Rich's Ramblings

by Rich Schinnell

COMDEX

Well, the Spring '97 COMDEX (COMputer Dealers Exposition) was not that great a show. Even though Atlanta, Georgia, in June is normally very hot, this time I thought I was in Seattle. I arrived on Friday, the 30th of May, and it was cool and raining. Anyway, the company I was in made up for the rainy weather.

The Association of Personal Computer User Groups ( APCUG) had events all weekend long for User Group leaders as they do during every COMDEX in the Spring and Fall. I took on the responsibility for shepherding some of our leaders through the events. Everyone thought it was really interesting to talk to other user group leaders and find out we are not alone. Everyone is having money troubles as membership in many groups is declining and volunteers are not as forthcoming as in the past. I guess it is time to come up with new ideas and goals for Capital PC User Group.

Our president, Lillian Milliner, has written that she needs help in lots of areas to turn us around. I endorse her request with my own admonition. Get involved and don't just sit back and expect other volunteers to serve you. We volunteers are not paid and really don't get much glory for all this work. Most of us enjoy helping others and hopefully it will rub off on some of you. If you don't have the time, or feel you don't yet have any expertise the group can use, if you can afford it, send your tax deductible donation to the office.

Earth to Rich:
OK, now get off the soap box!

Back to COMDEX -- I did not think that the Atlanta COMDEX was that big a deal. Lots of vendors did not show up because a New York Expo starts the middle of June, just 2 weeks after the Spring COMDEX. This show was not like the big show in Las Vegas in November, where everyone who is anyone in the computer trade has a booth or shows up.

Fall COMDEX is the biggest and, of course, the most exciting. All those goodies combined with the glitz of Las Vegas are sometimes too much for the average geek. Notorious for being a bit on the overly cautious side in parting with money, computer geeks don't do much gambling while in Las Vegas. So the price of hotels is jacked up from the standard $50 a night to over $300 a night in some cases. Many are in the range of $200-$250 per night. With over 200,000 people attending, it is exciting and crowded. This year, from the 17th through the 21st of November, don't try to get a hotel room in Las Vegas, unless you're on a package tour or are a big spender on the gambling tables.

I already have my flight and hotel reservations because APCUG has a special deal in a new hotel for user group directors. The price is great, and this year the expo should be good. I first went to COMDEX in 1983 and have made the Las Vegas trip most years since. Next spring COMDEX moves from Atlanta to Chicago, but I think I will pass on that one.<G> Chicago traffic is worse than the beltway at 5:30PM on a Friday night.

More Computer Talk

Let's again talk about backup. Some of you are living on the edge of the knife. If you don't at least copy some of your critical files off to floppy disks, you're really asking for a fall. Do so now by deciding which files would make you cry if you lost them. I hate to see grown people cry, and sometimes there isn't any solution to the crash of your hard disk unless you have a good backup.

If time or space is critical for you, then don't waste time backing up your applications software because you can always restore your programs from your original disks. If you have a tape drive, then go for it and do a complete backup.

Some of you may have bought a machine with all the software already installed. Many times these machines include a CD-ROM to reinstall everything on your computer in one fell swoop. Reading some of the documentation on these systems leads me to believe that many actually reformat your hard drive and re-create your hard disk setup as it was when you picked it up from the store. Be careful if you have created things like calendars or mailing lists. Also take care to safeguard your word processing files and such. Try to copy these to floppy so that you can then restore them to your hard disk after you reformat your hard disk. All in all, backup is not a dirty word.

So, remember: Backup-backup-backup!

Hardware Accessories

I bought one of those little U.S. Robotics Palm Pilot devices that can fit inside your shirt pocket. They have the memory to keep lots of names, addresses, and telephone numbers handy. I used to keep this info in a database file on my computer, but now I have it with me (most of the time). One neat thing is that the software and interconnection stays on my main computer, and I can add and edit data on my desktop computer. I can also edit and add data on the little palmtop Pilot device. When I return home, all I have to do is to plug the Pilot in and synchronize the two. Really nice and easy to use. I find the price a bit high ($299.00 locally), and the screen is hard to read. Get the version with backlighting ($399), as that is worth the effort. Buy a stock of AAA batteries. They last a while, but you better have two spares when the battery indicator shows low. One nice thing is that if you do lose the battery power, you can always synchronize from your main computer.

The software is easy to install. If you are the boss, you can install the software on your network server so your secretary can update your files. Then when you return to the office you just plug it in and synchronize. But it does take a serial port. I sure wish that they would go to the new universal serial bus port that is coming out on many of the new Pentium motherboards. Then there would be more ports to hang these kinds of devices onto.

Internet Goodies

If you have access to the Internet and are using Windows 95, I recommend that you visit several of the Windows 95 specific sites and pick up a couple of programs. One neat program is called Atom Time. Atom Time version 1.2a is a 32-bit Windows 95 Internet (Winsock) application that will connect over the Internet to the Atomic Clock time server in Boulder, Colorado, and fetch the current time. It compares this value to your PC's time and displays the difference. You then have the option to update your PC clock to match the atomic clock value. It can be set to continually reset your time if you're doing really crazy time-related calculations. But the best is also last: it's free.

You can, of course, always use the URL

http://time -A.timefreq.bldrdoc.gov:13/

and get the time back as in figure 1.

I use both Netscape Navigator (NN) and Microsoft Internet Explorer (MSIE) because they are both great products. MSIE is free, so the price is right -- but I like the options in Netscape Navigator a bit better for things like mail and newsgroup reading. I also like the file for NN called BOOKMARKS.HTML. Explorer creates a subdirectory with your favorite sites in it and a separate file for each site. NN creates one file with the URLs for your favorite sites in it; you can carry it to another machine and install. Each browser has beta versions that are trying to outdo each other and take control of your computer desktop. Watch out installing and accepting the default install options. Some will change the look of your computer; you could have trouble getting it back to what you have grown to love and hate.

I have a spare e-mail account on juno.com, primarily because it is free. I only use it for correspondence with a few people. Oftimes JUNO offers products for sale at a reasonable price. The e-mail is free but you do have to put up with commercials when you use it. I received a message from JUNO administration that they had a special on the Hewlett Packard ScanJet 4S for a total price of $119.

I jumped at the chance and the 4S performs as advertized -- it's a great single sheet scanner. It's not for color, but it does come with some very good OCR software. The PaperPort OCR software that is included (HP licensed it from Visioneer) is pretty darn good. I scanned several letters and articles into WordPerfect, and there was very little cleanup to do. Of course, as always, your mileage may vary.

I think it is a good deal for a quick and dirty scanner. The price was correct, and the only downside is that you need another communications port. I was very fortunate and had a spare serial port that I could install as my COM 3. I was running out of IRQs and had to put it on IRQ 2, but it worked great. I am about out of IRQs and addresses on my machine, having an external modem on one port, my U.S. Robotics Palm Pilot on another port, and now the HP Scanjet 4S on the third port. I think that my option to use the PS/2 style mouse port on the motherboard was a good choice.

The HP 4S footprint is very small. It now sits on top of my HP Deskjet but is one more thing to plug into my powerstrip. It just sits there waiting for me to insert a letter, photograph, or business card into the scanner. The install software searches for word processors and graphics programs to copy scanned image or text to. After scanning a letter, it can be transfered to WordPerfect as text. The OCR automatically converts the scanned image to text. And it works!v

Rich Schinnell is retired from the U.S. Navy and Vitro Corporation. Now he is on his own doing a bit of small business consulting. He loves new toys and sometimes has a life.<G> He has been very active in CPCUG since day one and continues to enjoy helping members with their problems via our Helpline. He is available to help CPCUG members in the evenings from 6-9pm at (301) 949-9292, or most any time via e-mail at schinnel@cpcug.org or his ego home page at http://www.cpcug.org/user/schinnel.

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