![[UCS Trademark]](../../images/blulogo.jpg)
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PhotoSuite,VideoWave Featured At This Month's Meeting
MGI Software, a market leader in photo and video editing software,
will be featuring two award winning products presented by David B. Whittle,
named by Working Woman magazine as "one of America's most original
technological thinkers."
Are you interested in digital photography or digital video but didn't think you could afford it? Two market leading products from MGI Software, MGI PhotoSuite and MGI VideoWave, give you unlimited options when it comes to your photos and videos.
MGI PhotoSuite is your complete PC photography solution. It's the fastest, easiest way to edit, enhance, and organize your photos while giving you a creative freedom you've never had before. Turn your photos into greeting cards or incorporate them into personal calendars, web pages, family letters, and share them with others via e-mail or on the Internet.
MGI PhotoSuite makes it possible. And with MGI VideoWave, you can now capture, edit, and produce your own videos on your PC. Find out more about how MGI Software can help you begin to picture the world in a whole new way by attending our next user group meeting.
The guest presenter will be internationally noted author David Whittle, speaking on behalf of MGI Software. PC Magazine columnist John C. Dvorak has said "Dave Whittle's background and his years at IBM give him an unusual and unique perspective on things. I'm always interested in his insights . . ."
A proponent of personal computing and computer-mediated communications for over 16 years, Dave has also been involved with user groups since 1979, when he first joined an Atari Users Group in San Jose. He has presented to thousands worldwide, from Washington D.C. to Moscow, Russia.
As the founder of one of the world's largest virtual user groups, Team OS/2, and as IBM's first OS/2 Evangelist, Dave has also been an active proponent of grassroots volunteerism. He is the coauthor, with John C. Dvorak, of "Dvorak's Guide to OS/2" and author of the recently released "Cyberspace: The Human Dimension." (New York: W.H. Freeman) Following a twelve year career with IBM in personal computer hardware and software marketing, Whittle left IBM in early 1996 to pursue grass roots marketing opportunities.
You will come away from this meeting entertained and informed. Dave will provide time for an open Q&A period and will bring valuable door prizes, informative handouts, and a special user group price for those wishing to purchase this outstanding product at the meeting. See you then!
![[Photo of Cliff]](../../images/cliff151.jpg)
![[Baton Bleu Image]](../../images/baton.gif)
By Cliff Millward, Editor
Cliff & Preston on KALL
Our first radio show on KALL 910am went very well. The station engineer Scott ------ helped us out of a few jams, but as a whole, our "maiden voyage" went very well.
Preston and I interviewed Varerie Whalin of Earthlink. She called in from a marathon rock concert occurring in California. As I understand it, she had a hard time finding a quiet place in order to use her cell phone. Also, the battery was winding down and she didn't know how long it would last. Fortunately, it performed admirably and the interview lasted about 45 minutes.
When I mentioned over the air that her battery might run down, Scott chimed in with a statement which asked if her phone was running down also. She was, however, "all charged up" for this radio interview and responded quickly that her phone would die before she would.
After the show finished, Maggie Plum, the sales representative from KALL provided sandwiches, chips and soft drinks for everyone. The Second show went just as well we featured Win98 with Dan Peay from Microsoft.
Earthlink
EarthLink is moving heavily into the Salt Lake area and is asking Blue
Chips to help them. They are doing this by sponsoring PC Solutions and
purchasing ads in this magazine.
For now they will waive the usual $25 start-up fee for everyone, so sign up soon to take advantage of this great offer. They will also help Blue Chips by donating $10 to our organization for everyone who mentions Blue Chips when signing up. The first month's fee has also been reduced to $9.95. After that, it resorts to the usual $19.95 per month. They also have a very low ratio of users per modem, so you will almost never get a busy signal! They have created a unique Utah Total Access Software package. The software includes a TotalAccess Program, a Utah Personal Start Page (which is your gateway to the Internet), a Utah Regional Content area, Net Nanny filtering software and Ancestral Quest genealogy software. The Start Page features hyperlinks to the Jazz, Starzz, Grizzlies, ZCMI, Deseret Books, Utah Travel Council and more!
Another perk - they will be throwing a bash for all Earthlink members at Lagoon on July 25 if you sign up before July 15! Party, Party, Party! All EarthLink members will receive one free admission ticket and three $10 admission tickets along with free lunch for four. Their founder, Sky Dayton will be there, giving away prizes, gifts, etc., and there will be food enough for everyone. Sounds like a great way to spend the July 24th weekend!
I recently became an EarthLink Net-Surfer, and let me tell you it was great! The start up CD features Lisa, an attractive young woman, who guides you through the setup and explains some of the intricacies of the Internet for newbies. The CD also has many other "goodies" to make your life more enjoyable.
The start-up screen is easy to understand and manipulate and it was great not to have to wade through tons of advertisements before gaining access to the Internet! Earthlink is determined to provide the highest quality services and products to all members at all times. They never compromise with the technical limitations and will push the envelope of technology, but ONLY if it benefits all members. Their purpose is to better the lives of everyone through their communication with each other over the Internet.
KALL on Cliff & Preston?
Please support the radio show and EarthLink. When you tune in, if you hear
us languishing for lack of phone calls, get on the phone, call (575-KALL)
in, and ask us a question! By doing this you will be helping Blue Chips
and, perhaps, clarifying a problem plaguing many listeners. It is also
your chance to be heard throughout the Salt Lake Valley!
Blue Chips is moving ahead, branching out and becoming more influential in the Salt Lake Valley. By the time you read this, the Microsoft Win98 presentation hosted by Blue Chips will be over, but the confidence placed in us by Microsoft is notable. Two other radio show sponsors are coming on line shortly. It is, indeed, a good time to be a Blue Chips member.
However, the best way to spread the good news of Blue Chips is by word of mouth! We need you to tell your neighbors and friends about our organization get them to our meetings. Tell them of the great presenters we have had and are going to have. Inform them of the prizes given away and the interesting people you meet.
![[President's Porch Image]](../../images/porch.gif)
. . . from the President's Porch
by James Alexander
Last month, I wrote about the influence of the essays on myself and others. I was so sensitive to the issue that when I visited the University's library, I had to look at the media center. Though there lots of Mac and PC machines, only a very few were loaded with a current operating system and applications. I was stunned again. As a parent of youth thinking about attending a university, I want my children to be able to study and learn, and hopefully be on a par with the real world when they graduate. Admittedly, the university has classrooms where the new stuff is taught. But if the resource center is behind, how do we expect the non-computer students to be able to compete in the ever growing information technology world. I hope you enjoy the essays printed in our publication this month, I did.
A few weeks ago, Rob Sloat <rsloat@mail.aros.net> wrote: "James, I was wondering what your opinion was on the MCSE, the demand in Utah, the starting salary ranges to ending range, etc . . . " I believe it appropriate to include my response to Rob. If our public and higher education does not provide this training for the future, these commercial schools, despite any flaws, may be our kids only hope.
MCSE is like most of the certification in the industry. It :represents the ability to learn printed material and be able to apply the same to a written test. Obviously, passing the test is not easy, but it is possible(some folks have a knack for figuring out tests and are able to pass, without really knowing the material). Here is the kick, (it applies to all of these certifications) knowing the stuff on paper, does not mean you can do the job. Many complaints arise out of the fact someone is certified, but know nothing about how to do the daily work.
An observation about the tests -- some of the material is not correct, but in order to pass you must answer the question the "right" way. Some of the questions and answers are just plain propaganda or sales pitch. The market in Utah for Microsoft certification, I believe is growing, though slowly because of long term customer relations with Novell-WordPerfect. But there is a future.
As to going rates, I do not have any strong info. My perception however is that it is not just locked into the certification as much as it is dependent on the company's payroll history. Having experience and the ability to present oneself to management as capable, is more effective for getting the better pay. The Utah Department of Workforce Services, Labor Market Information will provide that kind of information for the asking. ( The Y2K problem has pushed COBOL and other mainframe folks into some higher tax brackets, with nearly desperate grabbing of anyone who can just figure out basic program routines. But the downside is that this will fade, and over time the professionals in that area will need to know how to work with SQL and Client Server. If the mainframe folks do not learn the rising technology, I believe they will eventually watch their once high tax brackets get static and be passed over by the increasing pay for client-server and LAN/WAN engineers.) I have listened to many graduation talks lately. There is one theme I heard in every ceremony. That students are now prepared to go out and LEARN. Surprised? I belong to our user group because I need a way to help me stay up with information technology changes. The month of June is an example. On the 25th, many of us went to the movie theater to get a glimpse of the new Microsoft Windows 98. Granted we have been talking about this for over a year, but now we have the first retail release. Bottom line: my Windows 95 works very well for me, so unless there is some fabulous price advantage (free works for me) I will not be moving over to Windows 98. But I have learned some things about Win98, which I want to pass on, as well as these resources.
WINDOWS 98 INFO VIA FAX BACK:
The Microsoft Sales and Information Center's Fax-Back System, (800) 727-3351,
has the following Windows 98 documents available:
WINDOWS 98 PRODUCT SUPPORT
The Windows technical support team has been increased by 40% prior
to launch to deal with the likely influx in customer calls. In addition,
there will be weekend support the first weekend or two after the launch.
The Windows 98 tech support line is (425) 635-7222. Also, self-help information
on the Web (http://www.microsoft.com/windows98)
is expected to be extensive with some 200 how-to articles being posted.
ADDITIONAL WINDOWS 98 INFORMATION:
* Two really interesting articles on the development of Windows '98
are:
* Also, please read "WINDOWS 98 ADDS SPICE TO YOUR PC," an article on the Microsoft Personal-Computing web site http://www.microsoft.com/magazine/jun1998/spice/spice.htm
The September 1997, June and July issues of PC World cover many important issues of if and how to install Windows 98. (Many Windows 98's features are already part of Windows 95B [OSR2]) Based upon my own experience and several articles, I would recommend a full clean install. Of course, make backups of any and all data files, and any programs that you downloaded in the past. One category especially to make full backups on are the Internet related products. Both Juno and AOL update themselves over the line, so your disk is no longer the most current version of the software.
Are there reasons to jump to Win98? Many people will have Win98 with their new PCs. That one is obvious. However if you have some new hardware or even some software, you may want to move. Below are some of these conditions.
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by Lauryn Wingate
FullShot -- The Complete Image Capture & Printing
Program Version 4
Manufacturer: Inbit Incorporated PO Box 391674 Phone: 4087309819 Fax: 4087301756 Web: http://www.inbit.com Email: info@inbit.com Requirements: Microsoft Windows Compatible Computer Windows 3.x, Windows 95, or NT 1 MB hard disk space 1 MB memory
For a long time, I had been complaining that I couldn't capture photos off the Net, or open a Bitmap file, or save a piece of artwork without spending hours maneuvering the file around only to have it still come out wrong. I have used Microsoft Paint and Paintshop Pro. Still, most of the time, these programs took me too long to figure out and I still gave up in total frustration. Along came FullShot.
Let me tell you, it is the best product that I have owned in a very long time. I put in the 3.5" floppy and up comes a dialog box that tells you it will only take a minute to load. Literally, the zipped program only took a minute! I thought, "Okay now what?" and "It really can't be this easy, can it?". So, I put it to the test.
This program is so easy, I couldn't believe my eyes. Once FullShot is launched and running live on your desktop, no matter what program you are running, the Snapshot Buttons are located in your title bar along with the current time so the program is ready for anything that you find you want to put in a file. The Snapshot Buttons are represented by letters: S for Screen capture; W for Window capture; R for Region capture; F for Freehand; and B for Button.
There are ways to change settings in your capture setup, but the defaults worked fine for me. The defaults are: hide the Mouse Pointer; hide all Windows (which works best if you want a screen capture to include only the desktop background); add Frame & Mat (which should be selected if you want to add a frame); bring FullShot to the Top; As Is (obviously leaves captures unchanged); and then you have various options for B&W, Grayscale, Color Reduction, and Invert Color. I have found both the Invert Color option and the Color Reduction option valuable especially when you are using the program to help design camera ready artwork for printing.
Now, here's where the fun began for me. I had designed a book cover for a friend but I didn't like the way that the program was capturing it and sending it to the printer. I wanted to use less of the background and take out the text box around the words. So, with a click of my "R" key, I regionalized the outline of the artwork and text, and then watched to see what would happen next.
Within seconds the FullShot had launched itself and opened a window containing the exact replica of the design that I had just created. That was a miracle for me. It may sound like child's play to someone else, but for me, this was magic.
Then, I began to really get down to play. I tried reducing colors to see what would happen. I decided that in this case, I didn't like the look. It washed out the design so I went back to the original design. With this program you can use 16 colors; 256 colors; High color or True color. In addition, (especially if you are using the program for graphics that are Internet ready) you can change your pixel resolution. Since most Websites are designed in 800x600 pixels, in order to load images quickly the image needs to be compressed. Banners and Buttons for advertising are particularly susceptible to this criterion and sometimes you spend hours (or at least I did) trying to make this work. FullShot made my graphic life so much easier, I really can't say enough good things about this program.
Once I got the image where I wanted it, I had to save it. First, I saved it. Then I enlarged it, and transferred it to Microsoft Paint to erase the text box. The first time, I goofed. All I had to do was go back into the originating program and capture it all over again. Same result it came out just the way I needed it. I made a copy of the image, pasted it into Paint, cleaned up the pixels, added text headlines from Publisher and within a half hour, I had a finished product.
FullShot gives you a perfect opportunity to easily manipulate your graphics as you print, too. In the FullShot Print Dialog Box, you can set your options for making the image larger or smaller, change your alignment, and/or preview the image to see exactly how it will appear on your paper. It's better than WYSIWYG. Oh! And this was not true with other programs I tried to use, believe me.
For me, Inbit Inc. has answered all of my graphic capturing problems and has made my life easier. It is a simple little program with muscle. I can't say enough great things about it. So, if you are like me and want to save time and aggravation, I recommend FullShot. It is a HOTSHOT program for people who think a picture is worth a thousand words.
by Jay R. Kim Manufacturer: Verity, Inc. 894 Ross Drive Sunnyvale, CA. 94089 Phone: 4085411500 Fax: 4085411600 http://www.keyview.com keyviewinfo@verity.com System Requirements: PC with 386/25 or higher Windows 3.1, 3.11, Windows 95 or Windows NT 5 MB minimum disk space (10 MB full load)
Another utility program: what is it and is it worth having? KeyView Pro, simply put, is a file viewer. It allows you to view, convert and compress files from the Internet, Windows 95 and most other software applications. How many times have we experienced this situation? You have just received a file or downloaded some information from the Internet. What do you do next? Well, you go to open the file directly from the hard drive, floppy or zip. Like most adventures, nothing can be simple. What you thought was going to take a few minutes now turns into a frustrating ordeal. The monitor screen prompts you to select a program with which to open the file and gives you a list of unfamiliar and strange names. If you are like most of us, you go ahead and try to select a program you are at least somewhat familiar with such as "WinWord, notepad etc...". What happens next is that you get a message stating that the program, which you have just selected, cannot open the file. Now what do you do? You go back and try to select a different program to open the file with but how do you do that? You desperately and frantically try to search for that prompt which allows you to select the program to open the file with. Nothing. After a few minutes of mortal effort you give up and forget about it, or, if you really have "no shame" you send a message to the originator of the file asking how to open it.
Has anything like this ever happened to you? If you have experienced this phenomenon, this program is the cure! KeyView Pro is a utility program that allows you to use files of any size or type without having the original application that created them. In the manufacturer's own words, "With KeyView Pro you can view nearly 200 file formats including text, word processing documents, spreadsheets, graphics, presentations, faxes, and compressed documents. You can also watch and listen to multimedia (video and sound files of AIFF, AU, AVI, MPEG, MIDI, QuickTime, or WAV format".
Here is a summary of what this program offers in a nutshell:
One of the key features of this program is the ability to integrate into other Windows applications. Once integrated, you can start KeyView Pro from within these applications: Windows Explorer, Windows File Manager, Eudora Pro, Novell GroupWise, Microsoft Outlook/Exchange/Messaging, FTPSoftware Mail OnNet, Lotus Notes, HP OpenMail and WWW browsers such as IE, Netscape Navigator and Communicator.
KeyView Pro is a truly versatile file viewer. It is one of those programs you forget about and leave it in the background until you find a need for it. It is a "safety net" or "insurance" which you are about to cash in. Until you need it, you will never understand the full value of this program. I just hope everyone gets the message and not have to find out after it is too late.
My final opinion, you ask? The answer is a definite YES. It is better to be prepared than to be caught off guard and sorry!
Processors, Processors, Processors!
At no time in the past has the selection of PC processors been as great as it is now. There are no fewer than 24 different Pentium class processors currently available. And that total doesn't even include the Pentium Classic processors still available.
The next question would have to be what processor is best for me? Well, that depends on what you desire to do with your computer. Business applications, games, education, or even web surfing tax the processor in different ways. Before we go into the details lets look at the offerings from the various processor manufacturers.
Intel currently has six flavors of Pentium II processors available ranging in speeds from 233 to 400 MHz. Also available is the Celron processor at 266 and 300MHz. The Celron is simply a Pentium II processor stripped of the level 2 cache memory and the fancy case. Of course the Pentium MMX (166, 200, and 233MHz) and Classic Pentium processors (100-200MHz) are still widely available too.
Currently AMD offers the K6 and K6-2 processor families. The K6 is available with 200, 233, 266, and 300MHz speeds. The new K6-2 (a.k.a. the K6-3D) is available in 266 and 300MHz speeds.
Cyrix, or should I now call them National Semiconductor offers the 6X86 and M2 processors. Either way, the 6X86 is available in PR200, PR233, and PR266. Recently added is the M2 processor at PR300. In case you were wondering the "PR" stands for performance rated. The processor actually doesn't run at the indicated "PR" speed. For example, the PR300 processor actually runs at 225Mhz. Of course don't forget about the IBM twins of the Cyrix processors that are also available.
Integrated Device Technology (IDT) offers the Winchip C-6. It is currently available in 180, 200, and 225Mhz speeds.
Considering only performance, Intel has a good lead with the Pentium II 400Mhz processor. The next closest competitor only has a 300MHz offering. However, you can buy at no fewer than four of AMD's K6-2 processors for the same price as a single Pentium II 400. It's too bad that you can't use multiple K-6 processors in one system. A more realistic comparison would be the K6-2 300MHz and the Pentium II 300. At this level you can still buy almost two of the K6-2 processors for the price of a single Pentium II 300. There is little actual difference in performance of either the AMD or Intel 300MHz processors. The Cyrix and IDT processors are even cheaper than the AMD processors at the same speeds.
Most general business and home applications run very well on any of the non-Intel processors. If all you need to do is general home or business applications, you are lucky. You can select an inexpensive processor from most any of the processor manufacturers.
If you need to run CAD software, graphics editing software, or possibly the latest 3D blast em to bits games, you will want the power of the Pentium II or K6 processors. The Cyrix and IDT Winchip processors don't typically perform as well when required to do graphic rendering or 3D games. This is primarily due to the weaker floating-point performance of these processors. Of note here is Intel's Celron processor which tends to do quite well with 3D games. Hint, if you select a slightly more expensive motherboard to use with a Celron you can have an instant upgrade path to the Pentium II 333 or even 400MHz processors. The motherboard must use Intel's "LX" or the newer "BX" chipset for this to be possible. Please also note that for 3D games an accelerated 3D video card, or better yet a 3D add on card, can make a bigger performance difference than a faster processor will.
The Pentium II processors and the Celron both use Intel's proprietary "slot one" processor socket. Everyone else uses the older "socket-7" processor socket. Socket-7 still holds promise for high performance even though Intel has abandoned it. New chip sets from manufacturers other than Intel have added AGP and a 100MHz buss to socket-7. Socket-7 still offers by far the best price/performance ratio. If you need the highest performance and have deep pockets to afford it, go for the fastest Pentium II. If you are running an operating system capable of using multiple processors, such as Windows NT or Linux, you also have the option of a dual Pentium II system.
To wrap things up Intel is still the leader in processors for IBM compatible PCs. The fastest Pentium II processors lead in performance by a good margin. If you want more reasonably priced system but don't want to sacrifice much performance, look at using AMD's K6-2 with one of the new 100MHz "socket-7" boards. The 200-300MHz processors from any of the manufacturers have more than enough power to run most business or home applications. The Cyrix and the Winchip C-6 processors are good choices for those not needing to play 3D games or do much with graphics. Go for the Pentium II, K6, or K6-2 for more demanding gaming or graphics applications. Due to of all the competition in the processor market we all come up winners because of the low prices.
![[Internet Insights Graphic]](../../images/interntc.gif)
by Welden Andersen
"It's not a TAX, it's a benefit"
One area of concern for all of us has been the recent discussion concerning the TELCOS (Telephone Companies) desire to charge different rates for voice and data (Internet traffic) In a recent article from CNET it appears that US WEST is making the move. Under the guise of helping the bandwidth problems that currently exist, I see this slow move towards separating the transmissions as a way to be able to make a rate hike for data traffic that will be passed on to ISP's (Internet Service Providers) and ultimately to you and I. What do you think? Here is the article:
US West splits up voice, data traffic
By Paul Festa
Staff Writer, CNET NEWS.COM
June 19, 1998, 12:40 p.m. PT
US West announced a limited rollout of a system for carrying voice and Internet data traffic on separate networks.
The move, announced yesterday, is intended to decongest traditional phone systems and cut the number of busy signals tying up both Net and phone users.
The way it works now, most Net users program their modems to dial up their Internet service providers and then they get connected. But the actual routing process is a bit more complex: The call first goes to the Net user's phone company. The Net user's telephone company then routes the call to the telephone company of the Internet service provider. As a final step, the ISP's telephone company routes the call to the ISP itself.
The leg of the journey between the two telephone companies is the source of much of the current traffic congestion.
With the new system, ISPs will lease equipment at the US West central office and the dial-up connection will go more directly from the user to the telephone company and then to the ISP.
Most importantly, to ease traffic, US West will route data calls over a preexisting high-speed frame-relay network that is separate from the phone network.
US West is rolling the system out on a trial basis at two Seattle-area ISPs, Silverlink and Sinclair. The company has tentative plans for further rollouts in Minneapolis, Denver, Phoenix, and Salt Lake City over the next year or so, according to US West representative Jeremy Story.
This isn't the first instance of a telco separating voice and data. Many telcos, including US West, offer digital subscriber line DSL access, which does something similar. But in the case of DSL, voice and data calls are automatically routed over a data network and switched to the phone network if they fall below a certain frequency.
US West's system is different also in that it will separate voice from data for common 14.4-, 28.8-, and 56-kbps connections, rather than the still-rare high-speed DSL connections.
"This is intended to give us a solution now, rather than waiting for something that's still two or three years down the road," Story said, referring to the sluggish adoption of DSL technology.
The new system's primary beneficiary will be the overtaxed phone network, and Story acknowledged that the burden will fall on US West to convince ISPs to incur the leasing costs and adopt the new method. But ISPs that do adopt it will find themselves benefiting, he predicted.
"This way they won't have to buy equipment that they have to maintain on their own premises, or deal with depreciation and obsolescence and a lot of other problems ISPs currently face," Story said. "This will be good for the network, but it will also be good for them."
US West's back-end system will use Signaling System 7 (SS7) technology to divvy up data and voice calls. SS7 is the software that ordinarily governs the switching of phone calls to and from central offices, but US West has found a new way to use it in distinguishing data from voice, according to Story.
Send comments or suggestions to welden@xmission.com
by Erma Wheeler
Manufacturer: QuarterDeck 131 Mindanao Way FL 3 Marina Del Rey, CA 90292-9705 (310) 309-3700 www.qdeck.com System Requirements: Intel-based PC Windows 95 or Windows NT ver 4.0 or later 8 MB Ram for Windows 95 (16 MB recommended) 16 MB for Windows NT (32 MB recommended) 15 MB of hard drive space Internet access required for updates.
I really like this program. The installation was very easy and straightforward.
With Fast and Safe Cleanup you can get a scan of your hard drive. You get a list of space available on each drive, what files the program decides you don't need and how much space could be free on each drive if you clean off the files it recommends. You can tell the program what file types you would like to clean (get rid of). You can set the program to automatically clean them and set it for the interval you want to use. I prefer to use the manual option.
You have the option of having the program clean the Windows temp directory when the temp files have not been changed for 7 days. CleanSweep treats lost clusters in the same way.
CleanSweep's main window has Status Lights in the lower left corner. If CleanSweep is on it ensures that you can only delete files that are safe to remove.
The Registry editor lets you edit the registry file safely. You can also run the Registry Genie which finds all the entries that do not have a file that goes with it. It marks all the entries with a color that indicates it is safe to remove that entry or not safe. It won't let you remove the entries that it considers unsafe. I tried this when I was having trouble getting rid of Norton Utilities. I didn't want Norton protecting the recycle bin. I wanted to see how the Safe part of CleanSweep would put them in the safe. When I ran the Genie it gave me a list of items in the registry that it thought were not necessary. It also listed some but wouldn't let me take them out.
I uninstalled one of my programs that I wasn't using very often. It asked for a directory to compress the program into. I can restore that program any time that I want to. Using the backup it is possible to make a copy of directories and have them compressed. You can move programs and remove them to another computer.
I moved a program from one drive to another. It seemed to move all the files, but the program wouldn't start because the start menu had not been changed to the new drive and directory.
The Safe has a dialog box that has a Scan Now button to scan the Recycle Bin for files to put in the Safe. By clicking on the settings button you can choose files types to save in the Safe. You can also add any file types not listed that you would like to save.
CleanSweep also monitors the Internet files that accumulate on my hard drive. I really like the feature that cleans off Active X files.
I did a Scan Now. This moved the file with the extension I marked into the Safe.
For the most part I am satisfied with CleanSweep Extra Strength. I will continue to use most of the features. I like the manual mode for most things.
by Darcy Roberts
Manufacturer: Symantec Corporation 175 W. Broadway Eugene, OR 97401 (541) 334-7400 www.symantec.com Minimum System Requirements: 286 IBM PS/2 or 100% compatible 640 K of RAM 4 meg for windows 8 meg on hard disk (for full install) VGA / XGA / SVGA or 8514/A video card mouse recommended DOS 3.3 / Window 3.1x or higher Suitable for Networks and Windows Workgroups 3.11 This review was done on an: AMD 586 CPU @ 133 MHZ. 16 meg of main memory Windows 3.11
Being the first ones on the block (as far as I know), Norton Utilities were held in high esteem in the computer users' world. Never being able to afford them, I was looking forward to doing this review.
Choosing the fully auto install method, I took up 10 megs of disk space. (I always format and make a rescue disk on any software that will make them in the course of the set up routine; it's cheap insurance.) Symantec even provided a nice label so the Rescue disk would conform to the four 3.5 floppies that make up their installation disk package. After choosing the option to let the set up program reboot my system I had two more program groups on my desk top, one for DOS and one for Windows.
The first thing I tried was the System Watch in the Windows Group. This is a program that shows you 11 different aspects of your system. If you don't know a lot about the inner workings of operating systems then most of this information won't mean anything. But that's the nice thing about their manual. It explains things in detail and is a good tutorial for learning about how your system works and what all these weird words mean.
Four of the possible eleven monitoring events have to do with memory. There's Physical memory, Virtual memory, DOS memory and Windows memory, all given in megs of free space. Then there is your GDI (graphic display interface) resources and USER resources. It has a line that tells you how much free space is on your hard drive, how many "handles" are free and how many files you have open. The last two have to do with how well your Cache is performing (mine was at 75%) and if your CPU is working hard or not. Mine was only working at 510% of its possible 100% capacity. I'm kind of a technical nut so I enjoy watching how all these performance statistics relate to one another. One thing I noticed was that with just my Program Manager open the "files" line said I had 12 programs open. Too bad it doesn't go one step further and tell you what they are. The only con to this I can see is there are other programs that perform the same sort of system resource monitoring, so this is nothing new. System Watch was one of eight programs in the Window group.
The next program I checked out was one called Speed Disk. This program is your disk defragmentation program with a different set of clothes on. A little more graphical and in color as opposed to the original DOS version. For newbies (and oldbies) that don't know what defragmentation is, it is when your files that get sent to your hard drive for storage get put in locations that are not sequential. It would be like having to do some baking where you had to go to the garage to get your sugar and then to the back bedroom to get your flour and then the library to get your cook book and then to living room to get the salt, instead of having everything right in front of you in a row. It takes longer for your programs to run if they must go to a bunch of different places to get the information they need.
File Compare (3 out of 8) is for comparing files that are the same but with different dates or sizes or the like and you want to see exactly what the difference is. Some thing you probably wouldn't need very often if you're the average user like me. It puts both your files side by side in different windows with numbered lines. Then you scroll, both windows together and compare line to line. There are several other options to choose from in the way you want to view your files.
Norton Disk Doctor (4th of 8) is the same thing as DOS Scandisk command, again with a graphical interface. I don't know if the program has a bug or my disk has a problem but when it tried to do a surface test of the disk it got stuck reading the same track (at least that's what it appeared to be doing to me). When I got out of Windows and ran Scandisk in DOS everything checked out fine. So I tried it again in Windows and it seemed to do OK this time, although the surface check through Norton seemed to be running 4 to 5 times slower than when DOS scandisk ran it. The only saving grace would be that Norton will work in the background while you're doing something else. Disk Doctor (scandisk) and Speed Disk (DOS defrag) will work in conjunction with each other in the background so you can get on with your work. (One hopes it would be done by the end of the day.)
The last four programs have to do with your .ini files. INI is short for initialization. These are files that Windows uses when it is first "initializing" Windows and your applications and programs. They have to do with what your applications will finally "look like" when you see them on the screen. Things like fonts, size of the window, colors shown, and lots of things I don't even know about, though the programing gurus do.
You'll want to read through the manual first before doing anything to your .ini files. Your system can crash big time if you start hacking away without knowing what you're doing. The four programs; "INI Advisor", INI Editor", INI Tracker" and "INI Tuner"; work together to let you edit any and all of your .ini files and just kind of "tune up" your system.
The "INI Advisor" is an expanded " Help" program. It is a good place to browse if you have a trouble that you want to try and fix. It will give you a good feel of what you can do with your .ini files.
Before you change any of your .ini files you will want to start the "INI Tracker" program. This program lets you undo any changes you make. When you're tweaking Windows and find you no longer have Windows to tweak, you can use the "DOS" version of Tracker to undo your last tweak. If this sounds a bit scary then you're probably in over your head.
All of the INI programs have similar interfaces so it's easier to pick up on the others once you have gone into one. The "INI Tuner" seems to overlap the other programs. It would be kind of a central station to have open to launch the other ini programs.
Now for the DOS program group:
The Dos program group utilities run in DOS mode even through you start
them from "Windows". They basically seem to automatically shut
down Windows for you and then do their thing from DOS.
The Windows group of Norton Utilities consisted of menu items for creating Rescue disks, duplicating 3.5 disks, and disk formatting for 5.25" and 3.5" disks from 360 k to 2.8 meg. Other items in the DOS program group are:
1) A "Change Directory" program that lets you look at your whole disk directory (like in Windows). While there you can make, remove, rename, relocate, and in general reorganize and clean up your disk in a convenient manner.
2) "File Find" is a thorough utility for looking up files and info that you can't remember if you still have on your disk or not. You can search for a certain word or a partial file name using your standard DOS wild card characters * and ?.
3) "Diskreet" is an encryption program that gives you a means to secure confidential information with password protection.
4) "Filefix" works with dBase, Clipper, Excel, Lotus 124, (just seeing if you're awake), Quattro Pro, Symphony, and Word Perfect data files. It will recover as many data as possible and rebuild the damaged files.
5) "NDOS" is a replacement for the standard "command.com". The only thing I could find on it in the manual was that it was an "enhanced" version of the standard DOS one. So to see whatever differences there are a person would have to compare the help files in standard DOS and Norton DOS by entering ? at the command prompt and go through each one.
6) "System Info" gives you five (?) areas of system info.
a) "general" info about your CPU type, Bios mfg., bus
type, keyboard, operating system, etc.
b) "disk" area tells you more than you can understand
about your floppy and hard drives.
c) "memory" covers usage, expanded, extended, block listings,
TRS programs & device drivers.
d) "benchmarks" let you know about your CPU speed, hard
disk access speeds, and overall performance indexed ratings.
On my system (a 586 running at 133 MHz) it said my CPU was running at 118 MHz, my hard drive access speed was 9.1 ms and my overall performance was 64.1 compared to a 386DX33 with a 24.9 rating, a 486DX33 with a 50.5 rating and a Pentium 66 with a 145.8 rating.
7) The last item in the Norton DOS Group is the "Norton Integrator". This program is the heart of the original Norton Utilities. It takes all the "above" utilities and puts them, plus several others, together on one screen. This is the complete list of available programs you can use to get yourself in trouble. The Integrator gives you brief descriptions of what each utility does as you toggle through them so as to make it fairly intuitive.
I really like their manual. I can and did, just sit there and read. It has a wealth of information other than just describing the features in its programs.
Although my "Family" computer is still running Windows 3.1, I will be switching it over to Windows 95 soon. And being very impressed by this program I will be budgeting in some money to purchase Norton Utilities for Windows 95
Or should I wait for "98"?
by Lee Ammons
Manufacturer: Merriam Webster Inc. Springfield, Mass 01102 Phone:800-828-1880 Fax: 413-731-5979 www.m-w.com System Recommendations: IBM PC or fully compatible 486SX processor or higher Windows 3.1 or 95 Monitor w/256 colors SVGA graphics card. CD-ROM drive Mouse, Sound card, speakers 4 MB RAM 2.5 MB hard drive Space
This is a wonderful Health Care Dictionary. It is a dictionary plus much more. The program works on both Windows and Mac operating systems. A neat feature of this program is that it has M-W Link which works with most programs, meaning that you can link from your Word Processor directly to The Medical Dictionary to get a medical word or definition and go right on with whatever you are working on. You can link to other Windows or Macintosh programs using shortcuts.
There are many menu commands that make using the dictionary quite a simple procedure. You can print the screen, which is great. You can copy to the clipboard to paste into something else. It works very well with the other Merriam Webster programs such as, the MW Collegiate Dictionary if you happen to be using that program also.
As with most Windows programs, there are excellent Help files to assist you. You can print out a User's Guide or just use your Help files. It is an easy program to learn and use.
There are several ways to find the definitions of words. If you know the word, just type it in the Main Entry or Entry Word field and press enter/return. Look up medical phrases in the same way, just type in the phrase and press enter/return. There are 57,000 entries in the dictionary from Aids to Z-DNA. You can look up partial words if you don't know how to spell a word and only know part of it. There are so many different ways to find what you are looking for and you don't have to be a genius or medical terminologist to accomplish this. Use the advanced Search tools such as Boolean and regular expression operators to conduct searches quickly and easily.
There are 750 full color Illustrations and Tables included in the program. You can easily tell if there is an illustration by a camera icon that appears in the lower right-hand corner of your screen. Just click on the camera icon to view the illustration and to close the illustration click anywhere outside of it.
One of my favorite things in the program is the Audio portion of the program. How many times have you tried to pronounce a medical term or word? If you are like me, it can be quite a task. Not anymore, now you can just click on the word if it appears in blue and "voilá" you will hear a recorded pronunciation of it. Not all words in the dictionary have the recorded pronunciation but the ones that are hard to pronounce do and this is a great feature. You must have the CD-ROM in the drive to be able to use the Audio portion.
The Spelling Help function of the Merriam Webster's Medical Audio Dictionary includes two aids to help you find your word. There is the Word Wheel, which as you type brings up different words and if you find the one you want you, just click on it to look it up. The second is the Spell Check Button which if you spell a word as it sounds the spell checker will try to find words that sound like it. You can use the Wild card feature also which is the `?' mark. If you don't know how to spell a word, type the beginning and ending letters or what you think it might be and include a `?' mark in the middle. The program then looks for words with those letters in plus others. You can see that there are many ways to find the words or phrases that you are looking for.
If you are looking for an audio medical dictionary that you can learn quickly and easily, I highly recommend Merriam Websters Medical Audio Dictionary. Even if you aren't looking for one this program is amazing and fun to use.
This is our first month of publishing the essays submitted for the Gateway
project. We will pick the essays which offer variety and those which tell
us about how young people see the PC world and their future. This month
we have four essays reflecting four different points of view.
(Please note some essays may have been edited for spelling or shortened for space needs of the magazine.)
Our only entry with a dose of humor came from Laurie Beth Egan of Cottonwood High School, Salt Lake City, Jordan School District.
Well, I am not sure what a computer actually is, but all I know is that my school surely needs something to help its students in educating us for the rest of our lives. I certainly have pride in my-school, and that is why the motto "it's not what your school can do for you but what you can do for your school, "applies to me. I love my school dearly, and I feel that getting a so- called computer would help bring us out of the dark ages. There is even a possibility that I could talk my principal into looking into such a thing as electricity! Forgive me for my small intellect. It is not that I haven't had a good education, but it is merely alack of funds and modernization. In my technology class, I was taught about some type of machine that allowed access to Information throughout the world. All I could say to my teacher was "You have got to be crazy, I can't even contact my neighbor down the road without taking a Jog." In other words, I have no idea about what would be in Store for my school if we received this computer, but I assure you, it would be put to good use.
Let me just take a minute to tell you about my school, and the wonderful new things we have already received this year. It all started in August when our principal came to each classroom and announced that they were about to start a project which would allow the students to drink water from a well near the school, rather than Jogging to a nearby stream.
I'm sure you can imagine what an accomplishment this was, considering that our school was extremely hot in August, and the "so-called" nearby stream was almost a mile and a hair away. In addition, we also got a large chalkboard for each classroom and paper so that we no longer have to write on slates! My school is wonderful, and I love it.
Cottonwood High School offers some or the best education in the state, and Utah is ranked among the top states for education in the Nation, and therefore, Cottonwood is among the best of the best, and needs a new computer. So, when you ask, what a Gateway Computer would do for my school? , My response is "It would change the world!"
Sincerely, Laurie Beth Egan
Many of the essays talked about computer abilities that seem to be more of the Star Trek level. However if you think about what Ed Bitterman (8th grade) Wasatch Middle School, Heber, Utah sees as possible, you will realize all of these are real.
A Gateway will make the bell system very simple and keeping records for the rest of the teachers and staff very simple. A Gateway will make the programs a lot more complex and it will keep us up to date a little more than we are right now. It will allow us to run more complex system with better graphics. It will allow us to run more and better programs, whether it is for learning or not, and still have room for saving space and anything else. We will be able to have a better climate control in the summer and in the winter.
The lighting for in the gyms will be a lot better, for the inside
and out. It will save money by not using as much electricity, and we will
be able to buy a new school or just add onto the school we have now so
that the halls aren't as crowded.
The President's Porch column June, mentioned the shortage of resources in our schools. Jackie Salaz (5th grade), St. Francis Xavier Regional School, Kearns, Utah, points out shortages in peripherals, with overcrowded results.
When my class needs to print, the printer goes slow and backs up all the computers printing. When my classmates need to do a project, everybody fights for a CD-ROM. We don't have many CD-ROMs, so people have to double up to see a CD with another person.
The school has taught my classmates and me a lot. We know how to change color and fonts and sizes. But, there is a lot to learn in so little time.
When one of my classmates looks for a certain subject, the computer takes a long time to get the topic and we have little computer time in the computer lab.
Our school needs new computers for fun studies and reports.
Finally, there were a few entries which contained pearls of wisdom with insights we had not thought of before reading those entries. Of these entries, the Blue Chip's President picked this entry from Eduardo H Nunez (10th grade) Skyview High School, Smithfield, Utah. It was picked for being unique, and also emphasizing educational goals with PCs.
ESL - English as a Second Language - this class is not even considered as a core class. It is a class where you can find people from Russia, Latin America, and all over the world. When we write research papers about each other's country, it is hard because Russia and Mexico don't have much in common. Brazil and Germany don't have anything in common either. It is also hard for the teacher to communicate with all the students, because she is not going to learn all the languages of the world to teach ESL.
We can use the Gateway computer to write our research papers easily and quickly, without spending days in the library looking for information. Although we have Internet access in the school, they don't have all the CDs offered, especially in multiple languages.
Besides the research papers, typed projects, and homework for this class, we can use the Gateway computer system to learn the keyboard. (Most Hispanics that come here, never have used a computer before.) None of us in the ESL class have computers in our homes. We can do science projects, historical reports, and social studies, with this computer system.
Of course we are going to use the Gateway computer system every day. Everybody in the school can have access to the system. There are lots of people who do not have computers at home. The only way they can do their homework is through the school computer lab (50 computers for nearly 1800 people). Even then there are not enough programs to help find the information needed for our education. I think where you don't have information, you don't have education. This computer system would facilitate the ESL students in all their classes in the school, especially with Foreign Language classes, English, Sciences, Geography, and History projects and reports. The written word is the best way to learn and travel around the world ... and a Gateway is the best way to get there.
by James Hirst
Manufacturer: Luckman Interactive, Inc. 1055 West 7th Street, Suite 2580, Los Angeles CA 90017 Phone: 2136141758 EMail: info@luckman.com. Home page: www.luckman.com
Luckman's Web Edit Pro 2.0 gives you the tools to create a professional looking web page in no time at all. All you need to create and view your own home page is Luckman's Web Edit Pro 2.0 and an Internet browser. Remember you need to have a browser installed on your computer to use Quickview.
Luckman's Web Edit Pro 2.0 covers HTML through 3.0. The newest version of Luckman's Web Edit Pro 3.0 covers through HTML 4.0. You can download the shareware version from http://www.luckman.com. I found that it gave me the power, tools, and confidence to create and test a home page that will run like a champion the first time without knowing anything about HTML (HyperText Markup Language). The size of your home page is limited only by the size of your memory.
I found that using the Web Edit Home Page Wizard was a lot of fun and easy to use. All you have to do is follow the simple instructions and press next and before you know if it's finished. It will format all the text for you and place your JPEG or GIF images in your home page for you.
Another feature that it has is its link verification tool which checks to see if the links are current. How many times have you gone to a web page and found out that the links no longer exist? You wait and wait and then you find out that you were waiting for a link that no longer exists. Nothing else is more apt to make you lose confidence in a home page and the links that it contains. Keeping your links up to date is an extremely important point in the ever changing web. Validation of links and being able to preview your page with Quick Preview gives you the chance to make minor changes and see how it affects the overall feeling of your homepage.
One must be careful about the background color and text colors and the font size. If you are not careful your home page becomes hard to read and distracts the visitor. Make sure that you use as many key words as you can to describe your homepage because the search engine robots will pick them up and give yours a better chance of being pulled up. The multilingual spell checker allows you to check your text without exporting it to some word processor and then importing it back again. It also lets you add to the dictionary used by the spell checker. I appreciated the Quick Print option that removes the HTML so that I could get a clean print out of the document which makes it more readable when used in Faxes or Email's. The built in form support made it easy to create forms to hold your data with what you see is what you get technology. Trying to line up data in tables has always been a pain and this interface makes it painless. If you like frames there is the wizard frame builder for you but it is always nice to include a non-frame version of your page for some older browsers. Over all it is a great product with plenty of features for all of those who make home pages.
by David A. Murray
Manufacturer: Luckman Interactive, Inc. 1055 West 7th Street, Suite 2580 Los Angeles, CA 90017 ph: 2136141758 Email: info@luckman.com http://www.luckman.com System Requirements: PC Windows compatible 386 (or higher) PC Windows 3.1, Windows 95 4 meg RAM Win 3.1 8 meg RAM Win 95 7.5 meg free HD space, for installation 4.5 meg free HD space, after installation Super VGA monitor 2X CD-ROM drive (4X recommended) 14.4k baud modem (or higher) MAC 68020 (or faster) or Power Macintosh System 7 (or higher) 2X CD-ROM drive (4X recommended) 8 meg RAM 7.5 meg free HD space, for installation 3.5 meg free HD space, after installation 14.4k baud modem (or higher) List price: $29.95 (+$10 s&h)
Luckman's Official Interactive World Wide Web Yellow Pages, a product of Luckman Interactive, Inc., is an easy way to get up and running on "The Web". Before installing, I scanned the read.me file and found only one impediment to a nobrainer installation. I happened to have a screen saver ensemble that conflicted. After changing it, installation was a snap.
The hype on the box was right on the money in describing the software as fast and easy. A quick scan of the manual's description of the button functions and I was on the net.
First I looked to see if my genealogy site was listed. I did not really expect it to be and it was not. There were only 3 genealogy sites listed and the category was hard to find. Sometimes it is a service business, a hobby, a research service, a history subcategory, a family recreation, a form of church records or government vital records. I have never been able to easily find the category, it just doesn't fit well in the subject listings. No problem so far. I did a little browsing and ended up at the Luckman page (www.luckman.com). Luckman has not published a lot of software and I was surprised to find that WWWYP was not listed. I finally found the product listed in the FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) section.
Earlier when discussing installation I failed to mention that I chose to install the Mosaic Browser. I have Mosaic on my software shelf, but have never loaded it. A special version of Acrobat Reader was a necessary part of the installation as well. Both loaded fine and worked on first try, as one should expect.
The first problem I found was that Mosaic could not load some of Luckman's web pages because the pages had features that Mosaic could not handle. That struck me as odd. Why would Luckman's web masters write pages that were not accessible to a web browser that the company included with their software? A page or two that would not load, loaded fine when accessed from a different hypertext link! The problem may be related to some combination unique to my machine. Who knows? No biggie, WWWYP will work with Netscape or Internet Explorer.
You may ask "What does World Wide Web Yellow Pages do for you that a year collection of bookmarks will not do?" WWWYP has over 10,000 Best sites, selected from over 100,000. These sites are rated on content, design and flow. Loading time is listed for a 28.8k modem. A one paragraph description of the site is very helpful in deciding where to "go". A separate two line "site detail" lists technical content (i.e. Real Time Audio or Video, Animations, Forms etc.) All of this information is available before going logging on the net (as well as being instantly accessible while online).
As the product name implies, these are business sites. WWWYP should be a useful tool for a longer period of time than a similar piece of Luckman software "The Best of the Web" that is not limited to business sites. For about $25 ($19+s&h) Luckman will update the product, that's a $15 saving from buying the product annually. I called six Salt Lake area software retailers and found none that had WWWYP in stock. It is a new product and may be only available from Luckman or via special order at your favorite software store.
A couple of months ago, Lauryn Wingate, Don Nendell, and me (Dave Otterstrom) met at Access Software to do yet another Blue Chips Interview!! Access was super for letting us use their conference room and their phones
Steve Witzel Also was instrumental in setting us up with a very interesting person to interview. Dave Pearson stayed and helped as we made the long distance call to San Francisco for the interview. I hope you find it as interesting as we found it fun to do.
Denny Atkin is a features editor for Computer Gaming World. His focus is simulations and when he feels irresponsible he plays action, adventure, strategy, and even puzzle games.
Denny's been involved with gaming every since he programmed a terrible upside-down Centipede game for a Commodore Pet 2001 in 1980. He began his writing career covering the Amiga in 1987. After stints as an editor for Compute! and the late lamented OMNI magazine, Denny married an amazing woman, packed up a 20-pound cat, and moved west to join CGW in 1995. He's spent the ensuing years trying to convince the rest of the staff that flight simulators are fun. He's had time at the stick of real planes, including a SkyWarriors T-34A and the highlight of his career an hour and a half in the back seat of a USAF F-15D Eagle.
Denny's written for Compute!, OMNI, and Computer Gaming World. He's freelanced for at least 20 other magazines, ranging from Computer Shopper to Entertainment Weekly to Penthouse (The Technology column that nobody reads!)
DAVE O: You wrote the technical page for Compute Magazine, is that right? Was that your first writing job?
DENNY: Actually my first writing was sort of a bad luck story. The first thing I had accepted for publication was with a predecessor of today's CD ROM magazine. It was published on floppy disk, but it still had the animation and the music and the interactive ads. It was well ahead of its time so of course it failed. It went out of business between accepting my article and actually publishing it.
Luckily the editor took pity on me, I was a college student at the time who was very excited for getting published for the first time. He put me in touch with the editor at Amiga World Magazine, which was an Amiga specific magazine published by IDG. They took a look at the article I had written and picked it up, and I eventually became a columnist for them.
DAVE O: I read your article where Amiga was going out of business and they were going to drop the page, and you sounded a little hurt and a little angry.
DENNY: Yeah.
DAVE O: Yeah I a started with a 64 so I'm very familiar with the Amiga. I remember when the Amiga was first released watching guys with full-blown Macintosh's start to cry. I think it has just been within the last year the Amiga PC has been dropped by Disney and replaced with Pentium IIs.
DENNY: Yeah, it was an amazing machine for its time, I think its been only in the last year or year and a half since Windows 95 finally brought the PC up to the level of a decent operating system.
LAURYN: Do you take pleasure in writing game reviews?
DENNY: Yea, I still do, even with it being the day job. I really think the only way that someone can be a successful game reviewer is to have love for the genre, for the activity. Most of the successful people I know in the occupation, are people who would be playing the games any way, and who really enjoy it. They look at game reviewing as a way to get paid to do something that they enjoy. I've worked with a couple of people over the years who were writers, who came into it because there was an opportunity with game writing, but they didn't play games before, they got into it and weren't really into it, and they really looked at it as a very tedious job, "How can you sit there and play this all day and still play it at night!?!".
DAVE O: So you don't ever hit a burn out point?
DENNY: There are times that I look forward to turning the monitor off grabbing my wife and going out to a park somewhere where there isn't a monitor in sight. Certainly I'm not. Well our magazine caters to hard core game players, our average reader buys 20 games a year.
LAURYN: Whoa!!
DENNY: Yeah, and that is just on the average, so for every guy who is buying five, there is another, who is buying 30. To even be able to play two new games a month. That's a lot of time to put into it. So any way I spend a fair amount of time doing this, but you've got to spend some time in the real world.
DON: What got you started reviewing flight simulators in the first place?
DENNY: Well I've always been an aviation fan. >From the time I was a little kid I was reading airplane books and going to air shows. I made friends with any pilot I could who could possibly take me up and let me take the controls of the plane for a few minutes. I even debated at one point going into the Air Force or doing an airline career, but it didn't work out by the time that I had decided to go to college. I've always had the interest of aviation, but with out going into the service, commercial airlines, trying to get my pilots license, or getting into a situation were I could fly for a living. You just don't get that many opportunities, and I certainly would never be able to fly something like a high performance fighter jet. I was interested in flight SIMM's, just because it gives you an opportunity to do something you wouldn't normally get to do in real life.
DON: Without the aviation experience, how do you qualify to be a flight simulation reviewer
DENNY: Aviation was a topic I had interest and had devoured books on since I was a kid so I already had a fairly good knowledge of the history of aviation and of what pilots do, and have been lucky enough to do a fair amount of flying with friends and acquaintances. Certainly I'll never get a chance in real life to fly a Mustang, Corsair, or a Saber jet, and this is a way to simulate some of that. I did work out of the computer magazine business for a little over a year at Omni the science magazine. I was very lucky to get a call from the Air Force asking me if I wanted to go for a ride in a F15 Eagle. My initial reaction to that was "All right who is this and what kind of joke our you pulling?" That's not even funny, but I decided to play along with it, and it turned out that it was real. So I got an hour and a half in the backseat of a high performance fighter. Because of that I'm sure as a pilot you know that it is one thing to sit there and see the environment recreated on the 15" screen , but it something entirely different to pull 7.8 G's.
DON: I wish we had a whole bunch of time because if we're playing one up man ship, you just beat me on one. (Hat in hand) I've never flew in a F15 but I can match you story for story.
DENNY: Oh, I'm sure you can top me.
DON: Tell us about how you got to go to Atlanta and fly with Sky Warriors.
DENNY: Yeah it worked out that Microsoft had a new flight simulator in testing called Fighter Aces. It's an online Internet game were you can go up in an arena, with like a hundred other players and just shoot at any body on the other team type of game. But before it went live on the Internet they invited a number of editors and other industry people to participate in a contest. We just flew for about a week and people with the best kill ratio won trips to sky warriors if they were going to E3 (COMDEX for gamers). So of the top 4 placers in the contest, three of them CGW writers, I was down there, and I was number four in the group. I've actually got a couple of guys who write for me who are better virtual fighter pilots then I am. I went down there and got a chance to fly a laser equipped T34 in mock air combat. Of course it is always interesting to compare the simulation experience to actually flying maneuvers in a real plane.
DON: I'm told that there is a number of schools like that around the country. One up in San Diego I believe.
DENNY: Yeah there is one in San Diego, one in the Bay area, I think there is probably ten of them throughout the country. Some of them fly ex military T34s.
LAURYN: So Denny, are flight SIMMs pretty much the only thing you do?
DENNY: No, actually that is something that I been concentrating on since I got to computer gaming world. Because this publication is an all gaming publication, we're lucky enough to have a fairly large staff devoted to game coverage. We have about eight primary editors and so we all tend to focus on the genre that we are most interested in. We have one guy who does strategy and action games. Another guy focuses on puzzle and war games. My specialty is simulation. Before I came to CGW, when I worked for Compute, I was the games guy, so at that time I actually reviewed just about everything.
LAURYN: And the favorite on the block, because you had all the new software.
DAVE O: I have a question to ask you that I asked Steve, I won't tell you his answer and I don't know if you've seen his interview.
DENNY: No, I haven't
DAVE O: Ok but I'm going to ask you this. One of the members of our group games quite heavily. He has made the statement in the meetings that "The improvements in computers today, the accelerated graphics, 3D sound is there primarily because of games," He says" Games are driving the computer industry." What's you opinion on that?
DENNY: I definitely think that's true to a point because, if your doing the thing that the typical consumer does with a computer which someone who doesn't play games, You're probably browsing the Internet, using a word processor, maybe Excel, the spread sheet, That kind of stuff. If that's the kind of stuff you're doing the Pentium 133 you bought two years ago, still has plenty of horsepower. You're not sitting around waiting on the computer at all for that kind of thing. Whereas if you're into gaming, the more horsepower you have the more realistic environment you can create. The more intelligent opponent the game designers can have you face. You've got things like full motion video, that sort of thing. Gaming has driven the hardware quite a bit. If you take for example the whole 3d graphics card industry, which if you look through or just about any hardware related or gaming publication you see 3d, fx, and ATI. all these other company really playing up to these 3d cards. At this point those kind of things are only useful to games The business magazines and the company who are trying to sell these out side of the game industry are really trying to come up with all these ideas where they might be useful like 3d graphs and VRML on the web. But none of that stuff really exists. So just about any computer you buy now has a chip for 3d graphics in it and it's a technology that's only useful for games
LAURYN: Do you see the Internet playing a much larger role in games and playing against one another like flight simulators.
DENNY: Ya, it's definitely going to happen. It's a fairly early point in that technology. The key thing that's missing right now is the companies figuring a way to make money from it
LAURYN: How will they make money from it?
DENNY: Unfortunately people are used to getting things on the Internet for free. They' say "I pay my 20 dollars to my ISP. So why do you want another 20 dollars on top of that?" The companies that have been most successful right now with that are the companies that have box games that they simply make playable over the Internet. If you take for instance QUAKE, which has done very well as a single player game, it's stayed in the top ten and gets so much traffic in the net because of the multi player aspect of it. Certainly that's true with flight SIMMs and strategy games, Microsoft's Age of Empires was one of the most popular strategy games of the Christmas season, and one of the great things about it is it offers Internet play on their Internet gaming zone. And that's very easy to set up. You don't have to be a net guru to get into it like Quake and some of these other games.
LAURYN: I did a little bit of research and found out there's more flight simulator games than I can shake a stick at. So which ones are your favorites?
DENNY: The one I've been playing most recently, is the title called F22 air dominance fighter from DID. It's a simulation that's set probably 20 years in the future because your flying the F22 which is only in the flight test stage right now, the Air Force isn't really using them in combat. It's a well designed game, very graphically exciting, a lot of fun, but frankly my favorite variety is the WW2 games. There haven't been any new WW2 games in a couple of years. Luckily, everyone decided to fill that gap at the same time. There's probably going to be about eight of them released over the course of this year. That's what I'm really looking forward to because, with an F22 game you can shoot at your opponent when he's twenty miles away.
DON: Now you just turned me off. This is the reason I didn't look forward to coming to this meeting tonight, because I'm a Falcon 3.0 nut. The first time I was dogfighting with a guy, he was shooting me down from 30 miles away. That's no fun! And so, what I did was tell him " Let's go guts. " Because the shooting the missiles from 35 miles away, which is the real world, just isn't fun. I'm glad I'm not in the service right now, because of that.
DENNY: You know those games can be fun, but to met it's far more exciting to get in there and try to fly maneuvers against someone, you know try to get a gun hit on them. The other way, with the automated devices, it's almost like fighting a computer based war.
LAURYN: Let me ask you this question because Don brings up an interesting point. Are your reviews written for retired pilots or 25 to 54 year old wannabes.
DENNY: The majority of them are the wannabes. Certainly in some of the flight simulation discussion groups I know a couple of people who are ex F16 pilots who fly for the airlines now and who miss the rush of the fast fighter jets and play the SIMMs just to reminisce and relive the experience. I know an active duty F15 pilot that does this. But, the majority of people are aviation and military buffs who play it to get a chance to experience something that they would not get to do otherwise.
DON: What is/was the best flight simulator or your life?
DENNY: There are two that are probably the best that would be Falcon 3.0 and the original Red Baron
DON: My hat is off to you. (Again with the hat)
DAVE O: Don gets all excited every time someone says Falcon 4.0, he's looking around corners for it.
DENNY: Ya, I've been doing a series on Falcon 4.0,
DON: When will it be out?
DENNY: Ah , it's been delayed again. It's looking like it's going to be about June. It's going to be interesting. One of the great things about SIMMs that's gone on in the last year or two is that it's gotten so much more realistic. Probably 80% of the people who play these wanna just go up and shoot at things. But they don't want to get into the minute details. And the good SIMMs let you turn off the heavy realism features. But there's a hard core element who want every thing to be as realistic as you can possibly be on a computer. They want to get in there and tweek all that heavy detailed stuff. There's two new flight SIMMs coming out this summer. Jane's F15 from Origin and Falcon 4.0 that are light years ahead of any thing else as far as realism.
LAURYN: You just did a review on that, didn't you ?
DENNY: Ya, I did a preview on that. So when these things hit, and people are really faced with this level of realism, its going to be interesting to see how many get into it, and how many turn down the detail. Cause they are gonna find out its more work than fun.
DON: No it's the other way around. It's more fun than work. DENNY: Certainly the best SIMMs, the ones that are the most successful, are the ones that cater to both crowds. I love to get in there and find out how the real plane works, but I fully understand if I sit my dad in front of one of these he's gonna to want to get into all the details as well as learn the basics. Red Baron and Falcon, that's something they both had, they both had that easy instant action mode, but as the people got into it could go back, read the manual and find out how they really worked..
DAVE O: Tell me, is Force Feedback really making a big difference.?
DENNY: Not yet. Most of the games that support it use it as a gimmick. I've really only played one game where it's really enhanced the experience. That's War Birds, an online WW2 flight SIMM. In WW2 fighters it was real easy to stall out when you get into tight maneuvers. If you're using a non force feedback joystick it had a horn if you started to stall, (didn't seem very realistic). If you were using a Force Feedback joystick, when you started to stall it would shake the stick more like a real fighter. It's kinda nice with that, but it's really technology that's been not fully realized yet.
LAURYN: So in terms of the joystick, is the Microsoft Sidewinder one of the better ones out today?
DENNY: For the casual user Ya. For the person who plays many different games, who's looking for a all in one solution, it's OK. The Falcon fan will probably want to go along with something like the CH products. The really good joysticks have separate throttle and rudder peddles and fully program them. .
DON: So for the new, first time flight simulator pilot, What's your starter flight SIMM ?
DENNY: that's a tough one. Well, I think a game called Fighter Simtholegy from Janes combat simulations. It's not one of the most technology advanced games, or one of the most realistic, but I certainly think it's accessible. The planes are easy to fly, it's got some interesting missions, and it has very easy to use Internet play. I think one of the really appealing things about flight SIMMs, is when you can go on and play against other people. it's one thing to know your beating a computer, but it's quite another thing to get on someone's tail and get a kill, and know that that was another guy trying just as hard as you were. Fighter Simtholegy unlike some of the SIMMs where it's every man for himself, actually gives you structured missions where somebody might have to take out a target, while somebody else protects it. That's what I like, it's got some real goals.
DON: How do you feel about Microsoft's product, Flight Simulator for a first time SIMM Pilot?
DENNY: Well, if someone's interested in general aviation, like what it could be like to really learn to fly, I think it's great. It's just that for a lot of people the competition is a necessary thing for gaming.
LAURYN: I happen to like the Microsoft Flight Simulator, because it reminds me of flying a 150. In other words it's kind of like, just being up there. Whereas what your talking about is Dog Fighting.
DENNY: For people who are interested in finding out more about what it's like to fly a real plane, Microsoft Flight Simulator is a good title. The one that I really recommend right now is a SIMM called Flight Unlimited 2, from Looking Glass. It gives you a much more realistic environment. It has very good 3-D card support so it visually looks a lot like you're flying. It's the first SIMM where I kind of felt like I have in a small plane while taking off down the runway. The other cool thing about it is that it models hundreds of other planes in the skies around you, and it models air traffic control. A bunch of things. In Microsoft Flight Simulator it's sort of like you're the only person in the skies.
DAVE O: a couple of years ago at COMDEX, we were wandering through the multimedia section and we came across a booth where they had two 300 megahertz Macintosh's connected together with a helicopter flight SIMM. The interesting was they had all the hardware, including rudder, joysticks, and helmets. The really great thing was that when you were flying, if you turned your head it only changed the view, not the direction of the craft. It felt a lot more like flying than any other flight SIMM I've ever tried. Do you think anyone will ever create a flight SIMM to take advantage of this kind of hardware?
DENNY: Ya there has been a couple already. The problem is the helmets are very low resolution. They give you about 320 by 200 pixels across so you can't read an instrument panel and it's very hard to make out the plane around you, things like that. Helmets use LCD's and when they get to the point where they can make an LCD small enough to give you the same resolution as your monitor, 640 by 480 or 800 by 600 it will be different. Once that technology gets there, the flight SIMM guys are very anxious to support it. It's just that right now the added immersion you get by being able to look around in three dimensions has been counter acted by the low detail of the helmets out there.
DAVE O: So what your saying is that when the helmets work better and force feedback joysticks are perfected we can probably really kill ourselves.
DENNY: Heh Heh. Maybe have a heart attack
LAURYN: We'd look like Lawnmower Man
LAURYN: So where do you think flight simulators are headed? More towards realism?
DENNY: Ya, for the last year or so the market seems to be segmenting. There have been SIMMs that were geared more toward beginner players like F22 Raptor from Nova Logic, where they sacrifice realism to male it more accessible. Then there have been some SIMMs that were a little too hardcore, like one called Back To Baghdad where some people literally couldn't get the engines started on there F16's. the successful products are always the ones that cater to the whole range. I think your going to see both new levels of realism and at the same time the companies are going to really work hard trying to make it so people who pick up these games and it's their first Flight SIMM can turn off all these levels of realism levels, get up there fly around see what the skies are like. Then if you're really interested in it you can slowly crank up the realism and learn how the real thing flies. It's a combination. They are catering to the hard core guys and at the time they are trying to not scare away the newbie.
LAURYN: You were saying that your average reader buys about twenty games a year. I'm assuming they are mostly male. Are they all flight SIMMs?
DENNY: Our readership is probably about 90% male. The male-female breakdown varies by genre. It's probably 95 % male for flight SIMMs, at least as far as the military ones go. However when you get into an area like adventure games like MIST and RIVEN, you might see 40,50% female. As far as types of game go most gamers have 2 or 3 that they like. I don't know many people who pigeon hole on just 1. Most everybody have 1 or 2 types of games that they just don't play. Like I just can't get into sports games.
LAURYN: Oops, Sorry Dave (Pearson)
DAVE P: What! No golf
DENNY: Er, er, ah, golf is an acceptation. I'm thinking more along the lines off-
LAURYN: Ha ha ha good recovery Dennie
DENNY: No no I'm serious. Links saved my life because I'm the only male Atkin on the planet who doesn't golf. My whole family are golf fanatic's, my dad like reviews golf games.
DON: Access is paying for this call
(More Laughter )
DENNY: But no, computer golf is my life saver. I have no hand to eye coordination in real life, but I can play computer golf. I've spent many, many hours playing computer golf with my whole family. I don't just play SIMMs, I play a lot of strategy games like Age of Empires, Warcraft, Total Annihilation, and games like that. I occasionally enjoy a good adventure game such as say overseer.
LAURYN: That's a good one!!!
DAVE P: I was wondering if you would get that one in there.
DAVE O: Ok, lets say, you go home from your work and you sit down in front of your computer, What kind of system do you, a nationally read review editor, turn on? Just how much computer do you have? And last but not least, when was the last time you played a solitaire game in windows?
DENNY: Well let's see the equipment I've got at home is a home built just upgraded from a Pentium 133 to a Pentium 233 last week with a big hard drive, because of the amount of games that I'm called upon to play.
DON: What is big?
DENNY: I've got a 6.4 gig in there and a 2 gig. A 3d fx card, a 56k modem, and I got the bargain price of the century on a 21 inch monitor last year which is just great for games and long word processing sessions. As for solitaire I've managed to go 32 years of my life without learning how to play it, but I have been known to pull up mine sweeper.
DAVE P: Ooh I love that one.
DENNY: Mine sweeper's great on my Palm Pilot for those long tedious meetings
DAVE P: Me to. I love it.
DENNY: Yeah, the people think you're taking notes.
DAVE O: So, what kind of joy stick do you use?
DENNY: At home I've been using the Thrustmaster F22 with their TQS throttle. And at work right now I've the new Suncom setup. They have a F15 joystick and a new split throttle so you can actually control two engines independently.
DON: I'll probably be buying these pretty quick.
DAVE O: Don's over here taking notes like mad.
DENNY: Their throttle's called the Strike Fighter Throttle.
DAVE O: You did a review on a sub SIMM didn't you?
DENNY: Yea. That was another Jane's SIMM. They did a game called 688 I, based on nuclear attack submarines last year. When we were working on the preview, Sanitist (The company that developed it) is also a military contractor. They do simulations for training. We went up to visit the developer and it was right next to a navel base in Connecticut and we were actually able to go onto a 688 sub and compare the simulation to the real thing.
LAURYN: It's a shame you don't like what you do for a living!!
DON: In upgrading to the new Microsoft Flight Simulator, is there some kind of backward compatibility for the old scenery disks so you don't have to buy all new software to fly places where you want to go.
DENNY: Are you going from Flight Simulator 5 to Flight Simulator 98 ?
DON: I'm going from Flight Simulator 4 to 98 !
DENNY: Actually I think version 4 scenery will work with 95, however I don't think it will work with 98. But Flight Simulator 98 includes scenery for the whole continental United States on the CD.
DON: In other words I got a whole bunch of coasters.
DENNY: Pretty much, yea. Which is the case with so much software.
DAVE O: I saw an article in a flight mag that showed some software for flight SIMMs scenery in Australia. It was either in Sidney or Melbourne and it was drawn with the help of the positioning satellites so everything it where it belongs.
DENNY: Flight Unlimited II is that way, with the one limitation being it only comes with scenery for the San Francisco Bay Area. I can take off with my SIMM from Buchanan Airport north of town and I can actually fly over and find my apartment building. That's a level of detail not found in the past. It used to be a major town had maybe 10 buildings downtown and that's about it.
LAURYN: So Denny, where do you see the industry going? Gaming in general and then flight SIMMs in particular.
DENNY: One of the things that people have looked forward to is the main streaming of computer games. The thought that eventually it would become a form of entertainment where people sit and play games on their set top boxes hooked to their cable system.
LAURYN: Do you think Web TV will have that kind of influence?
DENNY: No, I don't think it's going to happen. I think there's a certain mind set, like the person who gets together with friends and plays board games still. There are certain kind of people that enjoy games and there are people who would much rather go out and play football with their friends or curl up with a good book. Certainly it will get bigger, and more popular, especially as the games continue to get better. But I think it's always going to be some what of a niche hobby.
LAURYN: So, to a PC user group in Utah of about 300 to 400 people, what would you want them to know about the gaming industry?
DENNY: Boy! I guess the one thing I would want them to know is the amazing variety of games out there for all interests. I've talked to a lot of people over the years who don't play computer games, who say "Oh, I tried and missed.", or "I played Pac Man on my Commodore 64 years ago and it just wasn't that interesting.". I think a lot of people don't realize the scope of what's available. History buffs can find that can let you recreate battles from Napoleon times through the civil war, to modern day battles and into space. You can learn to do things like fly a plane or drive a race car. People who are big book readers can find adventure games that are designed by novelists that have really compelling stories. If you look around hard enough you will find the game created just for you.
DON: I think this is the most exciting time in the history of mankind, because of the things you just said. Whatever you want, you can do.
DENNY: The other thing is tying all the stuff in the Internet. There are so many people who used to think that they were the only people in the neighborhood who's interested in this stuff. But now you can find people on the net very easily who, no matter how niche'y or weird your interests are, will share the same interests. It's the same thing with gaming and related topics. You can find players to game with, and in the reality based stuff you can find people who are big aviation buffs that you can chat with before you go up and fly.
![[Law++ Image]](../../images/law2.gif)
by John Ogilvie
Client confidences are protected by attorney-client privilege, by a confidentiality obligation, or both. The confidentiality obligation is a broad ethical responsibility to protect client confidences from disclosure except in very limited situations. For instance, an attorney may choose to reveal information to prevent a client from committing a serious crime, to rectify a crime or fraud committed using the attorney's services, to establish a claim or defense in litigation between attorney and client, or to comply with a court order. Except for such limited situations, client confidences can be revealed by the attorney only with the client's permission, regardless of whether the disclosure would be in a lawsuit or some other context.
Clients also control the disclosure of privileged information, but the context of a potential disclosure is a lawsuit. The attorney-client privilege gives clients the authority to decide whether their attorneys may testify in court about privileged communications. The attorney-client privilege is different from the confidentiality obligation in that information may be protected by the confidentiality obligation without being privileged.
Privilege only applies to communications between privileged persons made in confidence for the purpose of obtaining or providing legal advice. It is often, but not always, possible to prevent your opponent in a lawsuit from obtaining your privileged communications. However, privilege cannot be asserted successfully unless the communication was made between privileged persons, in confidence, to obtain or provide legal advice.
For instance, suppose an attorney is retained to represent a corporation in a lawsuit, and the attorney meets with corporate management and personnel from a public relations firm hired by the corporation. Discussions at the meeting are not necessarily privileged, because the public relations personnel are neither attorney nor client. An opponent seeking information about the discussions could successfully argue that the discussions were not between privileged persons, were not in confidence, or both.
Information is not made privileged merely by sending it to your attorney or discussing it in the presence of your attorney. For instance, internal email messages about product or marketing strategy cannot be shielded merely by sending copies to the company's counsel. An opponent seeking copies of the email could successfully argue that the email was not sent for the purpose of obtaining or providing legal advice. On the other hand, suppose the company sends a collection of email messages to its attorney with a request to review them and provide legal advice, and the attorney does so. Then the attorney's reply would be privileged even if the email it discusses is not.
In summary, attorney-client privilege and an attorney's confidentiality obligation both prevent disclosure of confidential client information. However, the confidentiality obligation limits disclosure in any context while privilege only limits testimony by the attorney. Privilege is also more complex, having more requirements and more exceptions than the confidentiality obligation. Nonetheless, the attorney-client privilege is valuable and you should understand when it is available and how to avoid losing it.
John W. L. Ogilvie is a Registered Patent Attorney and founder of the Computer Law++ law firm. He can be reached at (801) 355-0828 or email jwlo@LAWPP.com.More information is available at http://www.lawplusplus.com. Computer Law++, LAWPP, and lawplusplus are trademarks, and Law++ and COMPUTER LAW++ are federally registered trademarks of John Ogilvie. Copyright 1998 John Ogilvie. All Rights Reserved.
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