------------------------------------------------------------------------ REVIEWS OF THE WEEK | Interesting software/hardware you may need . . . ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Product: WinShield for Windows 95 Reviewed By: Paul Baker (paulbake@macc.wisc.edu) Reviewed on: 486 SX33, 8 MB RAM ----------------------------------------------------------------------- "A little knowledge is a dangerous thing," our Computer Services staff grumbled as they rescued my PC from a recent (and unauthorized) botched attempt to install Windows 95 on my PC at work. Despite my precautions, I managed not only to cut off my network access but also to scramble my C drive. All is well now, but our Computer Services staff will forever regard me under a cloud of suspicion and doubt. I recount this story because it illustrates how closely corporate network managers and security specialists have always had to keep a sharp eye out for employees (like myself) who feel compelled to tinker with system configurations, despite warnings, costing valuable time to fix whatever got broken. And now that Windows 95 is becoming more common, the problem will likely escalate. Fortunately, WinShield for Windows 95 is here to help prevent damage to, and misuse of, PCs running Windows 95. A product of Kent-Marsh, Ltd., WinShield joins its sister program, WinShield for Windows 3.1. WinShield 95 prevents unwanted configuration changes, controls the use of peripherals, protects applications, and protects against unsupervised surfing on the Internet. Although it seems most appropriate for service bureaus, corporate workstations, and educational labs, it may also be used in the home. In a nutshell, WinShield lets you define what rights and privileges other users may enjoy when they use the Windows 95 desktop. An "alternate setup" option allows you to establish and toggle between several setup environments depending on how you want the machine configured at any given time. For example, certain users may need a less restrictive environment. Just give users a password and they can toggle from the default setup to the alternate setup. The system requirements are Windows 95 and a VGA monitor. WinShield gives you broad control over nine areas of Win 95. In particular: 1. Appearance: Prevent changes to the screen saver, wallpaper, display resolution, or color scheme. 2. CD-ROMs: Prevent the use of CD-ROMs entirely, or allow access only to certain CD-ROMs. 3. Diskettes: Prevent the diskette drive from recognizing any disks, and constrain all file saving to diskettes only. 4. Explorer: Shield all icons on the Explorer desktop (i.e., only items you've placed on the Start menu will be usable), restore icon positions at shutdown, shield all drive icons in the My Computer window, shield control panels and printer folders. 5. Network: Allow nothing/local machine only/local machine and workgroup/entire network in the Network Neighborhood; freeze network hardware and configuration settings; prevent remote administration of the computer over the network. 6. Printer: Freeze driver, port, and spool settings; disable deletion or addition of printers. 7. Sharing: Prevent all file sharing, all print sharing, or dial-in networking; freeze shared access control settings; freeze user-customizable desktop settings. 8. Start menu: Prevent Start Menu customization; limit access to the Settings menu item, limit access to the Find, Run, and the Shut Down commands. 9. System: Shield access to MS-DOS, prevent hardware driver deletion or changes, prevent creation of hardware profiles, prevent registry editing tools, freeze system performance settings, freeze the computer's identity, or prevent date and time changes. The setup interface is easy to follow and follows an attractive tabbed folder metaphor. One thing to remember when using WinShield is that when you install applications, you must use the WinShield Setup item under the Start menu to toggle WinShield off before the installation. This ensures that WinShield will preserve any new settings the application has made to the computer's setup information. WinShield for Windows 95 Kent-Marsh Ltd. Inc. Kent-Marsh Building 3260 Sul Ross Houston, TX 77098 (713) 522-LOCK (5625) Fax: (713) 522-8965 Sales: (800) 325-3587 sales@kentmarsh.com CompuNotes - The Best Free Publication Available! ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Product: Olympic Gold: A 100 Year History of the Olympic Games Reviewed By: David R. Leininger (services@alanrand.com) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The world's most celebrated festival has been held every four years for the past century. The Olympic Games bring together the finest athletes of nearly every nation to compete for medals in dozens of sports. In conjunctions with the International Olympic Committee, S.E.A. Multimedia has created a CD-ROM which offers a beautiful and extensive look into the people, places, and events which are known simply as the Olympics. The artistry of the user interface is superb. Color and monochrome images from past Olympic events form the backgrounds throughout the disc. The design does not overshadow the subject matter; rather, it serves as an intuitive means to access information from five perspectives: Athletes, Nations, Games, History, and Events. The disc offers plenty of content for even the most enthusiastic Olympic admirer. Some 15,000 athletes are listed, including their sport, country, year(s) of participation, and medals won. Searching for specific athletes is possible based on a variety of criteria, including event, nation, name, and related text. More than 100 legendary athletes are depicted through photos, movies, and textual narratives. The Nations section provides facts and figures for every National Olympic Committee, including contact information, logos, medals won, and participation results. The listing of nations is a joy to use. Press an 'S' and the list quickly scrolls to countries beginning with that letter. Click on a country name and the logo and background information are presented within a second or two. Twenty five 'movies' delve provide an overview of the individual quadrennial Games . Each Olympiad is profiled in a narrated sequence of photos, movies, and animations. Users gain a sense of the historical times and places as they learn of the highlights of each of the past games, plus a preview of the upcoming event in Atlanta. History is divided into textual narratives with accompanying pictures for the 11 sections: Arts, Ancient Games, Drugs, Marketing, Media, Olympic Ceremony, Olympic Movement, Olympic Museum, Politics, Symbolism, and Women. Hypertext links in each of the narratives allow users to branch to information of particular interest. Twenty nine Events, plus a section on discontinued and demonstration events, are described in text and portrayed in photos. A very interesting part of the disc is in this section: a concise rule book and animation for nearly every event. Once again, the graphics are superb. The rule book, while informative, is not the complete text. For instance, the rules are simply text paragraphs, not the numbered and structured style found in the official rule books. However, this does not detract from the usefulness of this consumer disc, which is not positioned as the ultimate official's guide to rules on Olympic events. There are only a few drawbacks to Olympic Gold. Some users may find the fade to black/fade from black between each section to be somewhat annoying, and it may take several seconds on a machine with less capability than a Pentium90. The need for the fades is clear: 256 colors is the standard setting for video cards and their drivers. The wait is worth it. Secondly, too few music clips are used throughout the disc. The few in use are repeated so often as to get monotonous ... quickly. Finally, the print function provides no formatting of the text and the images will not print in landscape mode, resulting in pictures that are printed out of their proper perspective. Overall, the disc is clearly worth $39.95 to anyone remotely interested in the Olympics. It is a must-buy if you are going to Atlanta, if for no reason other than to gain a strong overview of the Games through the years. Olympic Gold: A 100 Year History of the Summer Olympic Games Developed by S.E.A. Multimedia 515 Madison Avenue, 34th Floor New York, NY 10022-5403 FAX: (212) 935-6577 Internet: seacomp@netvision.net.il Distributed by Discovery Channel Multimedia ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Product: Road Warriors: Dreams and Nightmares Along the Info Highway Reviewed By: Craig E. Bull (craig.bull@udayton.edu) ------------------------------------------------------------------------- When I first received this book, with its bright yellow jacket, I thought "Oh, great. A couple of guys are going to tell me that the Info Highway is either the greatest thing since the digital watch, or the worst thing since 'The Last Action Hero.'" But, this turned out to be one of the better books I've read on the so-called Information Superhighway in a while. Rather than going into great detail about how the Internet can be a boon to the corporate world, the authors instead talk about the coming of age of the 'Digital Revolution', from how it got started to where it may be headed. Did you realize that one company, General Instrument, effectively derailed the push for high-definition television (HDTV) and made the Information Highway practical? By doing something that no one thought was possible; an all digital approach to HDTV. It was this technology which, according TCI's John Malone, "made the Information Highway financially possible." And they almost didn't submit it to the FCC for consideration! The sections of the book, each with several chapters, are interesting and readable independently of each other. (Obviously, reading the whole book gives a better perspective.) The book seemed to me to be a documentary of the evolution of the `Digital Revolution.' The authors describe events of the last 10 to 20 years, with interviews with some of the most significant players in those events. In the third and final section, they address some of the future social and political concerns. Who should be responsible for the morality of the Info Highway? Should the government get more involved in encouraging the development of the technology needed to maintain America's superiority in this field? The appendix consists of interviews with John Malone, CEO of TCI, Ray Smith, CEO of Bell Atlantic, and Reed Hundt, Chair of the FCC. There are chapters devoted to the mass of telecomm/cable mergers that have occurred over the last several years, including those that have failed for various reasons. This includes interviews with the major players in the failed merger efforts and their perspectives on why those efforts failed. You also get a sense for what the "big boys" (TCI, Microsoft, Sun, etc.) see as the role of the Information Highway. There is also commentary on the recently passed Telecommunications Act. (Obviously, it was still in Congress at the time of the publication of the book.) The issue for the next several years, according to the authors (and others), is not going to be the technology as such. Sure, the technology is important. But it's the content that is going to make or break the idea of Interactive TV, for example. What good are 500 channels, if half of them are Infomercials or home shopping channels? The authors indicate that companies might have the great technology. But without the content, they are not going to succeed. That explains the recent merger mania. Why does a telephone company want to own a production company? To paraphrase the campaign slogans of 92, "It's the CONTENT, stupid!" And how to do all this, and yet keep the cost down to something the consumer is willing to pay? Of course, no book of this nature will discuss all this without going into what the authors feel are the things that need to be done to make this work. But they don't say "This is what must be done. If it's not, it won't work." Rather, they pose a number of questions that they feel must be answered. As they stress, they are "early-stage ideas and provocations...for the massive political and social discussion to come." Chip Bayers, Managing Editor of HotWired, says on the back cover: "Road Warriors should be on the reading list of anyone planning to do business in the digital world. In other words, anyone planning to do business, period." I think it should be on the reading list of anyone who has an interest in the future of the Information Highway. I enjoyed this book, and would highly recommend it to anyone. Dutton A Division of Penguin USA 375 Hudson Street New York, NY 10014 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Product: Norton Navigator for Windows 95 on CDROM Reviewed By: Gray Johnson (gray@posh.internext.com) ------------------------------------------------------------------------- The limitations of Program Manager in Windows 3.1 can be irritating. Anyone who has used the PC Tools, the Norton Desktop for Windows, or (Dare I say it?) a Mac, quickly sees the advantage of extending the desktop metaphor. The Windows 95 GUI is clearly an improvement, but has the new OS made Symantec's shell irrelevant? Applets? Let's examine what the Norton Navigator, Symantec's Win95 file-handler and desktop-polisher adds to the GUI. The program is actually a group of applets which can be run individually. So, rather than a redrawing of the OS, the Navigator is a collection of additions and improvements. The Norton Command Center allows you to activate and configure the other parts of the as well to as access documentation. The Norton Taskbar applet adds a Quick Launch area to the 95 Taskbar. Shortcuts dragged to this area take up residence there and can be launched with a single click. This is more convenient than a stroll through the Start Menu, and you don't have to minimize running applications to reach a program shortcut on your desktop. In a second pane of the altered Taskbar, you can create multiple desktops, each shrunken to an icon. This is my favorite feature. Although multiple user profiles achieve the same end in Windows 95, that approach requires a restart to change desktops. The contents of each desktop including open windows are depicted on the icons. Running programs can be dragged from one desktop to another. The Norton File Manager is much more versatile and capable than the Windows Explorer. Available directory formats include a view of deleted files, at least those not yet dumped from the recycle bin. File handling abilities include zipping and unzipping compressed files, encrypting and uuencoding for Internet use. FTP sites are represented as folders on a virtual drive. For example, click on the Symantec FTP icon in the left panel, and you are connected to the site via your Internet connection. The files at the site are displayed in the right-hand panel, as if they resided on a drive on your local network or desktop. You can "quick view" or download them from there. The QuickFind applet allows file indexing, speeding repeated searches of file groups. The applet can also save and recall searches. The Navigator also adds options to the desktop QuickMenus. The "Navigator" option in a folder Quickmenu opens a cascading list of the folder's contents. This lets you open a file several folders deep without leaving a stack of open folders on the desktop. You can also add options to compress folders and Zip files. Any of these additions can be deleted through the Command Center. Something for nothing? The features added by the Navigator exact a price in performance. You will notice slowing in boot up as well as overall system performance using Norton Taskbar. The File Manager is slower to open than the Explorer, so I use either one, depending on the situation. Symantec has addressed speed in an update of the Navigator. It can be downloaded from CompuServe or their WWW or FTP sites. When I added the patch, I did notice an improvement in speed. But let's face it. As they say in Cupertino, there's no such thing as a free latte. Still I think the added features are worth the price($99, by the way.) I recommend the Navigator on CDROM, or on disks for that matter. There's more to the CD version than convenience installation. It contains a manual in Adobe Acrobat format (including the Acrobat viewer) and a multimedia overview of the program. (Yes, you still get a printed manual to read on the bus.) I found the overview useful for orientation before running the Navigator. Symantec Corporation 10012 Torre Avenue Cupertino, California 95014 [800] 441-7234 WWW: http://www.symantec Compuserve: GO Symantec ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Product: Symantec Cafe Reviewed by: Doug Reed (dreed@panda.uchc.edu) Reviewed On: 486DX2-50, 12 MB RAM, 2xCD-ROM, Win 95 Requires: 486, 8 MB RAM, Win 95/NT ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Cafe is the first graphics environment/debugger for Java, the hot new programming language that is all the rage on the 'Net. Symantec has beaten several competitors to the market who are planning on introducing their own GUI's for Java within the next few months. Cafe is based on Symantec's award-winning development tool for C++, but has been trimmed down and modified to fits the differences between Java and its ancestor. If you have used Symantec's C++ (version 7.0 or greater) than Cafe will look just like home. However, in addition to Symantec's own compiler and interpreter for Java, Cafe includes the latest release of the Java Development Kit (available free from Sun Microsystems). Installation of Cafe is straightforward and easy, although surprisingly Autoplay is not supported. Nevertheless, Cafe is installed used Windows 95's new InstallShield and is added to the list of programs that can be easily uninstalled. With 8MB of RAM, Cafe boots up fairly quickly; with 12 MB Cafe practically smokes it loads so fast! The layout is fairly simple to understand; in addition, the user can customize their workspace to suit their needs. Included from Symantec's C++ are various elements such as AppExpress, ProjectExpress, Class Editor, the Heirarchy Editor, and the Cafe Studio (renamed to fit Cafe, in C++ it is called the Resource Studio). AppExpress is designed to automate the creation of a skeleton program upon which you can build the application you are designing. In Cafe the choices are fairly limited: you can choose to create an SDI (single document interface), Console app, or an Applet. Applets, in case you don't know, are what all the rage about Java is about - applicat ions run over the WWW by your web browser. Cafe creates an HTML file with your program embedded in it, along with the code required in your application so that it calls the proper methods, etc... to be used as an applet. The ability to automate various small, onerous chores is one of the high points for Cafe. The Cafe Studio is designed so that you can rapidly and easily create visual elements of your application - menus, buttons, scrollbars, etc... With Cafe, you don't need to remember the code required to make a button appear on the screen that the user can push; Cafe Studio allows you to place the button on the screen where you want it and Cafe Studio creates the code that goes for that button; you can concentrate on the other aspects of your code that make it unique. The Class Editor is designed to make it easy to view a particular class quickly. This way, you can very quickly look at a particular class and all of its associated methods and objects without shifting through hundreds of lines of code to find them all. The Hierarchy editor allows you to see the relationship of the various classes and to easily create classes or change the inheritance of a particular class. Drag a subclass from one class s to another her and Cafe automatically adjusts the source code to reflect the change you just made. Cafe also comes with a visual debugger, the first to be released for Java. The debugger allows the programmer to step through the source code one line at a time or to step through the execution of methods. The debugger is fully capable of stepping through multi-threading, which is critically important to Java applications or applets. The programmer can freeze individual threads, allowing the rest to be executed. A careful eye on the newsgroup comp.lang.java has turned up a few complaints about the debugger, mainly in missing problem code or in not allowing acceptable code. A soon to be released patch from Symantec is supposed to fix these problems. While I'm on the subject of the comp.lang.java newsgroup, let me mention that this is one area that Cafe really stands out. The Cafe development and technical support teams maintain a very active presence on this newsgroup, quickly and capably handling complaints or problems with Cafe, as well as offering various tidbits, etc... for programming in Java. Symantec's team is very committed to Cafe and Java, and it shows! I am very impressed with the level of commitment and support expressed by Symantec. It is not often these days that you see such an active and vocal support for a product. Symantec has also created an entire website (cafe.symantec.com) dedicated to their Java development products. You can enter the site once you have registered with the password included with the CD-ROM or you can even purchase Cafe at the site, either by requesting that it be mailed or by downloading it over the web. Be prepared- downloading would probably take a long time and be fraught with the possibility of corrupted files or interrupted transfers. In addition to the basic program, Symantec includes a fairly large number of sample Java programs and applets, allowing you to use them to get a good feel for how the various parts of Cafe work and how to use Java to accomplish your programming goals. On-line tutorials for both Cafe and Java programming are also included, although I felt the Cafe tutorial was a little on the short side. While the basic program is covered, along with the Class Editor and Hierarchy Editor, nothing is said at all about how to use Cafe Studio (although there is plenty of on-line help explaining how to do so). Also included are the complete references from Sun Microsystems on the Java Programming Language and API Specs. To sum it all up, if you are looking to program in Java and you want a graphical interface, then look no farther. Cafe is no longer the only GUI development tool for Java (Sun has release the Java Workshop beta, which requires 16 MB of RAM and costs considerably more than Cafe), it still holds some very good qualities. For one thing, the compiler originally released with Cafe and the recently released JIT(Just-In-Time) compiler are among the fastest (if not the fastest) of all the Java compilers out there. The environment is easy to use and designed for automation of a large portion of the more tedious programming chores, leaving the programmer free to concentrate on other things. The level of support from Symantec is very impressive, to say the least. I'm still a novice at programming in advanced languages but I am impressed with Cafe and with Java in general. Cafe gets a big thumbs-up from me - Cappuccino, anyone? Symantec Corp. 10201 Torre Avenue Cupertino, CA 95014 408-253-9600 408-973-9340 fax http://www.symantec.com http://cafe.symantec.com ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Product: Activision's Atari 2600 Action Pack 3 for Windows 95 Reviewed By: Paul Vess (veracity@interpath.com) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Come on...you remember 'em. Colorful little spaceships, tanks, helicopters, the fat little man making hamburgers. I jumped at the chance to renew old acquaintances when the opportunity knocked at my door to review this collection of games that started the computer gaming revolution. To once again re-live a bygone era of strange sights and sounds never heard before 1979 was too much to pass up. 1979 was the year David Crane, Larry Kaplan, Alan Miller, and Bob Whitehead got together with a music industry executive named Jim Levy, and created a company they named Activision. This new company's guiding philosophy dictated that video games are created works and that the authors of such creations should be treated as such with both recognition and royalties. Due in large part to this unique policy, Activision became a pioneer in helping to create the first superstars of the fledgling computer gaming industry. A year after Activision came into being, it released it's first game. From 1980 to 1981, sales went from $6 million to over $60 million dollars as the demand for games like Starmaster, River Raid, Freeway, Barnstorming, H.E.R.O., Pitfall, Stampede, and Ketstone Kapers ran head on into an insatiable demand for more. It wouldn't be long before other enterprising companies would jump into the fray in an attempt to create another "instant success" story. But for the moment, Activision reined supreme ruler of the video game world as millions of parents, teenagers, and yes dads, bought the sleek, small shoe box size plastic console with the fake wood grain decal on the side, the Atari 2600. Installation of the game was easy enough. I installed it on a DX2-66 486 PC running Windows 95 and 16 meg of RAM. Installation was quick and painless, except for requiring me to set my monitor display to 256-color (640X480). That was a rather large inconvenience to me because I am an avid graphics intensive guy and I like to mess around with graphic designing and creating. That meant I had to re-boot before my new settings would take effect. Also, even though I didn't try it, I doubt this program will run under Windows 3.1 since the instructions recommend the game be run under "100% Windows 95 compatible" system. After re-booting and getting back to the post-install options, I was greeted with easily understood choices regarding sound effects and sound-cards, CD options, plus a surprise choice...the "Mom Nag" option. Yes...that's right folks. You can choose to have a motherly voice interrupt your play time with admonitions like "go outside and play", or "you are making too much noise". The "Mom Nag", thankfully, can be muted, so that you can waste your time in peace. You can choose to have her nag you in 30 second intervals, or very infrequently. After selecting the install options, I continue to the "Game Menu" where you can select Breakout, Combat, Canyon Bomber, Double Dragon, Checkers, Night Driver, Pressure Cooker, Starmaster, Private Eye, TitleMatch, Space War, or Yars' Revenge. But before I started to play, I had to read the fine manual (Instructions for Play) just in case I had forgotten anything from yesteryear. I chose my mode of play...either keyboard or joystick. I also checked to find out which game options I needed to select since you can choose to play against the computer, or another player. If you need to pause the game, no problem. Simply hit the Escape Key to pause the game and bring up the menu choices, or click on the menu command bar that is always at the top of your game screen. I found this game to still be a great waster of time. I definitely had to mute "Mom" as I played, and I had to keep going back to read instructions for game play. But after a few weeks I was back up to par. As you can probably tell, this Atari 2600 Action Pack 3 by Activision does bring back many great memories for me. Anyone who enjoyed computer video games when they were simple, colorful, and generally loud, may find this a novel collection. However, I do wish Activision had spent a bit more time making sure consumers wouldn't have to spend extra time changing their monitor display options, (which will probably need to be reset each time they want to play the game, plus a re-boot), and I wish that with a program such as this distributed on a CD, that modem play could have been included. After all, it's hard to share a keyboard with your opponent, and most computers only have one joystick port making it difficult to run 2 joysticks from the same game-port. It would have been nice to call a friend and say "let's waste some time and play Atari". Even though Atari games were hot items during the early 1980's, I can't help but think very little planning was done to make this software production more compatible with today's computer systems, and to utilize modem play, for example. Besides designing useful menus and the "Mom Nag" feature, these games appear to have been inserted intact into a Windows 95 operating environment. If you ask me (and no one did) I would have re-written the programs to make full use of the latest technology, including backwards compatibility. If this collection of games was created to bring back some great "old memories", that it does admirably. If this collection was created to appeal to today's average video gamer, it is probably way too little entertainment. With games to compete against like Heretic, The Dig, Descent, and hundreds more, perhaps the only hope this collection has is to appeal to those of us who went out and bought the original Atari 2600 consoles and then dozens of games we "plugged" into the small plastic box with the fake woodgrain on the side. Activision P.O. Box 67713 Los Angeles, CA 90067 World Wide Web: http://www.activision.com CompuServe: GO ACTIVISION ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Product: 10 Minute Guide to Access for Windows 95 Reviewed by: Herbert J. Lidstone (lidstone@eznet.net ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This small (5" by 8") paperback book of 170 pages guides the reader through Access for Windows 95. The title, "10 Minute Guide to Access for Windows 95", is only slightly exaggerated. The smaller print suggests spending 10 minutes per lesson or chapter, which would total a little over four hours to learn the "features of Access that a beginner is most likely to need." A motivated student could learn to use Access with this book, by carefully reading each lesson, and mimicking the lessons on the computer. The first forty-two pages has basic information such as; What Is a Database, Planning Your Database, and Saving, Closing, and Opening a Database. These lessons bring the reader to the point of creating a database. The next six lessons explain tables and how to create them using the Wizard and using the Table Design View. By page seventy-eight, the reader should be able to design a table with a correctly described key, and with each field's properties defined accurately. Forms are explained in the next four lessons. Creating, modifying, adding special effects, and adding graphics are demonstrated. Creating forms with AutoForm, Wizard, and "from scratch" are part of the "Creating a Simple Form' lesson. The reader should know what forms are used for and be able to create an attractive form for a simple database application at the completion of these lessons. The "Searching for Data" lesson, starting on page one-hundred ten, shows the find and replace features, and illustrates the use of these functions in practical applications in simple databases. Alternative methods in finding data are also described so the reader can fit the "Searching for Data" concept into context. Two lessons are devoted to Query. The reader will learn Query Wizard, printing query results, Design View, sorting, and viewing query results. Within these two lessons is material relating to reasons and purposes for queries so the reader is not just learning functions, but is learning to create a database that will provide information of use to the reader. Creating and customizing reports are demonstrated in the next two lessons. Creating reports using AutoReport, Wizard, and Design View are covered. By the time page one-hundred fifty is completed, the reader will be able to create reports from simple data bases having selected data from the database, in the desired sequence, and with the proper control breaks. The last three lessons, Creating a Chart, Creating Mailing Labels, and Analyzing How Well Your Database Works, completes the book, and the twenty-five lessons. These lessons will enable the reader to produce charts of a field in the database, print mailing labels, and perform a computer analysis of the database design and performance. I recommend the book for its intended audience, the beginner. The beginner will be able to set up the database, manage the database , search for data, and produce meaningful reports after doing the lessons. The text starts at the beginning by explaining the purpose of a database in simple applications. The Table, Form, Query, and Report functions are introduced with the reasons for using the function under discussion in simple, practical terms. The reader can work along with the text to see the results on the reader's computer to provide instant feedback. 10 Minute Guide to Access for Windows 95 by Faithe Wempen 178 pages $12.99 Que ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Product: Microsoft Office 6 in 1 Windows 95 Reviewed By: Don Hughes (dhughes@wwdc.com) ------------------------------------------------------------------------- The first chapter of the book is a complete induction to using Windows 95 for both a novice and experienced Windows user. Those who are familiar with Windows 95 and its file structure may be tempted to by pass this chapter. The novice user will benefit from this one hundred and twenty-two page well-written introduction to Windows 95. Que's "Microsoft Office 6.in.1" guide, is divided into seven sections: Windows, Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Schedule+, Access, and Working together. The last section gives an easy explanation of "Object Linking and Embedding (OLE)" and covers other topics such as "Paste Special" and "Insert Object." The current software trend is towards smaller (bit size) user manuals, with the programs CD-ROM containing most of the manual in text format, should the user required more information. Que's Microsoft Office 6.in.1 is a large guide that contains over seven hundred and eighty-two fact filled pages of step by step, tips, cautions, and definitions. This book is designed to help any computer user quickly create professional looking presentations and documents with ease. Written in unpretentious English, the easy to follow tutorials, many containing screen shots of the actual program ensure the end user of success completing Que's bit size lessons. Contained within the seven chapters are twenty to thirty lesson's (per chapter) on using the Microsoft Office Pro Windows 95 program. The following conventions are used throughout this book: Tip icons, indication ways for the user to save time when using MS Office, Term icons, easy to follow definitions, Caution icon (broken pencil) to help you avoid mistakes. Also shown in the guide is: On-Screen text, What you type, and Items you select, all appear in bold face as you work throughout the lessons. Each individual section of the book starts with an explanation of the particular program, its button bars and how to navigate around the screen. The skillfully authored illustrations and screen descriptions, encourage user to capitalize on the power of Microsoft Office Pro . The Tips, Term, and Caution icons are placed on the left side on pages, large enough to catch you at a glance. On page 151 Word, the Caution icon (broken pencil) states: "Don't Forget! Save your document regularly as you work on it. If the power goes off unexpectedly, your most recent saved version with all you have left." Good advice for any computer user, and invaluable for a new user. Nothing is worse then suddenly sitting in the dark, looking at a blank screen, wondering if you had in fact saved a copy of your work. Que's Microsoft Office 6.in.1 is an excellent resource for anyone using Microsoft Office Pro for Windows 95. If you want learn how to manage files, create professional looking documents, design spreadsheets for Excel, or a data base in Access, or organize your busy life with Schedule+, then this book is for you. Microsoft Office 6.in.1 for Windows 95. By QUE Contributing Authors: Peter Aitken, Sherry Kinkoph, Trudi Risner, Faithe Wempen. Compiled By Faithe Wempen. A Division of Macmillian Computer Publishing 201 West 103rd street Indianapolis, Indiana 46290 USA $29.99 USA / $36.95 CAN / L24.99 NET UK ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Product: Real Line Skating Reviewed By: Gail Marsella (71551.320@compuserve.com) ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Real-Line is a CD-ROM that purports to teach - in fact, encourages you to master - inline skating. I recently reviewed the MatheMagics CD-ROM from the same company (L3 Interactive), and was looking forward to more of their imaginative and innovative teaching methods in Real-Line. The quality of the instruction is predictably very good, with gradually increasing difficulty, clear examples, both text and video presentation, and little quizzes at the end of each lesson to make sure the main points sank in. I do, however, have one fairly serious reservation, and it has nothing to do with software. In short: inline skating can be dangerous, particularly the fancy stuff. The very first screen after the software loads is an elaborate warning that states, in part, "The maneuvers demonstrated here are dangerous and could result in serious personal injury or even death...Do not attempt any of the examples without an instructor..." Well, great. If you need an instructor to even try the examples, what do you need the CD-ROM for? When I got into the program itself, it became clear that the warning is mostly for the advanced techniques. And to be fair, the program constantly emphasizes safety, all of the demonstration skaters wear appropriate protective equipment, and three of the 27 lessons are on gear and safety. But still, how many kids will heed either warnings or safety instructions? How many teenagers will work cautiously through all the lessons, practicing each one carefully before moving to the next? You think most of them will? What planet did you say you were from? Oh, all right, maybe there are adults out there with enough time to learn to skate. Maybe skating instructors or experienced competitive skaters will find some of this material useful. I will continue with only them in mind. Computer requirements include a 16-bit sound card, Windows 3.1 or 95, a 486SX-33 class processor, a double-speed CD ROM drive and at least 8 megs of RAM - in short, a pretty high-powered system. (That's AT LEAST, too; it loads rather slowly on a 486DX-33.) The sound card is an absolute requirement because most of the instruction is audio. Setup on Windows 95 is particularly easy; you put the disk in the CD-ROM drive and the program starts itself. Setup on Win3.1 is the usual drill (choose Run from the File menu of Program Manager and so on). Both WinG and MS Video for Windows are required, but the program installs them for you. Like other L3 Interactive programs, Real-Line uses the "learning cube" concept to teach. This is a little disorienting for awhile, but makes sense once you get used to it. A cube appears in perspective, each face divided into 9 sections, like a stack of children's blocks three high, three wide, and three deep. One side has a different picture on each of the nine blocks; each picture is an entry point, and the three block row behind the picture holds three lessons, one on each block. A single-click on a picture gives you a short introduction to the material. A double-click on a picture causes the three-block row to move out of the cube and into closer focus, so you can then pick an individual lesson block. Each block gives you a choice of text or video explanation. Click the left side of a lesson block for text (called Transportext, for some reason) and the right side for video. At any time, you can back up (all the way back to the original cube if you like) and select something else. All of the little video segments in a lesson can be paused, rewound, andreplayed as often as you like. The video did seem a little fuzzy to me, but that may be a special effect of the filming, or a function of the fairly slow computer that I ran it on. The lessons cover everything from moving, turning and stopping, to dealing with inclines and obstacles on the pavement, to leaping over park benches. The jargon of inline skating is covered in some detail, and the instruction on various moves is carefully sketched from several angles. If you're a grownup (both in age and outlook), or are willing to closely supervise the child for whom you buy this program, then I recommend it. Real-Line L3 Interactive, Inc. 3000 Olympic Blvd. Santa Monica, CA 90404-9729. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Product: Bandits on the Information Superhighway - Book Author: Daniel J. Barrett Publisher: O'Reilly & Associates, Inc. Reviewed by: Craig E. Bull (bull@opus.oca.udayton.edu) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Bandits on the Information Superhighway is the latest offering in O'Reilly's "What You Need to Know" series. I've read several other O'Reilly books (not in this series) and have been very impressed with the quality of the information in the books. This book is no exception. As stated in the introduction, this book is written for all computer users. While I consider myself pretty literate about computers and the Internet, there were some points brought up in the book that gave me something to think about. The book is browsable, meaning you don't have to read the chapters in order. Of course, reading it in sequence certainly helps give you more background, but each chapter addresses a specific topic. The first chapter is an introduction to the Internet. I'm not real fond of the term "Information Superhighway." But he uses the term because "although the book focuses on the Internet, the risks we'll discuss can happen on any other computer network, BBS or online service as well." He does point out that the Information Superhighway is just a vision at this point, and that the Internet is the closest thing so far. The basic Internet tools are discussed, such as email, WWW, Usenet, etc., with an outline of the risks involved with each service. Chapter 2 talks about privacy issues. Many people think that the information on the Internet is private when in fact it isn't. The chapter discusses what types of things are at risk and how users can protect themselves. Choosing hard-to-guess passwords, controlling what information you make available via finger, and being aware of just who can access what on your system. Chapters 3-5 discusses everyone's favorite topic on the Internet - "Get Rich Quick" schemes. With some basic math, the author illustrates how it's impossible to make money on these schemes. He also points a few ways that people try to disguise these schemes and lists several questions that you should ask before you respond to them. There are also cautions against "free information...for a price." This is about paying money for information that you can get for free. For those interested in buying and selling on the Internet, the book discusses ways that buyers and sellers both can protect themselves in their transactions. As the intro to this chapter points out, and which the media likes to ignore, most people on the Internet are honest. But there are a few cheats, just like anywhere else. He lists "The 10 Commandments of Safe Buying and Selling." These are points that anyone, buyer or seller, should be aware of and follow. There is also a discussion of time wasters. As anyone subscribed to an active mailing list knows, April Fool's Day brings out a lot of messages. The GAMES-L list I'm subscribed to has information on a new "game" every year. This year, the game was Baywatch. Of course, the game doesn't exist, except in the minds of some very creative people. The author gives some pointers on things to look for that might indicate that a message might be a prank. There is also a brief discussion of urban legends on the Internet, including the FCC modem tax story and the Good Times virus hoax. (If I had a nickle for everytime I see that one....) Of course, the famous Canter and Siegel Usenet spam of 1994 gets discussed. Not only is time wasted by a lot of people, but many users have to pay to get their mail or news, and are not happy when they get junk mail. Interested in a relationship over the Internet? That gets covered, too. And the author is a good candidate to discuss it; he met his wife through the Internet. The section talks about ways to protect yourself when meeting other people. It also warns to be careful about names. You may start communicating with someone who you think is male/female, based on their name, only to find out that they're really of the opposite sex. The last chapter is for parents concerned about what their kids might see. This is an area that really annoys me, and the author, too. If you watch the news and the tabloid talkshows, you are led to believe that the Internet is full of twisted, perverted individuals who are just waiting to corrupt your children. It's not! As the author points out, the Internet has a dark side. But like any other large city, it's relatively small. There are adult sites, with pictures that you wouldn't want your kids to see. But then, the local bookstore has magazines with the same pictures. And television and movies have the same sexual content. The author illustrates the options available to parents to protect their children from the darker side of the Internet. The most important one, and one which more parents would do well to follow, is to talk to your children. Some of the topics suggested in the book include never giving out a phone number or address, recognizing that you should be cautious on the net, just as you would at the mall, and never tell your password to anyone. Every page of the book has notes in the margin relating comments from users the author contacted while writing this book. Some are anonymous, to protect the identity of the user. There are also a number of sidebars with more detailed information and stories. I think my only complaint with the book is the volume of the comments in the margins. For me, it's distracting. Do I read the text or the comments? In some cases, I think the comments could have been left out. But that's a minor, personal preference. On the whole, the information presented in Bandits on the Information Superhighway is well worth the $17.95 price. O'Reilly & Associates, Inc. 103A Morris Street Sebastopol, CA 95472-9902 800-998-9938 http://www.ora.com/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Product: Visual Basic 4.0 Reviewed By: Paul Ferrill (pferrill@fwb.gulf.net) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Microsoft's Visual Basic (VB) 4.0 updates the popular programming environment for the 32-bit world of Windows 95 and NT. VB 4.0 is a complete rapid application development (RAD) environment that lets you develop real programs in short order. For this review I looked at VB 4.0 Professional Edition. Microsoft also sells a version called the Enterprise Edition which includes Microsoft Visual SourceSafe, an integrated version control system. You'll need Windows 95 or NT to run the 32-bit version and 70MB of free disk space for a complete installation. Installing from CD-ROM makes the process almost painless. I was able to install the package in under 30 minutes with very little intervention on my part. Unlike the Visual C++ (VC++) 4.0 development environment, VB 4.0 also runs under Windows 3.x. The only catch to make your program run under both environments is that you must use either the 16- or 32-bit version of the custom controls depending on the operating system. You also won't be able to use your old 16-bit VBX controls in the 32-bit version of Visual Basic. One of the most visible enhancements for version 4.0 is the use of 32-bit OLE custom controls, otherwise known as OCX modules. The OCX modules replace the older VBX versions with added OLE functionality. VB 4.0 attempts to keep pace with its object-oriented VC++ cousin by using a similar concept of objects and classes. Previous versions of VB had the same type of features but didn't stress the object-oriented nature as does 4.0. Most hard-core programmers would argue the fact that Visual Basic is not a true object-oriented language although Microsoft has attempted to use the same buzz words to describe the different aspects of the language. VB 4.0 includes an Object Browser similar to the one in VC++ 4.0 that lets you view the objects currently used by your project and other objects available for use. Selecting a class or module displays the associated methods and properties. You can also paste a template of VB code for that method or property into a procedure. One of the strongest benefits of a RAD tool like VB is the ability to quickly create and debug a new application. Creating an input screen is as easy as dragging-and-dropping the desired controls onto a form. Since VB is an interpreted language you can make changes to your program and immediately see the results without having to go through a compile-and-link cycle as with VC++. The added benefit of the debug window allows you to display the current value of a variable or execute any legal VB statement. The database access tools have been updated to take advantage of the 32-bit operating system and offer a significant improvement in speed. The 32-bit version of VB 4.0 also supports database replication. Data-aware controls include grid, combo, list, and an OLE container for connecting to other OLE applications. You can also take advantage of Windows 95 features such as tabbed interfaces and drag-and-drop controls. A revised tutorial provides a good introduction to the VB way of doing things. Topics include the basics of getting started and event-driven programming along with building a sample application, accessing databases, debugging your program and more. A searchable index makes it easy to find help for the topic you're currently stuck on. All of the example programs have been updated to use the latest 32-bit controls. Microsoft has also added some newer examples in an attempt to show off the enhanced capabilities of VB 4.0. I find it much easier to grasp a new programming language when I can see concrete, working examples that let me see how it's done. VB 4.0 provides that and more. Four manuals with over 2700 pages cover everything from the basics of the language to creating OLE servers. I like having paper copies of manuals that I can kick back and browse through as opposed to the CD-ROM machine readable kind. Microsoft also included copies of the manual on the CD-ROM for those that prefer to read the manual sitting in front of the computer. If you're looking for a tool to quickly build Windows 95 applications you won't go wrong with Visual Basic 4.0. Microsoft Corporation One Microsoft Way Redmond, WA 98052-6399 (800) 426-9400 http://www.microsoft.com ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Product: Whiplash by Interplay Reviewed By: Mike Gallo (gallomike@aol.com) Requires: 486-66, 8 meg RAM, 30 mb disk space, DOS Reviewed on:Pentium100,16mb RAM, 4X CD, 16bit sound ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Playing Whiplash may be hazardous to your driving habits. However, if you could use a little bumping and grinding or outright roadside aggression, then InterPlay's new race car game may fit the bill. Unlike some other games currently on the market like NASCAR racing, Whiplash is more of an arcade game than a hardcore racing simulation. There are no tires to select or steering to adjust, or wheel angles to tweak. That does not mean Whiplash is a watered down product. There are some serious pixels being pushed around the screen in this game. Two graphics modes are offered: VGA and SUPER VGA. The screens include such goodies as clouds, buildings, ground textures, car textures, and perspective correction. I had no problem running the game in standard VGA mode, but the game looks truly fantastic in Super VGA. However, even on my Pentium machine, I had to reduce the screen size when playing in Super VGA mode in order to get an acceptable frame rate. Otherwise, I ended up crashing side to side into the walls because the slow screen updates caused me to oversteer. Yeah, you can shut off all the extra options so that all you see are the track and the other cars, but then you'd be back to playing with circa 1990 game technology. If you do want all the options turned on while playing in full screen SUPER VGA mode, you'd better have an ultra-fast gaming system. With the advent of new 3D graphics cards and the new Windows '95 gaming APIs, I would expect the next version of Whiplash to offer dizzying frame rates. There are eight different cars(representing eight different manufacturers) to choose from. Each car has its own strengths and weaknesses against seven attributes: Acceleration, top speed, braking, turning, grip, durability, and mass. Some cars are average across all attributes, while others are number one in at least one attribute. I found top speed, turning, and grip to be the most important. Sadly, the selection of cars is fixed and there is no opportunity to change a car's attributes. So what else separates Whiplash from other racing games? THE TRACKS! You won't find boring ovals from Indianapolis or Daytona Beach, in Whiplash. Instead, you'll find tracks with names like Snake Pass, Death Drop, and The Reaper. There are a total of sixteen tracks to race on. You're allowed to choose from eight of these, but you must win a championship at the medium level of difficulty to gain access to the other eight tracks. All of the tracks are hard. Quick twists and sharp turns are only part of the challenge. Pits, loops, and jumps make the race even harder. The really cool tracks have corkscrews, barrel rolls, and twisted jumps and offer spectacular views and makes for a good movie playback.(I could not get through the Gateway's corkscrew to save my life. I always ended upside down after a bone crunching crash that left the sound of crackling metal and glass in the background.) I must admit, put a race car driving game in front of me and the first thing I want to do is race around the track in the opposite direction!(Bet you can't do that in an arcade!) The game even shouts back at you that you're driving the wrong way! This makes for some cataclysmic crashes. What fun! The game also includes a record and playback system. You can record your race by turning it on in the options menu. After that, the entire race will be recorded automatically for you.(No fussing with turning the recording on and off while trying to play the game.) The manual warns you however that about 1 meg of disk space is consumed for each minute of race time, however most races last no longer than about five or six minutes so the space gobbled up is temporary and minimal. While recording you may experience some pauses in the game with the recording turned on. If this happens either defragment your hard drive or turn the record option off. You can control the game via keyboard, joystick, or the special racing steering wheels. I found my joystick to be adequate. Several multi-player options are available. A special two player mode will split the computer screen into half size top and bottom screens, one for player one and the other for player two. I found this format to be a bit confusing. Every now and then I'd look at the wrong screen and crash my car into the wall. The modem option allows you to dial up someone to race against, but the really neat mode is the network mode. With one CD, you're allowed to have sixteen players on a network! Wow! Now we're talking some fun. While seeing who can reach the finish line first is okay, I would rather see if I could just survive. With 16 people playing, that makes for quite an exciting demolition derby! I would rate Whiplash overall as a very good game. I had no problem installing the game and did not experience any glitches or crashes while playing. I wish InterPlay had expanded the offering of cars and allowed users either to either "earn" improvements or to outright modify their cars. The story line printed in the manual described each of the car manufacturer's background. The story emphasized how important it was for their cars to win in races. However, this information is not utilized in the game. Interplay 17922 Fitch Ave. Irvine, CA 92714 Customer Service: (714) 553-6678 Hintline: 1-900-PLAY Internet: AOL - Go to keyword INTERPLAY Compuserve - GO GAMEPUB, Section 4 Prodigy - email to PLAY99B Web - http://www.interplay.com ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Product: WordPro96 for Windows 3.1 Reviewed By: Doug Reed, Associate Editor Reviewed On: 486DX250, 12 MB RAM, CD-ROM, Windows 95 Requires: 486, 8 MB RAM, CD-ROM, Windows 3.1 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- WordPro96 is the latest version of Lotus award-winning, crowd-pleasing word processor (originally title AmiPro). For those new to Windows or word processing, AmiPro 3.0 was the definitive word processor for Windows users for several years. AmiPro is probably best known for popularizing the concept of SmartIcons. With this new version, Lotus has thrown in lots of new bells and whistles, including on-the-fly spell checking, divisions, task-specific tool bars and shortcuts, and many more. While maintaining a similar look and feel to AmiPro, WordPro is a significant upgrade. Installation of WordPro96 is a snap. The installation shield guides you through the process, giving you the option of doing a default or custom installation. The default installation requires about 30 MB of hard drive space. With the custom install, you can remove components you wont use, such as sample files, the tutorials, and other pieces that are nice but not necessary for WordPro to function. Using a custom installation, I was able to get it down to 28 MB, which included installing the tutorial Not a huge footprint, and noticeably similar in size to my old AmiPro files. Upgrading from AmiPro is fairly easy; WordPro installs to a different directory so you can convert your customized macros and files and then use your favorite uninstaller to remove AmiPro. Macros and files can also be converted from Word and WordPerfect. Once WordPro is booted it looks much the same as AmiPro, although you quickly begin to realize that there are subtle changes. The taskbar is now task-sensitive, which means that it can change depending on the task you are performing at the moment. Tell WordPro that you want to draw something and up pops icons for drawing-related tools. You can also customize what SmartIcons are always present and which pop-up with the various tasks. This way you can very easily create a work environment customized t your special needs. WordPro also has task-sensitive shortcuts that you can access from the text on the screen. What this means is that you can highlight a portion of your document (say a drawing you have made), and when you right click with your mouse up comes a menu containing drawing-related tasks. WordPro also now has nearly unlimited undo support, although this can be reduced if system performance is slow. WordPro can also auto-backup your files, insuring that even if you forget to back up occasionally, your precious data is saved in the event of a catastrophe. Reading through the manual I quickly discovered that WordPro carried one new feature borrowed from latest version of Lotus 1-2-3, the ability to create divisions within a single file. What this means simply is that if you are creating a document made up of several different sections, you can easily divide these while keeping them in the same file. For example, my "day job" involves scientific research. If you remember from school, scientific papers follow the general format of an introduction, the materials and methods used, the results of the experiments, and a discussion of what the results mean. Using WordPro, I can easily create divisions for each section of any paper I am preparing. Text added to the end of the Introduction stays right where it belongs and does not spill over into the Materials and Methods. Simply put, I love this feature. In about five minutes, I managed to put together one fairly large file that contained all of the chapters of my doctoral dissertation. Now three hundred pages of writing is consolidated into one (admittedly very large) document that I can easily scan to find what I need. Fortunately for the rest of you, this is not the only new feature in WordPro. Spell checking has been updated to include SmartCorrect, a relatively unobtrusive on-the-fly spell checker that will only make corrections if you hit the spacebar. I like the fact that SmartCorrect actually waits for you to tell it to make the correction. In science you often use jargon that is not part of ordinary language and which might throw SmartCorrect for a loop. Another nice touch to SmartCorrect is that you can penalize it, adding to it words that you commonly make mistakes on while typing. If your computer is limited on RAM, you may want to turn this off; SmartCorrect caused no noticeable slowdowns on my system but Lotus does mention turning it off as a means of improving system performance. WordPro also comes with a fully integrated thesaurus and grammar checker. So, is that all that is new? Not by a long shot. WordPro comes with a host of tools especially made for working with other people (called the Team Computing Tools). An example of how this might work can be applied to my example of a scientific paper. Papers in science are rarely written entirely by one individual; it usually takes two or more people to produce the work required as well as write it all up. WordPro gives you the ability to send your document over a LAN to other people who might want review and make changes. WordPro can then save these changes as different versions of the same document. Once everyone has reviewed the document, you can go back in and consolidate the various changes into a final, master document. Changes made by others can be viewed separately or made to stand out by highlighting with various colors. The Team Computing Tools are a powerful, well-done addition to WordPro. That sums up the new features in WordPro. I received the version for Windows 3.1, but there is very little difference between this version and the Windows 95 version (except for long file name support). I encountered no bugs or glitches, and was impressed with the overall speed and smoothness at which the program ran and performed various chores. The new features make for a very powerful but easy to use word processor. It will be sad parting with AmiPro, which I've had for five years now (longer than I've been married!), but it will definitely be worth it. þ