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The LangaList
Standard Edition

2004-07-22

A Free Email Newsletter from Fred Langa
That Helps You Get More From Your Hardware, 
Software, and Time Online

Please visit our sponsors and help keep the LangaList S.E. free!

Contents:

1) Speed-Tweaking Tool For Notebooks
2) BIOS RipOff?
3) Office 2003 Glitch
4) When Is A Byte Not A Byte?
5) More On "About:Blank"
6) Recommend This Newsletter And Win!
7) FireFox Gripes
8) Code-Load Success Story
9) Chkdsk/ZoneAlarm Conflict Still Unresolved
10) Just For Grins
11) Plus! Edition Highlights:

Next Issue In One Week:
2004-07-29

 

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1) Speed-Tweaking Tool For Notebooks

Hi Fred, in the last LangaList ( http://langa.com/newsletters/2004/2004-07-15.htm#3 ) Marcel Buchsbaum wrote about his speedstep problems. There is a nifty little program I use called SpeedSwitch XP http://www.diefer.de/speedswitchxp/ . It comes in very handy for laptop users when they want to use the full power of their processor when connected through AC. Also the program improves on windows own battery status icon in the taskbar with one that has a better graphical view of the battery life left. ---Michael Grabovsky

Thanks, Michael, and the several other readers who made the same excellent suggestion. This looks to be a very handy tool. From the site:

SpeedswitchXP is a small applet that sits in the system tray and allows dynamic switching of the frequencies of mobile Intel and mobile AMD CPUs under Windows XP. During the development of Windows XP, Microsoft decided to integrate dynamic frequency switching into the operating system itself. On a default Windows XP installation, the power schemes in the power settings of the system panel control the frequencies of the processor. On Windows 2000 and previous operating systems, it was possible to manually control the CPU frequencies with a SpeedStep applet provided by Intel, but this is not possible anymore under Windows XP. It is not very [well] documented what the different Windows XP power schemes do and it is impossible to fully adjust the schemes as the important settings are not accessible through the control panel.

SpeedswitchXP tries to fill this gap in that it provides access to ALL power scheme settings. This small applet is similar in functionality to the native Intel SpeedStep applet for Windows 9x/ME and Windows 2000 but with a few more options....

Also note the other software there, including a Dell Inspiron 8x00 fan control utility. Nice!

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"Hi Fred...Just wanted you to know that your new system of "notification" of the Plus! edition is working very well. Thanks for all of your extra effort and numerous ways to get past my ISP's filters. Would also like you to know that as an instructor at a 1000+ member computer club here in the Phoenix area, I have been regularly recommending your website to my students who want to get past the basics of computing. I really feel your easy to understand approach to explaining sometime complex issues is wonderful and really valuable in a world full of soundbites and assumed knowledge of current technology. For $1 a month you probably have the best value in this space, and I for one am extremely glad I found out about you. Sincerely, Dan Spedale"

Thanks, Dan!

Plus Edition subscribers not only get about 30% extra content and no advertising, but also can get their extended-length issues in any of four formats--- HTML (easiest on the eyes); plain text (universally compatible); digest (just the facts, ma'am); and the specially formatted "Notify" edition, designed to get past overeager spam filters. And all the Plus! editions are sent out before the Standard Edition even starts to mail, so Plus! readers see everything first!

And it's all still just $1 a month!

Get all the details:
http://langa.com/plus.htm

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2) BIOS RipOff?

Fred, After a search of LangaList Plus I couldn't find any information on Flash BIOS.  Perhaps my experience can just be chalked up to a dumb mistake ...hopefully a learning dumb mistake.  Here's the issue.
 
 While looking at installations in my computer I ran across an entry for the BIOS ...and somehow it brought up eSupport.com.  I went to their pages and did their test to see if an update would be profitable.  Well they had an update and the salesman said it would make big changes in my computer.  I sent for it ($75. plus shipping at around $9.) and tried to install it but nothing happened.  So I called them and they suggested a couple of things and finally sent an installation PDF file. which I opened and added to the disk they had sent. (that's what they said to do).  Trouble is that the download all happens so fast (no waiting...it is immediate) that I don't believe anything happened.  The computer certainly doesn't act any different.  Do you know how to tell if this BIOS Upgrade was installed?  Sincerely, Louis Mensing

I can understand your suspicion, Louis: It sounds fishy to me, too.

First, a quick recap: The BIOS (Basic Input-Output System) is semi-permanent software--- you can think of it as a very simple operating system--- that's stored in a special chip inside your PC. This is the code the PC uses to figure out how to wake up and start working: It handles all the lowest-level life-support kinds of functions in a PC, and is the foundation for everything that loads later on--- like Windows or another OS.

Because the  BIOS code is semi-permanent it can be changed or updated, but it takes special software to do so. BIOS updates are usually done to correct bugs in the original code; or to add support for new hardware features that arrived after the original BIOS was created; or to repair damage to the original BIOS software. Many--- perhaps even most--- PCs live their whole electronic lives with no BIOS updates at all, and are just fine.

A salesman saying that a BIOS update "would make big changes in [your] computer" is highly suspicious in itself. In most cases, BIOS changes are subtle, and rarely involve major performance gains. Instead, a bug goes away, or new hardware support is added, or something like that. In my experience, it's never, ever been a "wow" kind of change.

The PDF file is probably a how-to text in Portable Document Format, meant to be displayed by Adobe Acrobat Reader for humans to read. Its presence on the disk might help *you* in handling the update, but should have no effect on the actual update process.

A BIOS update usually takes at least 10-15 seconds, and on older machines can take several minutes. I've never seen an update that didn't put at least a few prompts on the screen--- an intro, a warning of what was about to happen, a visual indication of the process ("erasing... writing...") etc. And most of the newer update processes even make a backup of your current BIOS for you, just in case. So my guess is that your update never happened.

But the only way to know for sure is to note the BIOS version number before and after the update process: The number will change if the update succeeds. You usually can see this version number either on-screen at boot time, or by entering the BIOS setup program, by pressing a special key at boot: usually DEL or ESC or F1 or F8. Your PC's maker's web site will have exact info for your brand of PC.

I'm sorry you had trouble finding our previous BIOS information, but we've actually discussed BIOSes something over 80 times in this newsletter. 8-) See this for a Standard Edition search on BIOS http://langa.com/u/5m.htm ; Plus! edition subscribers can find those 60-ish references, plus about 20 additional hits, by searching for "bios AND update" (without the quotes) in the downloadable Archives, available at http://langalist.com/plus/archives/archives.asp . Or, they can search for "BIOS update" (with the quotes) just for Plus! issues that contain that exact phrase.

So, Louis, the above should help you figure out what's going on--- or what *wasn't* going on!

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3) Office 2003 Glitch

Hi Fred: I recently upgraded to MS Office 2003 (running WinXP Pro) and experienced a rather weird problem.  After clicking on the Start button, I discovered the buttons for "New Office Document" and "Open Office Document" were missing.  I did what I thought was a rather thorough Google search and did not find anything to help me track/fix the problem (I did find a number of references to people that had the same problem, though).  After a *very* lengthy MS knowledge base search, I stumbled on the following article.  Odd that it doesn't appear to have a MS KB article number.  It is titled:  Find the New Office Document and Open Office Document shortcuts     Here is the link: http://langa.com/u/5n.htm  The text is:

Install the New Office Document and Open Office Document shortcuts. If the shortcuts are not visible on the All Programs or Programs menu, you can do the following to install the shortcuts:
1. Run Setup again for Office 2003 or your Office 2003 program.
2. In the Maintenance Mode Options dialog box, select the Add or Remove Features option, and then click Next.
3. In the Custom Setup dialog box, select the Choose advanced customization of applications check box, and then click Next.
4. In the Advanced Customization dialog box, select the plus (+) sign next to Office Shared Features.
5. Click the arrow next to New and Open Office Document Shortcuts.
6. On the shortcut menu, click Run from My Computer.
7. In the Advanced Customization dialog box, click Update.
When Setup is complete, the New Office Document and Open Office Document shortcuts are located on the All Programs menu (Programs menu in Windows 2000). 
 
I don't know just how common this problem is, but maybe this can help some others from bashing their head against the monitor trying to find the solution!

As a long time subscriber, I have really grown to appreciate your e-zine.  The content (technical, mundane, obscure, and humorous) is absolutely stellar! Cheers, Jim Gutman

Thanks, Jim! BTW, if readers are wondering whether Office 2003 is worth the upgrade, here's a very interesting comparison between Microsoft Office '03 and the free OpenOffice suite: http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1570801,00.asp

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4) When Is A Byte Not A Byte?

Reader Mike Ryland was perusing older LangaList issues when he came across "Download Confusion" ( http://langa.com/newsletters/2004/2004-02-23.htm#4 ) which was intended to clear up misunderstandings about throughput speed reports.

But he raised another question about a line where I said: "There are usually eight bits to a byte..."

Mike's one word question was this:

"Usually?"

Well, yes. It's the transition from the theory ( bit = 1/8 byte ) to the real world that's the source of this confusion. By analogy: When you weigh a paper letter at the post office, you have to include the weight of the envelope and stamp: It's the total weight, and not just the weight of the letter inside the envelope, that matters. Likewise, you also must include the "weight" of the electronic "wrapper" when figuring transmission rates.

A byte may be 8 bits, but if it takes 9, 10, or 11 bits to send it (if your sending method requires start, stop, and parity bits), then, for all practical, real-world purposes, it's 9, 10, or 11 bits long. Network packetizing also adds overhead, which increases the total number of bits that may need to be sent to deliver one byte to its destination--- the byte may still be 8 bits, but its electronic envelope consumes real-world bandwidth, and must be taken into account.

More exotically, some encoding methods can transmit a full byte in *less* than eight bits, which goes the other way, and reduces the number of bits that must be transmitted. And even simple data compression can create a further disparity between "bits in the wire" and "bytes delivered to the disk," depending on where the compression/decompression takes place.

So, while a byte is 8 bits in the dictionary--- that is indeed the correct technical definition--- transmitting a byte may require more or fewer bits than 8 in real-life throughputs.

And suddenly, what started as a simple concept has gotten very murky indeed! 8-)

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5) More On "About:Blank"

We initially discussed the "About:Blank" hijack when it first crawled out from under its rock ( http://langa.com/newsletters/2004/2004-07-08.htm#4 ), but a lot more info is now available:

Hey Fred:  Saw the latest LangaList and then ran into this. Thought you might want to pass it on to your readers: "About:Buster v1.26 [23K] Win2k/XP FREE http://www.majorgeeks.com/download4289.html  Is your Internet Explorer hijacked to something similar to res://.dll/index.html#37049? Symptoms include an about:blank home page and popup ads. This one is a bear to remove, but a couple of tools have been released to help remove these, including About:Buster. The download page has instructions on using this tool..."---Michael H. Bell

Hi Fred. With regard to the "about blank" browser hijack, I had 2 friends systems infected with this Trojan and after some searching found this very useful site with information about Cool Web Search (CWS) which it is part of + the CWS shredder program removes all traces completely, even ones that Ad Aware did not pick up.  Recommended. http://www.spywareinfo.com/~merijn/cwschronicles.html  ---Geoff Wilkinson

I think you would have an interesting read of this page by Eric Howes and Suzi over at Spyware Warrior forums, at which I diagnose HijackThis logs at, under the user name TeMerc. I also have a MSN community, and I always post links to your newsletters. Here is my site:
http://groups.msn.com/TeMercInternetSecuritySite/home.htm ---Tom Mercado

Thanks Michael, Geoff, Tom, and all who wrote in!

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6) Recommend This Newsletter And Win!

If you think the LangaList is a worthwhile read, maybe a friend would find it useful too! Just use the following link to recommend the LangaList---your friend may find a new source of useful information and you just may win one of three FREE ONE YEAR SUBSCRIPTIONS to the LangaList Plus! edition given each month. (If your name is drawn and you're already a Plus! subscriber, your current subscription will be extended by a full year.)

Check out the details at http://langa.com/recommend.htm . Thanks for recommending the LangaList--- and good luck!

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7) FireFox Gripes

Hello Fred, The Firefox browser ( http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/ ) is getting a lot of attention lately and justifiably, its a free, safe alternative to IE. However, Firefox is not perfect, and being a long time computer griper, I documented gripes with it on my web site http://www.computergripes.com/. Perhaps of most interest though, are the web sites that do not work correctly with Firefox. I have culled these from my other Firefox gripes and put them on their own web page at www.computergripes.com/firefoxsites.html. ---Michael Horowitz

Thanks, Michael. Firefox, Netscape, classic Mozilla and Opera all claim to be standards compliant, but all fail in different ways on different sites. If they all were truly standard, they'd all fail the same way on the same sites. But they don't, so clearly, there are problems with the claims of compliance.

IE is not the most standards-compliant browser any longer (believe it or not, it actually was, for a brief while...), but it works on more sites than any other. I personally care little for arguments about technical purity--- I want a browser that works on the sites I visit. So, yes, I do use IE as my main browser. With proper care and feeding (keeping up with security updates, using antivirus and anti-spyware tools, etc.) IE is fine to use.

No browser is perfect: they're all a mix of positives and negatives. Ultimately, browser choice is a personal thing, depending on what "feels" right to you, and what's required by the sites you frequent.

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8) Code-Load Success Story

Code-loader Adrian State writes:

Hi Fred: Just a quick message to say a big thank you for my sites ( http://www.introduced-species.co.uk ) huge increase in traffic. Within 2 1/2 hours of the current LangaList being published which listed me in "they loaded the code" I received over 10000 hits...! Luckily I have a reseller account and was able to immediately allocate more bandwidth to my site. Many thanks from a long time LangaList reader. Adrian

Do you have a home page or website? (It doesn't matter what size.) Please click over to http://langa.com/code.htm , and maybe you can join the thousands of LangaList readers who have "Loaded the Code!" (If you've already "Loaded The Code" and are wondering if your site will appear here or on the Langa.Com web site, please see http://langa.com/link.txt )

Speaking of which: Here's another eclectic sample of reader sites--- some professional, some very personal:

View A Randomly-Chosen Reader Site
http://langa.com/randomlink.htm

Manually Browse All Posted-to-Date Sites Starting At
http://langa.com/readersites.htm

Voodoo Justice (Band)
 http://voodoojustice.bravehost.com/

PhotoGiftUSA
http://www.photogiftsusa.com/

Rusty's on Wynyard
http://www.geocities.com/webbasite/home.html

Sturgis 2003
http://webmakrexpress.com/sturgisrallynews.html

Fotos & Photos
http://www.fotosphotos.com/index.htm

Hand-painted Oil Reproductions
http://www.reproductionfineart.com/

at-Thoms
http://www.at-thoms.com/

Kid Magazine Writers
http://www.kidmagwriters.com/

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9) Chkdsk/ZoneAlarm Conflict Still Unresolved

The ChkDsk problem discussed in
http://langa.com/newsletters/2004/2004-07-08.htm#3 still has no fix I'm aware of, but ZoneAlarm sure looks like the culprit--- at least, that's what many, many readers suggested. (Thanks to all who wrote in!) See, for example, this note:

Hi Fred, in my instance this [chkdsk problem] was caused by Zonealarm v5 [Free].

See my forum log here... http://langa.com/u/5o.htm and where I found the lead...
http://www.executive.com/diskeeper/faqs/faqs.asp#gq0 and I guess it's not going to get any better till XPsp2 comes out and people have it installed. This will take a month or two to settle. ---Mega

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10) Just For Grins

Mr. Langa, Thanks for the continued support you give through your newsletter. It is a breath of fresh air.
 
I have enclosed a picture of a recent PC given to me for reasons of non-boot:

Plus subscribers: http://langalist.com/plus/extras/jfg20040722.asp

Public download: http://freetune.com/images/PIC000018.JPG

Oddly enough, viruses on this WinME box were the cause of the non-booting (over 140 infected files, 15 different viruses/worms and I lost count of the spyware issues after 120) and not the sweater of death shown. Also, from the hard to believe file is the fact that I had just serviced this machine 5 months previously, during which I had installed self-updating antivirus software (turned off after 1 update) and had blown the inside of the case and front panel clean. The answer is: never leave your computer on the floor next to a return air duct. It's been reformatted and cleaned again....
 
Again, many thanks! If all the money I spent gave such a great return as the Plus! edition, I could retire in a couple more years. --- Kevin Brown

"Sweater of Death..." I love it! 8-)

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Fred's Own Reference Shelf--- And Up To 20% Discounts!

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personally selected and recommended by Fred Langa
and available at Amazon.COM's deepest discounts!

http://langa.com/books.htm

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11) Plus! Edition Highlights:

  • Outstanding (Free!) Swapfile Resource
       (perhaps the best single reference ever!)
  • Free DOS Helpfile
       (every command, at your fingertips)
  • Free, Powerful GUI-Scripting Tool
       (open source and yours for the taking)

The Plus! edition is only pennies per issue, and comes with a MONEY BACK GUARANTEE from Fred. How can you lose? Check out the details: http://langa.com/plus.htm

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(Give a gift subscription to the LangaList Plus edition!
Click <a href= " http://langa.com/plus_gift.htm ">here</a>)

See you next issue, 2004-07-29!

Best,

Fred
( Editor@Langa.Com )

Please recommend the LangaList to a friend! (And maybe win a prize!)

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