FEBRUARY 2002 - Vol 18 - Issue 02

Newsletter - Internet Edition

Dynamic Karma, the original creators of the AFTER DARK screensaver, have created another award winning program. This time it's more useful than entertaining. POWERDRAWERS is a tool to help you manage your desktop icons and much, much more.

One of the neatest things I liked about POWERDRAWERS, are the tutorials. This product is very unique and to get the fullest knowledge of how to totally take advantage of all its features, there are tutorials provided by Dynamic Karma on their web site for you to check out before you even purchase the product. If when you get done with the tutorials, you are not totally convinced that POWERDRAWERS is a product that will make your life easier and more efficient, you've wasted nothing but some well invested time.

POWERDRAWERS 2000 requires only 2Mb of hard disk space and works on any 486 or faster desktop, server or laptop PC. When you are not actively using a Power Drawers menu, most of Power Drawers is unloaded from memory so that it's ambient memory and system resource usage is nearly zero. Power Drawers is compatible with Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows ME, Windows NT 4.0 (with SP3 or greater), Windows 2000 and Windows XP.

Windows 95 and NT 4.0 users require Windows Shell v4.70 or newer. A minimal PowerDrawers install requires approximately 900Kb of hard disk space. It is recommended that you have at least 2Mb of free hard disk space before installation. The computer must have an Intel-compatible processor (such as Intel, AMD, Cyrix, etc.). Power Drawers will function in any Windows video mode, includes specific support for multiple monitors and is fully compliant with networking standards.

Just a couple comments from the raves and reviews page: Best Utility in the World! PC World 2001 World Class Award Winner - "Enhance your PC's filing system with Dynamic Karma's Power Drawers, a $35 utility that makes navigating Windows much easier." PC World Magazine, July 1, 2001

Rated Best in it's Class by Windows Magazine - "Faster Files at Your Fingertips. The program is amazing...the time savings quickly make a difference...it's one that's easy to get hooked on." - James E. Powell - Managing Editor, Reviews 1/12/2001, Winmag.com (Windows Magazine)

Get the full information, plus the tutorials, and download a free trial version of PowerDrawers at http://www.powerdrawers.com/powerdrawers.htm

Also, while Dynamic Karma no longer has After Dark, they do still have a terrific program called Magic 2000. A free screensaver which you can check out at http://www.powerdrawers.com/content/magic_features.htm.

If you want to get started making a video on your computer but just can't see paying out the hundreds of dollars for Adobe Premier, then MGI Videowave 4.0 may be for you. Videowave is an easy-to-use program with all the features the home user will want. Here are just some of the main features: media capture, MPEG-2 capture & file creation, "Smart DV" editing, professionally designed storyboards, cutting room, text animation, special effects, video animation, transition effects, dark room, full range of easy to use audio recording features, and a tutorial.

In actually using this program things got started well after the desktop was resized to 1024 X 768 (a program requirement). The program installed without any problems on a Pentium II 400 MHz machine with 128 Megs of ram. The pictures looked good after importing and rearranging is all done with the drag and drop feature on the storyboard. This was going to be fun and easy. Still I have used enough software to know that before you invest too much time entering data, in this case photos, it's best to make sure all the functions work with your hardware. After importing five or 10 photos, arranging, editing, and adding transitions I wanted to see how it was going to look after exporting to a VCR.

With the VCR and television on the computer desk things were getting a bit crowded but I had to test this. The video card is an 8 Meg ATI Expert at Play with TV out. All the necessary connections were made so it was time to change the video settings to activate the TV out feature, but in order for that to work the resolution needed to be reset to 800 X 600. Can you see where we are going with this? With the resolution reset and a picture on the TV it was time to boot Videowave. I clicked on the icon and an error message popped up wanting me to change the resolution back to 1024 X 768 and then restart Videowave. Once that was done the TV out feature was deactivated and we were in the middle of a Catch-22 situation.

In conclusion, Videowave is an easy-to-use, affordable program packed with nice features but check your hardware compatibilities before going to far. This version is not currently the latest version but is available on E-bay by a number of different sellers for around $25.00.

About the Authors: A father & son team from Goshen, Dale and Anthony work on their own computers and generally see how much trouble they can get into before hurting their systems. Anthony, a 14 year old, home-schooled young man has been known to over-clock low end systems and generally push a system to its limits. Never with the good family systems, but any spare oldies he can get his hands on. Gathering spare parts from friends and relatives, it's nothing to hear that Dale and Anthony have put together another system on the dining room table. Father Dale, is a genealogy buff, while son Anthony is an aspiring author with one novel already to his credit. Look out world, this pair could be a couple of geniuses in the making!

Dave Severino from Microsoft put on a spectacular show as expected. If you had any wonders about Windows XP, Dave showed them to you at the January meeting. All the neat bells and whistles that make a new operating system exciting and then some. Showing off the new improved messaging system, which can be used with and without video cameras. The new and improved graphic products built right in so that sharing your pictures just gets easier and easier.

Many other features of Windows XP were demonstrated, and many questions were answered. It was a great night, and there were some great door prizes when it was over, too!

I think we may have had a record number of new members come in that

night, I hope they continue to show up and learn from the meetings. We also had our best attendance in over a year, since we left Crown, as a matter of fact. Please continue to make meetings, it's the only way we get the vendors to send out representatives. Bring friends and have a great time. February's meeting may be a little in depth but I think it is going to be very interesting to see behind the scenes of the National Weather Service. Check out the article on it.

As always, be sure to let me, as the Program Director, know if you have something that you would like to see demonstrated at the meetings. I'll let you know if it is something I can arrange or not. Remember, if you don't make suggestions, you have no right to complain when you do not like the content of the meetings! So get those emails coming if you have ideas.

Since Christmas, 2001 I have received many questions from people via phone calls, emails, and at the meetings about what is wrong with their computer. They loaded the latest and greatest game purchased for themselves, their children, or their grandchildren. After it was loaded, everything "went wrong" with their computer. Everyone made the same comment, "I checked and made sure that my computer met the requirements of the game before I loaded it."

The problems are of three separate types: video problems, sound problems, and system lock ups. Video problems are the most common. One game that has caused a lot of problems is the new Harry Potter game that was designed to run best on a Matrox video card. Does that mean it will not run on other cards? No, but you need to understand that the game makes changes to your video settings and you must understand what it does to your computer.

Most games want you to have a specific number of colors to view the game in the best graphics. In the "good old days", 256 colors were what every game required. Today, games want from 256 colors for simple games, to 32Bit color (true color) and when the game is installed, it modifies your video setting to the games optimum setting. Often the game will also adjust your system's resolution. One game sets your video resolution to 1152x864 (not a resolution that is often used today.) If your video card does not support the revised setting, oh well that's your problem, not the game manufacturer's.

Several people called, somewhat frantic that the video on the computer had "gone nuts" after the game was installed. They had to run in safe mode to use the computer. By setting the video setting back to 640x480 and either 16 colors or 256 colors (the default in safe mode for many video cards) they could then restart the computer in normal mode, then reset the video settings back to where they were before the game was installed. The games run just fine, but the color and resolution was somewhat less than what the manufacturer had in mind for the game.

Often the computer was running an older video driver. By updating the driver from the manufacturer, the user could use the higher setting and make the game look the way it was designed. You may also need to upgrade your Operating System's multi-media patches. Direct X 8 is the current version and, while not used as much for pure video, it can be part of the problems.

My personal computer has a low end S3 Verge AGP video card with 4MB of RAM and I can run almost every game I want in 16 bit color with no problems. In both Windows NT 4.0 and Windows 2000 when using 32 bit (True Color) the game runs slower, as there is not enough video memory for the games to show every panel, so the system has to wait for the video to "catch up."

The second problem caused by games is sound. Several people have had the sound stop working after the games were loaded. Most of the time it is because the installer program does not look to see what software is already installed. Games often install their own sound programs, like Real Audio, Shock Wave, and even MP3 players, right over the software installed in your system. You now have the basic dueling drivers, and while they are fighting, you don't get any sound.

In these cases, it is often best to remove all the sound drivers and add-on programs for the system, and start over. Use Control Panel and go to System, then Device Manager. With the driver disk in hand (or on the hard drive after being downloaded from the Internet) remove the sound card devices you find. Often you will find more than one device driver, and they are conflicting. Then reboot the computer and allow the system to find your sound card. After the sound card is working, then download from the Internet the latest version of the add-on programs the game(s) need.

Many people turn off the speakers when they play a game. Flight Simulator, for example, gives very high quality of engine noise and wind sounds, but after a short time the sound becomes annoying, and the player shuts off the speakers. The same is true of "shoot-em-up" games. If the sound does not work it can be a blessing.

Some games have "people" speaking, something giving you information, or acting as an interface for the interactive game. These games give the most problems, and you may need to contact the manufacturer of the game if the problem persists. Some game manufacturers have patches for specific sound cards to make their games work better.

You may want to check to make sure that your operating system is up to date. Direct X 8.0 is the current version of multi-media, and if you have not updated your Operating System in some time connect to www.windowsupdate. microsoft.com and select Product Update to download the current multi-media patches. Direct X is heavily used in audio, so this may be part of the problem.

The last problem is the most difficult: system lockups. The cure depends on the operating system that you are using. Windows 98's solutions are different than those of Windows ME and different again from Windows 2000 Pro. Windows XP is more similar to Windows 2000 Pro when it comes to system lockups but the cause of the lockups is the same. System resources are less than the game needs to operate efficiently.

Most of the time, the user has not done much (or any) hard drive maintenance. One computer that I worked on recently had a 30 GB hard drive with less than 20MB free. After deleting all the TMP files, running Disk Cleanup, then running Scandisk, Defrag, and using Disk Cleanup freed up 18GB of space. Since this was a Windows 98 system, I ran Regclean 4.1 to clean up the registry file, freeing up another 180MB from that single file. This solved the problem for that user and his games ran fine.

Windows 2000 Pro and Windows XP (Personal and Pro) both have an option to adjust the performance options. Set the Virtual Memory to at least 256MB up to 1GB (assuming that you have enough hard drive space) to allow for the swapping of data from RAM memory to the hard drive. One clue that you need to set your virtual memory larger, is to watch the hard drive just before the lock up occurs. If data is being transferred, the hard drive light will be flashing, and you need to set the virtual memory file size larger.

You can also add RAM, but that is a short-term solution. This is the most effective when you have less than 64MB of RAM. If you have 128MB of RAM, the effect of adding less than 256MB of RAM compared to adjusting the virtual memory is not a good cost-to-performance ratio. Save your money for a new computer and adjust the virtual memory!

There are times when a game replaces a required DLL file and it affects your computer's operation. To some extent Windows ME will allow you to correct the problem by going back to before the game was installed. Windows 2000 Pro and Windows XP save the DLL files in separate places so you can use the DLL for the game, but not affect the operating system

Again, you may need to patch your Operating System. Windows 98 especially has several recommended patches that will make your games run better. Windows 2000 Pro and Windows XP have a file that is updated at least every 6 months by Microsoft. This is the compatibility list that allows the operating system to know how to set itself up for each program it knows. Most game manufacturers contact Microsoft with the required settings to be in the next version of the compatibility list.

If all else fails, there is one more thing to try. Shut down your computer every few days. If you leave your computer on all the time, you are filling your hard drive with TMP files. Your computer may say that you are out of hard drive space, but you have check and there is over 1GB free. Why? Because open TMP files being used by your operating system are NOT reported as being on the hard drive. By shutting down then restarting the computer, you purge the TMP files from your computer.

I hope this helps you solve your computer problems after you have loaded your games. For the most part, the games only fault is that it requires up-to-date drivers for devices, enough system resources to operate properly, and a system that has maintenance performed on a regular basis.

Membership in your local User Group offers a wonderful opportunity to learn more about computers. With practically no effort on your part, other than attending a meeting, you can sit and watch a very good program, presented by a knowledgeable speaker, and frequently you also get an opportunity to participate in a raffle or door prize drawing where you have a chance to win a nice program for your computer. Even if you don't want to come to meetings, membership gets you a copy of the monthly newsletter, which contains information about upcoming meeting programs, some of which you may decide you want to attend. It also contains technical articles, reviews, and other news to read at your leisure.

But your local User Group also offers an opportunity to get a lot more out your membership than you can possibly get by being passive. It offers the opportunity for you to become an active participant, and give something of your self (time, effort, knowledge, etc.) to benefit others. The inner satisfaction and rewards one gets from helping others are truly amazing.

People frequently point to the 80/20 rule, which is found in many aspects of life; for example, 20% of the people in an organization will do 80% of the work, while the remaining 80% of the people collectively do 20% of the work. Well, there is a further application of the 80/20 rule: the active 20% doing the work, are getting 80% of the pleasure out of the club, and the passive 80% get only 20% of the pleasure.

I encourage you to think about this for just a few minutes. Is there something that you could do to help others, so that you can see whether or not I am right? You will certainly see that the returns from investing that effort to help others far outweighs the investment. Can you give just a little bit of your time, doing whatever you do best? Perhaps that is:

Making a few phone calls to try to arrange something we need (speakers for a SIG, a meeting place for a SIG, advertising for the newsletter, etc.)

Trying out a new computer program, and then writing a review of it for the newsletter, sharing what you liked and did not like about the program, so that other members can benefit from your experiences.

Spending a little time in a one-on-one basis with a new member who just got a computer, or who just got a new program for his computer, and who is completely lost trying to figure out how to make it work.

Donating some of your time to help church workers, or workers in some charitable organization, who are having trouble getting the most out of their computers.

Spending a few hours sitting in a booth at a computer show, telling people that stop by the booth what your local User Group has to offer.

Presenting a program to your user group, or to another user group in town.

Speaking to a class in the public school system, telling them how computers are used in real life, and possibly sparking that interest that encourages them to work harder to learn how to use computers, or speaking to a group of public school teachers, teaching them things they don't know about computers, to better enable them to teach their students.

Leading, or helping to lead, a special interest group, enabling UG members interested in a particular subject or program, to get together and share their experiences with others that have that same interest.

Joining us in the UG's Refurbishing Computers project, to help recondition old computers to be donated to some worthy non-profit agency, or other worthy recipient.

Spending some time adapting computers to aid the handicapped, so that a quadriplegic confined to bed or a wheelchair, and totally dependent on others, gains some control over his own life, whether it is something as simple as being able to turn the TV on and off without help from someone else, or whether it is a powerful as being able to communicate his thoughts, wishes, and ideas, when previously he may have been unable to seriously communicate with the outside world.

The elected officers, and the Special Interest Group leaders are all wonderful people, since most of them are Givers, rather than Takers. It is a real pleasure interacting with this group of generous UG Members, and they do a number of things to help make UG successful for the rest of the membership. But they can only do so much. There are many things that could be done, but are not currently being done, and I would be willing to bet your UG's President cannot in good conscience ask these Givers to give even more. Not that they would not accept the responsibility; they probably would, but he/she would run the risk of burning them out. What your President needs is a few more people to become Givers.

If you would be interested in helping your local User Group in any particular way, please let your President know. Things get pretty hectic at a meeting, so just mentioning your interest runs a risk that he/she may forget it when someone after you brings up something else entirely. But if you would write down your name, phone number, and the particular skills you have which you think your local User Group might be able to use, and perhaps an indication of the amount of time you would be able to devote each month, and either bring this to a meeting, or mail it to your President, he/seh will do everything possible to match you up with a job you can handle, and you can start reaping the rewards of being a Giver.

And if your UG President can't find enough to keep you busy, contact president@apcug.org, and I bet Dan can find some committee in APCUG that could really use your help.

I was sitting on the back deck, a Sierra Nevada Pale Ale in hand, and leafing through Microsoft's Windows XP Reviewer's Guide.

I was describing to my wife how XP made better use of the Start button than Win 98, when she casually said she hated it. "I never use the thing," she went on, not realizing I was under a moral obligation to make sure she was using the Start Button correctly. "I can get to all the programs I regularly use," she continued, "by clicking an icon on my desktop." Oy vey, I thought, the 293 icons-on-the-desktop syndrome. I had my work cut out for me. (Needless to say, she's never seen my collection of 70 Desktop icons, but that's another story altogether.)

"I'm a computing professional," I said empathically, hoping she wouldn't challenge me, "so tell me all about it."

"Besides," she was on a roll and there was no stopping her, "when I open the menu and click Programs, another menu slides out, then another, and half of them aren't even programs I have anymore. To get to the program I want takes, I dunno, 20 minutes."

Was that in real or computer time, I wondered, grabbing my beer, trying to decide if I should start the barbecue or plunge deeper into the abyss.

"The Start Menu," I said, easing back into the conversation, "is fully customizable. Give me ten minutes and I can show you how to make it look, feel, and act just the way you want it to."

Step into my wife's office and I'll show you what I did to her PC. I'm basing my tips on Windows 98 so while some will work in Win95 (and certainly in Win ME), you'll need to do some fiddling on your own.

STARTing to Understand

The Structure of Start

Folder Fodder

Making the Change

Win Explorer Meets Start

A Clean Start