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A Free Email Newsletter from Fred Langa About BrowserTune, HotSpots, Columns, Tips & Tricks, and Other Activities

In This Issue:
Does "Legacy Support" Matter Anymore?
Exclusive! LangaList SR2 Tip!
Many New BT98Updates!
New Online Column Home
The Infamous Mac Flame-Fest
Excel CSV Bug
Defrag "Can't access part of the drive" Reader Question
Just for Grins
More!

Intel's been talking about its EOU ("Ease of Use") initiative for about 6 months now. At the Comdex trade show last month, they rolled out some prototype machines that do something no standard PC has attempted in a long time: they turn their figurative backs on the past---on "legacy" (old-style) hardware standards.

You see, many of the hardware elements in today's PC's date from the IBM PC or AT, from the early and mid 1980s---an eternity in the computer industry. As long as new PCs have to remain compatible with ancient standards, they must keep one foot in the past. This limits what the system engineers can do.

It also holds back software. Think of it: Windows 98, running in a state-of-the-art Pentium II 450 still must be able to work with peripherals plugged into 8-bit IBM PC-style expansion slots or 16-bit AT-style slots, as well as PCI and AGP slots. It must be able to deal with printer ports (a connector type that's almost 30 years old!), standard and high-speed serial ports, mouse ports, a keyboard port, and new USB and FireWire ports. The fact that our hardware and software has to carry so much baggage from the past is at least one of the reasons why we have bloatware. And with all that complexity layered in, you can easily see why PCs sometimes are very hard to stabilize and support.

Intel's EOU concept PCs eliminate all the ISA ("Industry Standard Architecture") elements. The systems use only PCI slots inside, for example. All external connections are handled through USB and FireWire connections. Some versions of the concept PCs can't even be opened up, like an iMac.

(For a WinMag news story of the EOU systems, visit http://content.techweb.com/winmag//news/1998/1101/1125a.htm; for Intel's own information on it, go to http://www.intel.com/pressroom/archive/BACKGRND/cn111598.htm.)

In this week's "Dialog Box" column on the Windows Magazine BBS area, I'll tell you why I personally don't like the idea of non-upgradable PCs, but why I'm coming to think that maybe---just maybe---a "legacy-free" PC might be just what we need.

I have to admit I'm a little surprised, because even just a year or so ago I would have been dead-set against the idea. What about you? Are you ready to chuck your ISA slots, your comm ports, your printer-, mouse-, and keyboard ports? Would you try a new legacy-free PC? Or is this (as some have suggested) just a way for hardware vendors to force everyone to buy new stuff by obsoleting all the equipment we already own? What's your take? Join in the WinMag site via the home page at http://content.techweb.com/winmag/ starting at about noon Eastern Time (GMT-5) on Monday 7-Dec-98. The discussion runs all week, so join in anytime!

With the move of BrowserTune to a new, higher-capacity server two weeks ago, followed last week by WinMag's moving its own servers, I took the opportunity to update a number of pages on BT98--and (of course) to fix the inevitable links that broke during the move. 8-)

I updated and improved BrowserTune's:

• VRML Test
• Quicktime Test
• Multimedia Test
• Sylesheet test
• Virus-scanning tests
• Channels tests
• XML pages
• the "Identify Site Owners" test
• and made a number of smaller tweaks and improvements, too

And as expected, November did turn out to be a record setting month for BT98 activity: We served up over 1.3 million free test pages! It's wonderful to see so many people getting good use out of BrowserTune.

A lot of people are using BT98 to test-drive and compare IE5 and Communicator 4.5. BT98 is great for that, but you should also be aware that any browser can slowly "go bad" over time as new active components and plug-ins get layered on top of the system. This is never a good thing, but with the browser and the operating system as tightly integrated as they are in IE4 and in Win98, it can be disastrous!

Sometimes, the problems are obvious (crashes, etc.) but sometimes they're so subtle you may not be able to tell if the problem is on the site you're visiting, on the web itself, or within your system.

But BT often can help. For example:

From: "Steve" jusso@sprynet.com

Subject: Re: Browsertune

This is the third time I have had this same problem; I cannot open a target in a new window. It acts as though its going to do it, then nothing. The way I fixed it prior to today was to reinstall Windows98. So I happened across BrowserTune, and imagine to my surprise, the first test to run was for this exact problem. Your fix for it worked! And here I was all set to reinstall again. Thanks for the help, and back to the test to see what else is wrong with Microsoft :)

And another:

From: rayprof@earthlink.net

Re: Ground Hog Day Problem:

When I access my news web sites I get the same news dating back to Nov.11.. e.g., The Times, CNN, Post, etc. That’s why I feel like Bill Murray in "Ground Hog Day". It’s always Nov. 11. Any ideas?

Ray

The thing that got Ray out of his Groundhog Day loop was BrowserTune's advice about clearing the cache: wiping out the history and temporary files eliminated whatever it was that was keeping him stuck in a time warp.

No matter if you're trying a new browser or just want to ensure the health of your existing browser, check out BT98. With 1.3+ million tests a month, you know it's gotta be good. 8-)

You'll find BrowserTune at the easy-to-remember URL of http://www.browsertune.com.

Starting this week, the online column I've been doing for TechWeb for the last year will migrate to InformationWeek Online, the site of CMP's hugely successful publication for professionals in the information technology business.

It should prove interesting: The new year ---just three weeks away---is likely to be one of the most challenging we've faced in a long time. It's gonna be wild!

For example, the once-impregnable Wintel fortress has started to crumble. On the hardware side, AMD, Cyrix, and IDT have produced powerful, compatible, and affordable CPUs that have opened up the CPU chip market wider than it's been in almost 20 years. On the software side, Linux and a resurgent Apple---and maybe some long-shot players such as Be---are likewise opening up the OS market. And the AOL-Netscape deal is sure to have widespread repercussions, although no one can yet say exactly what they will be.

Next year also promises new challenges such as a service pack and a new OEM version of Windows 98; the release (at last!) of NT5/Windows 2000; the release of Office 2000; a new version of the MacOS. on and on and on.

Hardware, software, connectivity: There hasn't been this much churn and change in years!

In my kick-off column for IWeek, I'll tell you what I think will be some of the most interesting changes we'll see in the next year, and then I’ll turn the mike over to you: What topics would you like to see covered in the coming weeks? What are the major issues you'd like discussed? What special challenges do you see looming for 1999? Join in, starting Wednesday at http://www.informationweek.com/langaletter!

Between now and Wednesday, the Mac furor is wrapping up over on TechWeb at http://www.langa.com/badlink.htm. In about 3 weeks, we garnered over 1000 responses to the column!

This last week was far more temperate than the previous week, with many more thoughtful, cogent posts. I learned from the debate (and still am learning---the debate is still going on right now!) and I hope some of the Mac fanatics maybe learned a little too. It's fascinating reading, so join in the discussion while you can!

BugNet is reporting a problem with Excel’s "export" functions that prevents the spreadsheet from correctly exporting large numbers in the common CSV (comma separated variable) format.

If you don't export large numbers, or if you don't use the CSV format, it's not an issue for you. But if you use CSV and deal with large numbers, check out BugNet's reports at http://www.bugnet.com/analysis/excel_export.html.

If you've downloaded the huge SR2 patch for Office 97 or ordered the free patch CD (http://officeupdate.microsoft.com/Articles/sr2fact.htm), here's an EXCLUSIVE TIP I haven't seen mentioned anywhere else:

Several of the patches seem to want to have a fully "burned in" copy of Office to work on. If you have a new install of Office, you should first open and then close all the apps at least once before installing any patches. Why? Well, Word, for example, creates your default template only upon first use of the application, and the patch requires a template to work on. If you simply install Word and immediately run the patch, there's no .DOT file for the patch to process, and you'll probably get an error.

So the best sequence for setting up a new install of Office is to install the suite, open and close each application once, then install SR1, and finally install SR2. Whew!

By the way, I just got my copy of the free CD-based version of the Office97 SR2 patch. The CD contains both the SR1 patch (which you must install before installing the SR2 patch); and the SR2 patch itself. It's much simpler trying to deal with the enormous downloads you otherwise have to use. Highly recommended!

I've sometimes had the same problem. I suggest this:

1) Make sure nothing else is running in the background. If that doesn't solve the problem, then:

2) Run a thorough scandisk FROM THE DOS PROMPT rather than from inside Windows. In other words, boot directly to DOS, or exit from Windows to DOS (don't just open a DOS-prompt box inside Windows), and run Scandisk from there.

If nothing helps, it's time to either try a more powerful disk utility (I prefer Norton's), or (sigh) reformat and start over.

Reader Rogergri@mail.freewwweb.com sent this along:

See you next issue!

Best,
Fred
(fred@langa.com)

(P.S. Please email the LangaList to a friend! )

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