The LangaList

The "FREE Office Suite" Hot Button

In the last issue, I told you about Sun's "StarOffice:" a well-developed, smooth-running, good-looking and nicely integrated package comprising a word processor and web-page editor, spreadsheet, database, calendar/scheduler, presentation maker, drawing and graphics tools, an email client, newsgroup reader, and a browser.

It's also 100% free.

Lots and lots of you immediately tried to download the large file. In fact, the day after my column went live, Sun's servers were choked! (I'm sure it wasn't just my column, but still....)

Well, the servers are recovering, and if you had trouble grabbing the extraordinary piece of freeware, it may be worth another try.

And the larger issue--- Sun trying to attack Microsoft by devaluing Office, the same way that Microsoft attacked Netscape by devaluing Navigator--- has sparked an excellent discussion on the InformationWeek site associated with the column. The discussion also has lots of great info on things like StarOffice's compatibility with Microsoft Office, usage tips, and more!

Check out the column (with complete download info) and the discussion going on right now over at  http://www.informationweek.com/langaletter ! Join in!

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Fred Gets Bitten By The 9-9-99 "Bug"

Last week, I told you how the doom-and-gloom purveyors were claiming that the 9999 date would cause problems because (among other things) some very old mainframe programs used 9999 as a special marker to indicate end-of-program, or to tag files for deletion, and so on. I also said I didn't think much of anything would happen---and sonofagun, not much did.

Except here in the LangaList. I finished that issue very late at night, and in a moment of total brain-fade, I dated the email as 9-Aug-99 instead of 9-Sept-99. The text of the email had the correct date---it was just the Subject line of the email that was incorrect.

My apologies for the error. In any case (1) I  may be the only person in the world actually bitten by a 9999 problem; and (2) I won't be editing newsletters that late at night anymore. 8-)

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Easy Way To Save BIOS Settings, #1

Many readers wrote to point out that often, all you need to do to save your BIOS settings (see http://www.langa.com/newsletters/sept-9-99.htm#cmos ) is to hit the Print Screen button while viewing the BIOS settings pages.

This can work if (1) you have a printer locally attached to the system whose BIOS you're examining; and (2) the printer needs no special drivers to operate.

I have a small 7-node LAN here at Langa Consulting LLC Intergalactic Headquarters <g> and the 7 PCs share 2 printers. Because 5 of the PCs can only print when Windows is running and they're fully online, the Print Screen trick won't work for me---or for you, if you use a network printer. I'd suggested using paper and pencil, or a digital camera, to copy the settings.

But if you have a local printer, Print Screen may be an easier way--- try it!

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Easy Way To Save BIOS Settings, #2

Reader Carol Anne Ogdin, who has shared good information with us in past issues, suggests the following:

Another arrow in your quiver of system integrity tricks: I have a copy of the freeware CMOSSAVE.com, CMOSREST.com and CMOSCHK.com on every computer. Every so often, I copy CMOS to a diskette and preserve all settings (that way you don't have to write them down).... [C]heck 'em out at http://hotfiles.zdnet.com/cgi-bin/texis/swlib/hohttp://tfiles/search.html

With new viruses corrupting CMOS (which is why you can't reboot after they've done their deed...they've corrupted all the configuration info the BIOS relies on), this utility set is vital to good system health.--Carol Anne ( http://www.deepwoods.com )

Carol Anne also was a consultant involved in the design of the original IBM PC, and she offers the following background information:

The BIOS is in Read-Only Memory (ROM).  That's because it has to hold all that "heart of the system and boot-up" software even when the computer is totally disconnected from power.  That left a problem: Where do you store the information like date and time...and, later, the information about disk configuration, etc.?  It required a small RAM. But, RAM would require some kind of battery backup...and they didn't want the user to have to change the battery every couple of weeks (like the Palm Pilot). 

So, they selected a RAM made with Complementary Metal-Oxide Semiconductor technology.  The biggest advantage of CMOS is that because of the clever circuit design it consumes nearly zero power...except when it's actually changing.  That meant that a small "button" battery could keep the CMOS RAM alive for years.  The third major component of memory is Dynamic RAM...the conventional "main memory" we have 64 MB or so of (the earliest PCs had 64 K!); because of it's cheap design, it needs to be constantly read and re-written, several hundred thousands times a second, which is why it's a comparative energy hog...most of which it gives off as heat.

Going further:  One of the problems with BIOS, especially as it grew to encompass more things (VGA, power management, etc.) in an era of changing specs (e.g., power management), was software obsolescence and bugs.  So, high-end manufacturers began using "Flash" memory, a read-mostly technology, to store the BIOS.  Flash is a technology that erodes slightly when you write it, but reading bears no such penalty. In early Flash memory, it wasn't a good idea to write more than 10,000 times over the life of the chip.  But, that was perfect for an upgradable BIOS:  Load it from a diskette--say, once a year--and read from it all day long, every day.

Finally, in the need for speed, designers began to discover that the ROM and Flash approaches were slowing the system down.  So, as conventional Dynamic RAM got dirt-cheap, designers added a clever trick to BIOS:  At system boot-up, copy the contents of ROM or Flash to faster Dynamic RAM main memory, and gain the advantages of higher speed during computer operation....

Thanks, Carol Anne! (Check out her site at http://www.deepwoods.com )

By the way, I've had a backup battery die in as little as one year in one PC; in another, it's gone fully 7 years without a problem. It's hard to predict when the battery will die, but if you've had your system for a while and find that it no longer keeps track of the time or its system settings between power-offs, try the $1.79 fix and simply replace the watch-type battery on the motherboard. (Any Radio Shack sells replacements.) It may be all you need to avoid sending the system back to the manufacturer, or hiring a technician!

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"Millennium" Secrets

A long-time correspondent (who shall remain nameless) is currently beta-testing "Millennium," the next release of the Windows 9x family. She writes:

Hey Fred,

I was by the langaletter and read your comments regarding millennium. I don't think it's a plug and play bridge. In fact, Win2k recognized all of a consumer system of mine that 98/SE and Milly don't recognize everything on. Including the defunct Creative Labs Modemblaster.

Of course, this conversation is off the record, but the Milly folks seem to be more interested in how much stress losing real mode DOS support may cause. Of course the answer is little if any. Dropping legacy code is long overdue.

I don't know if you have the beta, oops, alpha of Millennium, but the speed improvements are something to see. We'll see if they remain. I have a new Pioneer 303S SCSI DVD and under Millennium it reads as fast as a 5400 RPM IDE drive.
Where a lot of testers, including myself feel it falls short is the boring flat look of the UI that will be maintained. It's so old and boring. Of course, with GDI+ that should all change but that's quite a ways off.

DVD support sucks as the player only supports hardware decoders and not the most popular the Hollywood+ by Sigma. As a matter of fact, it won't even show up if you don't have whatever the mythical supported hardware decoder.

Milly is basically Windows 98 with true 32-bit performance. (Some are reporting amazing performance on the 500MHz PIII. I just ordered mine yesterday) And the Windows 2000 UI. Now if only we could get them to create new hip-icons. Bill is such a bore...

Interesting stuff, eh? And thanks to---well, you know who you are--- for sharing this deep-secret information. 8-)

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Just For Grins

Thought for the day:

There is an old saying that if a million monkeys typed on a million keyboards for a million years, eventually all the works of Shakespeare would be produced. Now, thanks to the Internet, we know this is not true.

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See you next issue!

Best,

Fred

(fred@langa.com)

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