monthly computer chronicle mcc - sanborn software

MONTHLY COMPUTER CHRONICLE

By Chuck Hajdú

Happy Holidays. I love that greet-ing, even though it has come toreflect the political correctness thatseems to rule everyone’s life to-day. The fall and early winter ofeach year are full of wonderful holi-days that all deserve celebrating.

I love October (lots of family birth-days and Halloween), November(the Marine Corps Birthday, Vet-eran's Day and Thanksgiving) andDecember (Chanukah, Christmasand many other winter solsticecelebrations). They are all holidaysto me and I love to celebrate them.

Many of the holidays we celebratehave one thing in common. OK,two things in common: lots of goodfood and giving presents. I’m surethat most of our readers are tor-mented right now about what togive for the techno-geek on theirlist. We have a great piece on Net-book accessories that should giveguidance to everyone looking forcool presents.

Speaking of Netbooks, it looks likethey’ll be an exploding product linethis year.

I attended a Win7 launch eventrecently and found one commentfrom the presenter to be especiallyinteresting. He warned the SysAd-mins in the audience to be readyfor the first week of January whenall of the senior executives come inand want their personal Netbooksconfigured for the company net-work.

He was right, I feel that Netbooksare the wave of the immediate fu-ture. Recent research, the Display-Search Q3’09 Quarterly AdvancedNotebook PC Shipment and Fore-cast Report, seems to validate myopinion.

In the past year (a BAD year forsales and the economy in general)sales of desktop PCs, notebooksand UMPCs all dropped signifi-cantly. If you sell PCs you are wellaware of this. However, sales ofMini-note/Netbooks GREW 264%.Anyone in business should seewhat the pattern is: people arebuying Netbooks by the ton!

So, let’s say it one more time:Happy Holidays!!

N E W S A N D V I E W SI N TH I S IS S U E :

NEWS AND VIEWS 1

TECHNOLOGY SPOTLIGHT

ICYTE

2

SIGHTS AND SOUNDS OF

MULTIMEDIA

3

NETBOOK ACCESSORIES 7

TECHNOLOGY TODAY 10

THE OFFICE ONLINE 12

THE DEALS GUY 16

MCC D E C E M B E R 2 0 0 9

MCC

MCC DECEMBER 2009

By Bayle Emlein

iCyte (sounds like “eye sight”) is a utility for marking,archiving, sharing info about, and re-finding informa-tion on web pages. This web utility allows the user tobookmark, aggregate, and tag saved web pages fororganizational purposes.

How is it better than the Bookmarks utility includedwith your browser? Four advantages pop up: iCytesare based on text selected from the site. That meansyou can include as much text as you’d like from thesite–no more going back to hunt through the site tofind the quotation or price that turns out to have an-swered your prayers.

It’s easy to aggregate and share iCyte projects withcolleagues. It’s also easy toorganize saved sites by pro-ject name. By making a pro-ject Public, you and col-leagues can share in theidentification of relevantwebsites. Thirdly, you canget into your iCyte accountfrom anyplace that has inter-net access. That means thatwhen I want to show co-workers research that I didat home since, all I need todo is log in. Fourth, iCytearchives your citations,along with the web address, if the address becomestemporarily or permanently unavailable, you still haveaccess to your research. At least as long as iCytekeeps its servers powered up.

One starts by going to www.icyte.com. Locate theDownload button. Click. Follow the installation in-structions: download the plugin, set up an account.An iCyte flag is added to your address bar. Or at

least that’s what’s supposed to happen. Somehowthe download/install didn’t quite work on my com-puter, but it worked well enough that I couldn’t repeatthe installation routine.

The online intro video just about drove me wild withits repetitions of how easy and wonderful and usefuliCyte is, but no clues about how to make the X@#$#thing work. Disappointingly like many others–more ofan ad for the product than an explanation. Hey, look!folks, I’m already at the site/cyte. I have an idea whatI might want to do with the product. How about walk-ing me through one of those many projects you referto accomplishing with ease instead of just telling mehow wonderful your iCyte experience was in creatingand using them?

Normally, I would have just dropped the project rightthere, but since I was supposed to be reviewing theapplication, it seemed like I should make an effort toget in. So I emailed Support without identifying my-self as anything more than an end user. Had a re-sponse by the next time I read email, each time wehad an exchange. It took several rounds of email toclarify and the problem. Then resolution was a no-brainer. The original download hadn’t worked, thoughI had successfully set up an account. I was amazedat the amount of tech support available for a free util-ity.

Once installed and set up, I was ready to record myresearch. Just for the sake of the exercise in usingiCyte, I developed an internet shopping project. Let’ssee if I can use this thing to help support economicrecovery.

(Continued on page 6)

I C Y T E

TE C H N OLO G Y SP OTL I G H T

blocks for days,handwrittennotes and head-ings for themonth and daysof the week asinput and definedthe output asOCR/color/lettersize/text. Thescan led to theOCR process and produced a document that hasthe picture, days of the week, the month and all theday numbers; no blocks, no colored areas, no notes.I had to install Word to get this result; Wordpad didnot display the result correctly.

The scanner can scan business cards and plasticcards, so I tried these next. This test was defined asFile/color/business card/jpg. The scan worked per-fectly with a black and white card. I also tried threecards with color, which also scanned perfectly, in-cluding the colored design.

For the plastic card test, I used a credit card, whichhas raised text, colored areas, the coded numberand a hologram. The scan was perfect, including thehologram!

The scanner has resolution capability from 100 to600 dpi. I tried a text scan at 600 resolution and hadit saved as in TIF format. It came out very clear; nopixelation was evident until magnification of about14 times. The file size for a single sheet of letter-size paper was about 4 MB, compared to the 120KB for the text file of the same page.

Lastly, I tried the PDF option. I used the cover pagefrom the Best Buy flyer and fed it through twice,front and back. The back side scanned perfectly, butthe front side only included about 60% of that page.

The scanner works best with plain text pages; thesescan flawlessly. The business card test and theplastic card test were perfect, also. Scanning pageswith pictures worked less than perfectly; althoughsome were flawless, others were poor.

The documentation is quite extensive and is sup-(Continued on page 4)

By George Harding

Plustek D28 Mobile Office Scanner

This scanner is designed to be used in a mobile envi-ronment and it would work well for that purpose. Itrequires a power supply and a computer to function.A salesman in a home doing a presentation wouldfind this quite useful and easy to carry, since it isquite small and light.

The scanner comes with several pieces of softwarein addition to the software for the scanner itself. Theinstallation process is uneventful, consisting of suc-cessive installation of the scanner driver and the sev-eral software programs. Only one of these programsis really necessary for the scanner to work, DigiDoc.

The scanner has three buttons on the right handside, one to toggle through up to 9 LED positions, asimplex button and a duplex one. The LEDs repre-sent scanning parameters defined in the DigiDoc pro-gram. The parameters include resolution (up to 600dpi), paper size, business card, plastic card, color,grayscale or black and white, output type (txt, image,OCR or PDF) and location of the output.

You can use DigiDoc to program each of the 9 LEDpositions with variations of these parameters, so thatyou don’t have to make changes each time you scansomething different.

My first test was with a single sheet of text, to resultin a file that is an editable text document. The resultwas as defined; the output was an RTF file with edit-able contents. The OCR work was perfect.

Next, I tried to scan a part of anewspaper page, defining theinput as File/color/letter sizewith jpg output. I tore off a stripabout 11" long and 6" wide froma newspaper as the input. Itscanned OK and created the jpgfile, but only the first five inchesor so was captured.

For the third trial, I used amonthly calendar page, whichhas a picture, colored areas,

MCC DECEMBER 2009 PAGE 3

S I G H T S A ND SOU ND S O F MU LT IM ED I A

PLUSTEK D28, FRANKLIN BRAIN POWER, LG XENON

George Harding

with special buttons on the bottom of the screen.

When you choose the Logic category, you get achoice of seven games: Tracker, Blocks, Sixteen,Pegs, Switch, SuDoku and Wordoku. Most peoplehave tried out SuDoku. Wordoku is similar, usingletters instead of numbers. Sixteen involves rear-ranging columns and rows in order to put the arrayof letters in the proper order. Pegs involves jumpingpegs until only one is left.

The Numbers category includes Word Sums, Sums,Swimming, Totals, Calculate and Number. Calcu-late and Number are hard, at least for me, but theothers are fairly easy. Calculate involves using arith-metic operations and single digit numbers to comeup with a defined number. Numbers requires enter-ing 8 of the 9 single digits numbers in three sumequations to arrive at the defined sum for each.

The Words category has Hangman, Anagram, Tar-get, Word, Word Find, X-Word, and MatchPoint.Hangman and Anagram are games most of us arefamiliar with. Target gives you 9 letters in a 3 X 3grid; you must select letters in the proper order toform a 9 letter word. Word Square is similar. X-Wordgives you a 9 X 9 grid of letters and a list of wordsbelow; you indicate where each bottom word occursin the grid. MatchPoint is hard; you are given a 9 X 9grid with some empty squares and letters below.You indicate words made from the letters and insertthem in the blanks.

Memory offers these challenges: New Item, Shuffle,Sequence, Matching, Faces, Digits, Simon, Dotsand Pairs. New Item shows you several symbols,changes one and asks you to identify the one

changed. Shuffle is similar exceptthat the symbols are moved aroundafter the change. Sequence asksyou to identify which of severalsymbols shown one after anotherwas which one (1st or 2nd or what-ever). Matching is very easy – yousimply identify the two symbols of agroup are the same. Faces asksyou to check which of four faces isthe one you are shown first. Digitsis similar, but with 3- or 4-digit num-bers. Simon blinks one symbol afteranother; you click on the symbols inthe same order as they blinked.


plied in eight languages, along with limited pictorialguidance. There is one sheet for installation and an-other for scanning. These are quite large and mustbe folded severely to be useful.

There are four software applications included in thepackage: ABBYY Fine Reader (OCR); Presto! ImageFolio; DigiDoc (programming for the LED buttons);and Presto! Page Manager. Documentation for eachof these is in a separate PDF document (in the Helpfile, in the case of Page Manager). The printed docu-mentation is amplified in the DigiDoc PDF. There isnot printed documentation for the others.

This is a very nice, compact portable scanner. Itwould work best with plain text documents.

Requires WIN 2000 Pro, XP or Vista, 550 MB harddisk space, 256 MB RAM

Price about $275www.plustek.com

Franklin New York Times Brain Partner

This is a set of brain games that range from veryeasy to very challenging. It will keep your mind busyfor a long time!

There are four categories of games: Memory, Words,Logic and Numbers. Each category has from sevento nine games, giving you a total of over 32 games toexercise your brain.

The unit is about the size of a PDA, a little biggerthan your typical cell phone. It requires 3 AAA batter-ies, one set of which is included.The screen takes up about 2/3rdsof the unit’s front. There is an On/Off button, although the Off buttonisn’t really needed; the screenpowers down after about 30 sec-onds on no activity. The unitcomes with a stylus for selectingthings on the screen.

When you first start up, you areasked what language you prefer;there are seven available, andyou can change to another at anytime. The screen contrast, beeptone and backlight are changed

(Continued from page 3)



The Xenon also takes video. The amount dependson how much storage is available. If you use anSHDC card to expand memory, you can take longervideo. Image size is adjustable from 1600 X 1200 to320 X 240 pixels. The file size is commensurate.Other adjustments include image size, brightness,color effects, night mode.

Media capabilities include music, which can bedownloaded or uploaded. The phone supports for-mats AAC, AAC+, MP3 and WMA. It can also beused for streaming radio.

Media mall is accessible with this phone. Applica-tions include games, ring tones, puzzles, action,racing and more.

The GPS Navigator feature can be used to give youdriving directions to any address in the continentalUS. There is also a search feature to find busi-nesses or points of interest near your locations. Thetool provides an indicator showing you direction oftravel, location and speed.

Another useful tool provides is YellowPages.com.This allows you to find businesses, call them, viewratings and get directions to the business.

There are four games supplied and more may bedownloaded.

There are some applications available for download.The list is not very long, compared to what is offeredby Apple and Research In Motion.

News on the web is easily available, with some of-fered in video form. More generally, the phone sup-ports mobile video, which includes news, sports andcelebrities. The video is quite good; there is somedeterioration of the picture every so often, but thepicture is generally excellent.

I’ve used several “smart” phones and each has itsstrengths and weaknesses. This phone is sleek, welldesigned and efficiently operational. I had few prob-lems with it, other than the usual one of taking thetime to learn how to use all the features.

Price about $300 without commitment, $150 with 2-year commitment, less $50 rebate.www.wireless.att.com

Dots shows you a number of moving dots; you mustcorrectly count how many dots there are. Pairsshows you many question marks; you click on two tofind the matching pairs. It may take some time to getthem all!

This is a great tool to exercise your brain. Some ofthe game are very easy, some challenging, some toohard for me!

Price about $60 directwww.franklin.com

AT&T LG Xenon Cellphone

You can do all the usual things with this cell phone:call, take a picture, store contact information, recordand play music and videos. It accepts a memory cardto expand the memory in the phone.

It has a touch screen to simplify accessing featuresand has a slide-out QWERTY keyboard. Most func-tions can be accessed with the touch screen, butsome are done more easily with the keyboard.

Calls can be interrupted to take another and 3-waycalling is supported. Call forwarding is also available.

It has Bluetooth capability, as do most phones today.This feature allows sharing data and files betweenBluetooth devices within a limited range.

The camera is 2 megapixels and can be set to takethe picture full screen or full image. Once taken, itcan be used as wallpaper, or saved for transmissionor later viewing. The image can even be edited.




MCC

MCC DECEMBER 2009

Now that it is all set up, it is easy to use. At the iCytelogin page, I create my Projects and decide if they’rePrivate or Public. When I realized that I was using thegathered data differently than first planned, after-the-fact changing a Project from Private to Shared wasstraightforward and painless.

Then, on to the Web. Whenever I see something Ithink I might like to see again, I highlight just that in-formation, click the Create iCyte flag to the left of thetool bar, and add my comments.

Not interested in reading through the page right now?A click on the iCyte flag adds the entire page to mylibrary for perusal at a calmer time. Once created, Ican move the Cyte to another Project or email it to acolleague with a comment.

I appreciate the fact that the date that I made theCyte is included; that matches how I think. This willbe particularly helpful when I’m organizing a work-based research project.


I can’t add to my Projects from work, as the securitysystem won’t allow me to add the iCyte application.(Yes, how dumb they are has already been dis-cussed.) But I can get in and see the Projects I’vecreated and have access to my organized informa-tion.

Stop! Hold the presses!! Found: the How To videos.They’re in the PressPack section at the bottom of theiCyte top page, which I found wandering around look-ing for the Contact Us link again. Both are in a thinblue font on my vaguely blue-gray screen. And who’dthink that the directions are in the PressPack? Well,clearly someone thought that’s where everyone goeslooking, first thing.

Does iCyte replace sliced bread or indoor plumbingas the greatest invention of the post-industrial world?Not quite, but it does make slicing the Internet somuch easier. I’ll leave you to imagine improvedplumbing.

The price is certainly right. Not sure what about therevenue model, which concerns me because I’d like itto be good enough to keep the iCyte going. This isdefinitely a useful tool in the toolbox for managing theinformation overload. For students and other peoplewho have to organize the results of research, it hasthe potential to save eons of time and avoid tons offrustration. Shh! Don’t let them know at iCyte, or theymight try to figure out how much their service is worthand start charging. The only downside that I can seeis the assumption that I’ll always have access to theinternet whenever I try. Oh, and please put the direc-tions up front, on top, and labeled as Start Here.

iCyte205 Lexington Ave, 17th FloorNew York, NY 10016DownloadPrice: Free

Phone: (212) 710-5164Fax: (646) 808-0849

Support: [email protected] & Enterprise Inquiries: [email protected]

ICY T E

MCC

Since my netbook came with WinXp I figured Ishould see if I could try Linux on it. I checked theinternet and found that Ubuntu has a netbook ver-sion! I went to wiki.ubuntu.com/UNR and found all ofthe information I needed to download the softwareand install it on a USB flash drive. I didn’t want tooverwrite WinXp so this was perfect!

I downloaded the Ubuntu Netbook Remix 9.04(hereafter called UNR) .IMG file and also the Win32Disk Imager, the software needed to load the soft-ware on a bootable USB drive. The instructions arevery clear and make the process simple.

The system requirements for UNR are 512MB ofRAM and 4GB of disk space on a flash/USB drive.Every netbook I have seen meets these require-ments.

In order to load the software on a fast flash drive wecontacted the Verbatim PR rep who sent us two oftheir drives to try. We received the 16GB VerbatimStor ‘n’ Go USB Drive and the8GB Verbatim Tuff-Clip USBDrive. Both are compatible withWindows, Linux and MacOS asUSB drives. Both also have Pass-word Security for Windows but not the other sys-tems. Both are also very compact and solidly built.We chose the Tuff-Clip for our evaluation for no par-ticular reason.

I followed the installation instructions and had noproblems with the installation on to the USB drive. Iinserted the drive into one of the USB ports (everynetbook has several) and booted up to UNR effort-lessly. There was a beautiful Ubuntu screen on mypreviously WinXp computer.


By Chuck Hajdú

It’s been a long time since we’ve seen a productcategory capture the interest of consumer electronicsusers the way mini-notes/netbooks have. Sure, therehave been very compact PCs around for many yearsbut netbooks finally seem to have gotten everythingright.

When MSFT first introduced WinCE I fell in love withthe concept of a computer that can be carried withyou like a Franklin Planner. I tried the Gen 1 modelsand they were terrible. The tiny monochrome screenswere virtually useless and WinCE made me, youguessed it, wince!! The NEC MobilePro 750C wasthe first model that was close to good, It had a biggercolor touch screen and better ergonomics but wasstill crippled by WinCE and the limited apps. I stillhave mine and remember it fondly.

If you’re not familiar with the rapid growth of the net-book category in the past year or so, here are somefacts. In the past year sales of netbooks have sky-rocketed (up 264%) while price for the category haveplummeted (down 29%). Netbooks only cost around$300 for a computer that will do 90% of anythingmost users need. No wonder sales are off the charts!

My personal netbook is an ASUS Eee PC 900 pre-loaded with WinXp. It isn’t a review unit so I won’t becommenting on it as I would an eval unit. It is typicalof most netbooks and will provide a good platform totest the different products I’m reviewing in this article.

I believe all netbooks come with one of two operatingsystems, either WinXp or some flavor of Linux. WinVwasn’t capable of being run on a netbook and I don’tbelieve any vendors are preloading Win7 on theirproducts yet.


NE T B O OK AC C E SS OR IE S

MUST-HAVE PRODUCTS FOR NETBOOK OWNERS

NEC MobilePro 750C and ASUS Eee PC 900

to 10.2” and is very sleek and minimalist. It providesprotection in a tiny package. And, it feels reallygood! The kit also includes an Ultra-Mini Mouse andan Ultra-Mini USB 2.0 4-Port Hub.

Speaking of cases, Brenthaven makes an unbeliev-able line of cases for virtually any computer productmade. Their netbookcases include the EdgeNetbook case in blackand silver that we weresent. The Edge case isdesigned for units largerthan our Eee PC 900 butwork fine for all netbooks.

The Brenthaven Edgecase is very well paddedand provides excellent protection for road warriors.There is a front pouch that is just large enough tohold a power cord. It’s an ideal way to safely trans-port your netbook.

Several vendors make GPS programs that will workon netbooks. MSFT Street & Trips 2010 with GPSLocator is one of the few that sells their softwarewith instructions for downloading and installing theirproduct without an optical drive right on the box.Remember, netbooks don’t have internal DVDdrives! Netbooks are ideal as GPS units becauseyou can use whatever software you want. The last-est version of Streets & Trips has new maps and anintuitive interface. It’s not my favorite GPS softwarebut they’ve done a good job of making it netbookfriendly.

The one problem you will run into using any netbookas a GPS is battery life. Most road trips are manyhours long and you’ll run out of battery power longbefore you get where you’re going. What do you do?


Because it was a netbook, UNR knew that it had asmaller screen and set the resolution appropriately.Since I’m an old guy I normally use 1024x768 on allof my computers (tired eyes) but had no trouble usingthe 1024x600 used by netbooks.

All of my favorite software was there, including Fire-fox, the best browser ever. I was a happy camperand I must admit that I prefer the look and feel of Ub-untu on the smallish screen of a netbook. At thispoint I’m not prepared to overwrite my WinXp soft-ware or try dual-boot so I’m just leaving the Ubuntuflash drive in place and just putting the netbook tosleep so I can keep all of my preferences.

So much for software. What are the hardware acces-sories netbook users need?

Targus always has an excellent selection of acces-sories for every consumer electronics product. Wechecked their web site and netbooks are no excep-tion.

We were sent two accessory kits for our review, theTargus Netbook Essentials Kit (BUS0192US) andthe Netbook Accessory Kit (BUS0187). They pro-vide similar tools for netbook users and you shouldchoose the one that meets your needs the best.

The Essentials kit is perfect for peo-ple who actually use a computer ontheir lap. If you’ve ever felt the heatfrom a laptop/netbook sitting onyour knees then you’ll understandwhy this kit is needed. It contains avery effective Chill Mat that con-nects to one of the netbooks USBports and fits netbooks up to 10.2”.It works well and is highly recom-mended.

The kit also includes an Ultra-Portable Mouse and anUltra-Mini USB 2.0 4-port Hub. Both of these itemsare vital for netbook users since USB ports are theonly connectivity available. Netbook users find outvery quickly that they need more USB ports if theyintend to use their netbook seriously. Targus solvesthis problem nicely.

The Accessory kit is aimed at a slightly different user.Instead of the Chill Mat the kit includes a SlipskinPeel Mini-Notebook case. The case fits netbooks up





Next we plugged the two USB plugs into the net-book and were rewarded with a beautiful seconddisplay. It worked perfectly and gave us more thandouble the screen capacity we had before. Insteadof having to deal with everything crammed on onetiny screen we now had lots of real estate! The Dou-bleSight DS-90U is very highly recommended.

Find further information on all of these products at:

UbuntuUbuntu Netbook Remix 9.04, MSRP: freeWin32 Disk Imager ,MSRP: also freewiki.ubuntu.com/UNR

Verbatim8GB Tuff-Clip USB Drive, Street price: $3016GB Store ‘n’ Go USB Drive, Street price: $50www.verbatim.com

TargusNetbook Essentials Kit, MSRP: $49.99Netbook Accessory Kit, MSRP: $39.99www.targus.com

BrenthavenEdge Netbook Case, MSRP: $29.95www.brenthaven.com

Microsoft Streets & Trips 2010 with GPS Locator,MSRP: $39.95www.microsoft.com

BelkinAC Anywhere Plus AC 300, MSRP: $74.99www.belkin.com

DoubleSightDS-90U, MSRP: $149.00www.doublesight.com

That’s where Belkin comes in! Belkin has one of themost extensive lines of accessories for every possi-ble CE product you can imagine. To solve our on-the-road power problem we tested the Belkin AC Any-where Plus AC300 power inverter. The AC300 plugs

into the cigarette lighter/power socket in yourvehicle and providestwo AC outlets. TheAC300 provides plentyof power for a netbookto keep running for

many hours.

The AC300 has an internal fan to help keep it cooland has warning lights to alert you to potential prob-lems with the unit overheating or draining too muchjuice from your cat battery. It also has a 3 foot longcord which gives it great flexibility. My cars both havean outlet in the back of the car and that leaves thefront outlet available for other devices. Even if youdon’t have a netbook you should have an AC300 foryour travels.

There are two primary problems with netbook com-puters, the small keyboard (they’re terrible for touchtypists) and the small LCD screens. I guess touch-typers could add on a USB or wireless keyboard buthow do you add additional screen space?

The solution is the DoubleSight DS-90U Smart USBMonitor. I’ve used dual-monitor computers for yearsand love them. When I first heard about the Double-Sight USB monitors I thought they might be perfectfor netbooks and couldn’t wait to test one.

The DS-90U is a 9” LCD monitor that connects toyour computer using a dual USB cable for power andconnectivity. The box contains the LCD with frontcover, a compact stand, instruction sheet and soft-ware CD. The instruction sheet is short and sweet.Insert the CD in your PC and follow the directions. Ifyour OS isn’t supported then you can’t complete theinstallation.

Since our netbook doesn’t have a CD drive we wentto their web site and downloaded the software. Thisprocess is explained on the instruction sheet. We firsttried running it using UNR and hit the unsupportedOS wall. No problem, we rebooted to WinXp and ranthe installation again. This time everything workedflawlessly and in about 5 minutes all of the driverswere properly loaded.



MCC

MCC DECEMBER 2009

By Robert Sanborn

Windows 7

Yes it is here and as you read this, you will be able togo to nearly any store and get a copy or have it bun-dled with your new computer. It is different, it worksreally well, and I like it. If you are buying a brand newcomputer, and will be getting all new software to gowith it, then Windows 7 will be just fine.

The problem we run into is trying tomake things work with old hardwareand software. That is where you willrun into the problems and frustra-tions and the bottom line here is thatit probably shouldn’t be done.I have used Windows 7 for severalmonths now having nuked my old(three years old) work horse com-puter and installed first the beta copyand then the release candidate on it.The good news with older hardwareis that Windows 7 has many morenative drivers built into it than didVista and actually, Vista did a pretty good job of get-ting you up and going without really needing to installvery many hardware specific drivers. Good newsbecause finding Windows 7 drivers for somethingthat is three years old just doesn’t work and fortu-nately, it will take most Vista drivers for the hardwareyou have and use it just fine. My only real quibblewith the hardware I had was that I couldn’t use aUSB phone I had been using with Skype becausethere were no Windows 7 drivers and the Vista driv-ers just wouldn’t work with it. Had an older cardscanner that I had the same problem with.

Same might be true with some software. I use Sy-mantec’s Norton Internet Security again after all theproblems they have had with performance and bloatin the software but that is another matter as well. The2009 version was simply wonderful by comparisonsand runs like a speed demon on my Vista machinesand is finally the product it was meant to be. Butwhen I try to install it on my Windows 7 machine, itpromptly quit the install process saying the operatingsystem was not recognized. The funny part was theirwebsite said to wait till Windows 7 was released toget the update to work but the update expects you toalready have the program installed on the machine.Seems they need to figure that one out as well.

What their solution ended up being was to install the2010 version and use my existing 2009 product key.

Another program I had a problem with was Nero 9.New version does not like my copy of Windows 7. Ihad started the software installation and after 20 min-utes was only 50% completed when the crashesstarted. Had to use the Task Manager to finally killthe installation. But kill it, it did, and they do a goodjob of looking for solutions to the problems.

We have been really pounding thismachine quite a bit, I have severaluser accounts setup for family mem-bers who have been using it a lotand we have been using differentaccount level controls to managethem to allow only certain programsto run for particular users and it hasbeen working well. In the past sixmonths, I have had only one timewhere I have had to hit the powerbutton to shut down the computerbecause we could not log into one ofthe users and even then, I am not

convinced it was a Windows problem as I had beenhaving some problems with a KVM (Keyboard, Video,Mouse) switch I had been using. So, for a new com-puter, I highly recommend it which is strange comingfrom someone who normally recommends installingWindows XP.

Symantec Norton Ghost

I am a very long time proponent of keeping the com-puter backed up, and have had a chance to try out anumber of different solutions over the years. My cur-

rent backup planis to use Sy-mantec NortonGhost 14.0 toback up mymain Vista sys-tem over thenetwork to a net-work attachedstorage unit thatis configured ina RAID 5 format.I backup my sys-tem to the net-(Continued on page 11)

TE C H N OLO G Y TODAY

MCC DECEMBER 2009

work, and the network backs itself up using the RAIDtechnology. A double layer of protection.

But, it had been a while since I made sure it wasworking so it was time to dig into it and see that allwas right. First checked the storage system, an olderIntel SS4000E box that has 4 hard drives configuredin the Raid 5 format and that was working just fine. Ihave to say that when I bought the box, it came witha backup software package that I discovered wouldnot work very well with Vista and so had to give upon it and go with the Norton Ghost.

I check the Ghost and it is backing up everything justfine on the network so that looks good. So the nextthing to test was to see if I could get to the backup inthe case that the computer dies and I need to replacethe hard drive. To do that, you boot from a recoveryCD that you create, and then are supposed to beable to restore the backups. My CD boots just finebut I discovered that it doesn’t see the network. Infact, you have to go through hoops and several trialand error CDs in order to finally make it see the net-work.

When you boot the CD, it refuses to find the networkadapter so what is needed is the .inf file for the net-work adapter. Under Vista, Intel will allow me todownload the program from the website with the lat-est Lan driver but you can’t extract out the .inf filefrom the package, you can only install the entirething. The next thing to do is to figure out what .inffile I really need. I think I finally figured out after look-ing through the properties and drivers of the networkcard, and to be sure, did a google search on what theDevice Manager says the Network Card name is.

So then, I do a search on the computer (and Vistasearch function really stinks), I think I have found thefile, and copy it to a work directory so I can add thenetwork adapter to the Ghost recovery CD build butof course that doesn’t work probably because itneeds something else besides the .inf file.

So far, I have burned and thrown away three Ghostrecovery CDs. Back to the Intel website, and throughGoogle, I find an obscure Intel document that tells mehow to extract the files out of the downloaded driverswithout installing them. Dump it all to a work folder,rebuild the Norton Ghost recovery CD one more time,and oh by the way, it takes about two hours time to

(Continued from page 10) build that recovery CD, and finally, I can see the net-work. You still have to start the network servicesmanually from the CD but it finally works. Now that itworks, I think I will go find a simpler solution and takea look at Acronis.

Seagate Backup Systems

Another option for backing up your system is to lookat the drives with the built in backup software alreadyconnected and one of the best options here is theSeagate Replica hard drives. They way they work isto connect the USB External drive to your computer(via a USB 2.0 Portwhich nearly everycomputer built in thepast two years has)and then when it findsitself via either Vista orXP, it launches theReplica software. Andin theory, it looksgreat. Launch the soft-ware, and it will startto back up your sys-tem automatically. Ifyou have a severecrash, the boot CDthat comes with it willbe your lifeline into the unit to restore your hard drive.

What happens is slightly different and you need towatch out for a couple of things. First of all, Seagatetells you that you must plug it into a USB port that isdirectly connected to the mainboard. Not on the frontpanel USB port of most computers. What we foundwas that sometimes the unit would be recognizedand sometimes not and it would give us flaky errormessages so we ended up having to call Seagate tofind that out. And calling them is a royal pain. Youhave to start via the web and register the productbefore you can even get to the phone numbers to callthem and phone support is only free for installationissues in the first 30 days. After that you can use thepaid phone support or via the web. Want the short-cut, call them at 800-732-4283 between 8:am to 6:pmweekdays. But be sure you have the product serialnumber handy and you will have to register it overthe phone. Still, a recommended product for a verysimple backup solution.

TE C H N OLO G Y TODAY

MCC

Figure 2 - Technology Helps – Regardless of the gen-eration, company personnel feel that today’s advancedtechnology has helped them become more productive intheir jobs. Source – Kelly Services

They use their computers, use email and most evenuse an Internet browser. The majority (90%) be-lieves the new technology; new software helps themperform better, faster.

C-level executives see the social networking toolsas a means of achieving marketing/sales success,but don’t think it’s for use by everyone.

Market MiningIn their minds, the social networking tools are usefulfor:- acquiring new customers- increasing customer retention- increasing customer lifetime value- launching new products/services- increasing brand awareness- expanding in new market areas

While PC/CE companies are more heavily involvedthan all businesses, C-level executives and firmsaren’t exactly flooding the social networks.

Figure 3 - Socially Behind – While social network firmsand users love to extol how much people are using theP2P services, they are only gaining modest traction withcompanies across the board. However, firms in the techareas are gaining confidence in the use of ser-vices. Source – Burson-Marsteller


By Andy Marken

“Look, I'm all about loyalty. In fact, I feel like part of whatI'm being paid for here is my loyalty. But if there weresomewhere else that valued loyalty more highly, I'm goingwherever they value loyalty the most.” – Dwight Schrute –The Office, ABC-TV

Seriously… Tim Berners-Lee had no idea how hugehis concoction was going to be when he firstunleashed the Web on the world.

Like the Internet itself, all he wanted to do was makeit possible for researchers to share/update informa-tion with other researchers.

Somewhere along the way, it got “a little” outta’ hand!Well, not really. There’s just a little chasm betweenboomers, Gen Xers, Gen Yers.

There’s also a little chasm between C-level execs,marketing/communications, workers.

There’s little to no chasm between work and home.In “the company”:- 93% own a cellphone, compared to 78% ofindustrial country adults- 85% have a desktop computer, compared to65% of all adults- 61% own a laptop, compared to 39% of alladults- 27% own a Blackberry, iPhone or similar de-vice, compared to 13% of all adults

For the most part, all generations, work levels agreethat these and other technologies have had a positiveeffect on their productivity.


MAKING THE TRANSITION TO A SOCIAL BUSINESS

TH E OF F IC E ON LI NE

Even more don’t have a clue what it is.

Behind the CurveDeloitte research found:- two of Fortune 100 CEOs have Twitter accounts(one has 7,000 followers, neither follows anyone)- None have personal blogs- 18 have LinkedIn profiles – all were PC/CEbosses, two listed their old titles, most had fewerthan 50 connections- 19 have personal Facebook pages- 80+% don’thave personal Facebook pages, few have many“friends,” majority have little/no information on theirpages- Majority are listed on Wikipedia even though infois old or lacking

Nearly all are spending 90+% of their time just tryingto keep their business running “smoothly,” keepingthe board/stockholders off their backs, juggling the“gotta’ haves” of the new generation of employees,getting customers to pay for what was delivered!!!!

So chat sites are a really a low priority for them.

It’s probably a good thing then that most employeesuse the basic Internet tool – email – to get thingsdone.

Figure 5 - Work Tool – While some firms feel Internetand social network access will reduce the productivity ofemployees, email – the workhorse of Internet connectivity– continues to be the most valued tool followed by infor-mation search and research. Even when people usesocial media, they often blur the lines of business/personal life. Source -- comScore


According to a study by Deloitte:- 31% of CEOs are on Facebook (69% aren’t!)- 30% use social networking as part of their busi-ness, operations strategy- 23% use social networking as internal communi-cations tool- 18% have employee-created Facebook group- 14% of CEOs have Twitter profile- 13% post corporate videos on YouTube- 11% have company-sponsored Facebook group

As you might expect, most of those who use theInternet at work are male, but the difference is almosta rounding error.

Figure 4 - Equally Connected – The percentage of menand women who use the Internet at work is almost50/50. Analysts note that the slight weighting to men isprobably not significant. Source – comScore MediaMetrix

The same is true of social sites.

Social netophiles claim that all of the new tools arethe wave of the future, the way business will be rungoing forward.

According to these forward-looking, click-savvy folks;social nets are the way organizations and customerswill communicate, interact, collaborate, create, informthemselves, prioritize, organize, buy, sell.

They assert it is the way it is happening now!

The problem is that over half of the executives sur-veyed by Deloitte said they have no official policyregarding social networks.




Numbers GrowingBut since Gen Yers won’t disappear from the busi-ness scene (boomers are fading ya’ know!), it maybe time to understand it, deal with it, use it.

After all, you probably hired him/her based on herFacebook profile right?

Admit it, … you did!!!

As Mary Madden (Pew Internet & American LifeProject” said, the tools will be incorporated into thework environment but it will be an “awkward hug.”

In some way, shape, form, adding the tools has totake place because our new fantastic tech tools –notebooks, netbooks, smartphones – do improvework productivity.

Figure 7 - Muddied Waters – There was a time whenpeople had a pretty clear division between their office andpersonal lives. The Internet/Web have blurred those lines– many feel for the better – and you’re able to stay intouch almost anywhere. Source – Kelly Services

It would probably be more honest to say that thesefantastic work tools have allowed work to slop overinto your personal life.

You know you check your smartphone just beforeyou go to bed and the minute you get up.

You handle “just a few” emails over the weekendand when you’re on holiday.

That’s probably why the boss gave you a notebookand a smartphone (o.k., an iPhone or Blackberry).

You’re hooked on ‘em…and the man owns you –24x7 !!!!

O.K., he/she wasn’t that diabolical, that evil, …


Email today…it’s the way business gets done…getover how important your Twits are.

A LexisNexis survey showed:- 2/3 of boomers feels smartphones contrib-ute to a breakdown in workplace etiquetteand using a laptop in a meeting is distracting(only half of Gen Yers agree)- 17% of boomers believe using laptops,smartphones in personal meetings is efficient(1/3 of Gen Yers agree)- 28% of boomers think blogging about workis OK (40% of Gen Yers agree)

That may be why some firms actually block usersfrom using the social net.

Honest! We’ve sent links to people and they’ve saidthey can’t access sites from their office systems.

According to a study by the AMA (American Manage-ment Association), half of the firms ban visits to so-cial net sites.

Seems kinda’ dumb with so many people having asmartphone.

Figure 6 - Yeah…So – With the growing use of smart-phones in people’s lives, being blocked by the company’sIT department isn’t much of a barrier for people who cantap into the Internet with their phone and use the Web.

Guess the boss doesn’t know they are able to do a“work around,” but hey it makes HR feel a little morecomfortable…

Reminds us of Michael Scott’s pep talk in The Of-fice…“This is an environment of welcoming, and youshould just get the hell outta here.”




A well-meaning or disgruntled employee can tarnisha company’s/products image in 140 characters (orless).

But for the dedicated folks and social netophileswho venture into the social net world you have toremember one cardinal rule when answering aquestion…you respond, you own the question untilthe problem is solved or an adequate answer is pro-vided.

Passing the individual on, passing the buck isn’t partof the equation. Sometimes, you have to take thegood with the bad…

Figure 8 - What Me Worry– Many executive boomersare amazed what newcom-ers to the business environ-ment will put on their Face-book, LinkedIn and otherprofile sites. IT personnelare also concerned that theWeb locations can make thesystems/network vulnerableto security breaches anddata corruption. But somefolks just aren’t that wor-ried. Source – Mad Maga-zine

When you get started with the social net, rememberDwight Schrute’s now prophetic observation…“Yourpencils are creating a health hazard. I could fall andpierce an organ.”


MCC


right!!!

But the tools do help people with their work. Theyalso add stress and new demands on their lives.

The funny thing is, marketing and communicationspeople look at all these rich new social networkingtools as things they should “own,” “manage.”

Sure, it may take them three days to answer anemail, but give ‘em a break.

They’re busy doing what really counts, really mat-ters…they’re Tweetin!!!!

Email is so yesterday after all, and social networkingstuff is…with it!!!

Despite the fact that management is concernedabout security and employee productivity; most C-level executives feel social media will be a key strat-egy going forward.

It’s the way for the company to build a stronger rela-tionship with the customer, build brand reputation,launch new products/services, develop new mar-kets.

Bad with the GoodThe challenge is that social networking is a con-sumer technology that is taking the business worldby storm.

Cyberbadguys love the new stalking grounds.

Malware is available from almost every site/everyservice.


Jeffersonian wisdom - Delay is preferable to error.

are now smaller, although I have no problem withthat. The buffet was only complete in the morning.For the luncheon buffet, half of the area was cor-doned off, but the selection was still good. We neverwent to the evening buffet so we don’t know aboutthat one. Servers told us that with part of the areacordoned off, there was less food that had to bethrown away. Everybody did get whatever food theywanted. We noticed a few other cuts, but we stillenjoyed the cruise. Of course, some of these poli-cies could actually be “that ship’s” policy. The cruisein December on the Mariner of the Seas was better,but it’s been moved to Las Angeles and the Free-dom is taking its place out of Port Canaveral. Corpo-rate cuts probably took place since we took thecruise on the Mariner.

The Freedom of the Seas is about 1,100 ft. long and126.64 ft. wide; and is much too large for the Pa-nama Canal. As I said, we had a fun cruise, but it isoften crowded in certain places. The evening showswere great and one person in our group managed toget us tickets to a show at the ice rink, and that wasalso a spectacular show.

We think our next cruise will be on a smaller ship.There seems to be some great cruise bargainsavailable these days. How about $399 for a 7-daycruise on a Holland America ship! Also, NorwegianCruise Lines, which I have never tried, called to offerus a five day cruise at $129, but we weren’t quiteready for their fast approaching open dates. We didsign up for the Florida Association of PC UsersGroups spring conference, which will be held on athree day cruise next spring. Registration for it hasbeen great and it seems to be well received.

Enough about our fun (which is destroying our sav-ings); here’s a few things that might be of interest toyou.

*Just the Ticket For Dark Restaurants

If you haven’t seen (or heard) them, you’d be im-pressed with “Talking Menus.” I saw them at a foodshow some time ago, but haven’t been to a restau-rant that uses them. I’ve been to a few restaurantswith a dark ambience and tried everything to seewhat was on the menu. These talking menus wouldbe the answer, and according to the brochure, theycan also tell you the nutritional facts if you are inter-ested. Look them over at <http://


by Bob (The Cheapskate) Click,Greater Orlando Computer Users Group.

People I’ve seen since releasing the November col-umn commented on my vacation, but missed thatsome pictures of Port Huron, Michigan’s Boat nightwould be on my Web site. You can check <http://www.dealsguy.com/Boatnight_Images.html> for thepictures and descriptions.

I was surprised to hear from as many readers as I didabout the GM bankruptcy thing. I was unaware thatso many of my readers were also affected. Good luckto us all. I wonder why most of the people that ranGM into the ground are still running it, with ourmoney. I hear people complaining about the unions,but their pay cuts didn’t make the news. Many GMworkers took pay cuts, some as much as 50%. Thatmust have hurt, although some people feel that evenworkers at a 7/11 make too much money. Salariedworkers involuntarily took health care cuts long be-fore the union people had to. Where I worked inMichigan is pretty much a ghost town now where for-mer GM plants are now fields of weeds. When I hiredinto my GM plant, I was overwhelmed by the size ofthe plant (eight blocks long and four blocks wide)where over 7,000 people worked in 1950. Buick Citywas much larger, but it’s also gone.

*Recreation Time

My wife and I took a bargain cruise in Septemberwith two other couples and found that corporate cut-backs have also invaded the cruise industry. At leastthat’s what we were told when we asked crewmem-bers, or customer service, questions. Customer ser-vice urged us to e-mail our concerns to the corporateWeb site. Our ship was the Freedom of the Seas, aRoyal Caribbean beauty. It can carry about 4,300passengers and has 1,400 crewmembers. Last De-

cember (2008), we cruised onthe Mariner of the Seas (alsoRoyal Caribbean) and it’s slightlysmaller than this one, but theyare both large. There are nomore free gifts for “Crown & An-chor” members (people with mul-tiple cruises on RC). We did getcoupon books, but discounts inthem don’t amount to much.

We weren’t the only ones whonoticed that portions at dinner


TH E DE A LS GU Y

Bob ClickThe Deals Guy

*Having problems reading the screen?

A while back, I read a review of DeskTopZoom writ-ten by Bonnie Snyder in Bits of Bytes, newsletter ofthe Pikes Peak Computer Application Society ofColorado Springs <http://ppcompas.apcug.org/bb0903.pdf#page=5>. This product does a good jobof giving you options for enlarging parts of yourscreen for easier reading, or to study something youcan’t see very well on a page. It does have a fewshortcomings, but all in all, she speaks highly of it,and the price is “nada.” If you would like to find outmore, read her article in the above link, or go to<http://www.softpedia.com/get/Desktop-Enhancements/Other-Desktop-Enhancements/DesktopZoom.shtml>. There may be improvementssince her review was written.

*Magnifier You May Already Have!

Let’s say that you sometimes need simple magnifi-cation for something. Like me, you may not haveknown about the screen magnifier in XP. It’s nothingexciting, but simply click “All Programs, then Acces-sories, then click Accessibility” and you’ll find Magni-fier. I tried it and it’s pretty basic, but I’m told thatmore information about it is on the Microsoft Website. The article I read said there’s a link for that, butI didn’t see it. On my screen, large text appeared atthe top with a large curser, and while there wasn’tmuch magnified screen area, I was able to makeuse of it. Try it; it may be all you need. Clicking “exit”stops it. I was unaware of this gem until I read it in anewsletter.

That's it for this month. I’ll have some more newproduct announcements on my Web site that didn’toffer discounts. Meet me here again next month ifyour editor permits. This column is written to makeuser group members aware of special offers or free-bies I have found or arranged, and my commentsshould not be interpreted to encourage, or discour-age, the purchase of any products, no matter howenthused I might sound. Bob (The Cheapskate)Click <bobclick at bellsouth dot net>. Visit my Website at <http://www.dealsguy.com>.

www.talkingmenus.com>.

I could have asked them for a discount, but I doubtyour budget would have tolerated a $399 menu foryour dinner table at home (from the prices in thebooklet they gave me), and I doubt the cook offersmultiple selections to choose from. Ask your favoriterestaurant if they’ll be getting them soon. We don’tfrequent the dark places much and our favorites, thefast-food places, don’t need them. However, my wifehas to read the menus behind the counter to me be-cause the print is too small. Have you noticed that ontheir dollar menus?

*Tool For Repairing Access Files

I ran this product back in March, but if you missed itat that time, DataNumen is now offering a 20% dis-count by using the coupon code DATA-E2OI-TWENwhen ordering at <http://www.datanumen.com/aar/order.htm>.This is a better deal than the discount last Marchwhich was only 10%. The discount code may alsowork for ordering their products for repairing Exceland Word; and for the Outlook and Outlook Expressfiles. Check their Web site for descriptions of theproducts. The version for Access is 2.1, updated fromthe one in March.

*How’s Your Battery Doing?

Hewie Poplock of Central Florida Computer Society<http://www.cfcs.org> mentioned this product to themembers of his SIG (Special Interest Group) and itsounded to me like something that my readers mightbe interested in, considering the proliferation of lap-top use these days. According to their product page,“BatteryCare is a free utility that gives you muchmore information about your battery than how muchcharge you have left for the current session: The appchanges power profiles for you when you connectyour laptop to a power source, lets you know howmany recharge cycles your battery has left, andmore, all for free.” I know my laptop is not accurateabout its remaining time, but I have not used it verymuch while depending entirely on its battery.

It sounds like a handy product, and how could you gowrong if it’s free. However, the developer does ap-preciate any donations to help keep his work going.Makes sense to me. <http://batterycare.bkspot.com/en/index.html>



TH E DE A LS GU Y

MCC

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Monthly Computer Chronicle

Contact us at:

Phone & fax: (270) 423-3161

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MCCEditor - Charles Hajdú [email protected] Technology - Linda Webb [email protected] Editor - Megan Ehrhard [email protected] Editor - Bayle Emlein [email protected] Editor - Tim Ehrhard [email protected] - Bob Click [email protected] - Jan Fagerholm [email protected] - George Harding [email protected] - Diana Meade [email protected] - Kate Meade [email protected] Bob Sanborn [email protected] - Lee Schwab [email protected] - B. T. Woody [email protected]

PAGE 18

DISCLAIMERS:

The opinions expressed inthis newsletter are thoseof the individual authors

and not necessarily thoseof the editors or publisher,any municipal, county or

state governing body, theCongress, Senate or

Executive Branch of theU.S. Government,the Government of

Hungary,the United Nations or

the United Federation ofPlanets.

I call that bold talk from afour-eyed fat man.

LS/MFT

MCC DECEMBER 2009

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