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. Hello, This OPCUG Newsletter is sent at your request. If you want to cancel this service, please reply with the following line (do NOT include the remaining of the message): "Unsubscribe to the OPCUG Newsletter mailing list." I have NO input regarding the content of the newsletter, so any comments should be sent the newsletter editors directly or to the author(s) of the article. At the exception of messages regarding the distribution of this newsletter, I ask that all other messages be sent through the Pub, or if you prefer, see me in person at the next Users' Group meeting. I hope that you will enjoy this service. Jocelyn Doire OPCUG - OS/2 SIG Coordinator ____________________________ Coming Up PowerQuest squeezes more disk space for you January 7, 1998, 7:30 PM Added a gigabyte hard drive to your system lately? Finding that it won’t hold all the files you thought? You may be losing up to 40% of your disk space from large clusters and don’t even know it! Do you want to upgrade to a new operating system without risking your existing setup? Upgrading to a new high-capacity hard drive has never been more affordable, and Drive Image makes the process a breeze. Find out more about hard-disk partitioning and duplicating your hard drive by attending the January 7th meeting. Dick Kellerman of PowerQuest Corporation will cover all the benefits of hard-disk partitioning using PartitionMagic and he will also introduce us to new Drive Image, the ultimate solution for duplicating your hard drive. PartitionMagic (patents pending) won the 1995 Best of Fall Comdex Award for utilities. Organizing the partitions on your hard drive is so easy anyone can do it in minutes, a fraction of the time it used to take. Want to upgrade to a new hard drive? Now there’s DriveCopy, a safe, easy, and affordable way to copy everything from your old hard drive to your new hard drive. This utility supports every major operating system. The newest product just announced from PowerQuest is Drive Image for duplicating your hard drive. Using Drive Image, you can easily create and store a compressible backup file of your entire hard drive, or just the partitions you specify, to the medium of your choice. The image file can then be downloaded from the source to completely restore your operating systems, applications, and data, or just to make upgrading to a larger hard drive fast and easy. Dick Kellerman has worked with user groups for over 14 years. In the early 80’s, he was the president of an IBM internal user group in Tampa Florida and later the President of the Pinellas IBM PC user group (later renamed The Tampa Bay Computer Society). ____________________________ Club News Status of PUB II by David Reeves At their November 11 meeting, the OPCUG Board of Directors accepted the recommendations of the PUB II Committee and approved the associated implementation plan. In December, our WEB site was installed at its permanent site. Its new URL is http://opcug.ottawa.com. By the time you read this newsletter considerable progress will have been made on improving both the interface to the PUB and our electronic messaging service. With ISPs offering new technologies and service packages on weekly if not daily basis, the OPCUG has several different options to choose from. During January, Chris Taylor will be trialing ADSL and new WEB/BBS software. ADSL will provide us with Internet access at an affordable price and several features of the new software will assist in improving our electronic messaging services. The PUB II Committee was formed early in the fall as an investigative and advisory group for the OPCUG. The committee’s purpose was to investigate means of modernizing access to the PUB and improving our electronic messaging service. A copy of the PUB II Committee Recommendation Report, which documents these recommendations and the implementation plan, can be found in the PUB II file area. Our thanks go to the members of the PUB II committee for collecting information, researching various technical solutions, weighing the different options and recommending a plan of action. The PUB II Committee consists of Micheline Johnson, Jocelyn Doire, Claude G. Jarry, Ben Heaps, Morris Turpin, Dunc Petrie, Keith Martinsen, Bob Gowan, Norm Dafoe, Corneal Bierman, John Archibald, Marjorie L. Melick, George Campbell, Eric Clyde, Bob Bridges, Harry Sims, Chris Taylor, Zoltan Marko, and Flonia Wong. Once again, on behalf of the members of the OPCUG, our thanks to the PUB II committee for their efforts on our behalf. Our new and permanent home on the Magma server: http://opcug.ottawa.com/ ____________________________ Club News PUB II by Chris Taylor The PUB II Committee did a fair amount of work over the past months. They examined what we currently had with The PUB and where the deficiencies lay. They examined quite a few options and evaluated costs and benefits. I would like to thank them for their efforts. One of the desirable features was the ability to log on either through a dial-up line or through the Internet. At the time, it was estimated that the cost of having a permanent connection to the Internet would be close to $500 per month, so options that included this ability were dismissed as being too expensive. One option that was looked at was using cable modem access through Rogers. Although this looked fairly attractive, there were two potential problems with this approach. First, it is a shared media. We would have lots of bandwidth to start, but if the service becomes popular, we could see that bandwidth evaporate quickly. Secondly, although they currently have static IP addresses, Rogers has indicated they will be moving to dynamic IP addresses. This would make it very difficult for members to find the site! An option presented itself to have services provided through Chat Canada. This is a company that provides Internet access. They could provide the dial-up access we needed and the software would also allow members to connect from the Internet. While it seemed to provide all the services we were looking for, it would require a substantial up-front money investment and fairly hefty monthly fees. There were some means of possibly recouping some of the monthly fees but there were no guarantees we would recoup any monies. And then along came Bell, offering ADSL (Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line) for $65/month. It provides a 24-hour connection to the Internet through Sympatico. It is a dedicated line (not shared) with up to 2Mb/s download and 1Mb/s upload. Keep in mind this is from the perspective of The PUB, if downloading from The PUB, you would be using the 1Mb/s pipe, not the 2Mb/s one. David Reeves had already looked at a piece of software from Mustang Software called Wildcat Interactive Net Server and it seemed to provide all the capabilities we needed from the software side of things. You can log on from a dial-up modem as well as an Internet connection. You can use any standard web browser if you are connecting from the Internet. For dial-up connections you can use standard terminal programs. There is also an enhanced client you can download and use. We will be doing a pilot project using an evaluation copy of Interactive Net Server on an ADSL line. Originally, we were going to do a 2-month pilot. But since the current evaluation version of the software is limited to 30days, it appears the pilot will be shortened to 30 days. Everything may be up and running by the time you read this. Announcements will be made on The PUB, the answering machine and on the OPCUG Web site as soon as something is up that you can try out. ____________________________ Club news Future of the newsletter by Chris Seal At the end of 1992 I joined the OPCUG. At the first meeting I wandered in to the DTP SIG room where I was lucky enough to be recruited by Lynda Simons to assist in the production of the newsletter. Shortly thereafter I took over the editorial role from Lynda, a position I have held until now— the November issue was the last one I edited. When I had more time for it I greatly enjoyed producing the newsletter. I acquired and edited articles, layed out the newsletter in Ventura, printed out address labels, took the camera-ready art and labels to the printer, and distributed newsletters to stores and libraries in the area. In the last few years my work has been simplified. First by a change in printer: no longer did I have to drive into Ottawa early on a Friday to carry art to the printer — I was able to upload a postscript file to the new printer. Secondly through the assistance of Jean Vaumoron, who takes the articles, adds graphics, and creates the newsletter you see today. [Note: Bert Schopf has volunteered to assume the responsibilities as an interim editor. Anyone interested in assuming editorship or helping out, please contact Bert at 232-8427 or e-mail at Error! Bookmark not defined.] ____________________________ Product Review Drive Image By Harald Freise With 4.3GB hard disks selling in the mid $300.00 range I’m really tempted to get one for my overcrowded system. The thing stopping me is that I dread is the thought of reinstalling everything on the new drive. Many, many hours of tweaking, downloading and installing slipstream releases, new drivers and assorted other necessary stuff to make my system run just right and the way I want it to. With just a few simple steps, Drive Image can copy your current hard drive to your new drive while keeping every setting and byte of data safely in place. When I mentioned that I was about to use Drive Image, a colleague scoffed and said “why not use XCOPY, it does the same thing.” Well actually, no, it doesn’t. Drive Image includes PartitionMagic’s resize technology so you can resize your partitions after copying them to the destination drive. XCOPY can only copy files from point A to Point B. Going from a couple of 1.6 GB disks to a pair of 4.3GB disks allows me several options that I didn’t have with “just copying the files over to the new drive.” I can choose to resize my partitions in several different ways. I can have Drive Image automatically resize my partitions to take up the remaining free space on the destination drive. I could have Drive Image leave the remaining free space unused or I could choose to resize the partitions manually. I could also choose to do disk to disk copies with file system error and bad sector checking to prevent copy problems. Since Drive Image only copies used sectors it would also be a lot faster on a fragmented drive. Drive Image is a DOS program with a straightforward interface. The manual is very good in explaining the steps necessary to prepare and replicate a drive or any portion of it. If nothing else the appendices are worth reading as they provide an excellent tutorial on hard drives, formatting, file systems and understanding partitions. There is some very good drive related resource material and valuable troubleshooting tips there as well. Removable media is supported so that you could back up your drive any to spanned Floppy, Jazz, Zip, network, secondary or whatever drives you’ve got handy a the time. It supports Win 95, NT, Win 3.x, DOS, OS/2 including Fat, Fat32, NTFS, and HPFS partition types. According to the manual it even understands and to a limited amount supports NetWare, Linux and UNIX. How long would it take you to recreate an exact copy of your computer, the way it is set up now, if you lost a hard drive? Further, How long would it take to recreate all the data that you have stored on your drive? Got any fax or mail lists? Do you use a PIM? Taking risks with your data is something you shouldn’t do. You know you should take the steps to protect it (like performing regular backups) but doing so is often relegated to “I’ll do it next week” process. With Drive Image, you could create and store a compressed backup file of your entire hard drive, or just the partitions you specify, to the storage medium of your choice. The image file can be downloaded from the backup source to completely restore your operating systems, applications, and data exactly as it was when you first copied the image. Think about it. Included with Drive Image are two utilities that can be helpful in finding and changing drive letters assignments for partitions and CD-ROM drives. DriveMapper changes one drive letter at a time to reflect a new drive letter references. MagicMover helps in moving applications from one partition to another with their associated files and system settings. Drive Image isn’t for everyone but it sure does make a job of creating disk images a lot easier than without it. If you can use the services it can provide, it is worth every penny. ____________________________ Software review HomeSite: build it and they will come! by Alan German So, you have read the learn-HTML-in-a-week textbook. You have struggled, trying to cut and paste between several text files in multiple instances of Notepad, while remembering dozens of tags and all the numeric codes for French accented characters. Now you are ready to move up to a full-fledged HTML editor. There are lots of choices on the store shelves, in colourful boxes, at even more colourful prices. An alternative is to check the pages of PC Magazine (Vol. 16, No. 16; September 23, 1997) for the winner of their 1997 shareware award in this category "HomeSite for Windows 95" then log on to The PUB and download the software: HOMESITE ZIP 1,679,323 4/09/97 HTML editor If any of the above sounds familiar, then the HomeSite package may well be your web builder of choice. It is an exceedingly well-crafted product that will allow you to efficiently build, expand, and modify your web site. Usable interface The main screen offers a file list down the left margin. Double-clicking a filename loads the HTML code into the edit window. A two-tab system allows rapid switching between editing the source code and browsing the resulting page. You can use Homesite's default browser or configure the program to use Microsoft's Internet Explorer internally in the browser window. A single mouse click on the browser tab displays the page using the code in the edit window ¾ you don't have to save the page first in order to see the result of any changes. Even better, an undo button lets you retrieve the original code if you don't like the effect that your latest edit produces. You may also set up HomeSite to view a page in several external browsers in order to check the appearance of the code in the different packages. File management Having multiple pages open at the same time is no problem. Each open page has its own file tab. Clicking on the tab brings that page into the edit/browse mode. A really nice feature is that any coded page that has been modified but not saved is flagged with a red square on the file tab. Saving files is easily achieved by clicking on a Windows-- type disk button on the toolbar; or you can use File ¾ Close All, to shut down all completed files in one stroke. Useful toolbars As with many HTML editors, HomeSite allows you to highlight a phrase, and then click on a toolbar button to designate a heading level, boldfaced type, the colour of the text, or to bring up a dialog box for images and links. A nice feature of the package is the major saving in screen real estate achieved by nesting toolbars for such items as fonts, lists, tables, and frames. A number of different toolbars may be optionally displayed. One particularly useful toolbar is that for special characters. This gives access to such characters as ampersand, the copyright symbol, and to the special quotation marks used in French text (find those in Notepad!). Tabs for extended lower and upper case provide quick access to accented characters. You can even add multiple customized toolbars. Spelling checker If you type like I do, then knowing that the inclusion of one or severalspelling checkers iadds greatly to the appeal of the package. Users of Microsoft Word will feel right at home, as the icon and the dialog boxes for the spelling checker in HomeSite look very familiar. Extensive help file The package features an extensive help file and a quick reference on individual tags. HomeSite is designed for those who are familiar with HTML coding; however, the help file points to a number of useful links as references. Works your way HomeSite can be configured to work in the manner which you desire. For example, you can set the colours to be used for different HTML code elements in the editor, auto-indent your code, and have the program always insert ALT= in image tags. One item to check here is the default file extension ¾ the program initializes using .html rather than .htm. Special features There are many other special features of the program ¾ many of which I haven't tried yet ¾ including block indenting, replace across entire directory, support for style sheets, Active-X and Java, screen resolution rulers, validation of source code, verification of links, creating and publishing projects. The opening splash screen indicates that you may use HomeSite 50 times before having to purchase a license. This gives you lots of opportunity to try before you buy. If you have any interest in coding web pages easily give this program a try. At this price you may well become one of the buyers! Bottom line HomeSite is shareware (Registration US $ 39.95) from Nick Bradbury, Allaire Corp., Cambridge, MA Release reviewed: Version 2.5 for Windows 95 or NT 4.0 Web site: http://www.homesite-now.com/ ____________________________ DTP SIG Meetings review by Bert Schopf Scanning the scanners: part I DTP SIG member Dr. G.D. Petrie put together a comprehensive presentation on scanners, which he presented the first half of at our meeting on November 11th. This is a really hot topic, as our turnout indicated—it was standing room only for latecomers! Dunc's presentation outlined the technology behind scanners and how they operate to give you digital pictures. He explained the sometimes confusing terms used by the industry and enlightened us on things like dynamic range, pixel colour depth, and resolution. The full text of Dr. Petrie's presentation is available on the PUB as well as on the DTP SIG website (www.cyberus.ca/~blackbird). Scanning the scanners: part II On December 9th, the second part of Scanning the Scanners focused on scanning/image acquisistion software, TWAIN drivers, bundled software, and tips & tricks for scanning. Dunc Petrie also discussed future trends in the home/office scanner industry and reviewed his sources for more scanner information. Appropriately enough, we began the session with yet another way of bringing images into your computer: via video! Iain Malcolmson of Forefront Graphics Corp. (invited by Tim Mahoney) demonstrated the MPEG- CAM, a new portable video camera from Hitachi. The camera records full-motion video in MPEG and stills in JPEG format with audio. January meeting The January 13th meeting will be an open Q&A session on all topics relating to desktop publishing. Roy Chartier of Charette Multimedia will be on hand to field questions on our panel as well as yours truly. The DTP SIG meets on the second Tuesday of the month at Griffin Computer Training & Consulting, 275 Slater Street, Suite 340. Meetings commence at 7:30 p.m. Bring a friend! ____________________________ OTTAWA PC NEWS Ottawa PC News is the newsletter of the Ottawa PC Users’ Group (OPCUG), and is published monthly except in July and August. The opinions expressed in this newsletter may not necessarily represent the views of the club or its members. Deadline for submissions is four Saturdays before the general meeting. Group meetings OPCUG normally meets on the first Wednesday in the month, except in July and August, at the National Museum of Science and Technology, 1867 St. Laurent Blvd, Ottawa. Meeting times are 7:30 p.m. to 10 p.m. Fees: Membership: $25 per year. Mailing address: 3 Thatcher St., Nepean, Ontario, K2G 1S6 Telephone answering machine: 723-1329 Bulletin board—the PUB (BBS): Up to 28.8 kbps v.34, 228-0665 (4 lines) Chairman: Harald Freise, hfreise@@fox.nstn.ca, 828-3411 Treasurer: Willem (Bill) Vandijk, Bvdijk@@igs.net, 256-3054 Secretary: David Reeves david_reeves@@iname.com, 723-9658 Membership Chairman: Mark Cayer, cayemar@@statcan.ca, 823-0354 BBS Sysop: Chris Taylor, ctaylor@@nrcan.gc.ca, 723-1329 Newsletter: Bert Schopf (editor), blackbird@@cyberus.ca, 232-8427 Julie Dustin (assistant editor) micropro@@fox.nstn.ca, 823-1552 Mr. Jean Vaumoron (layout), vaumojav@@magi.com, 731-7847 Public Relations: Bob Cross, cross@@fox.nstn.ca, 595-1002 (after 6 p.m.) Facilities: Bob Walker, skywalk@@istar.ca, 489-2084 DTP SIG coordinator: Bert Schopf, blackbird@@cyberus.ca, 232-8427 Fox SIG coordinator: BobThomas@@msn.com (voice/fax) 596-3313 Internet SIG coordinator: To be announced OS/2 SIG coordinator: Mr. Jocelyn Doire, jdoire@@cslo.consultronics.on.ca Paradox SIG coordinator: Larry Chop, chopla@@magi.com, 236-8761 (days) Windows SIG coordinator: Chris Taylor, ctaylor@@nrcan.gc.ca, 723-1329