Members who are
unable to attend the General Meeting may submit questions to
"askdacs@dacs.org" by the day prior
to the meeting. We will attempt to get an answer for you. Please
provide enough detail, as we will not be able to ask for additional
information.
Thanks
to Jim Scheef for moderating the session this month.
Q. (AskDACS) The Weston
Police Department is looking for someone who can help with a FileMaker
Pro application (on Windows platform.) If anyone can assist, please let
us know.
A. No one at the
General Meeting was able to assist. If a reader can come forward, please
let us know.
Q. How secure are PDF files from web spiders?
For example, we have an organization where we would like to put phone
numbers, e-mail addresses, etc., but don’t want them to be indexed.
A. PDF format won’t
prevent it – many web hits that you get with Google will point to PDF
files. You can do several things: a) put a password on the file – this
will require a viewer to provide a password. b) make just the phone
number or e-mail a small graphic file (.GIF for example) and put it
adjacent to the reference. Just be sure that the name of the file
doesn’t reveal the information in itself, as Google and the other search
engines do look at the URL name. c) Put it on a secure server such that
the members have to logon in order to get the newsletter content.
Q. My network connection had a
problem of dropping the connection (a broadband connection) every 20
seconds or so, for about 2 seconds, and then it would reconnect, stay
connected for 20 seconds or so, then drop again. I spent hours on the
phone with Microsoft and HP trying to resolve it. It was finally tracked
down to a code module installed by Yahoo!/DSL – IPMON32. A search on
Google on this item revealed that it is a diagnostic tool that is known
to consume extensive resources. It also appears that if it thinks that
you have a dial-up connection you will observe this behavior. It may be
removed from the Startup folder without adversely impacting your
computer.
Q. Is there a 64-bit version of
Windows yet?
A. Yes, there is a
public beta available that may be downloaded. It is specific to the AMD
64-bit Athlon, it will not work with the Intel Itanium which does not
support the x86 instruction set. However, before you go grabbing it, be
aware that there are very few applications that make use of the 64-bit
instruction set, and also very few device drivers that work with 64-bit
Windows. So before you try it, make sure that you can get drivers for
your video card, network card, drive controllers, etc.
Q. My new notebook computer came
with a 90-day free trial “Microsoft Office Preview” – which I have not
opened. I have a full license copy that I want to put on this machine.
If I install it, will it interfere with or be interfered by the preview
copy? I don’t want to be forced into activating (and thus having to pay
for) the preview copy since I have a licensed copy.
A. It shouldn’t care,
but the best thing to do would be to go to Control Panel / Add Remove
Programs and remove the preview version prior to installing the full
copy.
Q. There was a recent New York Times
article that implied that there are thousands of web cams connected to
the internet that are essentially viewable by the general public. How
would you find these?
A. The web cam vendors
create URLs that point to the cameras, they have a common string within
the URL that is related to the brand of camera being used. If you do a
“URL search” on that portion of the URL you will get lists of such
sites. If you are interested in a specific area then there are sites
that catalog them – for example you might start with www.earthcam.com
Q. I have Office XP Pro installed on
my machine. (Note: Office XP is also known as Office 2002) I am
interested in the features of Outlook 2003 only – can I install it over
Office XP without a problem?
A. Yes, it should
peacefully coexist provided that you are not connecting to an Exchange
Server as your mail message store. It is reported that if you introduce
Outlook 2003 to a mail account on an Exchange Server, that Exchange
notes the change of client and as a result makes it incompatible with an
Outlook 2002 (aka XP) client. Thus if you have a desktop machine with
(say) Outlook XP and a notebook with Outlook 2003, only the Outlook 2003
machine will be able to communicate with Exchange. If you want to hear
it from others, you might go to the MS TechNet site, and in the User’s
area ask if there are any difficulties.
Q. My new notebook computer does not
have a parallel printer port. How can I connect to my existing (and
still quite functional) printer?
A. There are several
ways to do it, depending upon what is available to you. For example: a)
if you don’t have a home network, then there are USB to Parallel printer
adapters available. These come in various levels of quality and
capability. For example, the simplest will connect an essentially ‘dumb’
printer to a USB port. They will support simple status reports from the
printer, such as paper out, low ink, etc., but will generally not
support multi-function printers – printers that also serve as a scanner,
fax and copier. These can’t handle the volume of data that has to come
back to the PC. b) If you have a home network, then the printer could be
connected to a PC that does have a parallel printer port and then shared
with other computers on the home network. This has been available since
Windows for Workgroups 3.11 (pre-Windows 95) and is comparatively
straight-forward. A minor downside of this is that the computer to which
the printer is connected must be powered on when the printer is needed.
c) Another solution is to install a print server device. This may be
either a standalone print server device, or a component in a switch or
broadband router. A print server connects to an Ethernet network and has
its own IP address. Client computers then install a print driver for the
printer as a “local” device on a “Standard TCP/IP port.” The printer is
left powered on at all times, the only computer that needs to be powered
on is the one you are printing from. Print server devices are often
built into broadband routers. The standalone models may have a parallel
port, USB port(s) or a combination. For example, I use a Hawking HPS12U
http://www.hawkingtech.com/prodSpec.php?ProdID=89 printer server. It
supports my laser printer via the parallel port, a photo-quality color
printer via the first USB port, and a non-photo-quality color printer
via the second USB port. Without having to do anything special, I can
get at any of these printers from a Red Hat Linux machine, a Windows
2003 Server, 3 desktop computers and 3 notebook computers running WiFi.
The client computers do not require software specific to the printer
server – the configuration is done using a web browser interface. The
operating system of the client computer does need to know how to work
with a standard TCP/IP port. While in my case the desktop and servers
are all wired, and the printer server is wired, there are print servers
that are WiFi so you don’t need to have a wired network.
