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The LangaList
Standard Edition

2004-03-04

A Free Email Newsletter from Fred Langa
That Helps You Get More From Your Hardware, 
Software, and Time Online

Please visit our sponsors and help keep the LangaList S.E. free!

1) Free Temp + Fan Utility (And More) From Intel

Fred: You mentioned Motherboard Monitor 5 ( http://mbm.livewiredev.com/ ) as a utility for keeping an eye on various motherboard temperatures, [fan speeds] and voltages (in http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=17701645 ).  For those using Intel motherboards, the company offers Intel Active Monitor http://intel.com/design/motherbd/active.htm which provides info similar to Motherboard Monitor. ---Ron Sherwood

Thanks, Ron. If you have a supported Intel motherboard, the Intel monitor is about as easy to use as it gets: the software recognizes the motherboard, knows what sensors are available and what the correct limits are for temperatures, fan speeds and voltages; and sets itself up with essentially zero user input. It couldn't be simpler to get going, and it's easy to use too, with a clean, graphic interface that shows your system specs on gauges on an analog dashboard.

But the Intel tool isn't quite as configurable as is MBM5. For example, the Intel tool can sound an alarm if your system goes out of spec, but MBM can actually trigger other software. I have my copy of MBM set to perform an orderly shutdown of my PC in the event of severe overheating, so the system will protect itself even if I'm not there to respond to an audible alarm.

And of course, the Intel tool only works on Intel boards. Intel makes more motherboards than anyone else, so this is moot for many people. But there are many other motherboard types out there, and MBM5 can work with most of them.

But the bottom line is that there are many excellent and free tools that let you know what's going on under the hood. There's no need to guess or hope or assume that your PC is mechanically healthy--- you can *know*, and for free!

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2) "Media Safes"

I've been contemplating purchasing a media safe for storing my images/backups/digital photos/home movies on DVD.  There has been significant discussion on long term storage of CDs but I searched the archives and couldn't find any mention of media safes. I was wondering if you used one personally, took your CDs/DVDs to a safe deposit box, or used a fire safe at home (and would this keep the humidity in the ranges necessary for long term storage).  Any comments on the worth of a media safe would be greatly appreciated! Thanks for all your hard work! ---Ken Beyea

A media safe may help preserve your CDs or DVDs by smoothing out environmental extremes, but I think they might provide mainly a psychological benefit rather than  a real one. 8-)

Most offices and homes that have computers have regulated interior environments, Anything that's OK for long-term human comfort is also at least OK for storage of CDs or DVDs. And if your office or home is air conditioned, it's more than just OK: it's about as benign an environment as you'll find, and a media safe won't add much.

A safe may offer a little extra help in the event of catastrophe--- fire, theft, flood, etc. For example, the better media safes and ordinary document safes usually have a "fire rating," which (if you read the fine print) will state that the safe's internal temperature will not exceed X degrees when exposed to an external temperature of Y degrees for Z minutes--- with the X, Y, and Z varying with safe design and price. Usually, portable safes can help protect what's inside from short duration, relatively cool fires, but no safe (short of a bank vault) will protect its contents indefinitely from a full-blown conflagration. Paper will burn at around 451F/233C. but starts to turn brown and become brittle at lower temperatures. The plastic in CDs and DVDs will degrade and soften at even lower temperatures, so it doesn't take a lot of heat to destroy your data. A media safe might buy your data a little time in the event of a serious fire, but not a lot.

Likewise, a safe might help guard against some flood or rain damage, but unless your media safe is hermetically sealed (and most are not), again all you're doing is buying a little time.

A heavy safe, or one bolted to the building's structure, might help with theft--- but even there, a sufficiently motivated thief can still get in. All the safe does if buy you a little time.

So, no, I don't use media safes. When I make backups, I keep them my home but away from the PC for a brief time, and then move the older routine backups offsite. (I keep some critical records, like tax data, in encrypted files in both locations.)

For offsite storage, I've rented a small storage locker several miles from my home. It's cheap, and the building is fireproof concrete and steel, and on a flood-proof hill. With offsite storage, even if my home office burns to the ground or is totally flooded out, my backups are safe. Likewise, if something disastrous happens to the offsite storage, I still have the master files in my home office. The odds of something simultaneously taking out both locations are very small-- and if there were a disaster of that magnitude, I probably wouldn't be around to need my records anyway. <g>

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3) ActiveWords Rave

Dear Fred: I'm a Plus subscriber and love your newsletter.

There is one piece of software I could not live without... and I have never seen mention of it on your LangaList.  It is called ActiveWords (http://www.activewords.com).  ActiveWords is essentially a little program that you can use to automate everything you do on your computer...boiling any number of mouse clicks (or typing) down into a few letters followed by a press of the F8 (or other) key. 
 
Think about how you currently use your computer.  You are typing on your computer, you decide you want to use a different feature on said computer so you reach over and grab the mouse, click click click and then move your hand back to "home row" on the keyboard and start typing again.  How much more inefficient can it be when you could accomplish the same thing with a couple keystrokes using ActiveWords (without touching your mouse).
 
Their website gives a full review (including demos) of what it is and how it works.  They even provide add-in applications which automate things like Microsoft Outlook and C++ (to name a few). 
 
As a patent attorney, I see inventors everyday who have taken something that was redundant and complex and improved on it, making it simple ("why didn't I think of that"). That is exactly what the guys at ActiveWords have done. 
 
WinPlanet even named it the number 3 program of 2003 ( http://www.winplanet.com/winplanet/reviews/5143/3/ ). 
 
They have a free 60 day trial. Best regards,
 
Stephen M. Nipper
Registered Patent Attorney
http://nip.blogs.com (Nipper's Patent Law Blog)

Thanks, Steven. Activewords is hard to explain in a few, er, words. A longer review, like the WinPlanet link or this PC World review ( http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,109405,00.asp ) or these pages ( http://www.google.com/search?q=activewords ) may help.

It's worth a look. To me, it seems to be one of those tools that you'll either love or hate. If it fits the way you work, you'll be a fan for life. 8-)

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4) New SpyBot Beta and Info

Several readers pointed me to the new version of Spybot in quiet beta testing now. It doesn't appear to be private--- just not publicized--- so here's the link.
http://www.safer-networking.org/files/spybotsd13.exe

But note: It *is* a beta--- unfinished software--- so use with caution. All the normal beta warnings apply: It may crash, or cause your system to crash, or may cause you to lose data, and so on. So don't be upset if you find bugs!

While poking around the rest of the site, I also saw a page that's come a long way since I first saw it: It's a list of popular software that's often infected with some sort of spyware; and a list of spyware-free alternatives. Very handy! See
http://langa.com/u/3i.htm

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5) A Home User's Security Checklist for Windows

Reader Roger Griffin sent along an email containing a link to http://www.securityfocus.com/columnists/220

It's the aforementioned "A Home User's Security Checklist for Windows;" a useful tool aimed mainly at those who are unfamiliar with security issues. If you have less-experienced friends or colleagues who depend on you to help them solve their PC problems, you could do them--- and yourself!--- a favor by pointing them to that article.

If you're already up to speed about security there's not much there to learn, but it's still good to have a lot of disparate security info collected into one compact place.

Thanks, Roger!

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6) New Month, New Chances

It's a new month, and right now your chances are the best they'll ever be!

To have a shot at winning one of three FREE ONE YEAR SUBSCRIPTIONS to the LangaList Plus! edition I give away each month, just use the following link to recommend the LangaList. (If your name is drawn and you're already a Plus! subscriber, your current subscription will be extended by a full year.)

Check out the details at http://www.langa.com/recommend.htm . Thanks for recommending the LangaList--- and good luck!

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7) Odd Download Problem Solved

Hello Fred, Well after having benefited from your newsletter, maybe I have something that might help some of your readers who occasionally have need to download large files. It relates in part to what was written more than once in your newsletters, but most recently in the http://langa.com/newsletters/2004/2004-01-26.htm issue. There you mention that one can eliminate "Cache Thrash" by reducing the size of the browser's cache down to 10MB for high speed connection users and 20 to 25MB for dial-up users. I took this recommendation myself a couple of years ago and I did not perceive any speed hits from the cache reduction.

However, a short while ago I started downloading some rather large Java oriented files. After the download progress reached 99%, the downloads seemed to freeze. This is the stage where it seems like large parcels are reassembled back together in the user's PC.  I then tried large files from other sites, just to make sure there wasn't a problem with the sun.com server.  Later I discovered that if I walked away for a couple hours, the download would be completed when I returned. This indicated a tight spin instead of a program loop. I searched for hours across several days, but didn't find anything that resembled this particular problem. After looking at everything I could on my machine, I thought it might be my smaller cache size but I wasn't sure.

I posted my situation on Microsoft's Browser newsgroup, not mentioning the size of the browser cache because I thought it would be an obvious target for guessers to shoot at. After a couple of days, I got a response from one of Microsoft's MVPs, Sandi, who wrote that I should examine the size of the browser cache. Now I had my suspicion confirmed by a second knowledgeable source.

I went back to sun.com tried another download to make sure the problem was still there. It was and I cancelled the download at its 99% mark again. I increased my cache size to 40MB and tried the download again. When it got to the 99% stage, it quickly completed to 100% and terminated normally. The remainder of my large downloads also completed swiftly.

So now when I expect to download a large file, I temporarily bump up the cache size.  Afterwards I reduce it again.

Thanks for your practical rendering and editing of the Langa Newsletters.  Sometimes when I get behind in my reading, I delete accumulated issues of other newsletters, but not the LangaList! --- Russ W.

Thanks, Russ. That cache problem workaround could be useful.

But I have my cache set at 10MB, and I regularly download large files via http without trouble--- even Linux ISOs, which can be almost 700 MB. So, there may be something else going on with your setup.

Still, if the problem resolves simply by increasing the cache size a bit, it's worth noting as an easy, fast, free thing to try if or when a download problem crops up.

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8) More Reader Sites!

Do you have a home page or website? (It doesn't matter what size.) Please click over to http://www.langa.com/code.htm , and maybe you can join the hundreds and hundreds of LangaList readers who have "Loaded the Code!" (If you've already "Loaded The Code" and are wondering if your site will appear here or on the Langa.Com web site, please see http://www.langa.com/link.txt )

Speaking of which: Here's another eclectic sample of reader sites---
some professional, some very personal:

View A Randomly-Chosen Reader Site From Among All Listed
http://www.langa.com/randomlink.htm

Manually Browse All Posted-to-Date Sites Starting At
http://www.langa.com/readersites.htm

Tightwad Tech
http://www.tightwadtech.com/

Want To Buy A TV Repair Shop?
http://www.downsks.net/jimstv/

All Sites Cafe
http://www.allsitecafe.com/

Kidney Health Awareness Site (AU)
http://member.melbpc.org.au/~cutting/index.htm

Bible Quiz
http://bqexperience.home.att.net/

Custom Aluminium Cases
http://www.alpinecases.co.za/html/link2.html

Refurbished and New Computers
http://anotherchancecomputers.com/

Chetan Blog
http://chetan.ckunte.com/

The DragonLady's Aviary
http://dragonladysflight.20m.com/

Teks Superstore
http://www.teks-superstore.com/

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--- ( Your Clicks On Ad Links Help Keep The LangaList S.E. Free! ) ---

"Hi Fred, Hey, I signed up for the Plus edition and got my 1st one today
 Way cool! I put off signing up for quite a few months. Good grief,
I spend more for coffee on the road....
 and your newsletter, uh, tastes better."--- Chris Ridley

Thanks Chris!

The LangaList Plus! Edition costs just $1 per month and
is ad-free, spam-proof, and contains even more content---
tips, tricks, advice, downloads....---
than the Standard Edition you're now reading.

Get all the details:

<a href=" http://www.langa.com/plus.htm ">Click!</a>

--------------( the above is an advertisement )--------------

9) Disconnect From Internet In XP

I am new to WindowsXP. Do you know of a simple way to disconnect from my dialup connection? Really enjoy your newlsetters. Thanks, Bill

In Win2k and XP, right-click on "My Network Places," and select Properties. You'll see a list of connections: Right click and select Properties for each connection you want to be able to rapidly enable/disable, and select "Make Shortcut." Place the shortcut on your desktop. If you ever need to disable that connection in a hurry, right click on the desktop icon and simply select Disable. When you're ready to restart the connection, right click the icon and select Enable--- simple as that.

Note that you also can rapidly disable a connection by right clicking on the connection icons that may appear by the system clock. But if the icons disappear, you have no easy way to access the connection until you drill down through the My Network Connections/Properties dialogs (or, alternatively, through the Dial-Up networking dialogs) again.

Usually, disconnecting from the network link will cause the modem to hang up--- but not always. If your modem won't hang up and you suspect the problem's in Windows, the information in "Modem Issues, Auto-Connect/Disconnect & Dialup for Windows XP" at http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp_modem.htm probably will help.

If the problem's in the modem, you may need to create a little batch file to send an explicit "hang up" command to the modem. The standard hang up command is "ATH," so a simple batch file that would send this command to a modem operating on COM1 might be

echo ATH >COM1

See http://www.google.com/search?q=echo+ATH+%3ECOM1 for more information on this.

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10) Just For Grins

The planet Jupiter is calling... and you can listen in.

This NASA-related page has recorded samples of some weird sounds--- clicks, whistles, rhythmic wave-like noises--- produced by naturally-occurring radio emissions high in the Jovian atmosphere and recorded by radio telescopes here on Earth: http://www.thursdaysclassroom.com/16sep99/sounds4.html

More details, and more sounds here: http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2004/20feb_radiostorms.htm?list637162 . You need a little patience in listing to the latter because the odd sounds emerge at wide, random intervals from the steady white-noise background static.

Definitely some of the odder sounds you'll find on the web!

BTW, Jupiter is climbing into view in the late nigh skies here. And in a few weeks, the night sky will hold all the classical naked-eye planets at once: Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. It's a little unusual to have them all visible at the same time; might be worth stepping outside to see what you can see!

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11) Plus! Edition Highlights:

• Fred Test-Drives Xandros Deluxe
    (is it worth $90?)
• Flash No Longer Useful?
    (... or, like PDF, is it largely obsolete?)
• Sneaky Workaround For Shutdown Problems
    (blow right through hang-on-shutdown snags)

Access to over 100,000 additional words in special features, extra content and private links, all on a private web site--- plus 30% more content in every issue, for just a dollar a month!

Plus! Edition info: http://www.langa.com/plus.htm 

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See you next issue!

Best,

Fred
( editor@Langa.Com )

Please recommend the LangaList to a friend! (And maybe win a prize!)

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This newsletter is a service of Langa Consulting LLC and is Copyright © 2004 Fred Langa / Langa Consulting LLC. All worldwide rights reserved. LangaList: ISSN 1533-1156

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