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The LangaLetter

A free email newsletter from Fred Langa

Week of 12/14/97

Name Change, and a New Online Column!
Each week, there's far more to discuss than will possibly fit into the LangaLetter or in the WinMag online discussion area. Just this last week, for example, I saw a demo of DirectX5.1, received a new beta of Windows98, got a number of very interesting product briefings at Internet World, tried the latest versions of IBM's ViaVoice Gold and Dragon Systems Naturally Speaking/Dragon Dictate, discovered a great new product for online security, finished my tests of the Micron Powerdigm Xsu---a 300MHz Pentium II system that uses Micron's proprietary chipset---and more. There also was a very eye-opening discussion going on IE4 and Comm4 all week on the Windows Magazine site (a discussion in which many of you participated).

In the computer industry, good information can go stale fast. So to help ensure that you get information while it's fresh and of greatest potential usefulness, l'm starting a new online column and discussion area on CMPnet this week. A new column will go up every Wednesday starting 12/17 and the discussions will run all week.

This is in addition to the column/discussion area over on the Windows Magazine area. (http://content.techweb.com/winmag//bbs/columns/default.htm);the columns will be separate and on different topics, but in the same style and overall areas you've already seen. The WinMag column and discussion area will continue to be refreshed every Monday.

The new CMPnet online column will be called "CMPnet's LangaLetter," so I'll be changing the name of this free weekly newsletter. The content and frequency will remain the same---it's just a name change.  I'm not sure what the new name will be--- and I'm open to suggestions 8-) But whatever it's called, it'll arrive in the usual fashion in your mailbox next week.

Meanwhile, please check out the WinMag area every Monday and CMPnet every Wednesday!

That WinMag Area...
... was hopping last week with hundreds of messages from people reporting problems with, and helping each other resolve problems with, IE4 and Communicator. You once again set new activity records in the WinMag BBS area, and also drove usage at www.Langa.Com to its highest level ever. Best of all, the quality of your posts was outstanding. Thanks to everyone who participated!

Here are few examples of the great nuggets of information we gathered last week:

  • Netscape Communicator 4.04: If you're going to use Comm, this is the version to to have; it corrects many of the problems in 4.03; adds a nice "buddy list" component that comes as part of the Comm bundle; seems reasonably stable. On the downside, it's very large and a number of us had trouble getting a good download.
  • Networking bugs (such as a hang on shutdown, if you’re using IE4 on a networked machine).
  • Display problems: IE won’t run at all; or runs very unstably; or runs but draws lines through on-screen graphics.
  • Problems with drivers for ATI and to a lesser degree most of the other major video cards.
  • Slow performance.
  • Conflicts with Microsoft’s own Regclean (If you run Regclean, you’ll probably hose IE4.)
  • A "cannot follow URL" error, even when the URL is known to be good and the target working.
  • Myriad problems traceable to the Desktop Update and the Active Desktop
  • And lots more, including a link to an amazing interview with Steve Ballmer who says, in essence, that IE4 is just a browser, so the bug-level is no big deal!

Solutions!
Fortunately, there were many solutions and workarounds offered as well as lists of problems.

WinMag's Dave Methvin joined the discussion and wrote about a general way to see if your browser problems are video related. he says:

"Click on Start/Settings/Control Panel/System. Click the Performance tab, then the Graphics button on that tab. Move the Hardware Acceleration slider all the way to the left. Click OK twice. Restart your system.

"Try running for a while, retracing the steps that caused crashes, and see if the problem recurs. If not, then it was a video driver problem. You should check the vendors web site to see if they have a newer driver. You can also just leave video acceleration disabled, or try some intermediate acceleration setting if you want. It's better to have the video be a bit slow than to crash your system."

Reader Wayne posted instructions on how to rebuild your registry if your browser hoses your settings (another reader was even having trouble getting back into Safe Mode after installing IE4). Wayne wrote:

Win95 creates a back-up of your registry upon every SUCCESSFUL boot. Your registry consists of two files, 1)User.dat and 2)System.dat.

Every time you reboot successfully a back-up copy of these two files is created, they are, 1)User.da0 and 2)System.da0  All four of these files are stored in the Windows\system folder, and all four of these files have hidden, system, and read only attributes! So in order to work with these files you will need to remove the attributes first. You will need to get a copy of attrib.exe from a friends computer copied to your boot disk.

Attrib.exe is found in the Windows\command folder and is only 15 KB. Once this is done boot up with your boot disk and make sure you change dir. to the c:\Windows\system folder and then type in the following...

attrib -h -r -s system.dat attrib -h -r -s user.dat attrib -h -r -s system.da0 attrib -h -r -s user.da0

now type in these commands...

1)copy system.da0 system.dat 2)copy user.da0 user.dat

you can also delete your win.ini file as it is also rebuilt every time you reboot! The command is...

del win.ini (there are no attributes to remove)

Now reboot and cross your fingers!

There's tons more great info like that in the thread, which is now archived. You can access all current and archived threads through the page at http://content.techweb.com/winmag//bbs/columns/default.htm. It's a gold mine---check it out!

This Week on WinMag
Several readers sent email last week telling me about great freeware or shareware apps they used to help download browsers. That sparked an idea for an open exchange of "great apps" we know and love. 8-) I start off this week with a freeware gem and four inexpensive apps I've found---all either good to give or get for the Holidays. What're your favorite apps? Together, we could produce a killer list of must-have software! Starting Monday, stop by at http://content.techweb.com/winmag//bbs/columns/column.htm?day=2&frames=yes and join in!

This Week on CMPnet
I'm still really annoyed at all the browser hassles we've had with the 4.X versions of both IE and Communicator. Yet despite these problems, MS and Netscape want to build these buggy browsers into the heart of our operating systems. I gotta tell you I'm not ready to bet my business on either of these browsers. Are you? Join the CMPnet discussion starting Wednesday here.

Http://Www.Langa.Com
New records! If this growth keeps up, I can see a day coming when I'll exceed the Gigabyte-a-month transfer allowance. Yikes! Fortunately, the new design uses fewer graphics than the old which has the dual benefit of making the pages faster to load for you, and taking less of my bandwidth allocation. everyone wins! 8-) If you haven't seen the new design yet, please drop by!

LangaLetter
As I mentioned above, the name of the newsletter will change next week, but not the basic content. The users list is growing steadily, and that's great because I do this newsletter as an off-the-books thing, and my only compensation is knowing that people want to read it. 8-) Can I ask a favor? Can you recommend the newsletter or send a copy to several friends? I have nothing but word of mouth to help spread the word about the newsletter, and if you could bring in new readers, that'd be great! Thanks!

BrowserTune98
Lots of behind-the scenes work getting templates and the basic structure set up. I'll be testing two interesting new ideas this week---if they work BT98 will be much easier to navigate than earlier versions, and will also make it easier to jump into and out of just the tests you want. Looking good!

BrowserTune97 (http://content.techweb.com/winmag//flanga/bt97/bt97-1.htm) got a minor refresh last week, too; the basic tests didn't change, but several links and images needed changing. Interestingly, readers are reporting that Communicator 4.04 is having trouble on some simple tests, such as list boxes! If you have IE4 or Comm4, you might want to check it out!

HotSpots
Hope you've been keeping up with HotSpots---there've been some really great sites there in the last few weeks. This week leans towards the highly useful:

  • Sunday: Hard to believe this is done by kids!
  • Monday: Content-rich... amazing depth.
  • Tuesday: From Israel, an interesting FREE service
  • Wednesday: A useful web page from a most unlikely source!
  • Thursday: Very creative---look at the buttons and sliders.
  • Friday: A free late beta of a nifty stylesheet editor.
  • Saturday: Wow---I found half a dozen things I wanted to download right away!

Always Looking for More HotSpots!
The HotSpots mailbox is always open! Whenever you find a great site, could you take a second and tell me about it? It'd just take a minute--- email your favorite URLs to hotspots@langa.com. No explanation is needed---just paste the raw URLs into the body of the mail message, ideally, 1 URL per line. I'll sift through them and queue 'em up for possible inclusion as future HotSpot. Thanks!

See you next week!

Fred
(fred@langa.com)


A live web version of this note is online in  the "what's new" section of http://www.langa.com.

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