PLEASE NOTE: In an attempt to make it a little harder for spammers to harvest e-mail addresses, most if not all, e-mail addresses listed in this electronic version of the newsletter have had the "@" symbol doubled. If you want to use any of these addresses, please remove the second "@" before sending. ********* Club news ********* Audit of Accounts by Alan German and John Archibald We have examined the accounts for the club's 1996 fiscal year as these were supplied to us by the Secretary. In common with many non-profit organizations, OPCUG derives some of its revenues from memberships which, by their nature, are not readily subject to complete audit verification. Notwithstanding the latter, we have found that the accounts appear to fairly represent the transactions made over the past fiscal year, and accurately depict the club's financial position as of December 31, 1996. We would also note that we have made a number of suggestions to the Executive which we believe will improve the book-keeping process, and make the auditing task simpler and easier in future years. The PUB in Review by Chris Taylor, Sysop During 1996, The PUB saw a total of 36,556 calls, for a daily average of 100. There were 4,752 messages posted for a daily average of 13. Downloading remains popular with 30,681 downloads for a daily average of 84. 1,802 files were uploaded by members. Due to problems with the Sportster modems (which were reporting the connect speed incorrectly for much of the year) the stats for connect speeds are meaningless. Zmodem was the preferred file transfer protocol for 93% of downloaders and 94% of uploaders. This is true A new service was introduced to PUB users in '96. This is True, a weekly (now bi-weekly) compilation of humorous news stories, was popular with a total of 460 file reads. This is True is available both on-line under the Special Services menu and as a service file for QSO users. QSO is very popular An amazing 7,259 mail packets were downloaded from QSO, proving that off-line readers remains a popular method of handling messages. There were 18 instances where people downloaded 4 or more packets in a single day! The top five The wide range of interests is evident from the fact that of the 4,566 different files downloaded from The PUB over the year, 3,840 were downloaded 5 or fewer times. The most popular downloads (after allfiles.zip, recent.zip, and pub30nfo.zip) were: winzip95.exe 152 downloads cindy06.jpg 122 downloads pkz204g.exe 101 downloads powertoy.exe 93 downloads drew.zip 78 downloads Is it significant that 2 of the top 5 downloads are for Windows 95 and 2 are x-rated graphics? I would like to thank all the unsung heroes who helped make The PUB what it is today. Wanted:WEB master for the OPCUG by David Reeves The Directors of the OPCUG are looking for a club member to design, develop, and provide on-going maintenance of a WEB site for the OPCUG. As part of the project, that person would be responsible for obtaining a domain name and recommending an ISP to host the WEB site. Interested members should send a message to David Reeves in either the private or executive message areas of the PUB. March winners by Mark Cayer At the March 5th club meeting, OPCUG t-shirts were won by Wayne Giddings, Howard Macumber, and Ted Mitchell. *************** Tips and tricks *************** by Harald Freise There were these big, ugly, black marks on my printed pages. These marks, which started out light gray, progressively got worse over time. They were, what I thought, the signs of the demise of my laser printer. They were characterized by a horizontal mark that started about 1 to 2 inches from the top of the page. When I printed an envelope the address actually printed twice. Once where it was supposed to be and another faintly nearby. I assumed that the fuser assembly was shot and that I would have to pay some serious money to have it replaced. Finally, when I couldn't stand it any more, I took the printer to Fidel Guzman of Bytown Laser (749-8344) to have it repaired. For less than the cost of a box of beer, my laser printer was fixed. My printer doesn't get a lot of exercise. It wasn't the fuser assembly at all. It was the printer cartridgeÕs main imaging roller wiper. Over time, and with little use, this wiper loses its ability to remove the excess toner from the imaging drum completely. The printer cycles itself on a continuous basis when left on, even if not used. Each time the printer cycles, the imaging drum turns three complete rotations. Even if you never print a page, the wiper will wear out if you leave your machine on long enough. Leaving the printer turned off is also not a solution. Over time the wiper hardens and loses its elasticity and thereby its ability to clean the drum. If I had of known then, what I know now, I would not have waited so long and put up with less than perfect laser printing. Then again if I'd had it serviced regularly, then this might of never occurred at all. ************** Product review ************** First Aid 95 Deluxe by Paul Jones (Kawartha Computer Club) General protection fault at Module 12A4:23CF. PROGMAN.EXE error at Module 94E1:A41E. Sound familiar? If you are a Windows 3.x or a Windows 95 user, you will no doubt have had a crash with one or more of these types of error messages popping up on your screen out of nowhere while you were working in one of your applications. If you haven't yet, let me assure you that you will sooner or later. Despair no longer, help is finally here to solve these annoying error messages and crashes in your Windows environment. The program is called First Aid 95 Deluxe and is referred to as being like an airbag in your car because it prevents your files in the event of a crash. It also has a fantastic preventative maintenance module and a tune up utility all built into the same program. The great thing about this program is that it is compatible with both Windows 3.x and Windows 95. First Aid 95 Deluxe allows you to recover from catastrophic failures by automatically creating and storing snapshots of your configuration changes so you can revert to a previous working configuration quickly and easily in the event that your system begins to act up. First Aid 95 Deluxe automatically detects and fixes configuration and setup problems for ÒmostÓ Windows 3.x and Windows 95 applications. It cleans Windows by checking .INI files and the Windows 95 registry for orphan or invalid entries and then repairs them. First Aid 95 Deluxe creates a detailed inventory of your PC's software and hardware configurations so you donÕt have to hunt for product names and version numbers. One of the great features of First Aid 95 Deluxe is that it intercepts imminent crashes and allows you to save your work: this alone is worth the price of the software. Another great feature is that you are able to receive instant updates via the Internet such as Windows 95 updates and bug fixes with one click of the mouse. (Very nice feature) First Aid 95 Deluxe does not fix hardware problems but it does an excellent job fixing software conflicts and configuration problems. Some of the most noteworthy features of the software package are: - lets you save your work in the event of a crash - prevents configuration changes from leaving you unable to access your system - makes your applications run properly by finding misplaced or missing files - optimizes your computers multimedia capabilities frees up hard drive space by removing or compressing unused features of large applications like Microsoft Office and Corel WordPerfect Suite by storing these files in a compressed archive on your hard drive for later restoration if you decide you need them. I am presently running a multi-boot system using a program called System Commander (a subject for future review) which allows me to run Windows 3.11, Windows 95, OS/2 etc. and like most Windows users, I have encountered my share of crashes due to software conflicts. I decided to load the First Aid 95 Deluxe in the hope that most if not all these annoying crashes would stop. The software was loaded twice, once under Windows 3.11 for Workgroups and again under Windows 95. This was recommended by technical support at CyberMedia, the program developers. The software had been running on my system for about two months without a single crash that First Aid 95 Deluxe did not intercept and either fix or allowed me to save my data. In October 1996 I installed a new USR 28.8 modem and went on line to the Internet using Windows 3.11 and Netscape 3.0. This is where my problems seemed to start. I constantly would have my system lock up with the error message *Netscape error at segment xxx*. First Aid 95 Deluxe would pop up and inform me of the problem and prompt me to select the *Retrofix* button to correct the problem. I proceeded to *try* and comply but with no avail as my mouse was also locked up. The only way out was a complete reboot. I loaded the newest version of Microsoft Explorer and have not as yet had any problems. The only other total system lockup occurred after I loaded Microsoft Flight Simulator 95 but after some phone calls to Microsoft technical support, and some minor modifications to my configuration files, these lockups have not re-occurred. Generally, First Aid 95 Deluxe has caught and saved my system from crashes about 95% of the time, which in my opinion is excellent. I have to give a thumbs up to this program and rate it as an excellent utility for any Windows user. First Aid 95 Deluxe is produced by CyberMedia Inc., 3000 Ocean Park Boulevard, Suite 2001, Santa Monica, California 90405. You can also contact CyberMedia on the World Wide Web at http://www.cybermedia.com/. This article is reprinted with permission from The Kawartha Computer Club Bits & Bytes newsletter. Norton Antivirus by Steve Swan Norton Antivirus Version 2.0 for Windows 95 installed painlessly in about 30 minutes and required 12 MB of hard disk space. During the setup Norton Antivirus gives you the option of registering online, which for some reason didnÕt work for me. After the installation was completed, two sections of the program were added to the startup menu. The first is Norton Antivirus Auto Protect which monitors and protects your system as long as you are running Windows 95. The other is Norton Protection Scheduler which lets you set the day and time you want Norton Antivirus to scan the hard drive. For example, you can tell Norton Antivirus to scan every Friday at 8:00. A really nice feature of the program was the Live Update button which, if you have an Internet connection, updates and installs the new virus signatures automatically. Unfortunately this feature won't work if you are using the software supplied by Sympatico to connect to the Internet. Norton Antivirus has the ability to scan files in a .ZIP format, if you set it up in the option menu. In all my years of computer use I have never run across a virus, so I can't say how good this program is at detecting viruses. Nonetheless, I am confident that if I ever have the misfortune of receiving a virus, I will be protected. And with the Live Update option I will hopefully never have to buy an Antivirus Program until the next version of Windows. This article is reprinted with permission from The Kawartha Computer Club Bits & Bytes newsletter. *** SIG *** DTP SIG Computer Hardware Security by Bert Schopf The March 4 meeting of the Desktop Publishing SIG focused on computer hardware securityÑthat is, keeping your precious hardware on your desktop and not in the trunk of a thief's car. Doug Gervais of Prolox demonstrated computer cabling and their unique rail system for fastening hardware to desk surfaces and Serge Perras of Armex Alarms added some thoughts on home/office security. While there are no absolutely theftproof methods of security, alarms and hardware devices will likely make thieves move on to the next target rather than fumble and pry to disable your security system. Join us for the next meeting April 1st as we take a look at specialty printing: embossing, foil stamping, raised ink printing, and so forth. The DTP SIG meets on the first Tuesday evening of the month at Lemmex CTCI, 275 Slater Street, Suite 340 at 7:30 p.m. For more information contact SIG Coordinator Bert Schopf at 232-8427 or email at blackbird@@cyberus.ca. FOX SIG Developer's SIG meeting by Bob Thomas If you're a developer who's interested in discussing or learning more about the various development products that comprise your software toolbox, then consider checking out the Developer's SIG on Tuesday, April 15th. This outgrowth of the FoxSIG meets at 7:30 PM at the Jean Talon Building Conference Room in Tunney's Pasture, on Holland Avenue, north of Scott Street. The inaugural Developer's SIG meeting in February saw Terry Mahoney present an overview of developer products for database applications. Many of these are used to publish directly on the internet. Commerce over the net is yet another topic that was touched on. Will the upcoming Microsoft Transaction Server (MTS) be the product that gets this juggernaut rolling? Come to the SIG and hear what your compatriots have to say about it and other products! The March 11th FoxSIG meeting was scheduled to show the moving up to Visual FoxPro 5 video. This product has been used at many websites to collect information and to display information retrieved from databases. One application will find that elusive Florida phone number from a 6,000,000 record database and display it to you almost instantly! Once again, the SIG meets: Tuesday, April 15th at 7:30 PM, Jean Talon Building Conference Room, Tunnney's Pasture, Holland Avenue (north of Scott Street). See you there! Internet SIG Review of the March meeting by Jean Stalker On March 13, Paul Blakely lead the I-SIG on a tour of the Netscape Plug-Ins. He had the enthusiastic participation of a near-capacity audience. Plug-ins are programs that function as extensions of a browser, adding special features, such as the ability to play audio files or video files; to view 3-D worlds; or to handle specially formatted text. Browser plug-ins started to appear 12 to 18 months ago, and they already number in the hundreds. Netscape has made a development kit available on-line, so that plug-in developers anywhere in the world can add functionality to the Netscape browser. Paul discussed three of the most popular plug-ins: - Adobe Acrobat Reader: reads documents in Portable Document Format (PDF) - Real Audio: real-time broadcasting and "streaming audio" - Shockware: audio, video, and animation Where do you get them? Paul recommended three sites that carry product reviews and links to sources of plug-ins. Most are free; others are offered as shareware, with provision for trial use before purchase. Plug-in sources - TechTools Hands-On of CPM Media Inc.: http://www.techweb.com/tools/plug-ins/plugins.html - Netscape: http://www.netscape.com/comprod/products/navigator/version_2.0/plug-Ins - Tucows (Ontario site): http://www.tucows.cybertouch.com/plug95.html How do you get them? To save time, Paul had downloaded a sample plug-in file beforehand; procedures are spelled out very clearly on most sites; be sure to select the plug-in version that applies to your operating system and browser. The plug-in installation procedure proved to be a single click on a single executable file! The outline of Paul Blakely's presentation is available in PowerPoint at his FTP site: ftp://ftp.oneglobe.com/pub/plug-ins.ppt. April I-SIG presentation by Jean Stalker In May 1995, Sun Microsystems introduced Java as a way of delivering cross-platform applications via the Internet. We saw an immediate rash of moving ticker tape and animated cartoons. But Java is much, much more. Java is an efficient programming language; its "virtual machine" (JVM) makes it possible to run the same code under any operating system; the JVM is incorporated into operating systems and Web browsers, such as Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer. Corel Corporation was quick to see the potential of Java and is heavily committed to exploiting the opportunities it presents. Corel has developed a publishing engine called Barista which enables users of WordPerfect 7 and Ventura 7 to create portable documents that are readable on almost any platform and compatible with any Java-enabled browser. An upcoming version of the Corel Office Suite, programmed entirely in Java, is attracting widespread attention as managers begin to understand what the Java model will mean in terms of operating efficiency and ease of access to information. The April meeting Speaker: Chris Biber, Director of Strategic Alliances, Corel Corporation Topic: Office Applications for the Java Platform Date: Thursday, April 10, 1997 Time: 7:30 to 9:00 p.m. Location: Keefer Room, 111 Lisgar Street, Ottawa Chris Biber was a respected authority on SGML and electronic document management long before the World Wide Web was in the daily news. He joined Corel Corporation because he likes action and is now Corel's Director of Strategic Alliances. OPUG: Ottawa Paradox Users Group News and reviews: Borland Database Engine (BDE) by Larry Chop At the 20 MarchOPUG meeting, Nick Potter showed how to configure the Borland Database Engine (BDE). The BDE is the common data access engine program that is used by Paradox for Windows, Delphi, and dBASE for Windows to access and control data. For those familiar with Access, the equivalent is the Jet Engine. DBE allows you to configure your data for sorting order, and so on, and also allows you to access data stored in other products such as Oracle or Microsoft SQL through ODBC. Nick referenced an article from the February 1997 issue of Delphi Informant and added some his own experiences. Please note in past versions of Paradox the BDE Configuration Utility had different names. And future versions from Corel will still use the BDE from Borland. Future meetings Our meetings are held on the third Thursday of the month, at Inly Systems, 1221a Cyrville Road from 6:15 to 8:00 p.m. Everyone is welcome. The next meeting will be on Thursday, 17 April, 1997. We have contacted Corel and they have agreed to provide an early view of Paradox for Windows 8. For more up-to-date information about meeting topics, please visit our web site at: http://magi.com/~chopla/opug/opug.html ********* Coming up ********* Lotus' SmartSuite 97 by Julie Dustin What has Lotus Development Canada been doing in the middle of these Microsoft - Netscape wars? Doing what they do best, that is to say, developing and refining their mainstream end-user applications. Lotus, now a subsidiary of IBM, will be showing us their wares at the next OPCUG meeting scheduled for Tuesday, April 8. Dawn Fiander-McCann, Systems Engineer for Lotus, plans to demonstrate the finer points of Lotus SmartSuite 97. This newest release has been shipping for over a month and includes the following: Lotus 1-2-3 v. 97 Word Pro 97 Approach 97 Freelance 97 Organizer 97 ScreenCam 97 What's new? Fiander-McCann explains some of the latest technical innovations: "These products concentrate on the team aspect of software. Most data is shared by users in the organization at some point. Our team computing includes the functions of reviewing, consolidating, and revising electronic work. In addition, this document management can be done within a Lotus Notes environment or through electronic mail. For example, I can create a document and then send it out for revision. Through colour coding, I can see what changes have been requested and by whom. I can then choose to accept or reject the changes." This newest release is tied closely to the Lotus Notes environment but is flexible for other options. When you save a document, you are given three choices. You can save it to your hard drive, you can save it to a Notes database, or you can save it as an Internet document. This third choice converts the text into native HTML (HyperText Markup Language). The products include an Internet toolbar for ease of publishing on Internet or Intranet sites. Java Lotus is watching the Star Wars trilogy fever and knows about Jabba the HutÑI mean, Java the Applet. (I had to work that in: JD). Their Java applications (called "applets") are known under a code name, KONA. Fiander-McCann says, "Our development is concentrating on software for business applications. These applications are "function-centric" as opposed to the old focus of "app-centric". We know, for instance, that a person may work on a project or a budget. It shouldn't matter what application they are using to create it. A budget is made up of certain repeating elements (for example, accounts and dollar amounts) just as the same elements (for example, tasks, people, deliverables, and deadlines) are in a project." Lotus is projecting a release date for KONA of June 1997. For more information on the KONA products, you can access the screenshow demos on their web site. The KONA-specific address is http://kona.lotus.com. Stay tuned. By the time you are reading this article, more interactive demos and beta copies of the applets have been promised on this site. When asked how the partnership with IBM has progressed, Fiander- McCann noted that Lotus has kept some of its independence. They are, however, working on tying in their PC products with more of IBM's mainframe offerings. These product mergings include databases, DB2 with Approach, and SmartSuite with plug-ins to SAP Financials. For more information, visit our OPCUG site. That's the truly interactive, live, breathing, talking, walking and sitting site at the Museum (on April 8). Or without leaving your PC, go to Lotus' main web site at http://www.lotus.com. For only this time, I am sending you the OPCUG newsletter unsolicited, and will not send you any further newsletter unless you specifically ask to be part of the newsletter's distribution list. This is an experiment to check the logistic of sending the OPCUG newsletter by internet email. Please review the newsletter and let me know if you see any problem with the method, and if you have any comment. If you or someone else is interested to be part of the distribution list, just send me a reply saying so. Please do not send the newsletter back to me. P.S. I did not write the newsletter and have no input regarding the content, I simply reformat the articles into one message, and email it to you. If you have any comment regarding the content please contact the authors directly.