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(This is an HTML version of the LangaList. The
content is identical The LangaList A Free Email Newsletter from Fred Langa About BrowserTune, HotSpots, Columns, Tips&Tricks, and Other Activities 15-Mar-98 Back Online (sort
of!) There were the usual moving glitches and a few non-usual ones (such as when I put my foot through the garage ceiling while moving boxes in the attic). But we're in our new home and enjoying it. New Hampshire (or "New Hamsha," as the locals say) is highly underrated. The surrounding states---Vermont, Maine and Massachusetts---get the press, but New Hamsha has its own charm. It's geologically diverse (ranging from sea level to the Northeast's highest peaks), meteorologically interesting (a northern temperate climate made lively by being at the intersection of two major weather tracks--- the Canadian/Continental track and the Atlantic Coastal track); and socially a curious blend of rock-ribbed conservatism (no income or sales tax) and techno-liberalism (a female, democratic governor; and the highest percentage of Internet-connected households in the nation). This is actually the third time we've settled in New Hampshire, and we're hoping this time it's for good. On the tech side of the move, my PCs all survived the none-too-gentle handling of the movers; on restart, only one system had a small problem caused by a plug-in card that had worked loose. But everything else made it without any problem at all. ISDN---with a $400
Surcharge I ordered ISDN the day we moved in. We needed a new physical phone line run in from the street, so the telco sent a crew. Although this is New Hampshire---"the Granite State"--- and our property is atop a rocky outcrop with spectacular, room-sized glacial erratic boulders strewn everywhere, the telco sent two guys with hand shovels to dig the cable trench. It took them, um, a while. Supposedly, I'll find out this week when the line actually will be activated. For now, I'm on standard dial-up. My ISP uses 56K-Flex modems; I have a 56K X2 modem, so I'm now online at all of 28.8Kbps, max. Sigh. I can't wait for the ISDN lines; now, it feels like I'm driving with the brakes on. BrowserTune and HotSpots
On The Move Turns out the server itself had some problems; getting Front Page to work on IIS on NT is not a simple thing, especially on a very, very busy server. (It's not uncommon for BT98 to serve a thousand tests an hour, on average; and peak loads are way higher.) I'd get file lock errors and other problems all the time. Things were made more complex by the fact that the server I was editing on was two steps, or replications, away from the actual live server you'd access to run BrowserTune. FrontPage doesn't like replicated servers.... The WinMag folks and I went back and forth over days trying to get things right, but in the end, we punted: This week, I'll be moving HotSpots, the HotSpot Archives, and all three versions of BrowserTune over to http://www.langa.com. The pages will look, feel, and act the same as they did on the WinMag server, but the pages should be served up faster, and I'll have better access for editing. That means I can finish the final minor edits to officially promote BT98 to "shipping" status, and begin work on BT98a---the next round of browser tests. The switchover should be seamless and the old URLs should deliver you to the new pages with nary a speedbump. Meanwhile, BrowserTune98 is still showing that #1 cause of browser trouble is leftover pieces of early beta versions of IE4. Check out the first few pages of BT98 (at http://content.techweb.com/winmag//bt98 ). It'll only take about 5 minutes to see if this problem is affecting you! Netscape Images Thnx, Squirrel! The most-recent beta of Win98 actually has been quite impressive. I've run it on a variety of machines, CPU types (including Intel, AMD, Cyrix, and Centaur CPUs), RAM amounts, etc., and it's performed quite well. It seems to be somewhat faster than Win95, has much nicer tools and utilities (all the old Win95 tools have been updated, and a bunch of new ones have been added), and is quite satisfactorily stable for a beta. There are glitches of course---the beta groups turn up small numbers of people for whom Win98 just isn't working at all, or not working well. But on the whole, it's shaping up well and I expect it'll be worth a close look on June 25th, when it appears at retail. Curiously, MS ships a new version of "TweakUI" with Win98; this version is set up to let you turn off the IE4-like portions of Win98. Although this wasn't working in my copy of the beta, it does suggest that Microsoft may be planning on ways to allow you to gain Win98's other benefits without having to deal with the integrated browser. Interesting. And you can run Communicator or other browsers on Win98, if you choose. That's good news. I think the only people for whom Win98 may NOT be a great choice are those who need NT's features; and those with relatively new machines running well-tuned versions of Win95B (SR2) with IE4.01 with the DeskTop Update (because that combination gives you a lot of what's in Win98). For everyone else, I think Win98 is gonna be a good upgrade. We'll talk lots more about it in future issues, of course... And you can get the latest MS propaganda at http://www.microsoft.com/windows98/ . Win95 "Sockets"Speaking of a "'well-tuned" Win95 if you'd like to try the new, improved "Sockets" that will be in Win98, check out Windows Sockets 2.0 for Windows 95 at http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q182/1/08.asp . Socket services are a core component of your Internet connectivity; Win95's sockets services haven't been changed much at all over the years. Sockets 2.0 brings you the latest improvements and advances. How Much RAM Is Enough? Last week’s WinMag discussion triggered some interesting comments on RAM. At one point, I suggested that 32MB is a good minimum amount of RAM for new systems running Win9x, with 64MB preferred and 128MB worthwhile at the high end. Some readers thought I was nuts! Maybe I am. I'll tell you my reasoning in my online column on WinMag this week, and then I invite you to join the discussion on the issue of RAM. I’d love to hear from people with various amounts of RAM to see what effect the different sizes have on real-world systems. How much do you use now, and how much would you realistically like to have? If you were buying a new system today, how much RAM would you spec? How much would you spec if money were no object? The WinMag column will go live Monday, Mar 16 around noon Eastern time, (that's 1700 GMT, for our readers outside North America). Please check the WinMag home page (http://content.techweb.com/winmag//) for the link to the column as of about noon on Monday. Useless Usenet?Has the "use" gone out of Usenet newsgroups? I was once a fanatical Usenet newsgroup participant, joining and participating in discussion groups all the time. The groups were great--- free-ranging, no-hold-barred discussion on almost any subject you care to know about (and some subjects maybe you didn’t want to know about!). But more and more groups became flooded with spam. In the ones that aren’t, people seem increasingly reluctant to post messages because of the fear of having their names and addresses lifted by email spammers. I’ve found a few spam-free tech gems and some good filters (and I'll tell you about them in the discussion listed below), but overall it looks to me like spam and maybe porn have all but killed the usefulness of Usenet. I hope I’m wrong. Do you find Usenet still useful? If so, where are the good sites? Where do you turn when you want to dig out information on tech subjects? Or is it time to turn in our newsgroup readers and---sadly--- close this chapter in the history of the Internet? Join in my CMPnet discussion on Usenet at http://www.langa.com/badlink.htm starting Wednesday 18-Mar-98. Back to UnpackingAs I mentioned at the top of this note, I'm still only "sort of" back online. At the slower modem speed I have available right now, it's going to take a long time to pump out the tens of thousands of copies of this week's newsletter. Plus, this newsletter is an "after hours" volunteer effort of mine I do on my own time on the weekends. With several rooms still full of unopened boxes, I have some other priorities to attend to as well. 8-) But it's good to be back at least in limited fashion. See you next week! Fred A live web version of this note is online in the "what's new" section of http://www.langa.com. Why are you getting this newsletter? My
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