Q. Is there a conspiracy among notebook manufacturers that they not alert users to the fragility of the LCD screen. A friend was putting in a USB device and pushed against the screen and it cracked. A. It is probably in the booklet that nobody reads. It usually just warns against even touching the screen, so if you shouldn’t touch it, surely you shouldn’t push against it. By the way, the accidental damage policy available on some machines usually will cover only one screen replacement. Q. Could someone comment upon cost-effective backup? Backup to hard disk, burn a DVD, burn CDs, etc.? A.
All have their pros and cons. An external hard disk is fast.
DVDs have high capacity - maybe 4GB or so per media. CDs are
very cost effective considering that if you watch the ads you
can often get a spindle of 100 for free after rebate. A. When CD burners first came out you had to be careful that the CD could support the speed rating of the burner - it was quite common to have CDs rated at only 4X. Now it really doesn’t matter - they are often rated at 52X. Q. There have been newspaper articles that say that CDs deteriorate. Do they? A.
They might. But many of the articles point out that they have
been subjected to accelerated (simulated) aging. If a CD is properly
cared for (i.e. put it in a case, and never put it down such
that the bottom touches anything as the data is read from the
bottom) it should last several years. By that time you should
have made several additional archival copies. By the way—don’t
use regular felt-tip pens as they can cause problems. I’ve
seen CDs that were written upon then put back into the drive.
The ink hadn’t dried so when the CD spun-up the ink streaked
out radially forming a very nice but illegible pattern on the
top fo the CD. It also spattered ink inside the drive. There
are special felt tip pens available specifically made for writing
on CDs. Several commonly available brands are Staedtler www.cleansweepsupply.com/pages/ skugroup 27563.html,
TDK,
Memorex, and Inland. A “Sharpie” is not recom-mended. A.
Many sites refuse to honor a request from a free e-mail account
such as Yahoo! or Hotmail as there is no way to really track
down who the owner of the account is, and thus the percentage
of fraudulent purchases is considerably higher. A. According to a Microsoft Knowledge Base article: Q307162, “ This behavior can occur if the portable computer has cached domain credentials and Windows XP cannot verify that the computer is in a secure domain environment. Windows 98 and Windows Me cannot provide a secure domain environment for Windows XP”. Translation” the XP machine that has belonged to a domain (i.e. at some time logs onto a domain controller and is subservient to it with regards to security permissions etc.) refuses to send the document since it can’t be sure that the 98 machine is secure. Since it isn’t ‘secure’ it won’t deliver the document for printing. Microsoft does not provide a work around. Q. I have tried to submit a question to askdacs@dacs.org and the messages were bounced back. Do you know why? A. The spam filter will complain if the message appears to be spam—what it things is spam may be triggered by several things. For example, if it is very full of HTML, if it has IP address references that do not resolve to a domain name, and if it has a very large distribution list are three common causes. Other common causes that we are pretty sure wouldn’t have been in a technical question would be if certain keywords were found—most commonly those referencing the enlargement of body parts or purchase of prescription drugs. A search on Google made the suggestion of using the NET USE command to redirect a printer port to a printer on the other machine. The other machine would have to be running an LPR service. Q. I’m holding off on using the internet to do banking functions. Does anyone have any experience with this? A. Several people reported that they had never had any problems. However, all mentioned that it is imperative that you be running your browser with high-encryption. All web pages should have https URLs indicating that they are secure pages, and you must have the ‘key’ or ‘locked padlock’ active on your browser. If you do have any financial accounts at your bank, or a service such as PayPal, beware of the ‘phishing’ phenomenon - a relatively new scam where hackers attempt to lure you into revealing account details by simulating an e-mail from your financial service. The e-mail contains a link to a forged site that asks you to fill in account details ‘for confirmation of your account status.’ Some ways to recognize a phish message: “Dear CitiBank Customer” instead of “Dear <your name here>”, references to “your account” rather than specifying your account number. One way to see if a link is good or not is to put in a deliberately wrong password. The phisher will accept it not knowing that it is wrong, where the valid site will reject the logon. Q. Dell Dimension with Windows XP, Earthlink 2004 e-mail service. About a week ago all inbound and outbound e-mail stopped, yet I can see or send e-mail using the web-based service. Since I only have dial-up I have to call Earthlink, talk them through to some point, then hang up, do what they suggested, and then call back. They have talked me through many times, I’ve re-installed, etc. but it doesn’t work. I have a firewall, but not a broadband connection since it is dial-up. A. If you are not getting error messages then it isn’t likely the firewall. Your firewall should complain, or the e-mail client program should complain. If you have a huge e-mail attachment waiting to be delivered, it could block access to the account, but you would see this on the server when you use the browser-based e-mail client. See if there is a large attachment in your inbox using the browser-based client. It was pointed out that Earthlink has a very good ‘live help’ capability that is online - you open a chat window and explain your problem, they type back an answer. By doing this you can do the steps suggested by tech support in ‘real time’ while connected via your dial-up service. |
| Bruce Preston is president of West Mountain Systems, a consultancy in Ridgefield, CT specializing in database applications. A DACS director, Bruce also leads the Access SIG. Members may send tech queries to Bruce at askdacs@dacs.org. |
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