficial. You canselectively darken, lighten or even recolourareas of a picture, even though some mayconsider this to be cheating a bit. Take aone-off trip to a far-off land, for instance: anotherwise perfect photo could have beenmarred by an overcast sky. Many wouldconsider themselves fairly beaten. But whilethere’s nothing better than capturing theperfect shot, first time, there’s still no needto bin a less-than-ideal pic. Why not scan itin and add a blue sky? Or at least darkenthe area to bring out more detail in thehighlights? You may at first share the samehorror I experienced when witnessing myfirst filter, but if you can get over this you’llnever look back (the professionals use everytrick in the book until they get the picturethey want).
This neatly brings me to the biggestgraphics job I’ve ever completed: printing acollection of holiday photos taken during thepast two years. Wanting the very best finalresults, I chose to use professional slidefilm: Fuji Velvia (50 ASA) and Fuji Provia (100ASA). Choosing slide film, however, provedto be a bit of a mistake since the 10in x 8inprints I desired were going to cost over£10-a-go at professional labs. Besides, Ihad originally wanted 12in x 8in prints toshow the full 35mm frame, but these hadbeen even more expensive. Consequently,the processed slides just sat there in theirsleeves… until now. Towards the end of last
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R e t o u c h and goG o rdon Laing shows how to save what might have been the perfect photo, ruined by blots onthe landscape: don’t bin it, scan it, and use every trick in the book to total unwanted tourists.
T
Far left Utah’s Monument Valley is just
begging for a panoramic shot. I took two
photos with my 35mm camera and stuck them
together using layers in Photoshop 4 ( a b o v e )
Hands OnGraphics & DTP
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panoramic shot, taking multiple frames andforeground parallax into account.
Before letting my photos and theircaptions do the talking, a short word on thePC hardware employed. I needed anexcellent 35mm film scanner and was notlet down by the superb Nikon SuperCoolScan, a 2700dpi 36-bit model whichquickly produced 28Mb (maximum) files.This was connected to an Adaptec2940UW SCSI card, which also controlled a
secondary 2Gb Quantum SCSI hard disk. The 166MHz Pentium PC I described
earlier was fitted with 64Mb RAM. I usedPhotoshop 4 under Windows 95 and, tomaximise performance, set Windows virtualmemory to 2.5 times the amount of RAM forboth minimum and maximum quantities,thus preventing Windows wasting timeresizing its swap file. I also set Photoshop’sscratch disk to the physically separateQuantum hard drive, independent from the
drive that Windows was using for its ownvirtual memory. I can’t wait to go away onholiday again!
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Any questions? Write to me at the usual P C Waddress or email me at g r a p h i c s @ p c w . v n u . c o . u k
Kerridge Computer Company 01635 523456F o n t W o r k s 0171 490 5390Sony IT group 0181 760 0500
Contacts
Clockwise, from top left: Central Park with a lampost, then without. My terrifyingly white legs… but hey, who are those two blokes by the rock? I’ll
get rid of them! Monument Valley by moonlight and a cunning car headlight trail; but perhaps it looks better without? A tranquil Californian beach
scene… but hang on, spot that fella with the rucksack? He’s history! All the above retouching was easily done with Adobe Photoshop’s clone tool
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the ability to open the gate from an externaltrigger, enabling you to create rhythmicpatterns from any sound. This is aprominent feature in today’s dance music,used frequently with synth pads and vocals.When a sustained chord is routed through agate, a sound source from a secondkeyboard can be used as the gate trigger.By playing or sequencing a pattern on thetrigger, some great effects can be created.
It is possible, using MIDI volumemessages, to create a similar effect,although it cannot cure any problems youhave with noise. A typical rhythm used forgating is two semi-quavers followed by aquaver, repeated over and over. This canbe seen in Fig 2 as note lengths. Be aware,however, that note lengths should bereduced by 50 percent, to allow the gatetime to open and close. If they are legato,the gate will remain open.
Newtronic gates Newtronic has produced a compilation of100 MIDI gating effects, along with panningand volume fade effects, available on floppyfor £14.95 (Fig 3). The disc contains someexcellent syncopated rhythms which aresuperb to have at hand. To use them, youimport the MIDI file to your sequence andset the MIDI channel to where you want theeffect. The panning effects, likewise, are notto difficult to program, but save you timeand aggro.
Zefiro Acoustic ZA2 To record audio to your PC without addingnoise in mountain-sized proportions, the
You can find a copy of the Koan X Silveron this month’s CD. Gold and Platinumversions are available from sseyo’s website,w w w . s s e y o . c o m, via secure credit-cardtransaction, priced £15.99 and £32.99respectively.
Trigger happyThe only good to come out of studio noisewas the invention of the gate. This is ahardware device, usually rackmounted, thatturns the input signal from a noisykeyboard, say, to either on or off. Whenclosed, no sound can pass through,reducing cumulative noise. When triggeredby an audio signal, the gate reopens.
A neat feature found on some gates is
Personal Computer World • April 1997 • 305
rom the letters and email Ireceive, it has become apparentthat the occasional hardware
review would be appreciated on thesepages. So from on, I’ll be on the look-outfor new and appealing products to put tothe test.
For this issue, I got my hands on thestunning ZA2 digital audio card from ZefiroAcoustics, which you, too, can lust afteronce you’ve checked it out. We also havenews of an emerging audio standard for theinternet, some useful MIDI tricks, thecustomary sampling CD review and a stackof goodies to enjoy on this month’s CD.
Koan ProLast year I met up with Brian Eno to seehow he was using Koan Pro to writegenerative, ambient music. Koan, which Iwrote about in March 1996, randomlygenerates and develops musical ideas forup to nine hours at a time, and all from amodest 100Kb file. Eno later released analbum of “Koan” music. It wasn’t availableon CD, however. It came on a floppy disk.
On the disk was a jukebox-style utilityand enough music to last the weekend.Using only an AWE-32 as the soundsource, there was only so much you couldexpect, but the music was interestingenough owing to the random nature of theKoan engine: each time a track was played,it would develop differently. In fact, youwould never hear the same piece of musicplayed twice.
Twelve months on, Koan has beenadopted as a new, low-bandwidth musicformat for the internet. To help the formatalong, a new application has beendeveloped to allow even the most modestof musicians to create generative music.
The new software, Koan X, comes inthree flavours: Silver, Gold and Platinum.The Silver edition can be obtained as a freedownload from the sseyo web page andcomes with 30 musical templates to beused as starting points for yourarrangements. Although it’s a radically cut-down version, it can be used to produce upto two minutes of music — ideal for creatingfree music for web sites. Gold provides 30further templates, General MIDI andSoundfont support, and better editingfacilities. It will generate up to eight hours ofmusic. The Platinum version, shown in Fig 1, has it all: 100 templates, automatedmuting/mixing, and the ability to outputsongs to either MIDI or wav files.
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Generation XKoan Pro, which randomly generates musical ideas, is now in Silver, Gold and Platinumformats and active on the internet. Steven Helstrip tuned in and turned on to its ambience.
F
Hands OnS o u n d
analogue to digital conversion must beperformed by an external ADC, such as aDAT player. The ADCs found on soundcards just aren’t up to the job, and even ifthey were, they would be subject tointerference from the myriad goings-oninside your PC.
The Zefiro Acoustics ZA2 is a new DSP-based digital audio card designed to workalongside any digital source, be it asampler, DAT machine or another hard-diskrecording system. The single 16-bit ISAcard provides SPDIF, Toslink fibre-optic andAES/EBU digital in/out as standard, and issupplied with DSP utilities to support 20-bitrecording and MPEG2 playback. Providingyour PC has two high DMA channelsavailable, the ZA2 will work in duplex modeand has no problem handling as manyaudio tracks that your PC can throw at it.
Installing the card was straightforward,even with two other sound cards present.The accompanying driver software, seen inFig 4 (page 306), can be accessedeffortlessly from the Task Bar: such a simpleidea and it works a treat. The icon alsoindicates whether or not the card is syncedto an incoming digital clock.
All digital outs on the ZA2 functionsimultaneously: inputs are softwareselectable. There’s also an analogue outputfor monitoring. With some help from theDSP, the ZA2 will up or down sample data,enabling real-time sample conversion. F o rexample, you can feed a 48kHz DAT streamto the card, but actually record at 44.1kHz.Likewise, you can play a mono, 11kHz, 8-bitsample from disc and output to DAT at the
Fig 1 Koan X Platinum: Create “ever-changing” music easily by dragging pre-recorded phrases,
or templates, into the mix window. Templates exist for most styles of music, from ambient
through to techno. By applying rules to the templates, your music can take on a life of its own...
Fig 2 A typical gating rhythm, two semi-quavers followed by a quaver, seen as note lengths
Fig 3 Newtronic’s collection of MIDI gating effects will help you get the rhythm right
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standard 44.1kHz 16-bit stereo.The ZA2’s OS is downloaded to the
card at system boot, allowing the card to beupgraded with new software which will be
made availableon the net freeof charge. DSPalgorithms arealso ind e v e l o p m e n t ,making real-time effectssuch as EQand reverbpossible in the
If you have any hints or tips, MIDI-related items orgeneral comments, contact Steven Helstrip a tthe usual P C W address or email him ats o u n d @ p c w . v n u . c o . u k
N e w t r o n i c 0181 691 1087World Class Breaks £19.95 (inc. VAT anddelivery) from Time + Space 01442 870681Zefiro Acoustics ZA2 £397 (inc. VAT) fromRKMS 0115 961 1398; w w w . r k m s . c o m
Contacts
C reative Essentials’ World Class Bre a k sWorld Class Breaks is thefifteenth CD to be releasedunder the Creative Essentialslabel. Like the rest in the series,a mere 20 quid buys you 200samples, in this case drumloops in both audio and 16-bitsample format for Windows andMac systems. Ten genres ofdance music have beencovered: hip hop, swing, acidjazz, house, garage, and jungleare among them.
For each of the ten stylesthere are twenty loops. Theseare essentially four grooves, withfive variations on each, but thisis no bad thing since it enables you to vary the drum patterns throughout your songs.Each of the four grooves within each style are tempo-grouped with 5bpm intervals.
John Dunne, the producer, seems to have hit the nail on the head with the swing,acid jazz and seventies funk patterns, but seems to have lost the plot with the houseand garage patterns, which lack imagination and are stale in comparison.
Taking the overall package into account, though, this is still a great CD at a greatprice. The samples used to create the loops would have been appreciated, but isn’tthat the usual story?
There are five loops on this month’s cover CD in the hands\sound folder. Have fun!
near future. Hard-disk backup software issupplied with the card, enabling 1.2Gb tobe stored on a standard two-hour DAT.
I’ve had two weeks to check this cardout, and it’s been a joy. I no longer need adigital patch bay, since I have had the DATplumbed-in on the AES/EBU and thesampler on SP/DIF. I’m assured thatmultiple cards work together withSamplitude and SAW to provide up to sixindependent outs, although I don’t supposeZefiro would let me have another two cardsto check it out...
Zefiro Acoustics has succeeded inputting together a truly versatile and future-proofed card at a superb price. It couldshow the CardD a thing or two.Fig 4 The driver
software which
a c c o m p a n i e s
the Zefiro
Acoustic ZA2
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the license key to think about, which anynumber of applications may be using. Aclue to the extent of this devastation is givenin the note at the end of the fix. “Reinstallthird party custom controls,” it says, “andany software that may use the registry tostore licensing information.”
As for Regclean, a utility that comes withVB, I have come to mistrust it deeply. In a
misguided moment I ran the latest version3.0 which you can download fromw w w . m i c r o s o f t . c o m. The idea was to fix theannoying messages VB gives you whensomething is awry in the registry: “Objectserver not correctly registered”. To my greatamusement, the end result was worse.Post-Regclean, VB gave me this inspiringpiece of technical information 148 timesbefore it would open the Custom Controlsdialog. At times like that, you reach for yourregistry backup with relief.
This problem is not going to go away.
magine you have paid a four-figure sum for a top-of-the-rangeclient-server development
system. One day you open up thedevelopment environment and the splashscreen declares it to be the entry-levelhobbyist version. Next, you open theapplication you are working on to beinformed that you are not licensed to usesome of its components. Sighing, youreinstall the product from CD but it does notfix the problem.
Sounds fun? This is exactly what canhappen with Visual Basic 4.0. The reason,as you will have guessed, is that both VBitself and the many OCX controls whichcome with it depend on numerous registrysettings. If the registry gets scrambled, thisis the kind of thing that can happen.
The good news is that Microsoft’s website has a fix. Article Q149619 is entitled“Visual Basic displays incorrect splashscreen”, although the splash screen is theleast of your problems. It is not such goodnews though. The official fix goes as follows:1 . Using a registry editor, delete theHKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\LICENSES key. 2. Run Regclean.exe and delete all *.OCXand *.OCA files. 3. Delete OLEPRO32.DLL. 4. Restart Windows and reinstall VisualB a s i c .
Is this a good fix? Well, it’s better thandestroying your hard disk with asledgehammer, but not much. As adeveloper, you will know that those .OCXand .OCA files represent most of theActiveX controls on your system. An OCAfile, by the way, is an OLE-type librarycreated by VB when you first load an OCX.And ActiveX, says Microsoft, is becomingthe foundation of Windows. Then there is
An added twist is that the software industrynow gives huge distribution to betaversions, via demonstration CDs and overthe web. We are all encouraged to spendour time installing trial software, often ladenwith ActiveX elements, and probably fixedto stop working after a certain date. Frankly,the registry stands no chance of stayingclean in these circumstances. Naturally, it is
not just developers who install all this stuff,but clients and users as well. Anyapplication that uses standard Microsoft orthird-party ActiveX controls or servers mayfind the ground sweetly removed fromunder its feet. In the meantime, here are mytips for avoiding registry hell:1. Check your registry backup procedures.2. Press Microsoft to come up with properregistry management tools, rather thanthese draconian “delete everything andreinstall” solutions.3 . Install beta software on a machine
Clean-up c a m p a i g nTim Anderson wrestles with the registry in an attempt to unscramble his settings, tries to getAccess from Delphi, and plays Sherlock Holmes to detect which applications he has running.
I
Microsoft’s RegClean 3.0: proceed at your own risk
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Mixing Delphi and AccessGuy Cartwright writes: “I’m led to believethat, using Borland’s Database Engine, I canaccess data stored in a Microsoft Accessdatabase. I’ve followed the procedure in abook and created an alias called TstAcess,but I get the message ‘Application is notenabled for use with this driver. Alias:TstAccess’. I’ve trawled the net for ananswer but to no avail.”
Thanks to the popularity of MicrosoftOffice Professional and Visual Basic,desktop data is frequently stored in AccessMDB files. This creates a problem for otherapplications which need to get at the data,especially since Microsoft has neverdocumented the structure of an MDB. Inany case, the format changes with eachnew release of Access. Borland’s DatabaseEngine can only get at an MDB throughODBC, which is the method Guy has tried.Sadly, the BDE is not at its best with ODBC,and Microsoft’s ODBC drivers for Accessare nothing special either.
The situation is complicated by theinclusion of ODBC drivers with MicrosoftOffice, that are designed only to work withOffice applications. This might well causethe error Guy is seeing. It is important to gethold of the separate ODBC desktop driverpack, for example from the MicrosoftDeveloper Network CDs, but even then itmight not work. It needs the rightcombination of DLLs, registry entries andeven INI files to work as it should, and oneor other can easily get corrupted.Sometimes the only solution is to remove
dedicated to that purpose. Do not install iton a system used for real work.4. Persuade your users to adopt the samep o l i c y .5. So you only have one PC? Well, you havebeen warned.
Delphi
Borland’s Conference CDBorland developers who look with envy atthe Microsoft Developer Network CDs,stuffed with documentation and tips, will beinterested in the recently issued DeveloperConference CD. At first glance it looksgreat, with technical papers and examplecode covering many real-world problems.The two most prominent products areDelphi and C++ 5.0. The catch is that whatyou get depends on whether individualspeakers at the 1996 Borland conferencebothered to send in their notes.
For example, an entry on “Client serverdevelopment using Delphi and Oracle”leads to a detailed article with source codeand a Powerpoint slide show, while anotherentitled “Rapid application with Delphi 2.0”brings up only a speaker biography.Everything is in HTML and no searchprogram is provided, so you are left to useyour own search tools. You also get acollection of patches, technical notes anddemonstration versions. Overall there areplenty of good nuggets of information, but itis all rather a mish-mash and mostlyavailable free from Borland’s web site. Auseful resource, but not for the priceBorland is asking.
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Powers of detection
nce you get started with Windowsprogramming, you soon find you need tocommunicate with other applications. At
its simplest, for example, you might want to run theWindows calculator from a menu option in a VBapplication. Easily done with the Shell function butwhat if the Calculator is already running? In thatcase, you probably want to bring forward theexisting instance rather than starting a new one.Here is how you can find out.
The key to detecting an application is to look forits main window. The API offers functions for listingor searching all the current windows. FindWindowtakes two parameters, both null terminated strings.The first is a classname, the second the text of awindow title. You can search for one or both and if itfinds a matching top-level window, FindWindowreturns the handle. For example:hwnd = FindWindow(vbNullString, “Calculator”)
If it returns 0, then Calculator is not running. Of courseFindWindow must be declared, and you can copy the declarationfrom VB’s API viewer.
In the example above, FindWindow searched for the windowtitle. This works fine with Calculator, although you could not besure which calculator you were getting. It falls down with MDIapplications, where a maximised document window adds its titleto the main window. You might want to use the classnameinstead. It is not obvious what the right classname is, but there isanother API function, GetClassName, which reveals all.Calculator turns out to have a classname of “SciCalc”, whileWord is “OpusApp”. VB is “ThunderMain”, and a VB application,“ThunderForm” or in version 4.0, “ThunderRTForm”. Delphiapplications get their classname from the name of the mainapplication window, for example “TForm1”. So the decision tolook for a classname, a window title or both depends on whichapplication you are trying to detect.
If the application is running, the next step is how to bring itforward. One possibility is the API function BringWindowToTop.For example, the following code detects Word and brings itforward if found:hwnd = FindWindow(“OpusApp”, vbNullString)
If hwnd <> 0 Then
BringWindowToTop (hwnd)
End if
The one time this will fail is if Word is running but minimised. A minimised window brought to the top is not much help. Timefor another API function or two, in this caseGetWindowPlacement and ShowWindow. Using the API viewer,add the declarations for the following:GetWindowPlacement
ShowWindow
Type POINTAPI
Type RECT
Type WINDOWPLACEMENT
Public Const SW_SHOWMINIMIZED
Public Const SW_RESTORE
You can now discover whether a non-VB window isminimised like this:Function isMinimised(hwnd) As Boolean
Dim lpWnd As WINDOWPLACEMENT
lpWnd.Length = 44 ‘ 22 in 16-bit Windows
Call GetWindowPlacement(hwnd, lpWnd)
If lpWnd.showCmd = SW_SHOWMINIMIZED Then
isMinimised = True
E l s e
isMinimised = False
End If
End Function
Now the function for bringing Word forward can be modifiedas follows:hwnd = FindWindow(“OpusApp”, vbNullString)
If hwnd <> 0 Then
If isMinimised(hwnd) Then
iRetVal = ShowWindow(hwnd, SW_RESTORE)
E l s e
BringWindowToTop (hwnd)
End if
End if
If you look up GetWindowPlacement and ShowWindow inan API reference, you will find numerous other fields andparameters that give you fine control over the results. One pointto notice is that the length field of a WINDOWPLACEMENT type(or structure in C) must be set before it is passed as aparameter in GetWindowPlacement. Unfortunately VB has noSIZEOF function, so you cannot do this neatly. All you need toknow for the moment is that in 16-bit Windows the magicnumber is 22, and in 32-bit Windows it is 44. Occasionalinconveniences like this are the price you pay for avoiding theintricacies of C.
O
Using API functions you can find out which other applications are running
Borland’s Developer Conference CD has some
great resources, but why pay when you can
visit the web site?
Fig 1 Routine written from the DAO COM interface
v a r
sSql: string;
dbEngine: Variant;
db: Variant;
snMembers: variant;
b e g i n
sSql := ‘Select * from members order by surname;’;
dbEngine := CreateOleObject(‘DAO.DBEngine’);
db := dbEngine.OpenDatabase(‘C:\DATA\SPORTS.MDB’);
snMembers := db.OpenRecordSet(sSql, 4);
4 is dbOpenSnapshot
If not snMembers.EOF Then
b e g i n
Edit1.text := snMembers.Fields[‘SURNAME’].Value;
e n d ;
s n M e m b e r s . c l o s e ;
d b . c l o s e ;
e n d ;
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both the ODBC driver and the BDE,weeding out any registry entries as well, andthen to reinstall them both. Microsoft Query,which comes with Office, lets you testODBC data sources by running queriesagainst them.
There is another option if you are runningWindows 95 or NT. Microsoft has created aCOM interface to the JET database engineunder the name Data Access Objects(DAO). It is documented and can be calledfrom Delphi, and you can write routines likei n Fig 1 (page 308). For this to work, DAOmust be installed on the system, as it will beif you have Microsoft Office 95, for example.
There are several other problems.Microsoft’s documentation is aimed atusers of Visual Basic or Visual C++, so youhave to feel your way to some extent. Noneof Delphi’s data-aware components willwork. Finally, you cannot freely distributethe DAO files with a Delphi application. Allbut the last can be fixed by buying a third-party tool for using DAO with Delphi. Twowell-known ones are Titan Access andOpus DirectAccess, while Nortech Softwarehas a third in preparation. One of these islikely to be the smoothest route towardsusing Delphi with Access MDBs.
Visual Basic
Going verticalAndy Smith asks: “How can I print verticaltext in a Visual Basic application?”
There are a couple of easy solutions,and a better but more difficult one. The easyway is to use a paint program to rotatesome text — Windows Paint or theshareware Paintshop Pro will do nicely —and paste it into an image control. Youcould even have several different messagesand load them at runtime. For the best
performance, do not load them from diskbut use invisible image controls, or thePicClip control, or the Imagelist control.
If you want to be able to specify any textyou like at runtime, another possibility is touse the WordArt applet that comes withMicrosoft Office or Publisher. Here’s how:1 . Pop an OLE container onto a form andset it to contain a new WordArt 2.0 object.2. Right-click the OLE container andchoose Open. In the WordArt dialog,choose the text shape and font required.3. Use code like this to update the text atr u n t i m e :OLE1.AppIsRunning = True
OLE1.Format = “CF_TEXT”
OLE1.DataText = Text1.Text
O L E 1 . U p d a t e
The snags with the WordArt approachare firstly that you need the applet installedon the user’s system, and secondly a littleoverhead thanks to OLE. If that rules it out,the heavy coder’s method is to call theWindows API. Windows uses a structurecalled a LOGFONT to define fontcharacteristics, including several propertiesnot exposed by VB’s Font properties. Oneof these is lfEscapement, which specifiesthe angle of the text. Assuming that the y
co-ordinates count from top to bottom, thelfEscapement field specifies the anti-clockwise angle in tenths of a degree. Thatmeans you can print diagonal text or evenwrite a routine using a timer that wouldrotate text around a central point. To set afont using the API, take the following steps:1. Declare the necessary API types,constants and functions. 2. Define the fields of a LOGFONT variable.3 . Create a logical font by calling Create-FontIndirect. This returns a handle to a font.4 . Select the font into a device context bycalling SelectObject. For example, VB
Picture Boxes, Forms, andthe Printer object all havehdc properties which giveyou a handle to the devicec o n t e x t .5 . Print to the devicecontext using VB’s printmethod or API functionssuch as TextOut orD r a w T e x t .6 . Clean up by unselectingthe font and calling Delete-Object with the font handle.
Minimal sample codefor drawing vertical text inVB 4.0 is included on the
CD. Similar code works in VB 3.0 or 16-bitVB 4.0. It seems complex at first but it is thekind of code you can use again. Then again,alongside the four lines needed to automateWordArt, it does look like an argument forsticking to the easy way.
Tim Anderson welcomes your VisualProgramming comments and tips. He can becontacted at the usual P C W address or at v i s u a l @ p c w . v n u . c o . u k
Borland Developers Conference CD £59 (plus VAT) from Borland 0800 454065Delphi 2 Developer’s Guide (Pacheco andTeixeira) from SAMS/Borland Press £54.99Opus DirectAccess £189 (plus VAT) from QBS0181 956 8000, w w w . o p u s . c hNortech Software is at w w w . w i z z k i d s . c o mTitan Access 32 is £225 (plus VAT) from QBS0181 956 8000, w w w . r e g g a t t a . c o m
Contacts
Cover CD
The MSDN starter edition for Visual Basicis on this month’s cover-mounted CD-ROM. It includes 125Mb of searchableinformation on VB 3.0 and VB 4.0.
L e f t Vertical text
the hard way, setting
the font with the
Windows API
B e l o w Vertical text the
easy way, using the
OLE container and a
WordArt object
was a hardware problem and gave it agood kick, and I do mean a literal kick, nota metaphorical one. You should never treathardware with too much respect andshould always let it know who is bosswhenever you have the chance. Itresponded slightly to the kick but because I was up against a deadline I had to reviewan Intel Netport instead. This was alsosomewhat problematic (as recalled here).
The funny thing was, I had copied all thedata files on Pig to my other server “BigBoy” only two days before, because Iwanted to reconfigure it with both NT andNetWare. Lucky, huh? The reason I mentionthis is that if you believe your server is goingto last a lifetime, dream on. Mine is from awell-known manufacturer but has been onthe blink for 12 of the 24 months I havebeen using it. I am not revealing the name
of the server because, to be fair, it doesreceive a lot of abuse — apart from mekicking it. But when I do get it backtogether, Chris, I will definitely reviewSAPS — honest.
So there I was, all ready to review theIntel Netport Print Server (see page 315). Ihad the hardware installed, with a test pageprinted. I decided to install it underWindows 95 because NT Server was down,but I found that the Netport managementsoftware, running under Windows 95,couldn’t see the Netport so I couldn’tconfigure it.
I turned it on and off several times andre-installed the software. I even read theHelp file and realised that I needed NetBEUIinstalled. I re-booted but still got no joy, so Irang Intel tech support and spoke to two oftheir people for half an hour — very helpfulbut as baffled as I was — and then decidedto attempt configuring from anotherworkstation running Windows 95. Did this.Oops, same problem.
It seemed like a low-level protocolproblem (it wasn’t the physical media) andmy instinct told me that the root of thisproblem was in Windows 95 itself, not withthe Intel software. So I then installed thesoftware onto another machine running NTWorkstation 4.0: it instantly saw the Netportand allowed me to configure it.
I know I should really find out exactlywhat the problem was with Windows 95,but while my server may be a Pig, I alsoknow that quite often, when networking,Windows 95 is a complete dog.
Next month: how to remove theimpression of a size-ten boot from yourserver side panel.
ver since I took over Hands OnNetworks I have had problemafter problem with the hardware
on my network, in particular a certain serverwhich I shall refer to as “Pig”. I would like torefer to it as “*!***?* !*?*” but apparently Ican’t, and anyway, if my Mum read it shewould be a bit upset.
You may recall, in last month’s column, Imentioned that Chris Langford emailed meto ask exactly h o w I was going to share amodem on NT Server over my LAN, and Ireplied that I was going to review a productcalled SAPS which does just this thing. Sothere I was, software in hand, all ready todemonstrate the wonders of SAPS, whenPig failed to re-boot. It was not resting … itwas dead.
Now, this is not the first time I have hadproblems of this kind with Pig, so I knew it
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Pigs might flyMark Baynes finds hard w a re to be a boar, as he tries to install SAPS on Pig: even putting the
boot in doesn’t work. He’s just in time to catch the Netport Express for a quick re v i e w, though.
E
Fig 1 The main screen of Intel Netport Manager (see mini-review, page 315)
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Mixed bagA few words about correspondence: I ampleased to look at any queries you email meand find them very interesting, so pleasekeep them coming. But I should point outthat (a) due to lack of space I cannot printreplies to them all, and (b) due to thelengthy process inherent in producingsomething the size of P C W, there is asignificant delay between my receiving themand my reply appearing in this column, sodon’t wait for me to come up with a fix!
I will always tend towards answering themore generic questions as these are goingto be of more use to more readers. And Iwill also favour those from individuals orthose with limited backup support.
I received a query recently fromsomeone working for a well-known ITconsultant which charges hundreds ofpounds a day for advice. I say to them:“Sorry, this column is for those of us whodeal with little networks!”
OSI models and protocolsQ . “It was good to see coverage of the OSImodel in your column but I think you shouldmake a distinction between the model,which applies to almost all comms protocolstacks, and the OSI protocols, which have asmall user base, particularly now that the IPsuite has taken over the world.
“Your example of two developers inCalifornia and Peckham being able to co-operate using the OSI model to interfacenetwork widgets would only work if theywere using OSI protocols throughout. Infact, there is so much room forinterpretation that the widgets would mostlikely interwork only if they were following aspecific OSI profile such as GOSIP. Suchprofiles are the closest thing to ‘an OSIstack’, but to use the ‘OSI stack’ is seriouslym i s l e a d i n g .
“On the software side, there is also noreason why developers A and B should useeven remotely compatible APIs. This hasbeen a major problem with OSI andrequired the invention of things like SystemV Release 3 Streams and other models forthe software side of protocol stacks.
“The API deficiencies of OSI are anotherreason why IP has taken over. The latter hasa straightforward sockets API rather than aplethora of higher level APIs, and allowsselection of suitable presentation/sessionlayer functionality, depending on theapplication.
“For example, OSF DCE RPC has a very
complex presentation layer function, whileTelnet’s is extremely simple, each beingappropriate to the application domain.”
r i c h a r d d @ c i x . c o m p u l i n k . c o . u k
A . Richard, thanks very much for your letterand for clearing this matter up. Any morequestions about protocol stacks are comingdirectly your way!
Halfway houseQ. “I was interested to read in the Februaryissue of PCW that you intend to connectfour PCs together using 10-Base T and toattach further resources straight to the hub.I have a similar situation. I have a 10-BaseT network of four PCs plus two printers,and I would like to achieve independenceof the PCs and the printers. We run avariety of software: at various times amachine might be running any of OS/2,Windows 95, Windows NT Workstation orWindows 3.x.
“The peer-to-peer style of networkingpermits each user to share resources suchas printers, and to allow other workstationsaccess. For example, workstation A has aprinter and workstation B may use theprinter as an output device. I do not like thisexample because the printer is owned byworkstation A. I would like the printer to bea network device in its own right, andavailable to both workstations A and B. Inthe server style of networking the printer isowned by the server. The server is runningpermanently and allows workstationsaccess to the printer.
“I want a halfway house situation wherethe printer is not owned by any workstationor server. I want the printer to be anindependent network device in its own right.Any workstation may send work to theprinter whenever it wishes.
“There are many sources of standalonebox which will allow a printer to become anetwork device. All I have identified areintended for use with a server operatingsystem. The printer, although connected asa network device, effectively becomes aslave of one particular server.
“Do you know of any software, orhardware/software combination, which willallow the same printer to be addressed asa network device from multipleworkstations, with no server involved? Idon’t expect you to identify a solution forall of the software environments — any ofthem would be a start!”
1 0 0 1 2 1 . 7 7 @ C o m p u S e r v e . C O M
314 • Personal Computer World • April 1997
Hands On N e t w o r k s
I have been trying to get my hands onone of Intel’s Print Servers for quite awhile now. I have reviewed a few printservers and, to be quite honest, acouple of them have been extremelypoorly made. The Intel is quite theopposite, however, and is designed towithstand wear and tear.
At the front of the unit are the threeprinter ports, two parallel ports and oneserial port, and on the left-hand side isan RJ-45 socket for a length of10BaseT. There are a couple ofrecessed DIP switches, a diagnosticsbutton and the connector for the power
Mini-review — Intel Netport Express PRO/100 Print Server
P r i c e £468.82 (£399 ex VAT)C o n t a c t Intel 01793 431155Good Points High-quality, good managementsoftware but…Bad Points …potential problems installingunder Windows 95.C o n c l u s i o n Handy piece of kit for the small-to-medium-sized ethernet network.
Details
s u p p l y .The docu-m e n t a t i o nis good,the firstpage ofthe QuickS t a r tg u i d es h o w i n g
how to connectyour printer(s)to the network.
I plugged inthe NetportExpress andthe Activity,Transmit andReceive lightson top of theunit began toflash. Iconnected theexisting printercable from myt r i e d - a n d -tested HPDeskJet 600into parallel portone on theN e t p o r tExpress and
plugged a length of cableinto the RJ-45 socket. It willauto-detect if your ethernetnetwork is running at 10 or100Mbits/sec. To test that allis well from a hardware pointof view, you simply press thediagnostics button on theside of the Express and itshould print a diagnosticsreport. Hardware setup timeis three minutes.
I next installed thesoftware. Network operatingsystems supported areNovell, NT, Windows 95,Windows for Workgroups,
LAN Manager, IBM LAN Server andAppleTalk (Unix is also supported). Ichose to install a 100MHz Pentium PCrunning Win95 and this is where myproblems started — I could not get theNetport software (running under Win95)to see the Netport, but I eventuallyinstalled the software onto another PCrunning NT Workstation 4.0 and this wentvery smoothly indeed.
This is a nice, high-quality piece ofhardware, but it’s not cheap.
Fig 3 (right)
B a s i c
i d e n t i f i c a t i o n
details of my
DeskJet 600
attached to the
N e t p o r t
Fig 4 ( b e l o w )
At last! The
Netport seen
as Pr2721cf
u n d e r
Windows 95
p 3 1 6
Fig 2 (right)
The Netport
print server
s t a t u s
CYAN•MAGENTA•YELLOW•BLACK PERSONAL COMPUTER WORLD
A . This is an interesting one! I have thefeeling that what you are after does notexist, although I could be wrong.
In a peer-to-peer situation, a printerhangs off a specific PC which is, in fact, aprint server for that PC dealing with the printqueue. In a server-based LAN, the printercan hang off the server or, more likely, bean independent physical network device inits own right (see mini-review of IntelNetport Print Server, page 315) but — andit is a big “but” — the print queue has to bemanaged somewhere by the NOS. In aserver LAN, this is going to be the NOSrunning on a server.
So your ideal of “a halfway housesituation where the printer is not owned byany workstation or server” is not reallypossible because it has to be managed bysomething.
There goes the NeighbourhoodQ . “I have a 486 DX4 100 running Windows95 and a Pentium 75 with NT W/S 4.0.
“Things ought to be going smoothly —after all, this sort of setup is Microsoft’sdream, is it not? Well, unfortunately, theWindows 95 machine shows no computersin Network Neighbourhood — not evenitself — even if the ‘T-piece’ on thatmachine has a terminator on both ends.The Entire Network icon exists but whenattempting to open it I get the message:‘Unable to browse the network … it is notaccessible’.
“The NT machine allows browsing of the
network, but the other PC (the only otherone on the network) does not show. I havetoyed with the idea of a hardware fault, but Ihave tested everything I can think of andthat appears not to be the case.
“I am a newcomer to networking andcan’t be sure all the settings on eithermachine are correct, but I am fairly confident.Any ideas? (The protocol I am using isTCP/IP, but I have also installed NetBEUI.)
“If I enable file/print sharing on the Win95machine, it does appear in NetworkNeighbourhood although it takes a coupleof minutes for this to happen, during whichtime it is still unable to browse the network.”
a l e x i @ m a r g o . d e m o n . c o . u k
A . It is nice to know that this happens toother people apart from me! Don’t worryabout being a networking novice: I havebeen doing this stuff for over five years nowand I still often find that after zapping myPC’s hard drive and carrying out a reinstall(which I do on a regular basis to clear out allthe dregs of software I have reviewed), I stillget this problem from time to time.
I cannot tell you definitely what theproblem is but try this:1 . T h e first thing to do when you have anynetwork connection problems is to checkthe physical media — do you know forcertain that the network cable worksproperly? Can you borrow another one on aworking system for a while and try it witht h a t ?2. Are you certain that the network cards in
each machine work? If not, get theirinstallation disks and run the self-testdiagnostics. Then double-check to makesure there are no interrupt clashes; you cando this by looking in Settings/ControlP a n e l / S y s t e m .3. Have you tried the Networktroubleshooter in Windows 95 Help? This isquite good and has saved my bacon acouple of times.4 . Remove all your network softwarecomponents and start again, but to startwith try just running something simple likeIPX or NetBEUI, before trying TCP/IP whichis about as much fun to configure as puttingyour hand into a waste disposal unit andturning it on.5 . Have you tried Find Computer fromeither the Start menu or WindowsExplorer? I have found in the past thatalthough a computer will not show up inNetwork Neighbourhood you can “Find” it.Strange but true.6. Zap both PCs and start again. It’s adrastic measure but it often works. Itdepends how much software you haveinstalled on them because some programscan, for no obvious reason, have sideeffects on others.
316 • Personal Computer World • April 1997
Hands On N e t w o r k s
Mark Baynes is a web developer and IT journalistbased in Brighton. He can be contacted by post atthe usual P C W address, or via email atn e t w o r k s @ p c w . v n u . c o . u k
Contact
CYAN•MAGENTA•YELLOW•BLACK PERSONAL COMPUTER WORLD
Personal Computer World • April 1997 • 319
Hands OnM a c i n t o s h
CYAN•MAGENTA•YELLOW•BLACK PERSONAL COMPUTER WORLD
318 • Personal Computer World • April 1997
Hands On M a c i n t o s h
Black Night, a fancy shareware programwhich uses the same neat communicationstools installed in the Extensions folder (in my
case, the Serial tool for the connection, andText or TTY tools for terminal emulation).But it, too, locked up. Taking a multimeterto the cable, it was clear that the Olympusadaptor was not wired to support hardwarehandshaking, which the software and DSP-232 were expecting to use. When you buy(or make) Mac serial cables, make sure thateach one has the special RTS and CTSlines properly connected so you can usehardware handshaking if necessary.
Even when I used a correctly wiredcable, or turned hardware handshaking offin favour of the weaker XON/XOFF softwaremethod, the crashes still occurred.Switching to VT220 and other tools onlymade things worse.
I then turned to ZTerm, a popular ifvanilla-flavoured shareware commsapplication. Although the current versionpredates a proper release version of OpenTransport, ZTerm wisely fights shy of theCommunications Toolbox while apparentlyremaining totally compatible with OpenTransport. When in plain text mode you canset it to ignore the eighth bit of receivedcharacters, and in this way it sat andscrolled its way through pages and pages
of Navtex, packet radio and the gibberish ofnoise, for hour after hour.
The lesson is that keeping it simple oftenkeeps it stable. Because Apple has switchedfrom the sophisticated but idiosyncraticCommunications Toolbox to the sleekerOpen Transport, older comms programsmay be working through several layers ofemulation (the 68K emulator on a PowerMac, and Open Transport’s emulatedsupport for tools) and with tools that werenever completely debugged. Bring on thetruly native Open Transport commsprograms and all this should be a thing ofthe past, but they’re not here just yet.
Contact Howard Oakley via the usual P C Waddress or email m a c @ p c w . v n u . c o . u k
Apple Computer: 0181 569 1199. Web addressw w w . a p p l e . c o m and w w w . e u r o . a p p l e . c o mA E A radio modems and radio hardware aredistributed by N e v a d a : 01705 662145. Webaddress w w w . n e v a d a . c o . u k /ZTerm 1.0.1 is $30 shareware by David Alverson,available from all Mac online resources MacMorse 1.4 is $15 shareware from DougHavenhill and can be found in the Ham Radioarchive at f t p . d e m o n . c o . u k / p u b / h a m / m a c /
Contacts
The only enforced rigour on your Mac’s harddisk is in the System Folder. If you want yourMac to work properly and benefit from the fullfeatures of all your applications, you mustensure that all files and folders within theSystem Folder are correctly named and at theright level in the hierarchy. Most software nowcomes with an intelligent installer which putseach file in the appropriate place, butsometimes you will have to install things byhand. Your first recourse is to drop the file(s)onto the System Folder and allow it to sort outthe proper location for each: mostly it works,but sometimes you will need to correct errors.System Folder A-Z guide [f] Apple Menu Items: desk accessories,applications and aliases to be accessed viaentries in the Apple menu. [f] Claris: if you have installed any Clarisapplications, contains dictionaries, the XTNDfile translator system, help files and othermaterials for those applications. Clipboard: the last copied or cut item. [f] Control Panels: items accessible via theControl Panel menu, which may containextension code. [ f ] Control Panels (Disabled): control panelswhich have been turned off using ExtensionsM a n a g e r . [f] Control Strip Modules: will be added tothe Control Strip. [ f ] Desktop Printers: LaserWriter 8.4 andlater printers shown on the desktop.
[ f ] Extensions: a whole mass of extensions,communications tools, and shared libraries. [f] Extensions (Disabled): extensions whichhave been turned off using ExtensionsM a n a g e r . Finder: the Finder itself. [f] Fonts: installed fonts and PostScript fonts. Hosts: definitions for TCP/IP connections. [ f ] Launcher Items: aliases which appear inthe Launcher. MacsBug: a low-level debugger which canhelp you cope with crashes. [ f ] Preferences: settings and preference filesand folders for applications, although a fewolder ones still place their files in the SystemFolder itself. [f] PrintMonitor Documents: documents beingprinted in the background. Scrapbook File: the contents of yourScrapbook (in the Apple menu). [ f ] Shutdown Items: aliases etc. to be runautomatically before shutting down. [f] Startup Items: aliases etc. to be startedwhen your Mac starts up. System: the System file itself. System Updates: additions to the System file. [ f ] System Extensions (Disabled): olderextensions normally littered around in theSystem Folder itself, when turned off withExtensions Manager. [ f ] Application-specific folders and files.N o t e : [f] indicates that the item is a folder; othersare files — see Fig 1 for icons.
What goes where in your System Folder?
Thanks to Ian Cargill of Soliton Software for
solving my longest-standing gripe with
Microsoft Word 5: its apparent inability to
allow you to select irregular parts of words.
Use the Tools/Options… menu command to
display Word’s settings, pick the Edit tab
panel and turn Automatic Word Selection off.
It’s as easy as that (just a bit of tricky
navigation to get there)
Fig 1 The System Folder contains a strict
hierarchy of folders and files. When installing
software, give the Finder a chance to put files
in the right places, but correct any mistakes
design: a black box with lots of flashingcoloured lights, more convincing than asuccession of faceless and unlit platinumperipherals. Instead of convertingbetween digital data fit for the serial portand whistles down a phone line, theDSP-232 works with the far weirdersounds used in radio data transmission.These range from cicada chirruping torhythmic grating, demanding far greaterversatility in the electronics.
Rummaging through my confusedknot of cables, I decided to use the 9-pin“D” (standard, newer PC serial port) to Mac8-pin “DIN” (standard Mac serial port) cableprovided with my new Olympus C-800Ldigital camera, connected to the 9-pin “D”to 9-pin “D” cable supplied with the DSP-232. With everything plumbed in, and theDSP-232 suitably fed with pops andcrackles from an Icom R8500communications receiver, I flashed up my
n recent years Apple has beenmore adept at delivering shocksthan surprises, so it’s a particular
pleasure, when all eyes seemed turnedtowards Be, that we should hear of Apple’spurchase of NeXT. While I am sure thatApple has clear plans for its latestacquisition, I am certain that those plans willprove as flexible as Copland, althoughhopefully it will unravel to a tighter schedule.
Whatever Apple does with NeXT, itseems sure that its combined products willbe more exciting and that it will regain someof the initiative and leadership that has beenon the wane. High on my wish list is areplacement filing system for MacOS, whichwill spare us having to patch up with DiskFirst Aid after each significant crash.
Just as Apple has managed to transformits implementation of Virtual Memory inSystem 7.5.5, so it should accord a highpriority to the use of memory protection tominimise the consequence of crashes, too:that part of the Copland project (MacOS 8)also needs early introduction. And if thenetworking and security trappings whichthe NeXT team brings can turn a hybridMacOS into a first-class operating systemfor corporates and the government sector,Apple’s purchase will be money well spent.
Communication breakdownHaving cut my commercial programmingteeth on a suite of applications to drivevarious bizarre devices through the Macserial port, I tend to assume that ordinarycommunications can only be more simple.
If only this were so. This month’s newhardware was not a conventional computerperipheral, but the ham radio equivalent of amodem (and more). AEA’s DSP-232 is aperipheral of traditional and impressive
regular communications software,VersaTerm Pro. At this stage, my interestwas in receiving and decoding Navtexmessages which contain weather forecasts,navigational warnings and the other breadand butter of mariners. All you should needis a decent receiver, a DSP-232, and a plaintext terminal program. But VersaTerm,having obliged dutifully for a couple ofhours, suddenly froze the screen. I tried
N e X T on the agendaHoward Oakley hopes that Apple will capitalise fully on its recent acquisition of NeXT,including giving priority attention to a new MacOS filing system. Plus, comms chaos.
IL e f t AEA’s DSP-232
radio modem
connected to
VersaTerm Pro,
showing a received
Navtex weather
forecast. An hour or
so later the software
crashed, leading to
comms chaos
B e l o w Although most
amateur radio
software seems to
have been written for
Windows or MSDOS,
MacMorse’s fine
Morse tutor is an
excellent learning tool
Personal Computer World • April 1997 • 323p324
Beginners
ust about every consumer PCsold these days comes with asound card. But back in the
quiet, dark ages when the PC was firstconceived, sound was the last thing on theagenda. Computers were purely businesstools and the internal speaker was onlypresent so that it could beep when you didsomething wrong.
But with the increase in popularity ofmultimedia in the last few years, soundcards have advanced considerably andthere is a vast range available from £25 to£250. Alongside making games andmultimedia sound wonderful, they can allowyou to compose, edit and print your ownmusic as well as record and edit digitalaudio and play audio CDs from yourdesktop.
Whether you’re buying a sound card forthe first time or upgrading your existingmodel, it helps to understand some of theunderlying principles of sound generation onPCs. Here we’ve given a brief summary ofthe most important technical conceptsrelating to sound.
Frequency Modulation (FM) This was the first standard technology tobe used in sound cards. It was also used inthe first music synthesisers and made ahuge impact on the pop world back in theearly eighties. FM works by overlaying anumber of simple sound waves in order tosimulate real instruments. However, thistechnique can only approximate the soundof a guitar (for example) because the realthing is far to complex for FM to reproduceaccurately. Wavetable synthesis (describedhere) is much more realistic.
Musical Instrument DigitalInterface (MIDI) This was developed as a communicationsprotocol for musical instruments to “talk”to each other. Today it is used mainly forsequencing, which allows complexmusical arrangements to be built up thatwould be impossible to play by one personalone. The most common instructions tell
the receiving instrument to play a particularnote for a duration of time and how loud toplay it.
General MIDI This is a standard agreement whichspecifies the locations of soundswithin a synthesiser. It ensuresthat a piece written on onesynthesiser for drum andbass will come out exactlythe same whenplayed throughany othersynthesiser. BeforeGeneral MIDI wasimplemented, it would have beenquite possible for another synthesiser toplay the composition on a kazoo andFrench horn. With the possible exceptionof fanatical modern jazz afficionados, mostpeople appreciate hearing music as it ismeant to be heard.
DSP (Digital SignalProcessor) A DSP chip allows the use of effects likereverb, echo, stereo chorus and delay,adding considerably to the overall quality ofthe sound. Using the same technology,some modern hi-fi systems give you theoption of hearing music as if it’s beingplayed in a concert hall or a footballstadium.
WavetableSound cards with wavetable synthesis playback pre-recorded samples of realinstruments. The quality of the samples canvary considerably because of the factorsinvolved in recording the sounds. Theseinclude the quality of the originalrecordings, the number of samples takenfor each instrument and the method ofcompression used. Because they sounddifferent depending on how they areplayed, a number of different samples haveto be recorded for each instrument. A high-compression method means that manysamples can be stored in the wavetable
ROM but this affects thequality of the final sound.
A wavetable card will usuallyhave between 1Mb and 4Mb ROM (thebigger the better) but reproducing apiano’s sound accurately could take up asmuch as 10Mb, so it’s understandable thatsynthesised instruments never really soundlike the real thing.
Wavetable Daughterboard If you’re thinking of improving the soundcapability of your PC, check out yourexisting sound card first to see if it has afeature connector. If it does, then youcould save some money by upgrading thecard with a wavetable daughterboard.Wavetable daughterboards are compatiblewith any 16-bit sound card that has afeature connector. This is located to thebottom left-hand side of the card near theblanking plate and looks similar to a CD-ROM interface, only smaller. Some cards,including the Value edition of theSoundBlaster 16, do not have thisconnector, so check first.
Installing a wavetable daughterboardcouldn’t be easier. Simply remove yoursound card and “sit” the daughterboard ontop, making sure the connectors are firmlyattached. Three plastic spacers will also beprovided which prevent the two cards fromdamaging each other.
Card sharpYou’ll find a sound card and/or a graphics card in almost every PC sold thesedays. Here we present an overview of the technical concepts involved in both.
J
Sounds
good: A
sound card
is an integral
part of any
multimedia
system
324 • Personal Computer World • April 1997
Beginners
SoundBlasterThis is not so much a technical issue asone of compatibility. If you’re into games,make sure any sound card you buy is 100percent SoundBlaster compatible. This willsave you a lot of heartache in the long run.
Graphics CardsVirtually every PC contains a graphics card— it’s the one your monitor lead plugs into.But what does it actually do?
Data from the CPU is fed into thegraphics card where it is processed andplaced in the Video Memory. This stores a“mirror” of the image that you see on yourmonitor. The “mirror” is read by the DigitalAnalogue Converter (RAMDAC) andconverted from digital data to analogueinformation which is sent to the monitor.This happens many times a second — therefresh rate (in Hz (hertz)) is the number oftimes per second that the screen isredrawn.
This should give you some idea of theamount of information a graphics card hasto deal with. Consider a Windowsenvironment at 1024 x 768 resolution with24-bit colour depth. Each screen here ismade up of 18,874,368 bits of information.That’s a lot, but let’s not forget that thescreen should be redisplayed at least 75times a second. That’s 1,415,577,600 bitsof information every second!
How does the graphics card cope?There are two factors. Firstly, the size of the RAM on the card must be large enoughto contain an entire “mirror” of the screenimage. If you’ve got 1Mb there’s no wayyour card could cope with the examplegiven above.
Secondly, the card must be able to getthe data out of the Video Memoryand into the monitor quickly.The speed of the RAMDACand Video Memory both affectthis performance considerably.
The other factor in processingthe data is the size of the VideoMemory bus (how many bits ofinformation can be read in one go).Most graphics cards these days have64-bit buses, but there are a few(expensive) cards around with 128-bitbuses.
If you’re thinking about upgrading yourgraphics card you should first determinewhat you want from it. For instance, if youplay a lot of games, a 3D card shouldfeature strongly on your list of possibilities.Are high resolutions and high colour depthsimportant to you? If not, you might well beperfectly happy with a mid-range card. Asalways with PC hardware, it’s a trade-offbetween price and performance.
Plug and Play
“Plug and Pay” is a standard introduced by Microsoft in Windows 95. Essentially, itwas introduced to make the installation of new devices easier by automating thewhole process.
Windows 95 includes drivers for a large number of sound cards and shouldautomatically detect plug-and-play cards on installation. It scans your files for existingdrivers on installation. If the card’s drivers are pre-bundled with the OS, they’ll beinstalled and configured for you. If not, you’ll be prompted for an installation disk.
Sound cards which are not plug-and-play compatible must be installed manually using the Add New Hardware wizard in Windows 95. As with many plug-and-play devices, the “seamless integration” concept does not always find its way into reality, and often, cards which claim to conform to the plug-and-playstandard do not install smoothly.
Glossary
DRAM (Dynamic Random Access Memory) Standard memorychip mainly used in older PCs. Less efficient than VRAM or EDORAM.EDO RAM (Extended Data Out RAM) A more efficient type ofmemory with faster access time. Almost all new PCs are fittedwith EDO RAM.VRAM (Video RAM) Fast memory optimised for graphics cards.Faster than EDO RAM.WRAM (Windows RAM) Fast video memory optimised fordisplaying Windows.RAMDAC or DAC (Random Access Memory Digital toAnalogue Convertor) Converts the digital data from the PC tothe analogue information required by the monitor for display.LPB (Local peripheral Bus) A specific feature connector used to
connect MPEG or other related components (such as TV tuners)to the graphics card.Refresh Rate (or vertical scan rate) The frequency with whichthe whole screen is refreshed (or redrawn). At 60Hz (60 timesper second) flicker is quite apparent. Above 72Hz the flickerappears to go away. Increasing the refresh rate above 75Hzmakes the image increasingly solid.Interlacing Where only every other line on the screen isrefreshed with each pass. The result is very flickery and certainlynot recommended for long periods.Virtual Desktop When the card is capable of holding in itsmemory a screen image bigger than that displayed on themonitor. The monitor acts as a window onto a larger desktop.On-the-fly-switching The ability to change screen resolution,colour depth or refresh rates without having to restart your PC.
Buying Don’ts Don’t buy a machine with less than 16Mb ofmemory if you plan to run Windows 95. Avoid cheap 14in monitors. Bundled 14.4kb/sec modems are not thebargain they seem. Opt for 28.8kb/sec or oneof the new 33.6kb/sec modems when theybecome available.
Buying Do’s You can never have too much disk space.Spend extra cash on buying the next largesthard disk size. Make sure Pentium motherboards have anIntel Triton chipset; either 430HX or 430VX. Check the warranty. Is it for on-site or back-to-base repairs? If it’s on-site, does the
manufacturer offerguaranteed responsetimes? Check thetechnical support. Is it
free? Is it easy tocontact?
For home use, you’ll probably want fullmultimedia capabilities to enable you to useCD-ROM games and edutainment productsand play video clips. This should include atleast a 16-bit SoundBlaster-compatiblesoundcard and speakers. Think about ordering more memory. RAMprices are low at the moment but creeping up— you can pick up 16Mb of EDO RAM foraround £100 or less
Upgrading memory to 32Mb is also thequickest way to improve the performance ofyour machine — often more so thanupgrading your processor. Look at the software bundle. If you want anoffice suite, it is far cheaper to buy it as part ofthe bundle. Larger manufacturers can offerMS Office, for example, at about one third ofthe recommended retail price. Multimedia CD-ROM bundles will not include the UK versionof Encarta 96 — Microsoft only allows the USversion to be bundled.
Other things to consider PCs have become similar in the last few years.The days when smallish computer companiesdesigned their own chipsets (the chips thatassist the computer’s main processor) are longgone. Most small box-shifters buy theirmotherboards from Taiwanese manufacturers.Larger companies either design motherboardsthemselves (Apricot, Compaq, IBM) or getmotherboards built by other companies to theirspecifications (Gateway).
Cyrix chips are worth considering. Their6x86 chips, such as the P133+, are oftencheaper and give better performance thantheir Intel counterparts.
If you are serious about multimedia, itmay be worth upgrading your soundcard toa 16-bit wavetable card. A six-speed CD-ROM drive will give you a noticeableperformance gain over a quad-speed, butthe speed increase of an eight-speed over asix-speed is less tangible. Remember that,unlike your hi-fi setup, good speakers arepowered from the mains, not from your PC.
This is the absolute minimum spec we think youshould consider if you’re buying a new PC.Suitable for general business use: wordprocessing, databases and spreadsheets and,with a modem, accessing the internet. Windows 95 100MHz Pentium processor 16Mb RAM Graphics card with 1Mb of memory 1.2Gb hard disk Quad-speed CD-ROM drive 14in colour monitor
PCI local bus
Buying second-hand or discontinued kit is thecheapest way to get started. This is the minimumspec we think you should go choose for generalbusiness use, playing games and accessing theinternet.
Windows 3.1 or 3.11
DX2 66Mhz 486 processor
8Mb RAM
Graphics card with 512Kb of memory
200Mb hard disk
3.5in floppy disk
CD-ROM drive
14in colour monitor
No-nonsense Buyer’s Guide
Personal Computer World • April 1997 • 327326 • Personal Computer World • April 1997
The one universal rule is that PCs get cheaper, better and fasterall the time. The result is that your state-of-the-art PC can
become outdated and old-fashioned in a couple ofyears. It may still work perfectly well, but it probablywon’t run very fast and won’t run the latest software.If you’re just planning to do simple word processing,this may not matter. But we’re assuming here thatyou want to buy a general-purpose multimedia PCthat can play games, use CD-ROMs and run a rangeof modern software.
p328
No-nonsense Buyer’s Guide
No-nonsenseBuyer’s Guide
Buying a PC
If you’re not strapped for cash, this is thespecification we recommend. No-one at PCWwould settle for less.
Windows 95 or Windows NT 4.0
Pentium or equivalent 166MHz processor (afast processor will make your computer runquicker and more smoothly)
256Kb secondary cache
32Mb EDO RAM.
Graphics card with 2Mb of memory
2Gb hard disk — modern computer softwaretakes up a lot of space
Six-speed CD-ROM drive (video clips will playmore smoothly and you will be able to access fileson CD-ROM disks more quickly)
15in colour monitor
16-bit SoundBlaster-compatible soundcard
This is as good a PC as you are likely to need formost software. For some specialist applications,like professional DTP or CAD, you may need evenmore memory, a bigger hard disk, a morepowerful graphics card, or a larger monitor.
Windows 95 or Windows NT4.0
Pentium 200MHz MMX or Pentium Pro
512Kb secondary cache
32Mb EDO memory
4Gb hard disk
Eight-speed CD-ROM drive
17in colour monitor
4Mb VRAM or WRAM graphics card (thismeans your graphics card can display morecolours and at a higher resolution on yourmonitor: 16 million colours at a resolution of up to1,280 x 1,024
16-bit wavetable soundcardYou can read our up-to-date PC reviews in every issue of PCW.
Notebooks are one area inwhich it’s often safer to stick tobrand names. Not that some ofthe Far Eastern kit doesn’t workperfectly well, but reliabilityseems to be a problem and itcan be fiendishly difficult toobtain spares. A usefulguideline when choosing anotebook is: try before you buy.
Remember that standardnotebook specifications aregenerally a step or two behindthe desktop equivalents.
Buying aNotebook
What to look for in anotebook Pointing device There’s been a wholesalemove from trackballs to trackpads. Somenotebooks, notably IBM Thinkpads, use sticktechnology (a device which looks like therubber on top of a pencil and is controlledusing one finger). CD-ROM drives These are rapidlybecoming standard in notebooks. If yournotebook is going to be your only machine,it’s worth getting one. Floppy disk drive Often there’s a choicebetween a CD-ROM drive and a floppy diskdrive. If the notebook is to be your onlymachine, make sure the CD-ROM drive andfloppy can be used simultaneously. PC Cards Modern notebooks all have atleast one PC Card slot. They take credit-card-sized expansion cards which add a fax-modem, a network interface card or even anextra hard disk to your computer. Battery life Battery life varies from as littleas 30 minutes to over six hours. Lithium Ionand Nickel Metal Hydride batteries have nowreplaced the older NiCad (Nickel Cadmium)batteries. TFT screens TFT or active matrix screensare replacing the slower dual-scan or passivematrix screens. It means the screen image isrefreshed far more quickly. Warranty Drop a notebook and it maybreak, so it is vital to check the terms of yourwarranty. How long is it? What level of serviceis provided?
The state-of-the-art notebook: either you’reloaded, or your company’s picking up the tab. Windows 95 or Windows NT Pentium 256Kb secondary cache 32Mb RAM On-board graphics with 2Mb of VRAM memory,PCI local bus 1.2Gb hard disk 3.5in floppy disk drive Eight-speed CD-ROM drive Active matrix 1,024 x 768 TFT screen Long battery life
PCW Best specification
Windows 95 Pentium Quad or six-speed CD-ROM drive 256Kb secondary cache 16Mb RAM On-board graphics with 1Mb of memory, PCIlocal bus 850Mb hard disk, 3.5in floppy disk drive and/ordual-speed CD-ROM drive TFT 800 x 600 screen
PCW Recommended specification
Notebooks change quickly. It’s possible to pick upend-of-line machines with Pentium processorsfrom brand-name manufacturers like Toshiba andCompaq at discounted prices of £1,000 or less.These can be a very good buy. Just make surethey can run the software you need to use.
PCW Minimum specification
PCW Best specification
PCW Recommended specification
PCW Minimum specification
PCW Second-hand specification
* We assume that any new PC has PCIlocal bus and a 3.5in floppy disk drive.
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CD into your hi-fi. The advantageof distributing information on CD-ROM rather than other mediais that each one can hold up to680Mb of data — equivalent tosome 485 high-density 3.5infloppy disks. The disadvantage,however, is that you can onlywrite once on CD-ROMs, yet thismakes them ideal for archiving.CISC (See RISC)CPUCentral processing unit. Normallyrefers to the main processor orchip inside a PC. (See Processor).CrashCommon term for when yourcomputer freezes. Can be causedby a power surge, a bug (which isa fault in software), or a GPF.
DDRAM (See Memory)DOS (Disk OperatingSystem)Once the standard operatingsystem for PCs, it is now beingreplaced by Windows 95 andWindows NT. DPI (Dots Per Inch) Common measure of theresolution on a printer, a scanneror a display.Drive controller cardAn expansion card that interpretscommands between theprocessor and the disk drives.DriversPieces of software that “drive” aperipheral. They interpret betweenthe computer and a device suchas a CD-ROM. If you have a SCSICD-ROM drive connected, youwill be able to use it on a PC or aMac just by loading up therelevant driver on each machine.
EEIDE (See IDE)EISA (Extended IndustryStandard Architecture)A bus standard designed tocompete with MCA. Now beingreplaced by PCI. Electronic mail (E-mail,email)Still the biggest single use of theinternet. When you sign up withan ISP you are given an emailaddress. Usually you canincorporate your name, or part ofit, into your email address to makeit easy to remember.Expansion cardCircuit boards that fit inside PCsto provide extra functionality. Forexample, one might be an internalmodem, providing the samefunctions as an external version(which is more common) but
sitting inside the PC. Expansioncards are designed to be fittedand removed by people with littleknowledge of PCs.
FFloppy disk drivePractically all PCs come with afloppy disk drive. 3.5in HD (highdensity) 1.44Mb floppy disks arenow the standard. They come inhard plastic cases and havereplaced the older, literally floppy,5.25in disks.FontsA font is an alphabet designed ina particular style. Fonts apply toboth screen and printed letters.TrueType and Type 1 fonts arestored as shape descriptions,scalable to any size.FormatTo wipe a floppy or hard disk inorder to prepare it to accept data.
GGPFGeneral protection fault.Graphics cardAn expansion card thatinterprets commands from theprocessor to the monitor. If youwant a better, higher-resolutionpicture or more than yourexisting setup, you’ll need tochange your graphics cardand/or your monitor.GUI (Graphical UserInterface) (See Windows)
HHard diskSometimes called a fixed disk,hard disks are hermetically-sealedrigid disks able to store data andprograms. Disk capacitiesincrease all the time. The standardis now 1Gb but disks of up to9Gb are available.HardwareAll electronic components of acomputer system, includingperipherals, circuit boards andinput/output devices. HTML (Hypertext mark-uplanguage) The standard language used inthe creation of web pages, whichcan be read by web browsers.
IIBM-compatibleOriginally meant any PCcompatible with DOS. Now tendsto mean any PC with an Intel orcompatible processor capable ofrunning DOS or Windows. IDE Integrated drive electronics. A
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Glossary of computing termsAAccess timeThe time it takes for a device toaccess data. The access time,quoted in milliseconds (ms) forhard disks and nanoseconds (ns)for memory, is usually an averageas it can vary greatly. Togetherwith the transfer rate, it is used togauge the performance of harddisks and other devices. Thelower the number, the better theperformance. ApplicationsAn application, or package, isone or more programs used for aparticular task. For example:word processing, invoicing orspreadsheeting. Applications arebought shrink-wrapped(wrapped in cellophane forgeneral use) or custom-built forspecific uses.ASCII (American StandardCode for InformationInterchange)Usually a synonym for plain textwithout any formatting (like italics,bold or hidden text). Sincecomputers naturally use binaryrather than Roman characters,text has to be converted intobinary in order for the processorto understand it. ASCII assignsbinary values to Romancharacters. RTF, a Microsoftstandard, adds extra formattingfeatures to plain ASCII.
BBackwards compatibleCompatibility of hardware orsoftware to older versions of theproduct or standard. Baud rateThe amount of data that can besent along a communicationschannel every second. In commonusage, it is often confused withbits per second. These daysmodem speeds are normallymeasured in bits per second. (See V* and Bit).
BIOSBasic Input/Output System.Software routines that let yourcomputer address other deviceslike the keyboard, monitor anddisk drives. BitBinary digit, the basic binary unitfor storing data. It can either be Oor 1. A Kilobit (Kbit) is 210 (1,024bits); and a Megabit is 220, whichis just over a million bits. Theseunits are often used for datatransmission. For data storage,Megabytes are more generallyused. A Megabyte (Mb) is 1,024kilobytes (Kb) and a Kb is 1,024bytes. A Gigabyte (Gb) is1,024Mb. A byte (binary digiteight) is composed of eight bits.Bug (See Crash)BootShort for bootstrap. Refers to theprocess when a computer loadsits operating system into memory.Reboot means to restart yourcomputer after a crash, either witha warm reboot (where you pressCtrlAltDel) or a cold reboot, whereyou switch the computer off andback on again.BusA “data highway”, whichtransports data from theprocessor to whatever componentit wants to talk to. There are manydifferent kinds of bus, includingISA, EISA, MCA, and local bus(PCI and VL-bus).
CCache (See Memory)COAST Cache On A Stick.CD-ROMA CD-ROM is the same as anormal audio CD, except it canstore data as well as sounds. ACD-ROM player can be attachedto your computer to readinformation from the CD-ROM intothe computer’s memory in thesame way that a domestic CDplayer reads information from the
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All ISPs (Information Service Providers) allowyou to send and receive internet email, browsethe web and download files from internetservers. But there are differences between theextra services that each provides.
Large, centralised, online services like AOLand CompuServe offer discussion areas andspecialised content like online magazines, andsearchable file libraries and are easy to use.However they are not the fastest way ofaccessing the World Wide Web.
Some ISPs charge a flat-rate for internetaccess while others charge extra if you exceeda specified number of hours online.
The quality of the software and technicalsupport provided also varies. In general, the big“consumer” ISPs offer better support and morecommercial software. The smaller, more basic,operations often offer cheaper deals.
Some ISPs are more geared up to businessusers who may need a fast ISDN connectionand/or require the service provider to host oreven design web pages for them.
Your chosen ISP can have a big effect onthe performance of your internet connection,particularly access speed to US site. Relativelyfew ISPs provide local call access to anywherein the UK. In London you’ll have plenty of
choice, but in the west of Scotland, say, thechoice will be limited.
control system designed to allow computerand device to communicate. Once thestandard for PC hard disks, now beingreplaced by EIDE (enhanced IDE) which offersimproved performance and extra features.InternetMillions of computers interconnected in aglobal network.Internet Service ProviderISPs provide access to the internet. You useyour modem to dial the ISP’s modem. The ISPhas a high-bandwidth permanent connectionto the internet.IRDAInfra-Red Data Association — the standard forexchanging data using infra-red, typically fromPDAs or notebooks to a PC or printer.ISA (Industry Standard Architecture)This was the original bus architecture on 286PCs. Also known as the AT bus (the 286 wasknown as the AT), it is still in use today. Slowby modern standards, but so widely acceptedthat expansion cards are still made for it. (See EISA, PCI).ISDN (Integrated Services DigitalNetwork)Offers significant advantages over analoguetelephone lines. It can handle multipletransfers on a single connection and isfaster. In the UK, however, costs ofinstallation and rental are still high.
JJPEG (See MPEG)
KKbit (kilobit), Kb (kilobyte) (See Bit)
LLAN (Local Area Network) (See Network)
Local BusPCI (Peripheral Component Interconnect),developed by Intel, is now the standard forlocal bus architecture. It is faster than the olderVL-Bus (Video Electronic StandardsAssociation local bus) it replaces.
MMacintosh (Mac)A personal computer made by Apple andwhich is incompatible with PCs. Developed asa rival standard, its operating system looks likeWindows, but pre-dates it and (in somepeople’s view) looks and works much better. Maths co-processorA specialised chip that handles mathematicalcalculations (floating point operations) for theprocessor. Modern processors such as thePentium have a co-processor built into them. Mbit (megabit) (See Bit)Mb (megabyte) (See Bit)MCAA type of bus designed by IBM to beat EISA.Although faster, it never became popularbecause every machine that used it had to paya royalty to IBM, and because it was notbackwards-compatible with ISA. MPEG (Moving Picture Expert Group) A standard for compressing video available inseveral flavours: MPEG 1, MPEG 2, MPEG 4.JPEG (Joint Photographic Expert Group) is astandard for still image compression.MemoryThe term normally refers to RAM (RandomAccess Memory). This is the kind thatdisappears when you turn off your computerand is much faster to access than a hard disk.It acts as a staging post between yourcomputer’s hard disk and its main processor.• DRAM (Dynamic Random Access Memory)This requires its contents to be replaced every1/1000th of a second and is the most
common form of memory in PCs.• SRAM (StaticRAM) Retains memory until thepower is switched off.• VRAM (VideoRAM) Faster than DRAM, this isused by graphics cards.• EDO (Extended Data Out RAM) The latesttype of memory. Offers improved performance.• Cache memory Temporary memory setaside to store the information that is accessedmost frequently. The Pentium processor has8Kb of in-built cache. This can be furtherspeeded up by a secondary cache, typically256Kb. Part of your DRAM is often used tocache your hard disk.• ROM (Read-Only Memory) A type ofmemory which can only be read: you can’tmake changes to it as you can to RAM. It iscommonly used for things that will never needto be changed, such as the information thecomputer requires when you start it up.MMX (Multimedia extensions) (See Pentium)ModemThe word is a contracted version of“modulator/demodulator”, which means that amodem is a box (or, less commonly, anexpansion card) that lets your computer talkover phone lines to other computers.MonitorYour computer’s screen. Signals are sent to itfrom the video card. MotherboardThe main printed circuit board which housesprocessor, memory and other components.
NNetworkA network is a group of computers linkedtogether with cable. The most common form isa LAN (Local Area Network), where electronicmail and other files can be exchanged betweenusers without swapping floppy disks. Printers
Big, commercial ISPs are not cheap, but areeasy to use, with plenty of extra servicesthrown in: CompuServe 0800 289378; AOL0171 385 9404
Barebones service which is not for beginnersbut it does make your PC a full internet node inits own right: Demon 0181 371 1000
Another established service provider worthconsidering: Easynet 0171 209 0990
There are now over 100Internet Service Providers,
which makes selecting the right one a difficult task. Competitionbetween them is now so fierce that many Providers are happy to offera month’s free trial.
How to choosean ISP
PCW Recommended products
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p332
and other resources can beshared. All the PCs on a LAN areconnected to one server, which isa powerful PC with a large harddisk that can be shared byeveryone.
OOS (Operating System)The operating systemcommunicates with the hardwareand provides services and utilitiesto applications while they run,such as saving and retrieving files.
PPC Card Formerly PCMCIA. A standard toallow PCs, particularly notebooks,to be expanded using credit-cardsized cards. PDA (Personal DigitalAssistant)Small electronic organisers. ThePsion 3a is a typical example.PCI (See Local bus) PCMCIA (See PC cards)Package (See Application)Parallel portsUsed by your PC to communicatewith the outside world, usually viaa printer. Information can travel inparallel along a series of lines,making it faster than serial portswhich can only handle one pieceof information at a time.PentiumFast 32-bit processor with a built-in 16Kb cache. Now the standardon PCs. It is about to be replacedby the Pentium MMX chip whichhas extra instructions and a 32Kbcache. The Pentium Pro is ahigher end workstation CPU with256Kb cache meant for full 32-bitoperating systems such asWindows NT.PixelPicture element. The smallestaddressable dot displayed on amonitor. PowerPCThis family of RISC chips is theresult of a collaboration betweenIBM, Apple and Motorola. It is nowused in all Apple Macintoshcomputers and many IBMworkstations. ProcessorThe chip that does most of acomputer’s work.Programs (See Applications)Public domainSoftware that is absolutely free.The author usually retains thecopyright but you can make asmany copies as you want andpass them to other people. “Publicdomain” software is oftenconfused with “shareware”.
QQWERTYThe name of a standard English-language keyboard, derived fromthe first six letters in the top row.The French equivalent is AZERTY.
RRAM (Random AccessMemory) (See Memory)Reboot (see Boot)RISC (Reduced InstructionSet Computing)These are starting to replace CISC(Complex Instruction SetComputing), as they’re usuallyfaster. The PowerPC chip is atypical example.ROM (Read Only Memory)(See Memory)RTF (Rich Text Format) (SeeASCII)
SSCSISmall Computer System Interfaceis a bus that comes as standard ina Macintosh and is starting to rivalEIDE on PCs. Serial portSerial ports (com1 and com2) areused by your PC to communicatewith the outside world. Serialports are mostly used bymodems and similar deviceswhich communicate quite slowly. Faster communications areachieved via the parallel port.SharewareA method of distributing software.It is freely available, but not free-of-charge. You are honour-boundto pay a small fee to thesoftware’s developer if youcontinue to use the program aftera set period.SIMM (Single Inline MemoryModule)The standard modules for memoryexpansion on PCs. Older 30-pinSIMMs have now been replacedby the 72-pin variety available incapacities up to 16Mb.
TTape streamerMagnetic tape recorder forbacking up data from a hard disk.
U/VUART (UniversalAsynchronous ReceiverTransmitter)Pronounced “you-art”. A chip thatallows your PC to cope with high-speed communications. (…Glossary continued on p334)
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• Cheap lasers Epson EPL-5500: Epson 0800220546; street price £300 (see PCW February1996)
• Sub-£750 lasers Hewlett-Packard 5P:Hewlett-Packard 01344 369222 (see PCWNovember 1995)
• Network lasers Hewlett-Packard 5P:Hewlett-Packard 01344 369222 (see PCWFebruary 1996)
Brother HL 730: Brother 0161 330 6531. £270.
Sharp JX 9210: Sharp 01753 819819. £209. (see PCW January 1997)
Buying aPrinter
Scanners are used to import text,graphics or pictures into a PC. Theyvary from low-cost hand scannersnot much bigger than a mouse, todrum scanners costing thousandsof pounds. The latter are designedto scan photographictransparencies to professionalstandards.
LasersMost office printers are lasers. They workmuch like photocopiers, and are cheap to runand print quickly. The disadvantage is thehigher initial cost and mono output. Laserprinters are available in all sizes and at allprices. Small desktop printers cost as little as£300. You can buy colour laser printers butthey are still expensive, typically £5,000 ormore.
Types of laserPCs print by sending a description of the pageto be printed down a printer cable. There arethree commonly-used page descriptionlanguages (PDLs): • PostScriptThis sends an outline in vector form (seeDrawing Software) to the printer where it israsterised (converted into dots) and printed tothe device’s best ability. PostScript is device-independent so the image looks the same on amonitor (75dpi), a laser printer (300dpi) andprofessional image-setter (2,400dpi).
• PCLThis stands for Printer Control Language, andit is Hewlett-Packard’s alternative toPostScript, licensed to many clone-printermanufacturers. Printers using this tend to becheaper than PostScript ones but output willvary from one machine to another, making itless suited to professional use.
• GDI (graphical device interface)These printers download the description ofyour page already used by Windows straightto your printer. They only work with Windowsbut are cheap and fast. They are only suitablefor a personal printer and will not work acrossa network.
There are two main types of printer: laser and inkjet.
Buying a Scanner
PCW Recommended products
PCW Recommended products
InkjetsInkjets work by spraying ink onto paper.There are still some mono inkjet printersavailable, but it is best to stick with a colourinkjet printer as the price difference isnegligible. They are cheap to buy but moreexpensive to run, and slower. Even cheapinkjets can print in good quality colour,especially on high-resolution paper.
HybridsFor home use and small offices, a hybrid couldbe the answer. They combine a printer, a faxmachine and copying capability in one unit.
Lexmark 2070: Lexmark 01628 481500; streetprice £280. (See PCW November 1996).
PCW Recommended products
Flatbed scannersThe most common type, costing from £300 to over £3,000. They arecapable of scanning colour pictures to a high standard. Most havetransparency adaptors as optional extras.
Document scannersA new category which aims to combine the reliability of flatbeds withspeed and portability. They’re intended for OCR and documentmanagement. Most will cope with photographs and some with colour,but it’s not their forté.
Document scanners
Visioneer PaperPort VX: ComputersUnlimited 0181 200 8282; street price£299. Logitech PageScan Colour: Logitech01344 894300; street price £299. Plustek PageReader 800: ScanDirect 01292 671676; street price£149 (PCW, March 1996).
• Budget — Umax Vista S6E: IMC 01344872800; street price £299 (PCW, Sept 1996).
PCW Recommended products
PCW Recommended products
You’ll need a modem to connect to the internet or anonline service, such as CompuServe or AOL, and also to send and receive email.
Buying aFaxModemModems are available in three formats: as PC cards to plug intonotebooks, as external boxes and as expansion cards. PC cardmodems cost the most and external modems cost slightly more thanexpansion cards.
Apart from the case and the external power supply, there’s oftenlittle difference between the internal and external versions of a modem.Most modems now have built-in fax capability, which means you canreceive faxes on your PC to view or print out. If you’re strapped forcash, a V32bis 14.4kb/sec modem is just about adequate, although
Check the amount ofmemory on the card. 2Mbis standard these days,1Mb is skimpy and 512Kbis barely usable. Better-
quality cards are likely to be fitted withVRAM (Video RAM). Also, check out the performance capability of thecard. Video cards come as 16-bit, 32-bit, 64-bit and even 128-bit: allyou need to know is that a large number of bits means fasterperformance and more colours.
The most important aspect of your video card, and the mostfrequently quoted feature, relates to the resolution which the cardsupports in Windows. This is measured in terms of the number of pixelsthat the card displays on screen. The absolute minimum these days is1,024 x 768 with a refresh rate of 70Hz.
A 2Mb card can display 16-bit colour (65,000 colours) at 1,024 x768 pixels. A 1Mb card can only manage 8-bit colour (256 colours) at1,024 x 768 pixels. To display 24-bit colour (16 million colours) at 1,024x 768 you’ll need 4Mb of memory.
The refresh rate (measured in hertz) is important, too. It representsthe number of frames displayed on-screen per second. A flickeringdisplay is very tiring to use.
Finally, find out whether your video card is “local bus” or not. Localbus is a type ofinterface whichconnects your videocard to themotherboard. It allowsthe memory in the cardto be addresseddirectly by the CPUwhich makes it a lotfaster than the standardISA interface.
No-nonsense Buyer’s Guide
Graphics cards
ATI Video Xpression: ATI Technologies 01235833666; around £175 (see Graphics Card grouptest, PCW June 1996 )
Matrox Millennium: Matrox 01793 441144 £150
VideoLogic GrafixStar 600: VideoLogic 01923260511 from about £150
The graphicscard sitsinside the PCand controls
the featureswhich thesoftware candisplays on themonitor.
PCW Recommended products
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Fax modems
• External — Hayes Accura 288 MessageModem Hayes 01252 775 577 street price
£145. (see PCW November 1996, December1996).
(900Kb/sec), with eight-speeds (1,200Kb/sec)becoming increasingly common. All figures are theoretical maximums. Buyersshould go for quad-speed or higher. There islittle to choose between models, but off-the-shelf supplies are frequently short. Internal IDEquads start at around £100 and six-speedsaround £130.
The first CD-ROM drives spun the disc at thesame speed as an audio CD and were calledsingle-speed, delivering a sustained datatransfer rate of 150Kb/sec. Double-speeddrives spun twice as fast, doubling the datatransfer to 300Kb/sec, and quad-speeds twice
as fast again, raisingthe transfer rate to
600Kb/sec. Six-speeds are the
standard
better to buy a V34 28.8kb/sec modem or oneof the new V34 Plus 33.6kb/sec modems.
Buying aCD-ROMDrive
PCW Recommended products
Just about the only things which vary on today’s CD-ROM drives are theirspeed and means of connection. The most common connection is IDE orEnhanced IDE (EIDE). It is possible to connect an IDE CD-ROM drive tomost existing IDE hard disk controllers. Older PCs may need a newer EIDEcontroller. IDE controllers are also found on many soundcards.
Glossary(contd. from p331)
V34 Plus, V34, V32bis A series of CCITT standards that definesmodem operations and error correction. Thereare more than 20, but the key ones are: • V32.bis, the standard for 14.4kb/secmodems.• V34, the standard for 28.8kb/sec modems(see Baud). • V34 Plus, the new standard for speeds upto 33.6kb/sec.VESA (See Local Bus)VGAVideo Graphics Array is the name given to apopular display. VGA graphics have 640pixels horizontally and 480 vertically, and candisplay 16 colours. SuperVGA (SVGA)graphics can display 800 x 600 or 1,024 x768 in as many colours as the memory inyour graphics card will allow: up to 16.4million, or true colour.VL-Bus (See Local Bus)VRAM (See Memory)
WWindows A GUI (Graphical User Interface) developed byMicrosoft. Windows is intended to makeprograms easier to use by giving them astandard, mouse-driven interface. • Windows 3.11 16-bit operating system.• Windows NT Robust, fully 32-bit operatingsystem from Microsoft. The latest, version 4.0,features a Windows 95 interface.• Windows 95 Major improvement toWindows 3.11, with a redesigned interface.Less prone to crashes and easier to use, butrequires more memory.WinsockShort for “sockets for Windows”. TheWinsock.dll is an extension for Windowswhich is necessary for connecting to TCP/IPnetworks. World wide webA service on the internet which uses specialsoftware called web browsers (Netscape andInternet Explorer are the two best-knownones) to give you access to pages ofinformation with text, pictures andmultimedia.WYSIWYGAn acronym for “What You See Is What YouGet”. What you see on the screen is exactlywhat you get when you print out your work.
ZZIF (Zero Insertion Force)Sockets which are used for large CPUs.Lifting a handle enables you to remove theprocessor.ZIPThe common standard for compressing filesso that they take up less space. Zipped fileshave the extension .zip and are compressedand decompressed using shareware utilitiessuch as Winzip and PKZIP.
CD-ROM drives
Teac CD56-E six-speed: fitted to many new PCsand costing around £85 Teac 01923 225235(PCW January 1996). The Goldstar 8X is a good eight-speed choice foraround £99 LG Electronics 01753 691 888(PCW August 1996).
PCW Recommended products
Buying a Graphics
Card
Some people claim not to see monitor flicker,but your brain does, resulting in fatigue andheadaches. A refresh rate of 70Hz or higher willproduce a flicker-free image on most monitors.
Interlacing also results in flicker. Always runin non-interlaced modes and ignore interlacedquotes. The resolution refers to the number ofdots (pixels) horizontally and vertically on-screen. Standard VGA mode runs at 640 x480 pixels, while other typical modes include800 x 600 and 1,024 x 768. The more pixels,the more you’ll be able tofit on screen, but
everything will be smaller andmay only be suitable on a larger screen. Gofor a 15in or 17in monitor capable of running aresolution of 1,024 x 768 non-interlaced at70Hz or higher. The visible area of mostmonitors (and TVs for that matter) is smallerthan the model implies: a 15in screen mayonly have a 14.5in visible area, and a 17in mayhave only 16in visible.
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Check compatibility with your CD-ROM drive,and remember that 16-bit cards capable of
44KHz provide higher-quality sound thanslower 8-bit cards. Better soundcards now
include wavetable synthesis which meansthey have samples of real instruments
held in ROM. The quality of wavetable synthesis still
varies widely. Even cheap cardswhich have the inferior FrequencyModulation synthesis should have a
daughterboard connector allowingthem to be upgraded to wavetable. Thenewer cards are also plug and play which
means, in theory, that you should be able toplug them straight into a PC without any extraconfiguration. Most cards are bundled withextra software, normally sequencers, waveeditors and audio players.
Buying a SoundCard
You need one of these to add sound capability to your PC.
AWE-32: Creative Labs 01245 265265; £199(PCW, April 1996).
Aztech SoundGalaxy Waverider Pro: Aztech01734 814121; £79 (PCW, April 1996).
PCW Recommended products
Regardless of your computer application, you’ll be looking atyour monitor all day, so make sure you get a good one.
Buying aMonitor
• For a 15in screen: try the CTX 1569MS (around£300) or the NEC M500 multimedia CTX 01923818461 NEC 0181 993 8111 (around £410 onthe street).
• At 17ins there’s the Sony 17sfII or the TaxanErgovision 730TCO-S at around £500 Taxan01344 484646 (PCW July 1996).
PCW Recommended products
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Category Product Supplier Contact Price (ex VAT) Date of PCW review
A Accounts Lakeview LM3 Lakeview Computers 0181 303 3329 £8,750 Jan 1996
Accounts Exchequor SBS Financial Systems 01202 298008 £5,980 Jan 1996
B Browsers Netscape Navigator Netscape 0181 564 5100 £49 Mar 1997
Browsers Internet Explorer Microsoft 0345 002000 Free Jun 1996
C CAD Microstation Bentley 001344 412 233 £3,495 Jan 1997
CAD DesignCAD 3D BVG 01874 611 633 £149.95 Jan 1997
D Database Approach Lotus 01784 455445 £99 Nov 1996
Database Access Microsoft 0345 002000 £220 Nov 1996
R Remote control Reachout Stac Electronics 01483 740763 £110 Nov 1995
S Spreadsheet Excel Microsoft 0345 002000 £220 May 1995
Spreadsheet 1-2-3 Lotus 01784 455445 £365 May 1995
Suite Office (Standard) Microsoft 0345 002000 £360 Mar/Dec 1996
Suite Office (Professional) Microsoft 0345 002000 £460 Mar/Dec 1996
W Web authoring HoTMetal Pro SoftQuad 0181 236 1001 £99 Oct 1996
Web authoring Fusion NetObjects (US) 415-482 3297 (US$695) Jan 1997
Word processing Word Microsoft 0345 002000 £220 Oct 1996
Word processing WordPro (AmiPro) Lotus 01784 455445 £99 Oct 1996
A-Z of Recommended Software Products
marketing campaign.Recommended products: SuperProject 4.0for Windows
R REMOTE CONTROL SOFTWARE Softwarewhich lets you access and control a PCremotely, usually by using a modem.Recommended products: ReachOut, for itssimple interface and support for differentnetworks, particularly TCP/IP.
S SPREADSHEET An electronic version of anold-fashioned ledger.Excellent graphing andcharting facilities are included nowadays.Recommended products: Lotus 1-2-3,Microsoft Excel. SUITES Most general business software(word processors, spreadsheets, presentation
graphics packages) is now sold in suites. Two suites are widely available: Lotus
SmartSuite and Microsoft Office. LotusSmartSuite also contains a database.
For Microsoft Office, you pay extra for OfficeProfessional which contains Microsoft’sAccess database.Recommended product: Microsoft Office isclose to the industry standard. Its high level ofintegration gives it the edge over the opposition.
V VISUAL PROGRAMMING (see ProgrammingTools).
W WEB EDITORS Programs designed to do forweb page design what DTP did for magazinesand newsletters. They allow you to create webpages without manually writing HTML. You can
also incorporate graphics, backgrounds,tables, images and sounds into web pages.Recommended products: HotMetal Pro 3.0is our first choice. Adobe Pagemill is a capablealternative.
WORD PROCESSOR An application inwhich you can write letters and preparereports, or even produce a simple newsletter.
The latest word processors have advancedfeatures such as outliners, table editors andfacilities for adding columns of figures.Recommended products: Microsoft Word isthe clear market leader. WordPro (formerlyAmiPro) is a capable alternative.
If you want to obtain any of the reviewslisted and do not have the original issues,order PCW on CD-ROM. It costs just £9.95(including postage and packing). See pages 20/21.
338 • Personal Computer World • April 1997
No-nonsense Buyer’s Guide
Software A-Z
A ACCOUNTS SOFTWARE Oneof the few categories in whichthere are still masses of packageson the market at a huge range ofdifferent prices. Accounts is alsoone of the last bastions of DOS. Recommended products:Lakeview LMS and Exchequorfrom SBS Systems.
B BROWSER Programs used tonavigate the internet. A modernbrowser lets you navigate webpages, download files and sendand receive email.Recommended products: Thereare only two worth talking about:Netscape Navigator and MSInternet Explorer.
C CAD SOFTWARE ComputerAided Design covers everythingfrom architectural drawingsthrough office planning tocomplex engineering drawings. Recommended products:AutoCAD is the industry standardbut we think MicroStation 95 is amore capable product at the highend. At the cheap end,DesignCAD 3D offers astonishingvalue for money.
CONTACT MANAGERS (seePIMs)
D DATABASE At its simplest, anelectronic card index. For just afew hundred names andaddresses, an electronic-typeFilofax such as Lotus Organizermay be more appropriate. But formore sophisticated applicationslike tracking products andcustomers, the power of arelational database is required.Databases are generally the leastuser-friendly of the main suite
applications. In most offices youare likely to use a databaseapplication that somebody elsehas written for you.Recommended products: LotusApproach, Microsoft Access.
DESKTOP PUBLISHINGSOFTWARE (DTP) This issoftware used to createnewsletters, magazines, books,brochures or adverts.
Typically, it allows you toincorporate graphics, lay out textin multiple columns and to runtext around graphics. You alsohave control over how textappears including the leading(pronounced ledding) which is thespace between lines of text andkerning, which is the spacebetween individual letters.Recommended products: Thehigh-end market leader is QuarkXpress on Macintosh. On the PC,Pagemaker is strong. For seriouswork on a budget werecommend Serif Publishing Suiteand for sheer ease-of-useMicrosoft Publisher.
DRAWING SOFTWAREPrograms for drawing, that workusing vectors. This means eachshape drawn is described usingmathematical equations.Recommended products: Atthe budget end, GSPDesignworks 3 stands out. At theprofessional end of things,FreeHand 5 gets our plaudits.
I IMAGE EDITING SOFTWARE Aprogram for editing bitmap files(files made up of pixels). Typicallyused for converting graphicsfiles, retouching photographsand preparing pictures forprinting.Recommended products: Forsimple image editing the popularshareware program PaintshopPro is fine. For professionals,Adobe’s Photoshop is theindustry standard.
INTEGRATED PACKAGESTypically these combine thefunctionality of a database, wordprocessor and spreadsheet inone application. This makes iteasy to move data from onecomponent to another, butintegrated packages tend to lacksome of the advanced features ofindividual applications.Recommended product:Microsoft Works.
MULTIMEDIA AUTHORINGTOOLS Programs designed forproducing interactive multimediaapplications, typically for trainingapplications or for CD-ROMs. Thesoftware lets you control andmanipulate different types ofmedia like sound files, audio files,video clips and graphic files.Recommended product:Macromedia Director, the productused to produce PCW’s cover-mounted CD-ROM, gets our vote.
O OCR SOFTWARE OpticalCharacter Recognition softwareconverts printed text intocomputer text you can edit. Youwill also need a scanner or faxcard to get the printed text ontoyour PC. OCR saves re-keyingdocuments and can cut downdrastically on paper filingsystems. Recommended products:Omnipage is the best product wehave found, but TextBridge offersmost of the same capabilities forless cash.
P PERSONAL INFORMATIONMANAGERS (PIMs) PIMs are anelectronic way of storing names,addresses, phone numbers andappointments. Contact managerstake the idea one step further toinclude business informationabout dealings with clients.Recommended products:Sidekick 95 and Organizer are
excellent PIMs. For contactmanagers we recommendGoldmine for Windows.
PRESENTATION GRAPHICSIncreasingly the trend is towardsdoing presentations on a PC andthe latest packages tackle this byincluding sound, sophisticatedtransitions between slides andsupport for video clips.Recommended products:Powerpoint and FreeHand areboth capable products sold withMicrosoft Office and SmartSuiterespectively.
PROGRAMMING TOOLSApplications designed for writingsoftware. These range from “low-level” languages which arepowerful but difficult to learn anduse, to “high-level” languageswhich, although much easier touse, generally sacrificeperformance and flexibility in theprocess.
Commercial programs likeWord for Windows are writtenusing low level languages.Bespoke applications andprototypes are often written usingDelphi or Visual Basic.Recommended products:Delphi 2.0 is a great example ofscalability, catering for beginnersand serious developers workingon major projects. Visual C++ isthe pick of the high-end Windowsdevelopment tools.
PERSONAL FINANCEPACKAGES These help youmanage home finances. They’realso well-suited to some smallbusinesses and tend to be easierto use than full-blown accountspackages.Recommended product:Quicken is the outstandingproduct in this category and hasno serious rivals.
PROJECT MANAGEMENTPrograms for managing largeprojects. Anything from building apower station to planning a
Only a few years ago there were dozens of different softwareapplications in each category. During the last two years or so,however, there has been rapid product consolidation. Other
magazines list large numbers of packages, most of which are out of date and not worth considering. We’ve distilled eachcategory down to just one or two
recommended products.
BuyingSoftware
p 5 0 6
N e w sS c re e n p l a y
L e i s u reL i n e s S c re e n p l a y
L e i s u reL i n e s
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Personal Computer World • April 1997 • 505504 • Personal Computer World • April 1997
Tomb R a i d e romb Raider is a3D game with ar e f r e s h i n g
difference: you are LaraCroft, a hard-edged femaleversion of Indiana Jones.Your mission is to penetratean ancient tomb to retrievethe mystical Scion.
Your journey starts in theCaves where you encountershooting wall-darts, nastyattack-bats and viciouswolves. Luckily you’repacking two Colt .45s, soyou can blast your way outof some tough scrapes. You’ll need to huntaround for special items, door keys, betterweapons and secret chambers.
As you progress through the tomb tohigher levels, like the City of Vilcabamba,
you’ll need to sharpen your skills andpractice your breast-stroke — Lara has todo a lot of swimming here. The higher yougo the more dangers you find, likeprehistoric dinosaurs with big appetites.
The most unique feature of the game isLara’s zoom-around camera viewpoint.This aspect of the game is brilliant. As youmake her walk, run, jump and swim, it feelsas if you were following her with a hand-held video camera. But you’ll need a lot ofPentium power to get the most out of thegame. It ran fine on a Pentium 150MHz with32Mb RAM, but it struggled somewhat on aPentium 120MHz with 32Mb RAM.
Dylan Armbrust
CYAN•MAGENTA•YELLOW•BLACK PERSONAL COMPUTER WORLD
1 Cool Boarders Sony PlayStation
2 Destruction Derby 2 Psygnosis PlayStation
3 Command & Conquer: Red Alert Virgin PC CD-ROM
4 Victory Boxing Virgin PlayStation
5 Die Hard Trilogy EA PlayStation
6 Tomb Raider Eidos PlayStation
7 Tomb Raider Eidos PC CD-ROM
8 Championship Manager 2: Double Pack Eidos PC CD-ROM
9 Dark Forces: White Label Virgin PC CD-ROM
10 Soviet Strike EA PlayStation
11 Diablo Ablac PC CD-ROM
12 Flying Corps Empire PC CD-ROM
13 Secret of Monkey Island 1&2: White Label Virgin PC CD-ROM
14 FIFA ‘97 EA PlayStation
15 Sega Rally Sega PC CD-ROM
16 Tekken 2 Namco PlayStation
17 Tie Fighter: White Label Virgin PC CD-ROM
18 Command & Conquer Virgin PlayStation
19 NBA Live ‘97 EA PC CD-ROM
20 Worms United Ocean PC CD-ROM
C h a rt s
T
P r i c e £ 3 9 . 9 9
C o n t a c t Eidos Interactive 0181 780 2222
System Requirements MSDOS 5.0 or higher, orWindows 95, Pentium 60MHz (Pentium 90recommended), 8Mb RAM, 20Mb disk space,dual-speed CD-ROM, SVGA graphics card, 16-bit sound card.
Details
Join the Brylcreem boys and hunt the Hun in this accurate WWI dog-fight simulation, what!
t first sight, thisWWI flyingsimulation looks
the business: plenty ofdashing mustachioed heroesleaping into their crates andyelling “Chocks away! Let’sget this kite into the air!”. Butthe reality of life as a fighterpilot was grim, so FlyingCorps’ raison d’être i srealism: attention to detail, authentic aircraftperformance and accurate landscapes arerecreated, and different levels of flying skillsare available.
The landscape detail is impressive, butwhen running on a 133MHz Pentium with32Mb RAM it is a little jerky andoccasionally the action stops completely fora second or two, which is particularlyannoying if you are in the middle of adogfight. You can take any of six aircraft for
a spin and engage in four campaigns: twoas a German and two as an Allied flier.There are opportunities to command yourown squadron, formations and tactics. Themanuals do a superb job of setting thescene for the campaigns and are full ofinteresting historical information as well asadvice from pilots who flew during the war.
Flying and landing the planes is fairlyeasy, but navigating and fighting otheraircraft can be tricky. Attention to detail is
impressive, but it takes a lot of time to learnthe basics before you can do anythingworthwhile. The manual recommendsclimbing to several thousand feet andspending time familiarising yourself with theFrench landscape; not my idea of a goodtime. If you’re a dedicated flight-sim fanyou’ll get a lot from this game. Others maybe put off by the amount of effort involved.
Adam Evans
P r i c e £ 4 4 . 9 5
C o n t a c t Empire Interactive 0181 343 9143
System Requirements 90MHz Pentium (133MHzrecommended with 512Kb secondary cache),16Mb RAM, 5Mb hard disk space (20Mbrecommended), four-speed CD-ROM drive. Runsunder Windows 95 and DOS.
Details
A
3D thrills, with a feisty female hero fighting her way through fiends and foes. Great viewpoints.
F l y i n g C o r p s
Lara is one tough lady you wouldn’t want to double-cross!
Got to shake that cunning Fokker off my tail
If you have ever had the urge to be ahospital administrator, then Theme
Hospital, the successor to the 1.5 millionselling Theme Park, could be just what thedoctor ordered.
As an administrator, you must design,build and run your hospital in the mostprofitable and efficient way possible. If youfind you have unhappy patients, why notcheer them up with strategically placedplants? Or you can put a drinks machine inthe holding room for patients waiting fortreatment. Don’t forget to build thosetoilets, though…
The better you do, the higher up thecareer ladder you go until you are the besthospital administrator around.
Europress has re-released threesuccessful titles in a three-game bundle
called Total Insanity. For £49.99 you getEuropress’ Rally Championship,
Grolier Interactive has announced theforthcoming release of Banzi Bug, its
new, quirky 3D flying game. Banzi is theyoung, hip hero who’s trapped in a housefull of crazy characters, ranging from a lustyspider to nasty fly-killing humans. As Banzi,your job will be to fly around the house andsurvive all the trials and tribulations thatcome your way. The game incorporatesMicrosoft’s DirectX technology and will beavailable for Windows 95 in mid-April. Price: £29.99 Contact: Grolier Interactive 01865 264800
D o c t o r ’s ord e r s
C re e p yc r a w l i e s
T h re e ’s company
T h e m eHospital isdesigned to runon any PC froma 486/50MHzwith low-r e s o l u t i o nmonitor to anynew PC withstandard high-r e s o l u t i o nmonitor. It will bereleased on 31st March. B u l l f r o gP r o d u c t i o n s01483 579399
Microprose’s Star Trek — The NextGeneration: A Final Unity, and ElectronicArts’ PGA European Tour. Europress 01625 859333
f you want to bein charge ofmighty armies
and rule the galaxy, one ofthe most successful gamesand one of the better titlesin this genre is Master ofOrion. And now, the long-awaited sequel, Master ofOrion 2 — Battle atAntares (or MOO2) is here.
It boasts SVGAgraphics, multi-playeroptions and works underWin95 and DOS, but lacksthe multimedia pizzazz ofcontemporary games.There are almost no video clips. The battlesequences are visually unappealing and thesound effects and music quickly becomemonotonous. Nevertheless, MOO2 offersnew options at almost every level. Some,
like multiple colonisable planets at each staron the map, seem to add complexitywithout helping the gameplay, yet othershave clearly been added after much testingand feedback from gamers. For instance, in
the original game you could amass hugestarfleets, which made it hard to keep trackof all your ships, and the battles were ratherimpersonal. Now ships cost more and thereare strict limits to the number an empirecan control, so losing even one battleshipcan be a serious blow.
Even with greatly improved online help itcan take weeks of play before you feel youhave mastered it. But if you’re after a realchallenge, few games can match MOO2.
David Brake
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L i n e s
his nice little video game wouldmake an ideal gift for children.The colours are bright and
cheerful, Woody’s comical expressionsand gesticulations revive both thecharacter and the story, and the screen isfull of exciting toys.
It is easy to install and the task of gettingto the top (seventeenth) level becomesincreasingly difficult yet neverunmanageable. It’s a good game topromote skills development, as each newlevel demands a higher degree ofconcentration and a new trick in order tocrack it. The manual offers hints butprogress depends on your ownobservation, curiosity and co-ordination.The tasks are fun and range from dodging,to combat, to steering “RC Car”: not toodifficult, but some persistence is needed.
I appreciated the level of choiceavailable: if you are stuck it’s nice to have
alternatives suchas higher shelvesto explore ordifferent escape actions to use. Althoughthe story screen beginning each level setsthe scene well, it lasts nearly two minutes:thankfully you can turn it off before makingsuccessive attempts at the same level.
The sound effects are fun. My favouriteis the tinkly sound emitted when Woodynabs those omnipresent little gold stars. Iwould have liked more audio expression ofhis many deaths, though. He gets savagedby sharks and bumped off (literally) byclowns, but the game doesn’t providedifferent sounds for these events.
Toy Story would appeal to the eight- totwelve-year-olds who still take toys and
picture-book adventures seriously, and canconcentrate enough to become engrossedin the gameplay.
Sinéad Carew
To y S t o ryWoody & Co. in a charming children’s game.
T
Price £34.99 (Incl VAT)
Contact Disney Interactive 0171 341 5505
System Requirements DOS 3.3 or higher,Microsoft Windows 3.1 or 95, 8Mb hard diskspace, 8Mb RAM (16Mb recommended), 8-bitsoundcard (16-bit recommended), VGA graphicsadaptor, double-speed CD-ROM, gamepad orj o y s t i c k .
Details
M a s t e r of Orion 2I
More megalomaniac mastery of the galaxy in this challenging sequel to Master of Orion.
Price £ 3 4 . 9 9
C o n t a c t Microprose 01454 893893
System Requirements 486/DX100 or better(Pentium recommended), 8Mb of RAM (16Mb withWindows 95 recommended), double-speed CD-ROM, 75Mb of free HD space, SVGA graphicscard, 16-bit sound card.
DetailsYou are controlling the fate of the galaxy, so don’t spend all your
money in one place
Come on, Mr. Potato
Head — have a go on
the bouncy ball!
CYAN•MAGENTA•YELLOW•BLACK PERSONAL COMPUTER WORLD
508 • Personal Computer World • April 1997
R e t roL e i s u re
L i n e s
n June 1982, with the boldheadline “World Exclusive: ZXSpectrum. We Benchtest
Sinclair’s new 16k colour micro”, PCWbroke a news item that was so momentousour cover illustration had to be re-shot — a chimpanzee with an artist’s palettereplaced a man parachuting with a Sharppocket computer. The chimp was chosenas a follow-on from the ZX-81 cover thathad featured a similar simian. The colourpalette was chosen because, back then,colour was still a pretty new feature for asmall computer.
The hype was understandable because,at the time, the Spectrum was probably themost important computer ever launched inthe UK. The BBC Micro might have been aplanned attempt to make the countrycomputer literate, but it was the Spectrumwhich succeeded. In 1982,more people were programmingin bedrooms than today.
The price was a lot less thanwe would expect to pay for acomputer now: £125 for the16K model and £175 for the onewith lots of memory, i.e. 48K! Inyears to come, Alan Sugar wasto refer to it as a “pregnantcalculator” but in 1982 it wasvery special. The size of ahardback book but not asheavy, it broke new ground forSinclair by having actual press-down keys on the keyboard.
The original P C W r e v i e wpraised the Spectrum for havingall the possible signals on theedge connector. This may havebeen a result of Sinclair notknowing what would be needed,but it was wonderful for all thosethird-party programmers whogrew up around the machine.Many fortunes were made frombuilding add-ons for theS p e c t r u m .
I’ve heard it said that if everycomponent in a Spectrum only
just worked to its specification, the machinewould have failed: it relied on componentsbeing better than the manufacturersguaranteed. The Uncommitted Logic Array(ULA) certainly became very hot on themachine David Tebbutt tested 15 yearsago. He also noted that the keyboard, withits multitude of functions on each key, wasconfusing and you had to look at prettymuch every key to find the one you wanted.
For the day, the graphics were great. Aresolution of 176 x 256 pixels was offeredalthough colours were limited to the sameresolution as text, with 24 lines of 32characters, so graphics were best limited tomonochrome. There was a choice of eightcolours, which was seen as being veryspecial. In addition to the software, whichallowed lines to be drawn from one point toanother, the Spectrum offered user-defined
graphics. So, if your game didn’t use the %symbol but did need a picture of a bomb oran alien craft, you could define one of yourown within the 8 x 8 grid of a letter. All thiscould be done using the Basicprogramming language.
The review praised the machine forhaving a comprehensive Basic interpreter.It’s something of a backward step thatmachines no longer come with aprogramming language as standard. Backthen it was assumed that you’d beprogramming, and the strict program editorwhich inserted spaces was good forencouraging proper style.
The delays between launch and deliverywere part of the Sinclair legend; in part, theadvance payments for machines financedthe production engineering and this led tomuch bad feeling. The result was a huge
pent-up demand for softwarewhen the machines did arrive.
One of my favourite Sinclairanecdotes involves AndrewGlaister. He wrote the programfor the game Orbiter on paper,using only gleaned information,while waiting for the machine tobe delivered. When his earlySpectrum arrived he typed in hismachine code program butcouldn’t figure out how to dosound from Assembler, so eachtime an alien was shot or anexplosion was needed, theprogram popped back intoBasic and played theappropriate sound. It was goodenough, and the game soldthousands of copies.
For all its praise, the reviewwas realistic enough to point outthat the Spectrum was a homemachine designed for plugginginto a TV. This was long beforethe advent of disk drives thathelped make PCs useful formany other things, but in thosedays it was perfect for justmonkeying around.
A rainbow w a r r i o r
I
Simon Rockman remembers the colourful advent of the ZXSpectrum, then the most important computer launch in the UK.
Oil giveawayNearly all the oil pumped out of the BritishIsles has been during a Conservativegovernment. It started flowing in bigquantities in 1976. Since 1979 we’ve used7.5 thousand million tonnes. That’s 75,000supertankers (gone forever).
While we burned off that vast treasure,taxation on the resource was reduced. Thosepumping the oil, mostly foreign-ownedtransnationals, are paying less than half theroyalties they were when this governmentcame to power, when consumption andprices were comparable (£6,000ma d j u s t e d / £ 2 , 3 0 0 m ) . The tax picture isstrange. Individuals on average earningspay over thirty percent of their profits in taxand National Insurance. Companiespumping out British oil and gas are meantto pay about the same, but actually payabout 6.5 percent on their gross profits.
If those so-called global companiesactually paid the same rate as most peoplein Britain on a typical year’s profits of £13thousand million, it would add £4 thousandmillion a year to national revenue. This
corrupt canton of Vaud. British money’ssunny place is the Cayman Islands, whichis much smaller than the Isle of Wight, withone-fifth its population. Its residents areBritish subjects but not payers of UK tax.Cayman Islands has 546 banks, over twiceas many as London (213). Along with theBritish Virgin Islands, it has the offices of100,000 companies. Compared with morethan a million UK companies, that’s aboutone-in-ten for each company registered inBritain, and so British taxes are avoided.
Be sure the pence-in-the-poundtaxation debate in the British generalelection is of minimum concern to personsusing these financial facilities in the sun. Source: HM Treasury/Cayman IslandsHigh Commission. Nominee tax-avoidanceand money-laundering companies lodged inthe Virgin Islands, 65,000: in the CaymanIslands, 34,000; BBC News & CurrentAffairs. Tax dodgers form 10,000 secretcompanies a year in the British Virgin Islands.Secret companies registered in the VirginIslands in 1986, 5,000: in 1992, 6 5 , 0 0 0 .
would exceed the annual revenues from theNational Lottery, by more than three times. Source: Gross oil and gas production half-year profits: £6.584 billion (£13.168bn pa).Deductions allowed before taxation: £5.952billion (£11.904bn pa). Tax paid: £424 million(£848m pa). Inland Revenue (June-Dec 94).Lottery contribution last year: £1.2bn.
Sunny places for shady peopleWe hear a lot about social security fraud,but we hear little about tax evasion by UKbusinesses, a practice which multiplied 16times in value in a decade.
A circular promoting a City conferenceoffers to tell Britain’s 100,000 accountantsabout methods of “getting the taxman topay the mortgage”. Then there’s the never-never land of cyberspace, brought to us bycomputerisation. It was recently revealedthat News Corporation paid little UK tax. Inbureaucracies you can pass the buck andavoid not only taxes, but responsibility too.
Clever directors have their money-laundry abroad: the Isle of Man, Jersey,Gibraltar, Luxembourg and Switzerland’s
CYAN•MAGENTA•YELLOW•BLACK PERSONAL COMPUTER WORLD
Personal Computer World • April 1997 • 509
Brainteasers /C o m p u t a t i o n s
L e i s u reL i n e s
Q u i c k i eThe idea for this Quickie came to me onNew Year’s Eve. If a missile were launchedat midnight on 31st December 1996 and ittravelled towards the sun at a constantspeed of one mile per second, would it getthere before the millennium, January 2000,assuming it didn’t burn up and that it couldget beyond the earth’s gravity?
This Month’s Prize PuzzleWhen I was a boy, I had a toy whichconsisted of a series of hollow open-endedcubes of increasing size which fitted insideeach other, in much the same way asRussian Dolls do. The side of each cubewas an exact number of centimetres withthe edge of each successive cube beingone centimetre larger than its immediatepredecessor. You could use them asbuilding blocks and they could be storedaway in the toy cupboard in the spacerequired by the largest box only.
The toy was called “The (n+1) Cubes” (I won’t tell you what n was) and I couldnever understand why, since there were onlyn cubes. I thought one must have beenmissing, but it wasn’t until later when Ibecame interested in mathematical puzzlesthat I realised where the (n+1)th cube cameinto it. The sum of the volumes in cubiccentimetres of all the boxes was itself a
perfect cube! I can’t remember thedimensions of my boxes, but I do recallthere were two ways in which that number(n) of boxes could have been produced tomeet the stated requirement.
How many boxes were in the set? Forthe benefit of any pedants that mightattempt this problem, my toy cupboard wasjust an ordinary cupboard and not anaircraft hangar! Send the solution to: P C WPrize Puzzle April 1997, P.O. Box 99,Harrogate, N. Yorks HG2 0XJ, to arrive notlater than 20th April 1997.
Winner of Jan ‘97 Prize PuzzleAs usual with the annual number puzzle, wewere swamped with entries. The winningcard, chosen at random, came from Mr M Mitchell of Winchester who gets ourcongratulations now and a prize shortly.The winning solution is shown. Meanwhile,keep trying, you could be the next winner.
JJ Clessa
B r a i n t e a s e r s
C o m p u t a t i o n s
Rowland Morgan
Competition LeisureLines
CYAN•MAGENTA•YELLOW•BLACK PERSONAL COMPUTER WORLD
Personal Computer World • April 1997 • 513
Win a Panther P166+ooking for a new pet? Thinkingof getting that cute little kitten?Well, why not go for a Panther?
In this month’s PCW competition we havetwo to give away. Roldec is offering twocomplete Panther multimedia P166+ PCsas top prizes.
The Panther 166+, worth £923, is theperfect high-performance PC for home oroffice. With a Cyrix P166+ processor,16Mb RAM, 512Kb cache, eight-speedCD-ROM, 1.2Gb hard drive, 16-bit soundcard, 128-bit graphics card and 14inmonitor, you won’t have any trouble runningthat accounting package or blasting yourway through a cyber-galaxy.
There’s plenty of expansion space ifyou have the urge to upgrade. Withthree PCI slots, four ISA slots (oneshared, one PCI populated) you’llhave plenty of room to fit in amodem card, TV tuner add-on orwhatever you please.
But that’s not the wholepackage. Roldec is also including atwo-year return-to-base warranty for partsand labour plus an additional three yearswarranty for labour. So you’ll be able to resteasy regarding those “just in case” thoughts.
If you want a chance to win a Panther,here’s where you can do it.
All you have to do is enter this month’scompetition, either by post or through ourweb site, and the Panther could be yours.
Just spot the ball in the photographbelow. Please do not mark a cross — justtell us what the grid co-ordinates are.
L
How to enterSend your grid co-ordinates, with yourname, address, and daytime telephonenumber, to: PCW April Competition,P.O. Box 11312, London WC2H 0DJ.Alternatively, enter the competition viaour web site at www.pcw.vnu.co.uk.Please do not send direct email.Entries must arrive by 18th April 1997.
If you do not wish to receivepromotional material from companiesother than VNU Business Publications,please say so on your competition entry.
Rules of entryThis competition is open to readers of Personal Computer World,except for employees and their families of VNU BusinessPublications and Roldec. The Editor of Personal Computer World isthe sole judge of the competition and his decision is final. No cashalternative is available in lieu of prizes.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
P CS Y S T E M S
P CD e s k t o p s
Adams Technology 1 8 7 / 9
A p r i c o t 1 1 1 / 3
Alternatives 1 3 2 / 3
Atlantic Systems 1 3 6 , 1 4 1 / 1 4 3
Byte Direct 3 9 9 / 4 0 3
Carrera Technology 2 9 2 / 3
CD Revolution 1 8 0 / 1
Choice Systems 1 9 2
Colossus Computer 2 4 3 / 2 4 6
C o m p a q 52/3, 60/1
Computer Trading 3 9 3 / 5
Dabs Direct 4 8
Dan Technology 22/25, 341/5
Dell 5 , 7
Edge Technology 5 1 6
Evesham Micros 4 2 1 / 4 2 7
Fox Computers 374, 376/7
Hi-Grade 279, 303
HM Systems 2 3 4
L o c l a n d 1 5 4 / 5
Memory Bank 4 2 8 / 9
MESH Computers 65, 122/125
Micrology 3 1 7
Microsave 3 6 2
MJN Technology 1 6 9 / 1 7 4
M o r g a n 3 7
Opus 2 1 1 / 2 1 5
P a n r i x 1 4 6 / 7
Paragon Computers 3 9 2
PC Zone 2 8 9
PC World 206/7, 320/1
P o w e r m a r k 4 2 8 / 9
Purple Computers 5 1 0 / 1 1
Roldec 3 6 9 / 3 7 3
Stak Trading 3 7 5
Sterling Management Systems 5 1 2
Tech Direct 4 9 4 / 4 9 9
Technomatic 4 3 0 / 4 7 7
Time Computer Systems 386/7, 79/493
Tiny Computers 4 0 5 / 4 1 1
T o u c h e 2 9 7
Universal Control Systems 8 4 / 3 8 5
Viglen 5 2 4
Watford Electronics 4 2 8 / 9
PC Notebooks
A c e r 5 8
A J P 350/1, 514
ACI/BKPW 3 4 0
Adams Technology 1 8 7 / 1 8 9
Alternatives 1 3 2 / 1 3 3
Carrera Technology 2 9 2 / 2 9 3
CD Revolution 1 8 0 / 1
Choice Systems 192, 390/1
Collosus Computer 2 4 3 - 2 4 6
C o m p a q 52/3, 60/1
DabsDirect 4 2 8 / 9
Evesham Micros 4 1 2 / 4 2 7
Fox Computers 374, 376/7
Gateway 2000 1 0 0 / 1 0 1
Gultronics 3 6 3
L o c l a n d 1 5 4 / 5
Memory Bank 4 2 8 / 9
M i c r o l o g y 3 1 7
Microsave 3 6 2
Mitac Europe 1 9 9 / 1 9 9
Watford Electronics 4 2 8 / 9
Monitors
ADI Technology 187/9, 130
Alternatives 1 3 2 / 3
Atlantic Systems 1 3 6 , 1 4 1 / 1 4 3
Choice Systems 1 9 2 , 3 9 0 / 1
Computer Trading 3 9 3 / 5
Evesham Micros 4 1 2 / 2 7
Fox Computers 3 7 4 , 3 7 6 / 7
H i t a c h i 4 6
Iiyama 5 6 / 7
Memory Bank 4 2 8 / 9
Micrology 3 1 7
Morgan Industries 3 7
Novatech 3 5 4 / 3 6 1
PC World 2 0 6 / 7 , 3 2 0 / 1
Powermark 4 2 8 / 9
R o l d e c 3 6 9 / 3 7 3
SMC Computers 4 2 8 / 9
Stak Trading 1 5 2 , 3 7 5
Taxan 8 7
Tech Direct 4 9 4 / 4 9 9
Technomatic 4 3 0 / 7 7
V i e w s o n i c 9 6
Viglen 5 2 4
Watford Electronics 4 2 8 / 9
Input Devices
Fox Computers 3 7 4 , 3 7 6 / 7
Memory Bank 4 2 8 / 9
Novatech 3 5 4 / 3 6 1
Pico Direct 3 8 0 / 1
Powermark 4 2 8 / 9
Roldec 3 6 9 / 3 7 3
SMC Computers 4 2 8 / 9
Stak Trading 1 5 2 , 3 7 5
Technomatic 4 3 0 / 7 7
Universal Control Systems 3 8 4 / 5
Visioneer 1 1 9
Watford Electronics 4 2 8 / 9
P C M C I A
Fox Computers 3 7 4 , 3 7 6 / 7
Memory Bank 4 2 8 / 9
M i c r o l o g y 3 1 7
Novatech 3 5 4 / 3 6 1
Pico Direct 3 8 0 / 1
P o w e r m a r k 4 2 8 / 9
Roldec 3 6 9 / 3 7 3
SMC Computers 4 2 8 / 9
Stak Trading 1 5 2 / 3 7 5
Tech Direct 4 9 4 / 4 9 9
Technomatic 4 3 0 / 7 7
Universal Control Systems 3 8 4 / 5
Floppy Drives
Atlantic Systems 1 3 6 , 1 4 1 / 1 4 3
Choice Systems 1 9 2 , 3 9 0 / 1
Computer Trading 3 9 3 / 5
Evesham Micros 4 1 2 / 2 7
Fox Computers 3 7 4 , 3 7 6 / 7
Memory Bank 4 2 8 / 9
Novatech 3 5 4 / 3 6 1
Powermark 4 2 8 / 9
Roldec 3 6 9 / 3 7 3
MJN Technology 1 6 9 / 1 7 4
Morgan Industries 3 7
MPC International 3 5 2 / 3
O b o d e x 2 5 3
Opus 2 1 1 / 2 1 5
P a n r i x 1 4 6 / 7
PC World 206/7, 320/1
Pico Direct 3 8 0 / 1
Powermark 4 2 8 / 9
Rock Computers 2 0 0 / 1
Roldec 3 6 9 / 3 7 3
Sight and Sound 3 6 8
Stak Trading 3 7 5
Sterling Management Systems 5 1 2
Tech Direct 4 9 4 / 4 9 9
T e c h n o m a t i c 4 3 0 / 4 7 7
Time Computer Systems 386/7, 79/493
Ultra Notebook 5 1 4
Universal Control Systems 3 8 4 , 3 8 5
Viglen 5 2 4
Watford Electronics 4 2 8 / 9
PC Handhelds
Fox Computers 374, 376/7
Memory Bank 4 2 8 / 9
Morgan Industries 3 7
Paradigm Technology 1 2 8
Pico Direct 3 8 0 / 1
Powermark 4 2 8 / 9
Tech Direct 4 9 4 / 4 9 9
Technomatic 4 3 0 / 4 7 7
Ultra Notebook 5 1 4
Watford Electronics 4 2 8 / 9
PC Multimedia
Adams Technology 1 8 7 / 1 8 9
Atlantic Systems 136, 141/143
Carrera Technology 2 9 2 / 3
CD Revolution 1 8 0 / 1
Choice Systems 192, 390/1
Clove Technology 3 1 4
Colossus Computer 2 4 3 / 2 4 6
DabsDirect 4 2 8 / 9
Dan Technology 22/25,
3 4 1 / 3 4 5
Evesham Micros 4 1 2 / 4 2 7
Fox Computers 374, 376/7
L o c l a n d 1 5 4 / 5
Memory Bank 4 2 8 / 9
MESH Computers 65, 122/125
M i c r o l o g y 3 1 7
Microsave 3 6 2
MJN Technology 1 6 9 / 1 7 5
Morgan Industries 3 7
Multimedia Direct 3 6 4 / 3 6 7
P a n r i x 1 4 6 / 7
PC World 206/7, 320/1
Powermark 4 2 8 / 9
Purple Computers 5 1 0 / 1 1
Roldec 3 6 9 / 3 7 3
SMC Computers 4 2 8 / 9
Stak Trading 1 5 2 , 3 5 2
Sterling 5 1 2
Technomatic 4 3 0 / 4 7 7
TIme Computer Systems 386/7, 79/493
Tiny Computers 4 0 5 / 4 1 1
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CYAN•MAGENTA•YELLOW•BLACK PERSONAL COMPUTER WORLD
SMC Computers 4 2 8 / 9
Stak Trading 1 5 2 , 3 7 5
Technomatic 4 3 0 / 7 7
Viglen 5 2 4
Westlakes 3 8 8 / 9
Hard Drives
C + T Group 3 7 8 / 9
Choice Systems 1 9 2 , 3 9 0 / 1
Evesham Micros 4 1 2 / 2 7
Fox Computers 3 7 4 , 3 7 6 / 7
Keyzone 3 1 2
Memory Bank 4 2 8 / 9
Morgan Industries 3 7
Novatech 3 5 4 / 3 6 1
PC World 2 0 6 / 7 , 3 2 0 / 1
Pico Direct 3 8 0 / 1
Powermark 4 2 8 / 9
Roldec 3 6 9 / 3 7 3
SMC Computers 4 2 8 / 9
Stak Trading 1 5 2 / 3 7 5
Sterling Management 5 1 2
Tech Direct 4 9 4 / 4 9 9
Technomatic 4 3 0 / 7 7
Universal Control Systems 3 8 4 / 5
Watford Electronics 4 2 8 / 9
Westlakes 3 8 8 / 9
Optical Storage
CD Revolution 1 8 0 / 1
Evesham Micros 4 1 2 / 2 7
Fox Computers “ 3 7 4 , 3 7 6 / 7 ”
Memory Bank 4 2 8 / 9
M i c r o l o g y 3 1 7
Novatech 3 5 4 / 3 6 1
P o w e r m a r k 4 2 8 / 9
Roldec 3 6 9 / 3 7 3
SMC Computers 4 2 8 / 9
Stak Trading 1 5 2 / 3 7 5
Techomatic 4 3 0 / 7 7
Westlakes 3 8 8 / 9
C O M P O N E N T S
C D - R O M
Atlantic Systems 1 3 6 , 1 4 1 / 1 4 3
Byte Direct 3 9 9 / 4 0 3
C + T Group 3 7 8 / 9
CD Revolution 1 8 0 / 1
Choice Systems 1 9 2 / 3 9 0 / 1
Evesham Micros 4 1 2 / 2 7
Fox Computers 3 7 4 , 3 7 6 / 7
Memory Bank 4 2 8 / 9
M i c r o l o g y 3 1 7
Morgan Industries 3 7
Novatech 3 5 4 / 3 6 1
PC World 2 0 6 / 7 , 3 2 0 / 1
Pico Direct 3 8 0 / 1
Powermark 4 2 8 / 9
Roldec 3 6 9 / 3 7 3
SMC Computers 4 2 8 / 9
Stak Trading 1 5 2 / 3 7 5
Sterling Management Systems 5 1 2
Tech Direct 4 9 4 / 4 9 9
T e c h n o m a t i c 4 3 0 / 7 7
Universal Control Systems 3 8 4 / 5
Viglen 5 2 4
Westlakes 3 8 8 / 9
Time Computer Systems 386/7, 79/493
Viglen 5 2 4
Watford Electronics 4 2 8 / 9
Graphics Cards
Choice Systems 192, 390/1
Evesham Micros 4 1 2 / 4 2 7
Fox Computers 374, 76/7
Memoy Bank 4 2 8 / 9
Morgan Industries 3 7
Novatech 3 5 / 3 6 1
P C W o r l d 206/7, 320/1
Powermark 4 2 8 / 9
Roldec 3 6 9 / 3 7 3
SMC Computers 4 2 8 / 9
Stak Trading 152, 375
Sterling Management Systems 5 1 2
Taxan 8 7
Tech Direct 4 9 4 / 4 9 9
Technomatic 4 3 0 / 4 7 7
Watford Electronics 4 2 8 / 9
Sound Cards
Atlantic Systems 136, 141/143
Byte Direct 3 9 9 / 4 0 3
Choice Systems 192, 90/1
Creative Labs 7 9
DabsDirect 4 2 8 / 9
Evesham Micros 4 1 2 / 4 2 7
Fox Computers 374, 376/7
Linefeed 2 2 8
Memory Bank 4 2 8 / 9
Morgan Industries 3 7
Multimedia Direct 3 6 4 / 7
Novatech 3 5 4 / 3 6 1
PC World 206/7, 320/1
Powermark 4 2 8 / 9
Roldec 3 6 9 / 3 7 3
SMC Computers 4 2 8 / 9
Soho Soundhouse 3 0 5
Stak Trading 152, 375
Techmate K 3 0 6
T e c h n o m a t i c 4 3 0 / 4 7 7
Universal Control Systems 3 8 4 / 5
Watford Electronics 4 2 8 / 9
U p g r a d e s
Choice Systems 192, 390/1
Computer Trading 3 9 3 / 3 9 5
DabsDirect 4 2 8 / 9
Fox Computers 374, 376/7
L a s e r m o o n 2 7 5
Linefeed 2 2 8
MJN Technology 1 6 9 / 1 7 4
Novatech 3 5 4 / 3 6 1
PC World 206/7, 320/1
Powermark 4 2 8 / 9
Roldec 3 6 9 / 3 7 3
SMC Computers 4 2 8 / 9
Stak Trading 152, 375
Tech Direct 4 9 4 / 4 9 9
T e c h n o m a t i c 4 3 0 / 4 7 7
Time Computer Systems 386/7, 479/493
Viglen 5 2 4
Watford Electronics 4 2 8 / 9
Data Backup
A P C 1 6 4 / 5
C + T Group 3 7 8 / 9
Evesham Micros 4 1 2 / 2 7
Fox Computers 3 7 4 , 3 7 6 / 7
Memory Bank 4 2 8 / 9
M i c r o l o g y 3 1 7
Novatech 3 5 4 / 3 6 1
owermark 4 2 8 / 9
Roldec 3 6 9 / 3 7 3
SMC Computers 4 2 8 / 9
Stak Trading 1 5 2 / 3 7 5
Tech Direct 4 9 4 / 4 9 9
Technomatic 4 3 0 / 7 7
Viglen 5 2 4
Westlakes 3 8 8 / 9
M e m o r y
AW Computer Bargains 5 0 0 - 5 0 3
Choice Systems 1 9 2 , 3 9 0 / 1
Evesham Micros 4 1 2 / 2 7
Fox Computers 3 7 4 , 3 7 6 / 7
Kingston Technology 2 0 4
Memory Bank 4 2 8 / 9
Novatech 3 5 4 / 3 6 1
O f f t e c h 4 0 4
Powermark 4 2 8 / 9
Richnight 3 8 2 / 3
Roldec 3 6 9 / 3 7 3
SMC Computers 4 2 8 / 9
Stak Trading “ 1 5 2 , 3 7 5 ”
Tech Direct 4 9 4 / 4 9 9
Technomatic 4 3 0 / 7 7
M o t h e r b o a r d s
Choice Systems 1 9 2 / 3 9 0 / 1
Computer Trading 3 9 3 / 5
Evesham Micros 4 1 2 / 2 7
Fox Computers 3 7 4 , 3 7 6 / 7
Memory Bank 4 2 8 / 9
Powermark 4 2 8 / 9
Roldec 3 6 9 / 3 7 3
SMC Computers 4 2 8 / 9
Stak Trading 1 5 2 / 3 7 5
Technomatic 4 3 0 / 7 7
Universal Control Systems 3 8 4 / 5
Watford Electronics 4 2 8 / 9
Multimedia Upgrades
Byte Direct 3 9 9 / 4 0 3
Choice Systems 1 9 2 / 3 9 0 / 1
Computer Trading 3 9 3 / 5
Creative Labs 7 9
Fox Computers 3 7 4 , 3 7 6 / 7
L o c l a n d 1 5 4 / 5
Memory Bank 4 2 8 / 9
M i c r o l o g y 3 1 7
Morgan Industries 3 7
Multimedia Direct 3 6 4 / 7
Novatech 3 5 4 / 3 6 1
PC World 206/7, 20/1
Powermark 4 2 8 / 9
Roldec 3 6 9 / 3 7 3
SMC Computers 4 2 8 / 9
Stak Trading 152, 374
Sterling Management Systems 5 1 2
Technomatic 4 3 0 / 4 7 7
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Shareware
Evesham Micros 4 1 2 / 4 2 7
Fox Computers 374, 376/7
Memory Bank 4 2 8 / 9
Powermark 4 2 8 / 9
Technomatic 4 3 0 / 4 7 7
Watford Electronics 4 2 8 / 9
Unix
Fox Computers 374, 376/7
JJA Ltd 2 9 1
Lasermoon 2 7 5
Memory Bank 4 2 8 / 9
Powermark 4 2 8 / 9
P r i n t e r s
Alternatives 1 3 2 / 3
Atlantic Systems 1 3 6 , 1 4 1 / 1 4 3
Byte Direct 3 9 9 / 4 0 3
Choice Systems 192, 390/1
Computer Trading 3 9 3 / 3 9 5
DabsDirect 4 2 8 / 9
Epson 81, 105
Evesham Micros 4 1 2 / 4 2 7
Fox Computers 374, 376/7
Linefeed 2 2 8
Memory Bank 4 2 8 / 9
Micrology 3 1 7
MPC International 3 5 2 / 3
MJN Technology 1 6 9 / 1 7 4
Morgan Industries 3 7
Novatech 3 5 4 / 3 6 1
Paragon Computers 3 9 2
PC World 206/7, 320/1
Powermark 4 2 8 / 9
Roldec 3 6 9 / 3 9 3
SMC Computers 4 2 8 / 9
Stak Trading 152, 375
Tech Direct 4 9 4 / 4 9 9
Technomatic 4 3 0 / 4 7 7
Time Computer Systems 3 8 6 / 7 , 4 7 9 / 4 9 3
Viglen 5 2 4
Watford Electronics 4 2 8 /
Westlakes 3 8 8 / 9
S c a n n e r s
AGFA 2 0 2
Choice Systems 192, 390/1
DabsDirect 4 2 8 / 9
Epson 81, 105
Evesham Micros 4 1 2 / 4 2 7
Fox Computers 374, 376/7
Leonardo Computer Systems 3 2 2
Linefeed 2 2 8
Memory Bank 4 2 8 / 9
Novatech 3 5 4 / 3 6 1
Paradigm Technology 1 2 8
Powermark 4 2 8 / 9
Roldec 3 6 9 / 3 7 3
SMC Computers 4 2 8 / 9
Stak Trading 152, 375
Sterling Management 5 1 2
Tech Direct 4 9 4 / 4 9 9
PC World 2 0 6 / 7 , 3 2 0 / 1
Tech Direct 4 9 4 / 4 9 9
Westlakes 3 8 8 / 9
T r a i n i n g
Epson 1 6 7 , 1 0 5
Fox Computers 3 7 4 , 3 7 6 / 3 7 7
R e n t i n g / L e a s i n g
Choice Systems 192, 390/1
Panrix 1 4 6 / 7
Ink Refills
Cartridge Express 5 0 0 - 5 0 3
Inkwell 5 0 0 - 5 0 3
Mannink 5 0 0 - 5 0 3
System Insight 2 8 7
Watford Electronics 4 2 8 / 9
Westlakes 3 8 8 / 9
B o o k s / J o u r n a l s
Powermark 4 2 8 / 9
M a i n t e n a n c e / R e p a i r s
Fox Computers 3 7 4 , 3 7 6 / 3 7 7
Stak Trading 1 5 2 , 3 7 5
C o n s u l t a n c y / P r o g r a m m i n g
Paradigm Technology 1 2 8
Pico Direct 3 8 0 / 1
Internet Service Providers
Global Internet 2 2 7 - 2 3 1
Net Direct 2 3 9
Pipex Dial 1 0 6 / 7
The Direct Connection 2 3 7
UUnet Pipex 1 0 6 - 7
Net2Phone 3 2 5
B B S
Mega Download 2 1 7
Strangeways 2 9 1
Disk/CD Duplication
M i c r o l o g y 3 1 7
Loadplan 2 5 7 , 2 4 2
Computer Superstores
PC World 206/7
T r a i n i n g
DabsDirect 4 2 8 / 9
Fox Computers 374, 376/377
Morgan Industries 3 7
Novatech 3 5 4 / 3 6 1
Technomatic 4 3 0 / 4 7 7
Visioneer 1 1 9
Watford Electronics 4 2 8 / 9
Worthington Data Solutions 2 6 4
P E R I P H E R A L S
Bar Code Systems
Altek Instruments 5 0 0 - 5 0 3
JJA 2 9 1
Memory Bank 4 2 8 / 9
Paradigm Technology 1 2 8
Powermark 4 2 8 / 9
Scanner Technologies 2 5 4
SMC Computers 4 2 8 / 9
Stak Trading 1 5 2 / 3 7 5
Technomatic 4 3 0 / 4 7 7
Worthington Data Solutions 2 6 4
M o d e m s
Atlantic Systems 136, 141/143
Choice Systems 192, 390/1
DabsDirect 4 2 8 / 9
Evesham Micros 4 1 2 / 4 2 7
Fox Computers 374, 376/377
Linefeed 2 2 8
Memory Bank 4 2 8 / 9
M i c r o l o g y 3 1 7
Morgan Industries 3 7
Netdirect Internet 2 3 9
Novatech 3 5 4 / 3 6 1
Paradigm Techology 1 2 8
PC World 2 0 6 / 7 , 3 2 0 / 1
Pico Direct 3 8 0 / 1
Powermark 4 2 8 / 9
Roldec 3 6 9 / 3 7 3
SMC Computers 4 2 8 / 9
Stak Trading 1 5 2 , 3 7 5
Sterling Management Systems 5 1 2
Tech Direct 4 9 4 / 4 9 9
Technomatic 4 3 0 / 4 7 7
US Robotics 2 2 5
Watford Electronics 4 2 8 / 9
Network Hardware
Dakota Computer Solutions 2 6 8
Evesham Micros 4 1 2 / 4 2 7
Fox Computers 3 7 4 , 3 7 6 / 3 7 7
Keyzone 3 1 2
Lasermoon 2 7 5
Memory Bank 4 2 8 / 9
Micrology 3 1 7
Novatech 3 5 4 / 3 6 1
Pico Direct 3 8 0 / 1
Powermark 4 2 8 / 9
Roldec 3 6 9 / 3 7 3
SMC Computers 4 2 8 / 9
Technomatic 4 3 0 / 4 7 7
Tech Direct 4 9 4 / 4 9 9
Viglen 5 2 4
Watford Electronics 4 2 8 / 9
Digital Cameras
M i c r o l o g y 3 1 7
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Think you can do better? Then email
c a p t i o n s @ v n u . c o . u k, enter via our web site, or
write to the usual P C W address with your own captions on a postcard marked “Caption Compo”,
before 15th May. We’ll print the funniest entry and the winner will receive a £20 book token.
Congratulations to Alan Aldous who won February’s
caption competition with this:
“It’s up to you — give me ten million or I play track
13 of Barry Manilow’s Greatest Hits.”
Ear ear!Following a blistering Micrografx pressconference for Graphics Suite 2, a certainfreelance (who shall remain nameless) wasseen chatting with David Whitewood, theyouthful and earnest UK general manager.Nothing wrong with that, apart from the
fact that the said freelanceseemed to have a somewhateccentric habit of sticking thearm of his spectacles in his ear.During the conversation he hada good old dig around until hehad prised out the offendinglump of wax, took a look at it,wiped it off and replaced hisglasses, continuing to chat allthe while.
Either Mr Whitewoodsomehow failed to notice, orwas so taken aback by thispublic display of auralexcavation that he was simplyrendered speechless, rooted tothe spot. All credit to him forremaining professional enoughto appear undaunted throughoutthe entire unsavoury episode.What a guy!
C h i p C h a t
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Personal Computer World • April 1997 • 523
C h i p C h a tL e i s u re
L i n e s
Caption competition
O o p s ! In last month’s Palmtops group testwe inadvertently used the term “biro” asa generic term to describe a ballpointpen. Biro Bic has informed us that theterm “biro” must, in fact, be “Biro” andshould only be used in connection withballpoint pens… er, Biro ballpoint pens.We apologise for any confusion causedto our readers.
“If only we had British Rail in the States.”
Microsoft boob We’ve heard of support, but it looks likeMicrosoft has gone too far this time. Itseems that Asda is now selling a“microsoft” bra! Inside sources say thatMicrosoft is aiming to “lift and separate”instead of “embrace and extend” for thisparticular product line.
There are, however, concerns over thepotential confusion of product linesbetween Microsoft’s Visual C++programming package and the newmicrosoft C-cup bras. It has been said thatprogrammers might confuse the microsoftbras with the old programming interfaceand attempt to get hands-on experience.One can only hope that they read themanual first before trying them out.
Travel sicknessP C W’s own features editor, Gordon Laing,sadly appears to be £30 out of pocket dueto a rather unfortunate experience on ther a i l w a y .
Last month, Mr Laing was invited to visitthe Sony plant in “sunny Weybridge” (hisdescription). Ever eager to see yet anotherfactory assembly line, he dashed ratherbelatedly to Waterloo station to catch the17:20. On arrival at the station heapproached the ticket office and asked fora ticket to Weymouth (about 120 milesdown the line) whereupon he was told thatit would cost him £30.
Gordon normally pays £3 for the trip, so,dazed and confused, he questioned thebooking clerk about whether the fare to“Weymouth” was indeed £30... Surely itcouldn’t be this much? The man behind thewindow answered in the affirmative, and soour poor cash-strapped colleaguesheepishly handed over his money and ranfor the train.
One can only imagine the feeling ofhorror when Gordon arrived, just 15minutes later, at, lo and behold, Weybridgein Surrey, a mere 20 miles down the line.Way to go, Gordon!
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