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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 5-Apr-98 At Last, ISDN The phone company arrived unannounced and 4 days earlier than the scheduled date, but they did arrive. After 4 hours of drilling and cable-snaking, I blew the dust off my ISDN modem, plugged it in and, yow! Man, I'd forgotten what it was like to surf at 150+KBPS. What a pleasure to finally have the brakes off. I spend a major chunk of each day on line---and often, a major portion of the evening too---so my usage pattern isn't typical. But still, if your web access is a serious part of your life, and if you're at 33.6, 28.8, or lower, you really ought to check out higher-speed access. You won't believe what a pleasurable and efficiency-boosting difference it can make! Fifty-Six-K works almost everywhere, and if you have a 56K modem and phone lines that let you get at least near that rated speed, you may be OK for all but the heaviest-duty surfing. ISDN is the next-most-widely available choice; it can give you up to 115K for a standard card or external modem, and much more (230K, for example) with the right on-card chips or high-speed serial card for an external modem). Cable modem offerings are very spotty, but worth getting if you can because they can give you near T1 speeds if everything's hooked up properly and not too many of your cable-modem-equipped neighbors are on at the same time. (Supposedly, later this year I'll have cable modem access, and I'll grab it the moment it's available.) ASDL---asymmetric subscriber digital lines---are another option, though ASDL is hardly available anywhere yet. ASDL can give you T1-like speeds on the download side and faster-than-compressed-ISDN on the upload side. (The difference in upload and download speeds is why it's called "asymmetric.") Satellite links are another option, but they tend to be very pricey, especially for business-hour use. It's also somewhat of a kludge: You can get high-speed downloads via satellite, but you still need a separate, standard dial-up phone connection and ISP account for the upload side. I'd consider satellite if nothing else where available, but it'd be my last choice. In any case, if your online time matters to you, you really ought to check out some form of high-speed access. It makes a world of difference when web pages pour in, instead of trickling; when your email pops in place instead of dribbles; and when online, real-time games operate with minimal "lag" or latency. However, getting everything hooked up can be a challenge if you have more than one PC. For example, many cable companies limit access to one Ethernet card on one PC per cable installation; if you have multiple PCs, you'll have to use a router other means of sharing the accesses on your side of the card, since the cable company won't do it on their side. Likewise, ISDN and other high-speed access that requires a not-cheap piece of hardware: equipping multiple PCs with the required hardware can get pricey. That's where this week's WinMag column comes in (see next item). Share and Share Alike For example, consider Ishare from Artisoft (www.artisoft.com), a $99 software package that lets any PC on a network share its internet access with two other machines (a $149 software upgrade increases this capacity to 32 users). Ishare lets the second and third machines access the Internet exactly as if they had their own, private connection. If the host PC uses Dial-Up Networking and happens not to be online when the second or third PC needs Internet access, the software is smart enough to make the Dial-Up connection automatically on behalf of the second or third machine. And all the while, the host PC continues to operate normally. The only prerequisite is that the machines be connected with some kind of LAN---but even the simplest peer network, such as the one built into Windows 95---and that at least one of the machines on the LAN has internet access. (It doesn’t have to be dial-up, although it usually is; Ishare can share any kind of Internet access.) There are a couple of "gotchas" and a couple of unexpected benefits, too. I discuss these, and some other options (including an inexpensive hardware device I'm using right now to share internet access among three machines) in this week's WinMag column.Bottom line: It’s never been easier or cheaper to share Internet access or dial-up phone lines in a workgroup, small business, or home office. What other sharing hardware and software have you used, or do you know about? What other inexpensive ways are there to distribute access---and the cost of access--- among several machines? If you have more than one PC, how do you connect them? Let’s, er, share our knowledge! Join in this week's WinMag column on Monday, Apr 6 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. Microsoft 2000 (not!) The last week in march, the folks at CMPnet asked me if I'd make my weekly column part of the "CMPnot" offering for April Fool's day. I fabricated a story about three fictitious products---Microsoft Banking, Microsoft Medicine, and Microsoft Match. The fake story ran on April 1st, and even said that the hypothetical ship date for these products would be April 1st, 2000. CMPnet then put the final touch by inserting a photo of Jeff Pundyk, the CMPnet editor, wearing a jester's cap. Most people got the joke. But "April Fools" is primarily an American tradition. Here in the US, it's a day of harmless pranks, tall tales, and inventive fictions where the purpose of the exercise is to pull a good-natured fast one on an unsuspecting victim. Alas, April 1st is just another day in most of the world, and some people took the column as a dead-serious thing. So let me be clear: Microsoft Banking, Microsoft Medicine, and Microsoft Match are not real. I made them up. If you were misled, I apologize. Perhaps that column gave you no information whatsoever on American technology---but at least you learned a bit about American popular culture! 8-) Bonehead Move #2April 1st was a day of some small panic for me for another reason: The HotSpots page died. The HotSpots page (at http://www.browsertune.com/flanga/hotspots.htm) is by far the single most popular page at browsertune.com. While the BrowserTune test pages in aggregate account for far more volume, no single page gets more hits than the HotSpots page, where I hand-pick and highlight one interesting, useful, weird, or technically slick web site every day. Although I select all the HotSpots myself, the delivery is automated. Over the years, I've used different means. Now, the HotSpots page uses a small JavaScript written by WinMag's Dave Methvin to roll out each day's selected HotSpot. And it's been working fine. Until April 1st. That day, the HotSpot would not work on my machine. I tried everything---simplifying the page, running it locally, changing variable names, and so on. Nothing I did had any effect. I know Dave--it seemed very unlikely he'd build an April Fool's timebomb into his script---and the script itself showed nothing by the clean, logical code that is Dave's trademark. Eventually, I figured it out. I'd just completed a long review of Win98 for HomePC Magazine; in the course of the tests, I'd (drum roll, please) managed to change my system date. I couldn't access the April 1st HotSpot because my system thought it was March 31st. "Stupid" doesn't begin to describe how I felt. When I corrected the date, everything was fine. Duh! Keeping TimeThere are a lot of good time-synchronization software packages out there. Although I'd deactivated it for my Win98 tests (to my regret and embarrassment, as described above) the one I keep coming back to is "Dimension 4," from Rob Chambers at http://www.thinkman.com/~thinkman/. It's easy to use, and free. You install it, make an internet connection, and Dimension 4 (the "time" dimension, get it?) connects with a "time server" on the net. These time servers are synchronized with various atomic clocks running around the world, and while a by-the-web time update isn't accurate for interstellar navigation, the tenth- or hundredth-second accuracy is more than adequate for most normal purposes. Once it grabs the time, Dimension 4 then automatically adjusts your PC's time---couldn't be simpler. You just have to remember to run it! Network PCs: Gone
at Last? Perhaps you saw the page-one story in last Friday’s Wall Street Journal: "Network Computers Fall Short." Or perhaps you heard how once-fervent, high-profile NC proponents (FedEx, First Union, CSX, Wyse, SAAB Automobile…) are changing plans and switching to low-end Wintel boxes and/or Windows terminals. I actually believe that NCs have a place---but not on desktops as PC replacements. And while there's something to thank NC proponents for---the current crop of sub-$1000 PCs is one notable example--I think it’s safe to declare the dream of NC’s replacing PCs is officially dead. I, for one, am glad. What’s your take? Am I selling the NC short? Would you accept an NC as a PC replacement? Join in my CMPnet discussion on NCs Wednesday Apr 8 at http://www.langa.com/badlink.htm. Check it out!
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