the clicked and the read | issue 19980607

eZine lover (@eZine)

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clicked and the read

· 1 year ago

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Wanna b a wordsmith?
Today is?
fdisk and Windows 98 diatribe
CaR News
CReAte Your Own Newspaper (CRAYON)

Wanna b a wordsmith?

As you can tell from this newsletter, my skills do not reside in grammar, spelling, and fancy uses of the english language. I still get "there" and "their", and "affect" and "effect" mixed up. In a never ending effort to improve, I have been reading the daily dose of vocabulary from the "A Word A Day" (AWAD) [1.1] folks. Each morning I get an e-mail with a word, its definition, and one or two paragraphs of interesting facts on the word. See the info below to sign-up for free. Before you know it, you to will be "hooked on phonics." [1.2]

[1.1] A Word A Day Home <http://www.wordsmith.org/awad>
[1.2] Hooked on Phonics <http://www.hookedonphonics.com>
[ ] To subscribe to AWAD, send an e-mail to <wsmith@wordsmith.org> with a subject of "subscribe your-name" where your-name is your name.

Today is?

How many times a day do you take your eyes of your monitor so that you can look at the day/date on your watch? How about moving your hands off of the keyboard over to the mouse so that you can hold the pointer over the time so Windows will display the full day and date? I found a great piece of shareware for Windows 9x (they say it doesn't work for NT.) It is called Day Today [2.1]. It is a very tiny application which resides in your system tray (the area just to the left of the time.) It displays an abbreviation for the day of the week along with the day of the month. You can download and try it for free. But I guarantee you will want to keep this one - to keep, just pay $7 - use your credit card and order online over a secure connection [2.2]. While you are over at the Locutus Codeware site [2.3], check out their other tray apps - all are very handy.

[2.1] Day Today <<http://www.locutuscodeware.com/daytoday.htm>
[2.2] Order Day Today <http://order.kagi.com/?UJ&S>
[2.3] Locutus Codeware Home <http://www.locutuscodeware.com>

fdisk and Windows 98 diatribe

[thanks to AWAD for the 10 cent word in the title]

Lucky me - I was a Windows 98 [3.1] beta tester, which means I get a free copy of the Final Build of Windows 98 for FREE! After 3 days of back and forth with the overnight carrier trying to get them to believe that my street address did in fact exist, I received a plain brown package with the Final release of Windows 98. I immediately began the upgrade. One hour later, my screen showed:

Formatting 1,031.59M
5% Complete

Many of you will no doubt recognize those words as the status lines from the DOS format utility, and from the size of the disk being formatted, you probably already surmised that it was my hard disk. The following is how I got from an excited look at a brand new Windows 98 CD, to a disappointed look at a format message.

I installed Windows 98 as an upgrade over the Windows 98 Beta I had on my computer. The 98 Beta was itself an upgrade over Windows 95 [3.2]. Silly me to think that the upgrade option would actually work. After sitting through a one hour upgrade to Windows 98, the system rebooted and I got the friendly Plug-and-Play messages:

The system has recognized new hardware...
The system cannot find the *&%^$ file. Please insert the Windows 98 CD-ROM

Needless to say the Windows 98 CD-ROM was still in the CD-ROM drive. The problem is that Windows 98 no longer recognized the drive (CD-ROM attached through a parallel port), which means I couldn't install the drivers for my other hardware devices, or even install the drivers for the CD-ROM drive itself - the phrase "catch 22" came to mind.

I finally decided to just tell Windows 98 to "skip" the files that it couldn't find, at least it would boot up, and I could go from there. Well that worked somewhat - the system booted, but the display was in 4 colors, and the resolution awful (Windows couldn't find the correct display drivers - they were on the CD-ROM.)

At this point I decided I would check my e-mail. It had been about 3-4 hours since I started this process, so I figured I had at least a few new messages to deal with. I tried to open Windows Explorer so that I could get to Dial-Up Networking to initiate a connection to my ISP. Nothing - na-da - zilch - zero - hung. So I gave Windows the three finger salute (Control-Alt-Delete) and gave it another try. No change - system hung.

That was the last draw - time to scrounge up my handy DOS boot disk and rebuild my machine from scratch. Thankfully I had learned one lesson long ago: when dealing with Windows, always (1) backup and (2) have a boot disk by your side. You never know when you will be spending 6 hours rebuilding your machine. My boot disk contains a few handy DOS utilities (fdisk, format, edit, deltree) as well as DOS (real-mode) drivers for PCMCIA services and my PCMCIA SCSI card which connects to a CD-ROM drive.

I used boot disk to get to A:\ prompt, switch over to C:\ and write down all of the software programs currently installed - so that I could remember to re-install them (look in c:\progra~1 directory.) fdisk. format c:. Then I created a directory (c:\install) to hold the Windows 98 install files, and copied installation directory from CD-ROM (\win98) to this directory. That complete, I ran setup from c:\install, not the CD-ROM.

The entire ordeal took about 7 hours. In the end, I have a much better functioning PC - due to the cleaning and starting over, but also due to Windows 98. It is more stable and faster than Windows 95.

The other good thing is that I am writing this section from my old Toshiba T1950CT laptop with 324MB hard drive 12MB RAM running Red Hat [3.3] Linux 5.0 <strong>[3.4] using the GNU [3.5] Emacs <strong>[3.6] editor. I really like this operating system - stable, fast, small in size... I could go on, and I will, but in a later issue.

NOTE: Aside from this installation experience, which was probably a result of months of installing Windows upon Windows upon Windows (I doubt that normal users will have a similar experience), I am not sure I would recommend you upgrade to Windows 98. If it was free, yes, but I hear it will run somewhere around $70-100 [3.7]. I don't think there is enough there to justify that kind of cost. I will continue to recommend Windows for most people I know and work for. It has too many things going for it right now, including market share, to justify using anything else. Maybe after a few months of Linux I will change my mind - I will keep you informed.

[3.1] Windows 98 <http://www.microsoft.com/windows98>
[3.2] Windows 95 <http://www.microsoft.com/windows95>
[3.3] Red Hat Software <http://www.redhat.com>
[3.4] Red Hat Linux 5.x <http://www.redhat.com/products/product-details.phtml?id=rhl-intel>
[3.5] GNU Software <http://www.gnu.org>
[3.6] GNU Emacs <http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/emacs.html>
[3.7] Retail: Windows 98 <http://www.cdw.com/microsoft/win98.asp?source=mws>

CaR News

Thanks to everyone who subscribed to CaR this past week. We started with 30 or so people from my personal address book, and thanks to other invitations, announcement lists, search engines... we are now up to 87 subscribers. Not bad for 2 weeks. Thanks for the comments last issue and please continue to send me feedback (send to <clicked-read-owner@renaghan.com>.)

Please remember to forward your copy of the issue to anyone you know who might enjoy reading it. Word of mouth is the best type of review, and is the best way to build subscribers. Thanks.

The newsletter is listed in a few "list of lists", with the first official review arriving today:

the clicked and the read
A computer/Internet-related newsletter serving individuals ranging from the ultimate 'techie' or the 'computer geek' to the average user. The goal is clearly to deliver information. Facts are presented in a straightforward and simple manner, while the articles are written in 'normal' English without unnecessary jargons. This is definitely a newsletter worth reading to keep you up-to-date with the latest development of the world of computers/Internet.
-- eZines Database, The Ultimate Magazine Database[4.1]

CaR is now being archived [4.2] by reference.com [4.3].

[4.1] eZines Database Home <http://www.dominis.com/Zines>
[ ] CaR's listing on the eZines site <http://www.dominis.com/Zines/ByCategory/Computers/4221.html>
[4.2] CaR archive at reference.com <http://www.reference.com/cgi-bin/pn/listarch?list=clicked-read@renagh
an.com>
[4.3] reference.com Home <http://www.reference.com>

CReAte Your Own Newspaper (CRAYON)

Wish you could have your choice of news sites compiled together in one easy to access web page? Visit Crayon [5.1]. Two Bucknell University [5.2] undergrads created this free service a few years ago because college in Lewisburg, PA made them feel a bit isolated from the rest of the world. The site grew and grew, and they now maintain it as a hobby. You create your own newspaper by selecting the newspapers, magazines, and other news sources that you want displayed on your page. Your settings are saved, so that next time you visit the page you see only your selections. The stories are continuously updated, and linked to the text on the source site. Crayon features many more options than competing services like Yahoo [5.3], and CNN Custom News [5.4]-- and it is free with no ads. Give it a try.