February - 2004

Old cell-phones, Eyeglasses, Ink Cartridges and now
Laser Cartridges.

If you have any of these, please do not throw them away.  We collect them at the store for specific charities.    Thank you...

Looking to buy a new computer?  

Here are some ideas that may help you decide: http://www.bergesch.com/bcs/newcomputer.htm

A little different this month...

Most businesses run some-sort of proprietary software and that's just the way it is.  
If you are looking for software packages, do some research!

These days, transferring data or setting up a new computer or server is fairly simple for most well written applications.  Simply copy the data folder(s) from the old to the new machine.  Some software, like good accounting packages are equally as easy; Backup the data, setup the new equipment, install the software then restore the data.  But there are some software packages that make the moving process a little more difficult.

We have dealt directly with many software suppliers and found most very helpful when it came time to move the data.  Recently however, we ran in to a software company that insisted the customer had to purchase equipment from them or at least hire them (at substantial cost) to move the data to a new server.  Having this kind of lock on the customer is very unacceptable in our opinion.

For every specific type of software available, there are probably dozens of suppliers, so shop around.  When enquiring about software packages here are some questions to ask:

• What kind of support is offered; on-site? phone? 24x7? direct connect? etc.
• How much extra is that support?  Does that cover all support or is there an additional support fee for certain things?
• What is their typical response time?
• Does the software run under Windows XP?  Which version(s) Home and/or Pro?
• Does the server operating system require true server software such as the high end Windows Server or can you have less expensive operating system like Windows XP-Pro or 2000?
• Can you supply your own hardware and will they help via phone in transferring the data?
• Does it require special printers or accessories/hardware?  
  i.e., can it use whatever printer is the Windows default printer? 
• What are the disaster recovery steps? i.e., when the server or workstation hard drive fails what can be done? Can the data be restored to a workstation and the software ran temporarily from it?  What support do they offer for recovery.

RF

WIFI or Wireless networking is done via Radio Frequency.  Recently a customer ask me about the possible health risks associated with WIFI.  Since I was completely uninformed on the subject, so it was off to the Internet for another fact finding mission.  If you want more information, click the article links I have below or search the Internet for "radio+frequency health" but to summarize what I found:

RF's are all around us everyday, you cannot avoid them.  The frequency and the intensity are determining factors to health risk.  In the early 80's protection guides were released stating that devices operating between 300kHz (Kilohertz) and 1gHz (Gigahertz) and under 7 watts are basically safe. With that in mind...

Cellphones operates in the 800+ mHz (Megahertz) at 0.6 watts and 3 watts depending on the phone and service.

WIFI devices operate at 2.4gHz (about the same frequency as microwave ovens) for the 802.11b&g standard or 5gHz for the 802.11a standard with a typical wattage of less than one watt.  (Also the reason they have such a poor range.)

It is somewhat disturbing that these operate at about the same frequency as Microwave ovens keeping in mind just how many safety features are built in to the oven, e.g., the door has a screen to stop the RFs from cooking your eyes as you watch the popcorn pop.  So are they safe?  This article summarizes it nicely.

More information: FCC Article, OSHA Article, WHO summary (or search at WHO directly) and just because I found it...Cell Phones and are cell phone dangerous?

Flat panel monitors

The pricing came down a lot last year but since November,  pricing has been fairly stable.  FP's are much easier to look at for long periods of time.  Flat panel's costs less than a CRT to operate however, this is only an annual difference of about $20.  (About 35 watts vs. nearly 100 watts.)   

The difference between CRT and FP's was discussed under Buyer Beware in last November's newsletter.  

Ink Status

Most ink status monitors do not actually read the level of ink remaining in the cartridge but rather are estimates of the number of pages you can print.  If you print a lot of nearly blank pages, the monitor will indicate you are out of ink long before the cartridge is actually empty.

Looking at Photo Editing Software?

Click here for an interesting article comparing a few packages.

Download Accelerators

Web accelerators are yet another piece of software loaded to memory, consuming system resources.  Many of these check the page you are currently reading for hyperlinks and begin downloading those hyperlinked page(s) before your click the link.  Then, if you click on one of those links, the page is already (or partially) downloaded and seems to open faster.  However, if you do not click one of those links, the read-ahead did you no good at all.

File transfer accelerators may try to download a specific file from multiple servers but are of little value since your connection can only download a certain amount of data per minute regardless of where it comes from. 

Based on these tests, the gain in download speed was only a few seconds so why even bother...   

Have uncontrollable pop-ups?  

Although we discussed this quite a bit last year, it is such a problematic issue we will continue with more ideas this year...  You can download a popup blocker but why have the application causing the popups and an application to stop them loaded to memory?  Instead, remove the source of the problem.

Go to the control panel, add/remove programs and uninstall all searchbars, toolbars and Internet ad-ins.  Look at everything you find in there and if you come across something you don't recognize, search Google for that application.  

This one gets a little sticky so if you're not sure what to do, don't change anything.  Another place to look is the network properties.  See if there are VPNs or extra adapters, protocols or dialup connections that you did not specifically install or use.

Microsoft has a couple of articles on this subject:  Q308446 and Preventing popups

So how's that new Anti-spam law working for you?

Weird/Trivial

If you have Microsoft Word (not sure what versions this works in), open a new document then type =rand() and press enter.

Dialup connection keep popping up?

See the above article on pop-ups.

Running low on diskspace or simply want to clean up?

Use the Windows built-in utility found under Start > Programs > Accessories > System Tools Place check marks next to the category you would like to cleanup.   If the computer was updated from a previous Windows version, the list likely includes "old Windows 9x files."  These are likely taking up a lot of space and are basically useless under Windows XP. Windows XP users have a few more options available. Windows Components and Installed Programs opens the Add/Remove programs interface found in the Control Panel. System Restore can take a lot of diskspace and this may be the place to regain some.  If you rarely add applications and are careful about changes to the computer settings and Internet operations, reduce the amount of space used by restore.