______ _ __ __ / ____/___ ____ ___ ____ __ __/ | / /___ / /____ _____ / / / __ \/ __ `__ \/ __ \/ / / / |/ / __ \/ __/ _ \/ ___/ / /___/ /_/ / / / / / / /_/ / /_/ / /| / /_/ / /_/ __(__ ) \____/\____/_/ /_/ /_/ .___/\__,_/_/ |_/\____/\__/\___/____/ /_/ |CompuNotes is a weekly publication available |through email and many fine on-line networks. --------------------------|We cover the IBM computing world with CompuNotes is published |software/hardware reviews, news, hot web 4Point, Inc., |sites, cool FTP files and interviews. We also 135 W. Adams, Suite G9 |give away one software package a week to a St. Louis, MO 63122 |lucky winner for just reading our fine (314) 909-1662 voice |publication! Never dull, sometimes tardy, we (314) 909-1662 fax |are here to bring you the way it is! ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The Backroom Workers: |We are always looking for Patrick Grote, Managing Editor |people to write honest, (pgrote@inlink.com) |concise reviews for us. Send Doug Reed, Asst. Editor / Writer Liaison |a message to Doug Reed at (dreed@panda.uchc.edu) |dreed@panda.uchc.edu with Judy Litt, Graphics Editor/Web Master |your list of qualifications. (jlitt@aol.com) |If Doug thinks we can count ------------------------------------------|on you to make things happen I am looking for a collection of shareware|you'll receive free software reviews I put out in the 87-88 timeframe |of your choice for review. under my handle of NEVER BEFORE. I think |We like new writers! they started as NB*.ZIP. Can you look |----------------------------- on your local BBS? THANKS! | Go St. Louis Blues! ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Every issue of CompuNotes ever published can be found at the following ftp site: ftp.uu.net:/published/compunotes. Thanks to UUNET! ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Our Web Site is at http://users.aol.com/CompNote/ Please Add Our Link to Your Homepage! ------------------------------------------------------------------------ To subscribe, send a message to notes@inlink.com with the command subscribe compunotes in the subject. To unsubscribe, send a message to notes@inlink.com with the command unsubscribe compunotes in the subject. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ You Can Write for Us! See Masthead! ------------------------------------------------------------------------ SYSOPS READ HERE! Wanting to make CompuNotes available on as many BBS as possible, we can't afford to call everyone's BBS every week. What we would like to do is send those interested sysops a UUENCODED version for posting on their BBS. If you can volunteer to receive the UUENCODED version, turn it into a ZIP and upload it to your BBS, we'll list you in our sysops directory. If you are interested, fill out the following lines and send them back to notes@inlink.com with SYSOPS. We'll list your BBS in our SYSOPS LIST which will be included in each version of CompuNotes we ship out. If you have a WWW link we'll throw that up on our page. BBS NAME: BBS SYSOP: BBS NUMBER: URL: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Patrick's News Being The Publisher and Managing Editor Has Its Perks! ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Help Me . . . Or My Hands . . . | --------------------------------- You all may know I still handle this list by hand each week. I use Pegasus and a funky setup to make it happen. The problem is I like to keep the list in a standard mail format like: pgrote@inlink.com, but Pegasus keeps its mail in forms like Patrick Grote or even pgrote@inlink.com (Patrick Grote). Does anyone have a program that will go through a text file line by line and keep only the internet address on each line? If so, I will mention you and/or your product here! Let me know . . . My New Laptop . . . | --------------------- As many of you may know from reading CompuNotes on an ongoing basis, I have recently taken a position with a major computer reseller. We are nation wide and have worked for companies such as 3COM and Novell. When I joined them full time I received a few perks, but the best so far has been a new IBM ThinkPad 755CDV. What a joy! Right now my fingers feel right at home on the keyboard and I just love the pointing device. For those of you who have never seen a ThinkPad, there is a little red dot that sits between the G and H keys on your keyboard. By moving this pointer with your finger you move your mouse cursor. You click by hitting of two buttons directly below the space bar. I love the ability swap out the CDROM and floppy disk; the removable hard drive and long battery life and the MWAVE sound system and modem. Speaking of the modem, IBM has made it so the 14.4 internal is upgraded to a 28.8 via software! What I didn't like about the ThinkPad was the pre installed software. It came with IBM PC DOS 7.0, Windows 3.11 and OS/2 Warp. My main operating environment is Windows 95, so I decided that these had to go. As we all know from experience, the best Windows 95 installation is the one that is done from scratch with just DOS on the hard drive. As I went to boot from a MSDOS 6.22 disk for FDISK I was stopped by two of my co-workers who were looking on with envious expressions. They warned me that if I did what I wanted to do I would loose all sound, modem use and the entire pre installed software. They pointed me to the IBM Web Page where I was shocked to see a 16 page How To on getting Windows 95 to work on a ThinkPad. Hmmm, it wasn't that difficult on the NCR Safari I had been using. Along with the documentation came instructions on download the eight necessary patch disks I needed. I faithfully downloaded these disks and read the instructions. Unfortunately, no where did it mention a fresh install of Windows 95 just upgrades. I remembered hearing someone say something about IBM's toll free 24 hour hot line for support. On a lark I decided to call AT&T's 1-800 directory for IBM. They had one number listed. You guessed it. It was the support number. I called and spoke to a gentleman named Mike. We chatted about what I wanted to do and he played the role of IBM supporter well letting me know that OS/2 was the best choice for ThinkPads and that going to Windows 95 was "a mistake." He also did something no other technical support person has ever done in this case ... made sure I had the patch disks I needed. That was very helpful. He assured me I could FDISK the drive and start over. He did say I would lose the pre installed applications, but that's ok. I didn't need any of them anyway. As I booted in MSDOS 6.22 I felt more comfortable. In a half-hour or so I would be on my way to Windows 95, land of applications. Or so I thought. The DOS installation went OK. I FDISKed everything, formatted and installed DOS without a hitch. I opened the 16 page tom eof instructions from IBM then copied all the files from the WIN95 sub-directory on the CD to the hard drive. I rebooted and then started setup. At the initial screen my system hung. Hmmm, I thought. Maybe it is something specific to the Think Pad. OK, I looked at SETUP /? And see that I can turn the Smartdisk cache off. I do this, reboot and SETUP lets me get further into the installation, but hangs. I try a variety of other fixes, but I am always hanging ata random section in the installation. Frustrated, I decide to try to call IBM tech support again. Jose answered this time. I ran through what I told the last guy, what the IBM tech had said and what I had done. Jose told me that MSDOS 6.22 was an unsupported product. Hello? Unsupported? Come on . . . He then had me go into the Power On Setup of the ThinkPad and INITIALIZE the system. I did this, restarted and then tried the Windows 95 installation again. This time I got further than any other time. When it came time to enter my name and company name it locked up. This time it hit me like a mouse trap s springing. Each time the machine locked up it was because I had touched the pointing device on the keyboard. I went into the CMOS setup and disabled the pointer. Bing! Windows 95 worked like a charm. I am now loving every minute of using the ThinkPad. The keyboard hasn't hurt my fingers at all. The screen hasn't made my eyes soar, something even my desktop monitor can't claim. The hard drive is speedy. The machine is very solid. This lead me to wonder ... why in the heck has IBM made it so tough to add Windows 95 to the machine? On the other hand, why doesn't Microsoft support things like MWAVE right off the bat? I guess when two companies work so hard to beat each other you end up with the ThinkPad Windows 95 situation. I'm looking forward to using the ThinkPad more than 40 hours a week! I'll keep you informed of any quirks or bonuses I come across . . . . FORMAT CLARIFICATION . . . | ---------------------------- We've been publishing CompuNotes (even as CyberNews) for more than a year. We have always tried to accommodate all points of view in the computing world. It always seemed that when we tried to be as balanced as possible we'd tick folks off. The last week I received a few more flame mails about our lack of OS/2 coverage. My standard response is when I can walk into a CompUSA and buy the *latest* software in OS/2 we'll start doing reviews. Oh, then again, CompUSA was thinking about dropping OS/2 from the stores a few months back . . . Seeing as this publication is a labor of love and is not designed to please everyone, I've decided to scale back our coverage. After many minutes of thought during the Simpson's here's the deal: * We will primarily cover the Windows world. This includes 3.11, 95 and NT. Yes, this means we actually like Microsoft and the direction they're taking. This also meshes well with my chosen career * We will bring more of the helpful articles like the ThinkPad article last week. I received such positive response to that article that I know we need to do more. * We'll cover the DOS world with a little more emphasis. I would like to see more in the way of shareware or what to do with an under achieving PC. I'm not sure. If you would like to help in this aspect let me know. * We'll have more hardware reviews. Not just things like modems, video cards, etc. but helpful little items for your desk or cables. If you are an OS/2 advocate, a MAC afficienado or, gulp, someone who uses another type of computer, CompuNotes will still provide the same web sites, news and interviews. ------------------------- HELP FOR TIRED HANDS II!| ------------------------- Thanks to all who responded with custom programs and advice. The folks are inter1@pi.net, francesA-EP@worldnet.att.net and baechler@crl.com. I settled on a nifty utility. Here is the info: WriteLn ('FILTER v0.0 Written for Patrick Grote by Fred Schenk'); WriteLn; WriteLn ('I hope this is what you ment in compunotes...'); WriteLn; WriteLn ('And my own add: http://www.IAehv.nl/users/mbs/fred'); WriteLn (' The STEALTAG support-site'); WriteLn; WriteLn ('Usage filter: FILTER INFILENAME OUTFILENAME'); WriteLn (' Infilename is the ascii-file with the names and addresses'); WriteLn ('Outfilename is the resulting ascii-file with only the addresses'); This baby works great! Unfortunately I misplaced the author's email address :-( Can you resend your address! What I need now is a utility that can take a text file with one address on each line and delete that address from another text file that contains the master subscription list. Any ideas? ------------------ FILE FORMAT HELP!| ------------------ OK, it's time for someone to pull my rear out of the fire :-) I'm trying to automate the clean up of viruses off a NetWare network using the Norton AntiVirus NLM. The sad part is that the log file that contains the infected file information is in binary format of some sort. Symantec won't give us the file format. Can anyone make a small .COM or .EXE to decipher it? Let me know and I can send you a sample file. ------------------ THINK PAD UPDATE!| ------------------ Still have coworkers who will steal the Pad if I leave it unattended. Fortunately for me the auto shut off feature works great when you close the screen. When someone reopen the machine it asks for a password. Great security. Another couple of Windows 95 gotchas: 1) For MIDI support you have to install another five disks. 2) The MWAVE modem support slows down the orientation through the menus as well as cuts off the sound from the CD when you are working in it. -------------------------- FTP SITES FOR COMPUNOTES?| -------------------------- We FTP CompuNotes to FTP.UU.NET for permanent archiving and then to FTP.SIMTEL.NET for broad distribution. Do you know of any other FTP sites or lists we should be distributing to? Send a mail message! þ