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Front Range PC Users Group Newsletter k-Byte |
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| v. 23, n. 11/12 November/December 2006 | Users Helping Users |
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Front Range PC Users Group Newsletter k-Byte |
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| v. 23, n. 11/12 November/December 2006 | Users Helping Users |
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Contents 1 k-Byte Changes Scheduled for January 2 About k-Byte 3 December Meeting Activities 4 Distinguishing Forests From Trees in Search Engine Results - Gabe Goldberg 5 Microsoft Windows Vista - Mike More 8 BlueCoat's K9 Web Protection - Mike Mitchell 12 Are You "Compuliterate"? - Berry F. Phillips 14 Calendar of Events 15 NEW Services Available at FRPCUG Online 16 December/January Calendars 18 Membership Application 19 Digital Resolution Made Confusing - Dave Chrestenson 21 Should Your System Be RAIDed? - Vinny La Bash 23 Tip of the Month - Scott Dunn 24 Software and Website Reviews - Herb Goldstein 30 Trading Post 31 FRPCUG Contacts Beginning with the January 2007 issue, k-Byte will be published to the FRPCUG website on a monthly basis in a 12 page, 8.5 x 11 Portable Document Format (PDF). For those members who prefer to read a hard copy of the newsletter, it can be printed using Adobe Acrobat Reader (and other free applications). Reader is, for those unfamiliar with it, a free and reliable software application that can be downloaded from the Adobe home page (www.adobe.com). The download time using a 12 page PDF file with lots of graphics was tested using a dial-up connection running at approximately 50 kbps. The result was 4 minutes. There is a PDF version of the September/October newsletter available now on the website. That file was downloaded, under the same test conditions, in less than 2 minutes. Distribution of the newsletter via snail mail (postal service) will be discontinued. A short presentation on Reader is scheduled for the December General Forum meeting (December 5th). Reader is a very easy program to use, as this presentation will demonstrate. Published bi-monthly, k-Byte is the official newsletter of the Front Range Personal Computer Users Group (FRPCUG): our mailing address is: PMB 152 305 W. Magnolia Fort Collins, Colorado 80521 Opinions expressed in k-Byte are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the group or its members. Publication of information in k-Byte constitutes no guarantee of accuracy. Use of any information found in this publication is at the sole risk of the user. Neither k-Byte, nor its officers, nor k-Byte, nor its editors or contributors assume any liability for damages resulting from use of information in this publication. Submissions Articles, letters and short items of interest on computer-related topics are welcome and encouraged. All items submitted for publication are subject to editing. Send your contribution to the editor via e-mail attachment or submit on disk. If you have questions about a submission, please contact the editor for information. Copyright k-Byte is copyrighted ©2006 by the Front Range Personal Computer Users Group. Unless otherwise noted, other nonprofit users groups may reprint or quote from any articles appearing in k-Byte without prior permission, provided that proper author and publication credits are given and that a copy of the publication in which the article appears is sent at no cost to k-Byte at the above mailing address. User groups wishing to exchange newsletters with FRPCUG are invited to send a copy of their newsletter together with an exchange request. IBM PC, OS/2, Compaq, MS-DOS, UNIX, Windows and other trademarks occasionally mentioned in k-Byte are registered trademarks of International Business Machines, Inc., Compaq Corporation, Microsoft, Digital Research, AT&T or their owners respectively. Neither FRPCUG nor its newsletter k-Byte are connected in any way with any manufacturer or seller. Advertising Classified advertising is free to members for non-business ads. See "Trading Post" for pricing for camera-ready display ads. Charges for ad makeup from sketches, etc., are available on request. Deadline for camera-ready and classified ads is listed in the Calendar of Upcoming Events. Deadline for ad-makeup is the same as for articles. About FRPCUG FRPCUG is an independent nonprofit computer society, so incorporated with the State of Colorado and open to anyone interested in MS-DOS, Windows, or UNIX/LINUX microcomputers. Its purpose is to provide an educational and scientific forum of mutual benefit for members of the micro-computer community. FRPCUG holds a monthly meeting and conducts various special interest groups (SIGS) and seminars. Members have voting privileges, subscription to k-Byte newsletter, SIGs and selected seminars. Annual dues are $25 for individual/family membership and $50 for corporate/group membership. Election of officers will be held at the December 5th General Forum meeting. This meeting will also continue the tradition of a holiday social hour with free coffee or soft drinks and cookies. This is your chance to chat at length with fellow members on an informal basis about the world of computers. There will be a short presentation/demo of Adobe Acrobat Reader. And don't forget, the meeting room now has broadband access, so if you have a topic of burning interest to you, it is probably of interest to the rest of the membership. Bring your question to the meeting, and we can connect to some answers. Or, if you have a topic you would like to publicize, bring it (and its web addresses, if you have some) to the meeting, so that we can examine the topic. There is a special added attraction for this meeting: For every dues-paid member attending (you can bring your payment to the meeting), there will be a free gift. A very inexpensive gift, to be sure, but useful none the less. And no, it is not hardware or software. by Gabe Goldberg, APCUG Advisor and HCIL Media Fellow gabe(at)gabegold.com We all know people who cherish tiny details but never quite grasp the big picture. They're figuratively unable to see the forest for the trees, missing the landscape's glory while obsessing over whatever grows in front of their nose. Sometimes searching the Web feels like this. Google or any favorite search engine can cheerfully deliver a thousand -- or two million -- search result hits yet not reveal patterns, groupings, or gaps in what it quickly but mindlessly displays. Making things worse, hardly anyone looks at search results beyond the first screen or two; we either settle for one of the first few links, or add search words to prune our results. But this runs two risks. First, we may miss a key Web site that for some reason isn't highly ranked by our search engine. Not everyone knows that search engines rank results using proprietary criteria; even worse, ranking methods often change without notice, so identical searches days or weeks apart may yield very different results. Second, there's no clue or cue about search result patterns. And the human mind can't grasp a thousand-let alone two million-links to see what they might collectively reveal. Enter Bill Kules and Ben Shneiderman, respectively Graduate Research Assistant and Computer Science Professor at the University of Maryland. They're investigating how organizing the display of search results provides contextual and visual cues that make searches more powerful. Their technology, partially supported by an AOL Fellowship in Human-Computer Interaction, is ideal when searchers are unsure of the target or goal. This is a variation on the famous Supreme Court quote: searchers may not know what they're looking for, but they recognize it when they see it. Results, arranged in meaningful and stable categories using structures created by Kules' SERVICE program (as opposed to the ad hoc clustering used by some commercial search engines), are shown in a compact listing in the left side navigation bar. Important text (title, snippet, URL) is arranged for efficient scanning and skimming. SERVICE retains benefits of the traditional ranked results list, while adding an overview. The list allows efficiently scanning and skimming title/snippet/URL-which remains a critical task. The categorized overview adds another perspective on results, showing their distribution across categories. The overview also lets users explore results, narrowing them to a single category or subcategory. Categorizing results is proving to change peoples' search style. For some searchers, the categorized overview simplified formulating queries. They issued a somewhat broad query and then browsed the appropriate category. Others used the overview to organize exploration of results, first perusing results in the Business category, then Science, Health, etc. Other users only used categories when frustrated by normal searching. An interesting surprise is that empty categories-which might have been expected to include results-are in fact meaningful in some searches. For more information visit http://www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/categorizedsearch/. This article originated on the University of Maryland's Human-Computer Interaction Laboratory Web site, http://www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/, and is copyrighted by the university. All rights are reserved; it may be reproduced, downloaded, disseminated, or transferred, for single use, or by nonprofit organizations for educational purposes, with attribution to the university. It should be unchanged and this paragraph included. Please e-mail Gabe Goldberg at gabe(at)gabegold.com when you use it, or for permission to excerpt or condense. by Mike Moore, President, Bowling Green Area Microcomputer User Group, KY webstar(at)hughes.net http://www.bgamug.org/ [Editor's Note: A presentation on Vista is scheduled for the February 6, 2007 General Forum meeting. Check http://www.frpcug.org for details-or the January 2007 issue of k-Byte] In many respects, Microsoft's dominance in the areas of Internet Browsers, Office Suites and of course Operating Systems is puzzling, at least in the past few years. Open Source software such as the free OpenOffice.org suite has come into its own and the latest Apple MacIntoshT computers are brought to market with an operating system featuring iron-clad Unix underpinnings and a cheeky marketing campaign designed to turn PC users away from Windows. And yet, due to the sheer number of PCs out there with Microsoft branding, Windows still commands a staggering market share, in spite of no major upgrades to either Internet Explorer or WindowsXP in 3 and 5 years, respectively. Microsoft's answer to the rapidly changing personal computing scene has been a complete rethinking of Windows from the ground up. Vista, a new operating system due out around January of 2007 and now in beta testing around the world, seeks to redesign the way we use computers, particularly internet and media-enabled computers. Previously code named "Longhorn," this release is about as far removed from XP as XP was from the old text-based DOS operating systems. Although Microsoft is still hard at work finalizing the features of this blockbuster operating system, you can look forward to these new features, which will in most cases require a pretty beefy computer for support: Aero Aero is the name given to a new and visually stunning 3-D like graphical interface, which is currently known as the Desktop and Windows Explorer. In Vista, Microsoft introduces the Desktop Window Manager that will feature new technologies for application developers, transparent window effects, animations and file previews that all told will knock your socks off. See some of the previews of this interface at http://www.microsoft.com/windowsvista/. The full set of Aero features will be available on computers that support DirectX 9.0 and beefy video cards, so prepare to upgrade (and prepare to donate your existing computer to Gene Iglehart!) Security Microsoft has completely turned internet security on its head in the new Vista vision, choosing to de-fault a normal windows user to a limited access, virus-armored profile, as opposed to the current de-fault of a normal user having unlimited rights to the file system. Users that require more permissions on their accounts will have to make conscious and hopefully well-informed efforts to undo the protection Vista has built in to each account. Quick Search Windows 2000 and XP relied on indexed search techniques that were effective to a point, at a cost of much hard drive overhead and a key-word based search methodology. Vista takes this a quantum step farther and looks for both file content and something called meta-data, which will increase the relevancy of our searches for information on our machines, and will also help integrate local hard drive searches with internet searching. For example, file name searches are often useless when looking in a directory of photographic image files where the digital camera has named them with non-descriptive serial-number like file names. Imagine describing a photograph to your computer and having it go out and look for, say, a photo with a white church steeple, or a recorded song file that sounds like a tune you hum into a microphone. With Vista and other search engine companies like Google, we are poised at the brink of an explosion in searchability-a good thing considering all of the information that is out there! WinFX WinFX is an applications interface that supersedes the Win32 standard introduced in 1993. An Applications Programming Interface (API) is a set of standards and library routines that serve to control Windows-everything from the way applications are installed to all of the various standard ways in which a program can manipulate a window. The API is the way that many thousands of programs, hardware drivers and video games are able to communicate with Windows without Microsoft having to license the Windows operating secrets to each vendor. If you think of each way in which a particular windows feature can be controlled as being closed black box, the API standards are the knobs, buttons and dials on that box. WinFX means that developers with designs for software that is to run under Vista ought to be ready to study hard, because WinFX changes everything. The new API also means that we are bidding goodbye to our beloved DOS command line pretty much for good, running Vista. As different as WinFX is, it should be thought of as a superset of Win32, which means that we won't necessarily have to buy all new software, at least not right away. WindowsXP is my favorite operating system to date, and I predict that Microsoft will have to float some pretty good deals, and computer vendors will need to price sharply to get mainstream users to up-grade. Computer experimenters, those individuals that get really steamed when their cousin gets a faster computer than they have, will likely upgrade immediately, and hopefully BGAMUG will be able to refurbish what equipment they cast off in the quest for Vista!  by Mike Mitchell, Board Member and Newsletter Editor, Topeka (Kansas) PC Users Club http://www.topekapcusersclub.org mike.mitchell(at)cox.net Lately, I have been approached by several parents asking if there is a reliable Internet filtering solution they can install on the computer for their kids. I have also thought even some adults might be interested in content filtering software to possibly help decrease the risk of spyware, malware and viruses being installed on their PCs. (Most of that comes from inappropriate sites anyway.) The statistics are staggering: 5,000 pornography sites registered daily; nine of ten kids ages 8-16 have viewed pornography on the Internet, often in the process of doing homework; one in five children ages 10-17 have received a sexual solicitation over the Internet-and those are stats for just one category! Furthermore, the FBI lists on their website the following as some of the reasons your child might be at risk online: . Your child spends large amounts of time online, especially at night. . You find pornography on your child's computer. . Your child receives phone calls from people you don't know or is making calls, sometimes long distance, to numbers you don't recognize. . Your child receives mail, gifts, or packages from someone you don't know. . Your child becomes withdrawn from the family. Since so many sites these days have inappropriate content, I checked the filtering software possibilities out there. Most of them charge a fixed or a monthly fee (some quite expensive) but, lo and behold, I think I've found one! My buddy Gizmo from Tech Support Alert (http://www.techsupportalert.com) recommends BlueCoat's K9 Web Protection (http://www.k9webprotection.com) as his top free parental filter. Gizmo's description is as follows: "K9 Web Protection is a web based service that uses a special driver installed on your PC to redirect all your browsing through K9's servers where it is filtered for content. This means that the filtering works for any browser installed on your PC (Internet Explorer, Firefox, AOL, etc.). The actual filtering itself is highly customizable from a password protected control panel at K9's web site with over 55 selectable categories plus the ability to restrict or permit individual sites. Full reports on sites visited are also available from the control panel. The filtering seems quite accurate; I only found one site in an hour of browsing which I felt should not have been blocked. I also liked the optional blocking of Spyware and Adware sites. I tried a few obvious ways of crippling the filter such as uninstalling the product or disenabling the driver, with no success, which is comforting to parents. (You have to know the password to uninstall it.) I suspect though, that a determined tech-savvy teenager might eventually find a solution. The only real downside was the slight slowing down of my browsing as a result of it being re-routed through the K9 servers. This will mainly be of concern to dial-up users." Installation is quite simple. When you go to the download page, you register your name and e-mail address. They will send you an e-mail with the download link and a password to use during installation. I believe you can use the same password on more than one PC but they would like you to register a different name/e-mail address/password for each family. During the first use, the software asks you for an administrator password (don't tell your kids!!!) so you can manage the settings in the control panel. The program works regardless of how many user accounts are set up on the PC. (The program icon doesn't need to be copied/created on the other user accounts' desktops, which would be a good thing anyway.) Figure 1 shows the sign-on screen for the control panel.  Both options (View Internet Activity and Setup Options) require administrator password privileges. Figure 2 shows the Internet Activity Screen.  It gives you the category summary and general overview of the websites that have been visited from all users on that PC. In Activity Detail, it will actually list the individual sites that were accessed. You can reset the counters after each time you look at the stats or every month, etc., so the log file won't become too large. Figure 3 is the Setup Options area.  The options in this area are: . Web Categories to Block-Sets the categories to block. It offers several protection levels of filtering, or you can make a custom filtering level if you wish. . Website Exceptions-Sets websites you always want to block or allow. (Those are bypassed from being filtered.) . Web Search Options-Using Google SafeSearchT will filter search results you get from Google. This will reduce the amount of adult material that is returned when you search with Google. . Time Restrictions-Allows you to "turn on" or "turn off" the internet at half-hour intervals throughout the whole week. You can drag/select more than one block at a time to make setting it go a lot faster. . Blocking Effects-Set other default options. If speakers are turned on, you can enable the program to "bark out loud" to let a nearby parent know their kids are trying to go to inappropriate sites. Also, there is a setting where if users go to too many blocked sites within a set time frame, it will deny internet access for a set period of time. (All are adjustable by the administrator.) . URL Keywords-You can place words in a list so if that word shows up on a website, the page can be blocked, or the words on the site just won't be shown when the page is displayed. (That will probably not work for words embedded in a graphic on a web page.) . Change Password-Ditto. There are two things you will want to keep in mind. First, any block or notification from the program on the user's display can be overridden by an administrator's password. (See Figure 4.) If it is a questionable site, you can override it for 15 minutes and then it will go back to "blocked" status, or you can permanently permit it to be displayed. If you try to access the internet during a time of the day when time restrictions deny it, you can enable a temporary override for 15 minutes with the administrator's password. Second, if you make any changes to any page in the Options area, make sure you click the "Save Changes" button on each menu or the changes won't be saved. (It will remind you of that if you go to a different screen without saving.)  Overall, the parents' computers that I've installed this program on have been very pleased with the results. They have broadband connections and could not tell any noticeable difference in their download speed. If you like this program, please spread the word about K9 Web Protection to all of your friends, parents, etc. who would benefit from content filtering software. by Berry F. Phillips, member of the Computer Club of Oklahoma City and a regular writer for the CCOKC website and the eMonitor. bfpdata(at)1access.net http://www.ccokc.org [Your editor and the FRPCUG Board of Directors request that members read the paragraph on computer clubs in this article (marked with bold type on page 13). Let the spirit of the article and of the holiday motivate more members to volunteer to help with the computer classes taught by a very small number of FRPCUG members] Compuliteracy Test (unknown author): Who invented the computer? Mr. Chips, E.T., Marquis de Sade. What are microchips? What a herd of micros leave on the prairie. What you eat with a microdip. The reason you had to take all those computer literacy courses. What is a floppy disk? A painful lower-back condition, An album that didn't sell, A great Frisbee. What is the first thing you associate with computers? Bill Cosby commercials, Eyestrain & headaches, Annoying beeps, Three tons of printout where once there was a 3-page report, All of the above. What is FORTRAN? Between 3 and 5 tran, How to get computers excited before interface. Ridiculous. What is Pascal? A leafy vegetable, A foot fungus, A city in southern France, None of the above. When you need consulting help in deciding what to do with your computer, which organization do you think of? IBM, FBI, PLO? What is the most important computer peripheral? Bill Gates, Someone to operate the computer for you, Aspirin. Some years ago, I was staring at a demo game computer with that blank stare of a computer illiterate in a large computer store. I felt a tug on my sleeve and there was a small lad who asked me rather impatiently, "Why don't you do something?" I confessed with great difficulty being an adult that I did not know what to do. This mini computer user said, "I will show you because I have this game at home." He began killing monsters right and left as I slunk out of the store in humiliation. I vowed from that day forward I would become computer literate because no eight year old was going to be more computer literate than I was! I suspect you have some hands on computer experience since you are reading my column. Computer literacy is today a necessity when entering the job market. I remember when Time Magazine awarded the computer, their coveted Man of the Year which dramatically illustrated the incredible impact the personal computer has had on our contemporary society. Computer literacy does not mean you need to know everything about a computer but you should master the basics and understand how a computer works. I remember thinking that just because a person used a computer in a business that they must be computer literate. I discovered that many computer users only knew how to do limited applications necessary for them to do their specific work. Further, I noticed that many computer users due to lack of computer literacy were very limited in their use of their computers. Limited computer literacy usually translates into limited use of the computer never experiencing the full potential of the computer and maximizing their return on their computer investment. What alternatives are available to accelerate one's level of computer literacy? Basic computer courses are offered by most continuing education programs. They are usually reasonably priced and conveniently scheduled. They can be found in your local school district, or community college on evenings and weekends. There are career retraining programs that often offer computer courses through your local Labor Department Office. There are also online courses and tutorials available and the public libraries have computers available to their patrons with Internet access. I have found that computer clubs are an excellent choice for developing computer literacy since they are economical, and less theoretical and are more focused on how to operate the computer using various applications. Computer users helping other computer users move to the next level of computer literacy is an incredible learning and motivating experience. All of those who obtain computer literacy were once computer illiterates. As they were helped to reach computer literacy, they enjoy helping others as they were helped. You are never alone in your journey to reach computer literacy in a computer club; there is always another member to ask a question or to get hands on help. The sole objective of computer clubs is to help each other to reach computer literacy. We often hear from our members who have achieved computer literacy how when they started they wondered how they would ever use a computer and now how they will ever get along without a computer! The transition from computer illiteracy to literacy is truly amazing. Our mission is to help each other reach computer literacy with a variety of proven classes that will get you up too speed as soon as possible. The Computer Club of Oklahoma City believes the only unintelligent question is the unasked question! Obtaining computer literacy is not a luxury but an absolute necessity in our rapidly evolving technological society. I hope that I remain "compuliterate" because those eight year olds are getting more and more "compuliterate" especially the older I get! - IMPORTANT NOTICE - FRPCUG meetings are held at the Fort Collins Senior Center. Check below for directions to the Senior Center. December General Forum Meeting We will meet at the Fort Collins Senior Center on Tuesday, December 5, at 7:00 pm. Meeting Agenda 7:00 - 7:15 Announcements 7:15 - 7:45 Demonstration 7:45 - 9:00 Holiday Social January General Forum Meeting We will meet at the Fort Collins Senior Center on Tuesday, January 2 at 7:00 pm. Meeting Agenda 7:00 - 7:15 Announcements 7:15 - 8:00 Open Forum 8:00 - 8:15 Break 8:15 - 9:00 PDF Authoring Tools See you at the meetings! Directions The Fort Collins Senior Center is located at 1200 Raintree Drive. This site is situated at the northwest corner of the Shields and West Drake intersection, on the north side of the Raintree Shopping Center. Check the marquee at the main entrance for directions to the specific meeting room. Up-Coming SIG's, Seminars and Meetings Board Meeting FRPCUG's executive board meets on Wednesday of the week following the General Forum Meeting at 7:00 p.m. All members are welcome and are encouraged to attend. These meetings are held in the Staff Board Room of the Fort Collins Senior Center. New Technology SIG The New Technology SIG provides advanced support for all PC-related operating system and telecommunication issues. The meetings are held at 7:00 PM on the third Thursday of each month at Bluebird Manufacturing Inc., 1421 Webster Avenue, in Fort Collins. For more information contact Chuck McJilton at 493-2987. Rocky Mountain Internet Users Group Meets on the second Tuesday of 'odd' months at NCAR in Boulder. Meetings start at 7:00 pm, but members are encouraged to arrive at 6:30 pm for informal networking and refreshments. NCAR is located in Boulder at 1850 Table Mesa Drive. For more information see the RMIUG Web site at: http://www.rmiug.org/. Upcoming FRPCUG Meetings Along with presentations of new hardware and software, we will certainly continue to present tips, hints, solutions, as well as what is new with Public Domain and Shareware offerings. If you have ideas for presentations which you would like to see at future General Forum meetings or seminars, please let us know. We would appreciate the input and opportunity to improve your meetings. Thanks to two members, Jim Bragonier and Charles McJilton, there are two new services available from the FRPCUG website. Connect to the very professional looking-and operating-Web BBS. Is there something you particularly like-or dislike-about a meeting topic? About an article in the newsletter? Is there a topic on which you would like to have a presentation at a General Forum meeting? Need help with a software or hardware problem? You will find these forums: Comments & Suggestions News & Activities Saturday Morning: SHOP TALK Items for Sale (Computers/Accessories) Items for Sale (General) Connect to FRPCUG.pbwiki.com and let the board and other members know of your thoughts on the future of FRPCUG and the services you would like FRPCUG to offer (Wikis are easy-to-use Web pages that let you collaborate online and share information). 5 FRPCUG General Forum Meeting 7:00 PM 13 FRPCUG Board Meeting 7:00 PM 21 New Technology SIG 7:00 PM 25 Christmas Holiday January 2007 1 New Year's Holiday 2 FRPCUG General Forum Meeting 7:00 PM 10 FRPCUG Board Meeting 7:00 PM 18 New Technology SIG 7:00 PM by Dave Chrestenson, Member of the Fox Valley PC Association, Illinois Digital Photographer/Hobbyist There seems to be a plethora of articles on the number of pixels required to create your photos to their full glory. Many of the articles disagree with each other and some are mystifying (to say the least); occasionally a few are wrong. So here I will approach it from a different point of view, I'll give you the knowledge and let you decide what you need. Ready? Here we go! Let's start with some facts. (I'll reconsider these later, but we have to start somewhere.) First, the average eye, relaxed, focuses at a distance of about fifteen inches. So that's about the distance people view their prints. Second, the angle of comfortable vision (not acute) is generally agreed to be about fifty to fifty-five degrees. Beyond that is peripheral vision. Now, fifty degrees at fifteen inches subtends a distance of about thirteen inches, just covering the diagonal of an 8x10. Is it any wonder that size is so popular? And third, the typical eye has a resolution of about one minute of angle. This works out, at fifteen inches, to about .004 inches, or approximately 229 dots in an inch. (For purposes of clarity I will use the term pixels when referring to the camera sensor and dots when referring to the print. But in this discussion they can be considered equivalent. (Don't compare this with the resolution (normally also referred to as dots) of printers. They are completely different animals. (Subject for another article?) For convenience and to assure a tolerance, for now let's round that up to 300 dpi. This means that we need 300 dpi (at 15 inches) on the paper to assure that we won't see individual dots. Now, it's easy enough to work backwards from there. Assume that we wish to print an 8x10. Ten inches across at 300 dpi is 3000 dots. Eight inches down at 300 dpi is 2400 dots. So we need a camera of 3000 x 2400 pixels, or 7.2 meg. (This is assuming a camera with square pixels, not all have that, the Fuji S3 for example has hexagonal pixels, two sizes, no less. (Subject for still another article?) Simple huh? Maybe. But let's try another example first. Assume you just want to print a picture half that size, 4 x 5 is more common. Then 4 times 300 equals 1200 and 5 times 300 equals 1500, so our camera need only be 1.8 meg. That's not so bad, is it? But before you dash right out to buy a 2 meg camera on sale, let's take a look at some of those original figures. I said that the average eye views an image at 15 inches. That's an "average" eye. It can vary from that... a lot. Depending on age, it can go from 3 inches (a youngster) to more than 6 feet. (An old timer.) And that's for an eye that's working well. Near-sighted? You'll hold the picture closer. (Assuming you don't wear correction lenses, of course.) Far-sighted? Further away. Have astigmatism? A mess! So, if you hold your picture at 7.5 inches, you will need twice the number of pixels, or 600, per inch. An 8x10 would require a 28.8 meg cam-era. Good grief! Thirty inches viewing distance is a lot easier, a 1.8 meg one will do the job. Also, some eyes can see significantly better than one minute of angle, some can reach ? minute. That's even worse, you need 600 dpi at 15 inches, which means we're back to a 28.8 meg camera for an 8x10, and a 7.2 meg one for a 4x5. But you can do the math. And do you really need to have the dots as small as theory suggests? Well, to make it more confusing, there are other considerations that affect that. Bright lighting needs higher resolution, dim lighting needs less. Glossy paper? Higher resolution. Matt paper, less. High contrast image, more, low contrast, less. Ad infinitum. Finally, what if you have taken the definitive photo of Yosemite, the one to equal Ansel Adams, and you want to have it printed at, say, 16x20 and frame it. Do you still need 300 dpi? Probably not. After all, people don't normally hold a 16x20 in their hands and look at it from 15 inches. Remember the 50 degree vision. So, you'll probably be hanging it on the wall, where they will view it from a distance. Experience shows that people will move backward or forward when viewing a picture until it subtends that 50 degree angle. So you might well get away with 150 dpi. But, getting back to the more normal usage, handheld prints, do you need 300 dpi there? Again, maybe. In many cases you may get away with less. But if you go below 150 dpi you are almost certain to get obvious visual pixilation at that distance. Of course, Photoshop to the rescue, you can resample upwards and in-crease the number of pixels to what works. You're not adding detail, but at least you're getting rid of those annoying "jaggies." Clear? I didn't think so. Remember, I said "Made Confusing." But at least you are now confused on a much higher plane! Good luck. by Vinny La Bash, Member of the Sarasota Personal Computer Users Group, Inc., Florida http://www.spcug.org vlabash(at)Comcast.net You may have heard fellow computer enthusiasts brag about their new fast RAID system as if it were a high performance sports car. If you wondered what they were talking about, you are not alone. Just what does RAID stand for? The source of the RAID acronym can be credited to three University of California Berkeley professors named Patterson, Gibson, and Katz. In 1987 they published a paper named "A Case for Redundant Arrays of Inexpensive Disks (RAID)". The fundamental concept of RAID was to combine multiple small disks into an arrangement yielding greater performance than a Single Large Expensive Drive (SLED). If you can see the potential to combine the acronyms to make bad jokes, again you are not alone. The main objection to RAID was that two or more disk drives are inherently less reliable than a single disk drive. The professors overcame the objection by showing that disk arrays can be made more reliable by storing data redundantly in various ways across multiple disk drives. The paper defined five types of RAID arrangements, each offering different trade-offs in features and performance. Over time, more RAID configurations were added to the mix. The corporate world gradually adopted RAID, but it never took the PC world by storm because until relatively recently, disk drives were not "inexpensive". At the core of RAID is a process called "striping". With several hard drives connected to a controller card installed in a motherboard slot, you can juice up read and write speeds by breaking the data into blocks (stripes) and storing these blocks across multiple disk drives. This allows data to be either recorded or accessed in multiple blocks simultaneously across multiple drives in parallel. Without going into technical detail, the parallel operation provides the increase in performance. Of the many RAID configurations developed since 1987 only two are likely to be incorporated into a PC, and one of those isn't really RAID at all because it has no redundancy. The other is true RAID, but does not use striping. We'll start out with RAID 1, also known as Disk Mirroring. The title gives it away. In a two disk array you mirror the contents of one disk onto the other. With 100% redundancy, there is no need to do any kind of data restoration if one of the disks should fail for any reason. A few simple instructions allow you to use the mirrored disk until you can install a replacement for the failed drive. Reactivate your array, and you're back in business with no down time. The trade-off is that a second disk doesn't give you any additional disk space, nor does it appreciably affect performance one way or the other. If reliability and preservation of data are all important to you, then a RAID 1 array can make good sense. RAID 1 is relatively cheap, easy to use, and costs about the same as most conventional backup solutions. Turn to RAID 1 when data integrity is more important than performance. To set up a RAID for your internal drives, you will need support on your motherboard or add-in card. Finally, you must still keep current drive backups to protect against user errors, viruses, and other problems that affect both drives. Hard core gamers and other performance obsessed nut cases are almost always referring to RAID 0 when they brag about their PC speed demons. Most of them either don't know or care that RAID 0 is not true RAID as it has no redundancy. Data is spread out among all the drives in the array, which means that if any one of your drives fail, all your data is lost. This is not important if you use your system solely for game playing, but how many of us do that? If you have important data stored on your system, RAID 0 can be a dangerous implementation that may ultimately trash every byte of information on your system. A better way than RAID 0 is to install a hard drive with a disk cache of at least 8 Megabytes of RAM. Because computers can access data from RAM much faster than directly from a disk, caching can significantly increase performance though it won't match RAID 0. Many cache systems also attempt to predict what data will be requested next so they can place that data in the cache ahead of time. This will never stop performance crazy freaks from using RAID 0. They all backup their systems regularly, don't they? RAID 0 is for those enamored of performance where loss of data is of little concern. As an alternative, you can approach RAID 0 performance by installing drives with at least 8 megabytes of disk cache. While it does not obviate the need for backup, a RAID 1 array can provide additional protection for those whose main consideration is preservation of data. There are many different types of RAID configurations which we have not discussed. We have confined our dialog to RAID 0 and 1 because they are the most common arrangements on home computers. Most technical details have been left out for simplification. For a complete description of RAID, including animated diagrams of how data is actually stored, go to http://www.acnc.com/04_01_00.html. by Scott Dunn, Contributing editor to PC World Windows Tips: Move Quickly Between Your Open WindowsC Manage the proliferation of open application windows on your desktop. Chances are good that you have several application and folder windows open on your computer right now. You probably switch between them by pressing <Alt>-<Tab> if your hands are on the keyboard, or by clicking a taskbar button if you're mousing around. That's great for managing a few windows, but when you have several copies of a single application open (say, three pages in Internet Explorer, three instant messenger windows, and a couple of different folders), things get more complicated. Windows gloms their taskbar buttons together: You have to click, read a pop-up menu of options, and then click again in order to view the window that you want. Or if you have multiple documents open in your application, you have to switch to the app first (via mouse or keyboard) and then use another mouse or keyboard method to switch to the right document within the program. If window management is slowing you down, try these tips for customizing taskbar behavior and window access to find a style that suits you. Get away from grouping: To stop Windows XP from placing your taskbar buttons in groups, right-click an empty spot on the taskbar and choose Properties. Uncheck Group similar taskbar buttons under the Taskbar tab, and click OK. Group selectively: You may find grouping useful only when your XP taskbar is really crowded. Keep the 'Group similar taskbar buttons' setting checked (see previous tip), but use Microsoft's Tweak UI for Windows XP to set a threshold for when the setting kicks in. After installing it, start the program and click the plus sign ('+') next to 'Taskbar and Start menu' in the left pane. Then select Grouping underneath that. At the top of the right pane, choose a behavior or set a threshold that matches your work style, and click OK. Divide and conquer: Some applications don't show your open documents as separate windows on the taskbar, which prevents you from switching to a specific document directly by clicking its taskbar button, or by using <Alt>-<Tab>. To get quick navigation in Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, choose Tools, Options, click the View tab, make sure that Windows in Taskbar is checked, and click OK. In Adobe Acrobat or Reader, choose Edit, Preferences, and select General on the left. Check Show documents in taskbar, and click OK. The change will take effect when you restart the program. Note that in Office apps, this changes the <Alt>-<F4> keyboard shortcut so that it closes only the current document, not the whole application (unless only one document is open). But in Acrobat, <Alt>-<F4> still closes the program and all open documents in one fell swoop. by Herb Goldstein, Review Editor, Sarasota PC Users Group, revieweditor(at)spcug.org http://www.spcug.org [Editor's Note: The following information was extracted from a longer article.] BAD HYPERLINK?? Occasionally for reasons beyond our control, a hyperlink provided here will not work. After carefully checking your typing (needs to be 100% accurate), the only suggestion we can offer is that you go to Google and enter the name of the software. If a more current hyperlink is available, this is the best place to look for it. Please also note: Most of the software mentioned below is freeware. It is gathered through researching usually reliable sources. I do not personally try most references, time being the obvious factor. COMMON PROBLEM! Our SPCUG Treasurer, Bob Harris, calls our attention to a common computer problem in his message: "I was having trouble with my computer. So, I called Forrest, the computer guy, to come over. Forrest clicked a couple of buttons and solved the problem. He gave me a bill for a minimum service call. As he was walking away, I called after him, 'So, what was wrong?' He replied, 'It was an ID ten T error.' I didn't want to appear stupid, but nonetheless inquired, 'An ID ten T error? What's that, in case I need to fix it again?' Forrest grinned.... 'Haven't you ever heard of an ID ten T error before?' 'No,' I replied. 'Write it down,' he said, 'and I think you'll figure it out.' So I wrote it down: I D 1 0 T. I used to like Forrest." BEWARE OF THE FREE AOL 9.0. AOL's free Internet client software has earned the company a slap on the wrist from http://www.StopBadware.org, a consortium set up to combat malicious software. In a report recently released, the group advises users to steer clear of the software because of its "badware behavior." The report blasts the free version of AOL 9.0 because it "interferes with computer use," and because of the way it meddles with components such as the Internet Explorer browser and the Windows taskbar. The suite is also criticized for engaging in "deceptive installation" and faulted because some components fail to uninstall INTERNET EXPLORER RELEASE CANDIDATE1. There are still many reasons why Internet Explorer remains the most popular browser in spite of inroads made by the more feature-rich Firefox. One of the most important of these is IE's compatibility with web sites that other browsers choke on. If you are still an IE fan, you may want to download the latest free upgrade, IE7 Release Candidate1. IE7 is the version of Internet Explorer that will accompany the upcoming Windows Vista. RC1 is a more stable and reliable product than its beta release version and is in the format that will largely be what you will find in the final IE7. It contains tabbed browsing, a new and nicer interface and many other improvements you will enjoy. Get it at microsoft.com. VISUALZONE. This free add-in performs a backtrace that attempts to locate the would-be intruder's IP address, physical location (more or less), and Internet service provider. With a single click, you can report the incursion to DShield, which tracks threats as part of the SANS Internet Storm Center. http://www.visualizesoftware.com DIGITAL PRINT IMPROVEMENT. One of the keys to high quality digital image processing is to have your monitor properly calibrated. At this site they explain what's involved and give you a detailed guide how to do it. You'll find lots of other digital tips on this site including a good tutorial on color calibrating your printer. http://www.normankoren.com/makingfineprints1A.html A NEW WAY TO SAVE WEB PAGES. Ever been browsing at work and found a site you'd like to check out when you get home? Toread.cc is a free web service that takes a snap of the web page and emails it to any address you nominate. http://toread.cc/ FLASHGET has always been an excellent download accelerator. It performs well, has good browser integration, is reliable and highly configurable. Now it has another attribute: it's free. http://www.flashget.com/index_en.htm THE BEST FREE PAINT PROGRAM . Although they overlap in function, paint programs are really a different class of product from digital editors such as Photoshop and The Gimp. Paint programs are specifically designed to facilitate freehand drawing. They are ideal for sketching, painting, creating animations and special effects. Most folks have dabbled with Microsoft Paint (aka Paintbrush for Windows), which comes free with most versions of the operating system. In fact MS Paint is probably responsible for the generally bad reputation of paint programs. Early versions could only produce crude two dimensional drawings with jagged edges and no color gradients. Its free availability also encouraged untalented amateurs to produce works that could only be described as abysmal. Past reputation aside, the latest XP version of Microsoft Paint is actually a very capable and resource efficient product and deserves to be more widely used. In the hands of a good pixel artist it can give excellent results. My favorite free paint program is however, not Microsoft Paint but Project DogWaffle. This is a commercial product but the developer offers an older version (1.2) as freeware. The free version is surprisingly full featured. It has a comprehensive set of tools including fully customizable brushes, lots of filters and effects, multiple color selection options, a good set of color gradients, animation aids and more. On the downside the program runs slowly on older PCs, has limited layer support, has a clunky cut and paste mechanism and only handles .BMP and Targa files. Like all graphics editors, you'll need to invest a bit of time to learn how best to use DogWaffle but those with artistic skills will find the effort well rewarded. Freeware, all Windows versions, 4.5MB. http://www.thebest3d.com/dogwaffle/free/index.html PARTITION COMMANDER 10 Partition Commander is one of those utilities that you won't be using often, but when you have need, it's worth every penny you paid for it. It will readily do a variety of vital jobs that are essential to properly setting up your computer. The most prominent although not exclusive use starts any time you buy a new computer or install a new hard drive. To begin with, you will need to decide whether to format it as either FAT 32 or NTFS, the latter being the far more common choice today. There are also times when you may wish to change from one format to another. With one button click, Partition Commander will do the job in a few seconds. Further along, Partition Commander can perform a variety of other very essential jobs in the performance of which it is very close to singularly unique. Most users prefer to partition their hard drive for better organization of software, data, and the basic operating system, using their partitions as separate depositories of each. It makes for more efficient backups, restores, searches and separation of hard drive contents into logical areas. Not too long ago, setting up and partitioning a hard drive was a job that only your experienced computer vendor or a geek DOS expert could properly handle. Using Partition Commander it has become a simple chore that even a novice can accomplish with ease. With the massive size of today's hard drives, space is no longer the issue it used to be. Regardless, resizing partitions to more efficiently handle disk space is another chore that Partition Commander can easily handle. Another of yesterday's common partitioning worries was correcting partitioning errors which were not at all difficult to make. Partition Commander offers an undo feature that provides for instant recovery. Understanding the unique performance of Partition Commander requires some indulgence in computer history. Before the advent of Windows, computer chores from simple copying and deleting to more complex disk searching and partitioning required very complex manipulation of the original operation system, DOS. You needed to be a learned manipulator of the command line with the exact instructions, syntaxes, etc. to deal with it. Today's simple chores were yesterday's complex, time-consuming challenges. Computers were anything but the child's play they largely are today. When you bought a computer, your vendor was usually the only one with the knowledge and experience to set up and partition your hard drive. With the advent of Windows, computer life slowly became less frustrating and more bearable. Powerquest, a software publisher that tackled the more exotic of tasks like disk partitioning, developed and gradually improved a program entitled "Partition Magic." Although a step up from the DOS command line, it basically used DOS but presented it in an interface that was somewhat easier to employ. Partition Magic performed well but was not at all intuitive or easy to use. With each successive version it improved until in its final version, 8.0, it had gotten to where at least intermediate use could handle it without difficulty. Just when it reached its zenith, Powerquest died and was buried by falling into the reverse alchemist Symantec whose specialty appears to be its ability to turn diamonds into coal. Fortunately, V-Com Software (an Avanquest company) was able to fill the void with Partition Commander which has with its latest version, 10, brought disk partitioning software to the most state of the art and easiest to use software of its kind imaginable. It provides a simple, colorful, completely intuitive and easy to use interface, complete with step-by-step wizards that make disk partitioning and structural manipulation child's-play even in the hands of novices. It is completely amazing how such formerly difficult tasks have been reduced to utter simplicity. Here's what Partition Commander will do for you at the click of a button: Format or change the previous format of your hard drive. Create, resize, delete, undelete, format, merge, move and copy partitions. Transfer the complete contents of one drive to another automatically with its free component, Copy Commander. System Commander, a free component, allows you to run multiple operating systems safely and easily. Partition Commander is available as a download or boxed copy at http://www.v-com.com for $49.95 Go to their site for more info and to peruse their other software. Some of their utilities are the most outstanding and incomparable available in the software industry. DZSOFT FAVORITES SEARCH. Sick of scrolling through Internet Explorer's clunky Favorites list? Save your sanity by installing this freebie. Once the app is ensconced on IE's toolbar, a click summons a quick search box. Enter a keyword, and a list of clickable bookmarks appears. You can search a bookmark's name and/or the URL itself, automatically create a handy Last Items Found folder, and more. Note: Your antispyware program may alert you to the presence of a browser helper object, but in this case it's not a security risk. http://www.dzsoft.com EASYREAD. Other browsers let you view Web pages at custom sizes-why not Internet Explorer? EasyRead installs two buttons in your IE toolbar. One looks like a plus sign, the other like a minus sign. One lets you zoom in to make your Web pages look bigger, the other zooms out to make them smaller. Version 1.5 introduces the ability to do this with right-clicks as well. Whether you need things bigger for easy reading or smaller to pack in more information, EasyRead can make your Web reading, well, easier. http://www.iconico.com/easyRead/ TAB MIX PLUS. This free add-on provides a raft of useful tab controls for Firefox users. It lets you duplicate tabs, control clicking options, and undo closed tabs and windows. Tab Mix Plus also includes a full-featured session manager with crash recovery that can save and restore combinations of opened tabs and windows. http://tmp.garyr.net REMOVE MICROSOFT WGA. There is growing concern that the anti-piracy feature in Windows XP called Windows Genuine Advantage presents a security and privacy risk because it "phones home" at regular 14-day intervals. Others call WGA a "nuisance." RemoveWGA blocks Windows Genuine Advantage from reporting back to Microsoft. The tool alerts you if the WGA notification is active on your system, stops WGA from activating when you turn your PC on, and removes it. For the record, Microsoft says Windows Genuine Advantage is designed to check whether you are running a licensed copy of Windows XP. http://www.firewallleaktester.com FIREFOX EXTENSION BACKUP. This free combo pack of the Firefox Extension Backup Extension (FEBE) and CLEO (Compact Library Extension Organizer) enables you to back up your Firefox extensions as well as bookmarks, preferences, cookies, passwords, and more. CLEO allows you to combine your extensions into a single, installable .xpi file so you can store or distribute them easily. You can maintain multiple backup sets in folders named after the date of the backup, and easily restore any of the backup files. http://www.snapfiles.com/get/febecleo.html EXPSTUDIO AUDIO EDITOR V3.98. Is there any free audio tool out there that can give Audacity some real competition? Well, EXPStudio Audio Editor might be able to do just that. It makes editing audio files simple, easy and even a little fun. Here is what the developers of EXPStudio Audio Editor write: "With this free tool, you can edit your audio files like editing text files, display a waveform window of an audio file and apply zooming; Record new audio file from a microphone or another input device; Visually edit an audio file (Cut, Copy, DeleteSilence, PasteFromFile, Mix, MixFrom File); Apply different effects (Amplify, Delay, Equalizer, Fade, Flanger, Invert, Normalize, Reverse, MultiTapDelay, Silence) and more. "EXPStudio Audio Editor is a visual multifunctional audio files editor which allow you to perform various operations with audio data such as displaying a waveform image of an audio file, filtering, applying various audio effects, format conversion and more." So does it blow Audacity out of the water? Well, I would not say that just yet. It is a nice addition or alternative if you are looking for a new freeware program to do some audio editing. http://www.expstudio.com/downloads.htm k-Byte runs classified ads in Trading Post for three consecutive issues. Trading Post ads up to 10 lines (or 70 words) long are free to FRPCUG members: $5 for non-members. To place an ad in Trading Post contact Rick Mattingly at 970-613-8968 or email rmatt@mesanetworks.net Commercial Advertising Specifications (Monthly rate) Full Page (8 1/2" X 7") $30 Half Page (3 1/4" X 7") $20 One Third Page (3" X 4") $15 Business Card (2" X 3 1/2") $5 We offer a substantial discount for repeat ads and continuing contracts. For additional charge, we will design your ad for you. Contact Rick Mattingly for information on this service at 970-613-8968 or email rmatt@mesanetworks.net. |
FRPCUG Officers Name Work Home e-Mail
President Rick Mattingly 613-8968 rmatt(at)mesanetworks.net
Vice President Don Anderson 498-3534 482-0943 doande(at)gmail.com
Treasurer Virginia Febinger 498-2127 gingercln(at)cs.com
Treasurer Robert Clayton 493-4124 rclayton41244(at)msn.com
Secretary Jim Bragonier 484-9061 james.bragonier(at)comcast.net
k-Byte Staff
Editor-in-Chief Mike Morris 461-2002 461-2002 twriterext(at)gmail.com
Features Editor Mike Morris
Advertising Coordinator Open - We need a volunteer! Contact Rick Mattingly in interim.
Other Contacts
Membership Coordinator Jack Linder 663-2151 jack(at)frpcug.org
New Technology SIG Chuck McJilton 493-2987 cdmcjs(at)gmail.com
Door Prize Coordinator John Goldey 221-0877 johngoldey(at)juno.com
FRPCUG Fax Line 493-1408
FRPCUG Home Page w/E-Mail http://www.frpcug.org
FRPCUG Officer E-Mail contact(at)frpcug.org
Membership in the Front Range PC Users Group is $25 per year for individuals and $50 per year for companies.
Mail your completed application and payment to:
FRPCUG
PMB 152
305 W. Magnolia
Fort Collins CO 80521
or join in person at the monthly meeting on the first Tuesday of each month.
