RAndY's RumOR RaG July 1992 VENTURA PUBLISHER UPDATE A couple of months ago, I blasted Ventura Publisher 4 for long load times and incompatibility problems. Ventura has always gone their own way in programming and still refuses to adhere to the Windows standards. By the time you read this, they should be releasing Version 4.01 to registered users. This update will correct problems with the Word for Windows filter and GEM line art pictures. It also adds backward compatibility for chapter and style sheet files with 3.x versions of Ventura. According to the company, it will also improve software performance and speed up load and print times. --------------- NEWS IN YER FACE At the OS/2 rollout at Comdex, Borland's Philippe Kahn said, "I have done Windows. But I didn't inhale." --------------- A notebook manufacturer recently got one of Dell's color notebooks to do a little competitive analysis. They ran some tests, let it sit for a few days, then restarted it. When restarted, reports are that the screen started to smoke. (Remember, this is a Dell competitor.) --------------- Borland recently hosted a Paradox developers' conference with rumors abounding they would make a deal with WordPerfect to launch an application bundle which would compete with Microsoft's Office and Lotus' SmartSuite. No one's talking. Microsoft's spies were caught trying to copy database files from Borland's computer test room. --------------- At the recent Apple PDA announcement, Microsoft multimedia guru Rob Glaser tried unsuccessfully to crash the event. After being turned away, he asked for a press kit and was rejected. Then, he got a cab and as the cab pulled up, he grabbed a handful of kits. An Apple security team intercepted him and Glaser left kitless. --------------- Novell will soon ship a 1,000 user version of Netware 4.0 and will probably offer a package that supports 250-1,000 users. They will also soon announce a Windows-based application that reports management information about NetWorth LAN hubs to the NetWare Management System. --------------- Intel is having difficulties keeping up with the demand for 486-5- chips. They say it will be another month before they can get things under control, although it is meeting its contractual obligations. Demand is coming from uniprocessor servers, not stand-along PC's. --------------- The US Copyright Office recently issued a new regulation which confirms that software for generating typefaces can be registered for copyright just like other software. Adobe has set up an anti- piracy hotline at 1-800-525-6111. You can call them for information as to what constitutes piracy and related issues. --------------- Compaq will be offering their new entry level computers with DOS and Windows pre-installed. Computer sold through integrators will not come with the software loaded unless requested. There's a few more bucks in Bill's pockets. --------------- Borland will be soon shipping updates to C++ including the ability for developers to use TrueType fonts, drag-and-drop functionality, and multimedia extensions. There's a new 386 optimization technique which claims a 40% speed increase and smaller compiled file size. This is not a true 32-bit compiler, but more of a code optimizer. Also included is WinSpecter, similar to Dr. Watson which pinpoints causes of unrecoverable application errors. (This was code-named "Dr. Frank" for Dr. Frankenstein because "it brings your apps back from the dead". A new release of Turbo Pascal for Windows which utilizes Windows 3.1 enhanced features is also due at the same time. --------------- Everybody's after Microsoft. Aiming at Excel's functionality, Lotus is announcing a free enhancement disk. Called SmartPak, it will include nine pre-defined style sheets, new GUI development tools, and the dialog editor from Ami Pro. Borland's Quattro Pro for Windows will let users access and perform operations on Paradox and dBase files from within the spreadsheet. --------------- The Software Publisher's Association along with the FBI recently busted a BBS in Millbury, MA for allegedly distributing illegal copies of more than 200 copyrighted programs. --------------- Did you know that Intel's new DX2 chips use 40% more power and there is an optional heat sink available for them? --------------- AMD is expected to announce a single-chip Ethernet controller designed to reside on a PC motherboard. The chip offers drivers for NetWare, LAN Manager, VINES, and LANtastic with a cost of less than $25. --------------- In other chip news, Cyrix is set to introduce three new 486- compatible microprocessors. The Cx486DLC is a 486-compatible chip that is plug-compatible with 386DX systems. The chips feature a full 32-bit data path and a 1K on-chip cache. It will work with your existing math co-processor and there are no plans to add an internal math unit. Replacing your CPU will give you the equivalent 486 performance (if you replace a 33MHz, you'll get 486- 33 performance.) Pricing starts at $119 (OEM) for a 25MHz version. The 40MHz version is OEM priced at about $199, much less than Intel's 33MHz 486 which OEM's for about $400. The DLC series is available in 25MHz, 33MHz, and 40MHz versions. Cyrix tells me this will likely become a retail product (possibly bundled with a math co-processor) around the end of the summer. --------------- Adobe is introducing a PCL5 emulator which will enable PostScript printers to mimic the Intellifont graphics supported in the LaserJet III series. They're also offering OEMs Adobe Intelligent Sensing software which will enable the printer to distinguish between PCL, PostScript, and text-based printing jobs without the user having to specify the file type. --------------- Microsoft announced in May that IBM's contract to use Windows code in OS/2 runs out in 1993. Microsoft's Steve Ballmer said that IBM has not asked that the agreement be extended. The agreement in question allows IBM to use Windows 3.x code along with any other Windows code that Microsoft releases before the license agreement expires. Ballmer denies that Microsoft would deliberately hold up release of Windows NT until after the expiration of the agreement - so that IBM would not have access to it. According to an IBM insider, "if IBM can't use the Windows code, then in typical IBM fashion they will declare Windows dead and OS/2 the winner." --------------- IIT, famous for inexpensive math co-processors, plans to produce a 486 compatible chip with integration of graphics, compression, and the main processor on one piece of silicon. Dubbed the Vision Processor, it will combine a programmable compression chip with an XGA compatible co-processor called AGX. Intel says they've been working on the same thing. Uh-huh... --------------- QuarkXPress 3.1 for Windows is scheduled for release August 18. It will read Mac QuarkXPress files and an extension to the Mac product will allow it to read Windows files. (QuarkXPress is a quirky, but extremely popular desktop publisher in that "other" world.) --------------- Microsoft hopes to start a beta program soon for their database project Cirrus. As it stands now, it is highly graphical application which allows users to set up queries through a series of simple menu selections using a mouse. It will reportedly handle mixed data types from dBase, Paradox, and Btrieve. --------------- Seems that OS/2 has another problem besides the one I reported on last month. I hear that in the beginning, it will work fine on a LAN, but over a short period of time, the network performance will deteriorate and finally stop functioning completely. --------------- Lotus chief Manzi will soon make a public apology for racist images printed on a Freelance demo disk called the Adventures of Presentation Pete. This is an animated demo based on an African safari theme with images of white hunters and black tribesmen. An African American employee in the Freelance group was offended by the racist image but waited to complain until the disks were already shipping. Lotus has 750,000 of these things they're going to have to eat. --------------- AUTOCAD 12 Sometime before July, Autodesk is expected to release the newest version of the popular AutoCAD software. Included in the new release will be accelerated graphics performance, the ability to zoom in on a specific area of a drawing without waiting for the screen image to be repainted, new routines for selecting components of drawings, and the ability to store support for more output devices. There has reportedly been extensive modification to the graphical user interface, including programmable dialog boxes, cascading and pop-up menus, and the elimination of the text-based main menu which has been standard with previous versions. Grips, similar to handles in other graphics programs, let you manipulate objects quickly. Functions for modeling and rendering which were previously add-ins are now included. The new Region Modeler uses Boolean operations to add or subtract from regions. The new Render replaces AutoShade. Of course you've got backward file compatibility. Plans for a 16-bit Windows extension have been scrapped, but plans are proceeding to develop a 32-bit extension for release 12, expected to ship in the fourth quarter. The Windows extension developed for release 11 can be used with release 12. The suggested retail price has been raised by $250 to $3,750 but upgrade prices are not available yet. --------------- WORDPERFECT NEWS Sometime in June, WordPerfect is expected to announce some new software packages including presentation graphics for DOS and Windows, an E-mail package update, new word processing, spreadsheet, and database packages. The E-mail package will be released later this year and will share a common mail engine across Windows, DOS, Mac, and Unix platforms. It will support industry standard interfaces as well as supporting mail-enabling of other vendors' applications. They're also working on a NetWare Loadable Module for mail, but no release date has been set. No word yet, but there are plans for a major word processing introduction later this year as well as changes to DataPerfect and PlanPerfect. The graphics package will replace DrawPerfect and has working names of WordPerfect Presents and Perfect Impact. The program should be in beta testing by now but more specific dates and prices are not being released. In other unrelated news, WordPerfect is pursuing legal remedies against companies that use "perfect" in their company or product names. WordPerfect officials won't comment on these legal matters, they do admit to sending out dozens of letters requesting that software companies change their names. There are more than 50 companies that use "perfect" as part of their company or product names. The majority of small developers being sued requested anonymity, but some said they will come together to create a joint defense fund. WPCORP officials defend their actions saying this is not a Big vs. Small issue. "You either police your mark (trademark) or lose it," said R. Duff Thompson, vice president and general counsel for WordPerfect. "It's not fair for one company to trade on the good will of another. We are recognized as having a family of marks and under trademark law there doesn't have to be confusion - only the threat of confusion." Firms under threat claim that there is nothing for buyers to fear because most of their products are aimed at vertical markets and have little or no connection with word processing. Others say that WordPerfect has a right to defend its name. "WordPerfect as a whole is a nice company, but sometimes they are too nice and in the past they have let themselves be trampled," says Will Fastie, an analyst with the Baltimore investment banking form of Alex, Brown, & Sons. "Every product WordPerfect has uses "perfect" as the post-fix, and the company is just defending their name." --------------- WINDOWS COMPATIBILITY Last month I talked about the [Compatibility] section of the Windows 3.1 WIN.INI file. This section is required mostly because of bugs in Windows 3.0 which required applications code around the bugs to get their software to work. Some of these applications had problems under Windows 3.1 due to the bug fixes. The prefix "0x" specifies a hex number. Bit 0001 is a work around for the Microsoft C 6.x run-time installation library. This affects the setup programs in Microsoft Publisher, Money, Works, and other applications that were similarly compiled. Bit 0002 is a performance enhancement fixing applications that have a problem with the method used by Windows 3.1 for mixing text and graphics on printouts. Bit 0004 tells Windows to print landscape graphics in one large chunk. Bit 0008 fixes applications that can't handle other apps trying to remain visible at all times. Bit 0010 forces Windows 3.1 to give applications a list of TrueType faces, indicating that those typefaces are actually resident in the current printer. Bit 0020 tells Windows 3.1 to print graphics in multiple bands. The new Universal Printer Driver tries to optimize printing by placing all text and graphics in a single, page-long band if enough memory is available. Some programs like Freelance's REM module are confused by this procedure. Bit 0040 makes Windows send window-repaint messages to every running application when a new windows is opened. Windows 3.0 did this, but 3.1 tries to gain performance by messaging only those windows it thinks need redrawing. But some applications use these messages for other purposes, so this is needed to restore the old behavior for Pixie, ObjectVision, and the CP module of Cricket Presents. Bit 0080 fixes a 3.0 bug which converted text to capitals when passed to an application's File Open dialog box. Windows 3.1 fixed this, but some applications compensated for the bug and may display the wrong extension in the File Open boxes without this work- around. Bit 0100 changes the allocation of 4 bytes in a memory structure that was accessible by 3.0 applications, but not by 3.1. Setting this bit helps applications like Aporia. Bit 0200 fixes a problem that exists because in Windows 3.1, a TrueType face can be represented on-screen by either a scalable outline or pre-installed bitmap. This fix eliminates confusion for certain modules. Bit 0800 fixes another bug in 3.0 dealing with serial communications on COM2, which applications such as Packrat and Microcourier depended on and are coded around. Bit 1000 is for applications that hard-wired the 3.0 font names Helv and Tms Rmn into their code. Microsoft changed the names in 3.1 to MS Sans Serif and MS Serif. Setting this bit lets applications like Excel, Guide, Spinnaker Plus, and others still "see" the old names until upgrades are available. Bit 2000 lets some applications recognize TrueType faces as scalable, even though the current printer cannot scale type. This affects programs like Charisma, PageMaker 4.0, Micrografx Designer, and others. Bit 4000 affects applications that display drop-down lists inside dialog boxes (to show a list of disk drives, for example). Setting this bit makes sure that such boxes overlap other boxes properly. Bit 8000 forces Windows 3.1 to print TrueType faces as graphic output (rather than downloadable fonts) for certain applications. Bit 10000 corrects a 3.0 bug which sometimes sent an application an invalid set of coordinates for rectangles that needed to be redrawn. Without this fix, some Draw objects ar not properly redrawn in Word for Windows. Bit 20000 affects a message that Windows sends to an application after its window has been moved by the user. Windows 3.0 always sent the application a message to recalculate its window size. Because this is more important when a window is created (not just moved), Windows 3.1 usually doesn't send this message after a mere move. Some applications depend upon this message, such as Lotus Notes. This is one of the many ways that Microsoft slightly improved performance. Bit 40000 changes the way Windows 3.1 processes a mouse double-click on the System Menu icon. Bit 80000 alters the way Windows 3.1 calculates PostScript character widths for certain applications. All of this information was gleaned from several issues of InfoWorld and hopefully helps to clear up some questions. Do not mess with the [Compatibility] section of your WIN.INI unless instructed by an application's technical support department - or unless you know for sure what you're doing. For more technical information on the Compatibility] section, download the file COMPAT.ZIP from the WINSDK forum, Library 1 on CompuServe. --------------- KODAK PHOTO CD Very soon, you'll be able to have your slides and negatives scanned, converted to a digital photograph, compressed, and stored on a compact disc. The discs can then be played in new Photo CD players that connect to your TV set and in CD-ROM drives for our computers. As some of you know, my primary business is professional photography. Naturally, this idea has a great deal of interest to me. Kodak says that there are 50 billion snapshots taken per year by 250 million cameras, 15 billion snapshots with 100 million cameras just in the US. The potential is enormous to say the least. The images are compressed for storage, then decompressed as they're accessed. An uncompressed image would need about 18MB of storage space. You can store about 100 images on a disc with 2000 line resolution - the finer the film grain, the more images can be stored. The images can be stored all at once or added to later. There will be small, numbered reproductions of the photos on sheets which slip inside the plastic case, serving as a visual index of a disc's contents. By the end of the year, there will be more than 100,000 drop- off in places like K-Mart, one-hour labs, and such. In 1993, Kodak will give photo processors a way to add audio and text to Photo CD's. In September, Kodak will introduce authoring software with simple methods for linking audio and text with pictures to create multimedia slide shows. If that's not enough, Kodak gives consumers the ability to enlarge and crop pictures being viewed on a TV with enough resolution for the next generation high-definition TV standards. Kodak claims that the writeable discs will last 50-100 years, depending upon how they're stored. Altamira Software in California is working on Windows-based composing and editing software which will work with Photo CD's. OK, so what are the disadvantages? The speed of writing to a disc only gets so good. It takes at least a half hour to fill a disc. It can't compare to photo finishing where machinery can easily process 25,000 images per day. Also, right now, the only way to get information onto a Photo CD is via 35mm slides and negatives. And, of course you can't edit an image and write it back on a CD. There's another thing to consider. If you have a Photo CD written to in one session (filled up the first time), the CD players now on the market for computers will be able to read it. If you return a CD to have more images written, you'll need a multi-session CD reader which will be released soon. Present CD- ROM units can only read the first write session. Here's the technical side. Creating a Photo CD disc requires a license from Kodak and software that only runs on a PIW (Photo CD Imaging Workstation). The PIW system costs about $100,000 and includes a fast Kodak scanner for input (five seconds per image), and a Phillips CD writer for output. In between there's a Sun Sparcstation with a RasterOps display card and a custom image compression card, and a dual SCSI card to keep data moving through the system. The PIW can scan, compress, and write images simultaneously. The PIW systems also include a CD-ROM player and a Kodak color printer. The 35mm film is scanned at 3072x2048 resolution. The system reads the film type from a bar code and stores the film type with each image on the disc. There are five different resolutions of the image stored. The compressed images require 4MB-7MB of storage, therefore you can store about 100 images on a 680MB CD. Oh yeah, you probably want to know what this technology will cost. It will cost about $1 per image or about $20 per 24-exposure roll. Players for your TV will cost $400-$650 depending upon the features desired. The high-end player will have a carousel allowing you to have 5 CD's online. Of course, the CD's are Kodak yellow, but Kodak tells me they have to be that gold colored to enable writing. --------------- GREAT GAMES I need to put in a plug for some folks who make excellent games and sell them dirt cheap. I'm talking about Apogee Software. They're the ones who blew everyone away with Commander Keen, featuring smooth scrolling VGA graphics. One of their latest is called Wolfenstein 3-D. You're an escaped prisoner in a Nazi prison and your goal is to get out. As you move down hallways and go through doors, the 3-D effect is so real that it gives me a headache. The scrolling is very smooth. Sound card support is great with a suspenseful soundtrack, barking dogs, and Nazi guards yelling at you in German. Along the way you encounter Nazi guards, SS men, and patrol dogs, all of which you must kill to keep going. There are four levels of difficulty, but in all levels the violence is very graphic. When you shoot someone, you hear a yell and blood spurts out of your victim. The game is rated PC-13 which stands for Profound Carnage. It's another example of excellent shareware. Catch it at a BBS near you. --------------- WINDOWS TIP & INFO Did you know that if you're using Windows 3.1, you can delete the WINA20.386 file that DOS 5 put in your root directory. If you're still using Windows 3.0, you can remove the file if you're never going to run in Enhanced Mode. This mysterious file is just a virtual device driver which resolves conflicts between Windows 3.0 and DOS 5 when both try to access the HMA. As you're surely aware, SmartDrive 4 is a delayed write-back cache. I've had some people ask what happens if they do a CTRL- ALT-DEL and there is still information in SmartDrive's cache. When SmartDrive detects the warm boot key sequence, it takes control and makes sure all data in the cache is written to disk. You may see a box in the upper left corner of your screen that tells you to wait while it's dumping the cache. If you use a utility in a batch file to force a warm boot, include a line reading "SMARTDRIVE /C" to flush the cache before your warm boot program takes over. --------------- RIP This is more of a personal note, but it shows what's involved in developing and marketing a software product. In my photography business, I use a package called Masterpiece developed by Burrell Business Systems. It operates out of Windows and is designed as a point-of-sale package for portrait photography studios. It uses Novell's Btrieve for fast retrieval of information and frees me from having to write customers' orders on a piece of paper. Everything I sell has an easy to remember code assigned, so when a customer comes in to order photographs, the order is placed on the screen and an invoice is printed on a customized form. Of course the program keeps track of income and product sales. I was recently informed by Burrell that as of this past February they are no longer marketing Masterpiece. Cited as the primary reason was the cost of product support. While Masterpiece was produced for both the PC and the Mac, it is an extremely easy to use piece of software. I can't imagine people having problems with it. But according to them, their phones were tied up too much and they couldn't afford to pay someone to do their Windows programming. Actually, I could see this coming during my conversations with them over the last year. The bottom line is that it costs money to produce software and it costs money to support it. --------------- MORE NEWS IN YER FACE WordPerfect has been PO'd at Microsoft since the big M started running aggressive advertisements suggesting that WordPerfect was an inferior product. WP President Alan Ashton said, "I personally spoke with Bill and asked him to cease their misleading ads." According to Ashton, Gates thanked him for the call. "We'll look at this and get back to you", said Gates. Ashton is still waiting. --------------- WordPerfect and Borland will soon be announcing a low-cost migration path for users of MultiMate and Sprint. These two companies are also considering a reciprocal agreement to move DataPerfect and PlanPerfect users to Paradox, dBase, and Quattro Pro. The boys in Orem recently announced acquisition of a data communications software house, licensed ATM, made a mutual support and development pact with Novell, and announced a complete restructuring of its corporate mission. DrawPerfect for Windows, described by industry analyst Amy Wohl as "breathtakingly elegant" will debut at PC Expo. In development are a forms application package and a high-end document management package. WordPerfect has developed a "core engine" development policy which will result in closely synchronized product introductions across platforms. --------------- Hayes is expected to show Smartcom for Windows at PC Expo. The asynchronous package is available in five languages and supports ISDN, Hayes ESP, LANs, and TCP/IP. --------------- Novell is set to release a version of DR-DOS for hand-held computers in July. It will be known as PalmDOS, based on DR-DOS 6, and will work with hand-held computers and PDAs. It features a small kernel that can be loaded in ROM for fast booting and has disk compression capabilities. Novell is expected to announce a strategy called NetWare Desktop Systems which outlines how a variety of systems can connect to NetWare LANs. --------------- INGOLF Plaza recently purchased 126 large screen projection systems to interface with a computerized golf simulator. The system projects a realistic 18-hole golf course scene onto a 10x12.5 foot screen. Once the ball is launched by the golfer, a computerized simulator calculates its flight, distance covered, and distance remaining. The ball lands and a new shot is presented for the golfer. Price for the projectors, each with data, graphics and video capabilities is about $10,000 apiece. Here's the perfect gift for Dad. --------------- SUPPLEMENTAL DRIVER LIBRARY The Windows 3.1 Supplemental Driver Library is now available from Microsoft ($20), the Microsoft BBS, the popular online services, and your local dealer. Included in the seven disk set are drivers for printers not included in the Windows 3.1 package (too many to list). Drivers for sound cards such as Artisoft, Soundblaster, IBM M-Audio, and Pro Audio Spectrum are there, too. A driver is included which allows you to play WAV and MID files through the PC speaker. This should prove useful for those without sound cards. Drivers for ATI Ultra, DGIS, Tseng ET4000, and S3 compatible cards are in the package. There are also drivers for CGA (wow) and grayscale displays. Two disks labeled Miscellaneous contain C and D printer fonts, the old MS-DOS Executive, NetWare and IPX upgrade utilities, and the Access Pack for handicapped users. Reversi is back, after Microsoft left it out of the 3.1 package. An updated UNIDRV.DLL is part of the set along with two new additions for your SYSTEM.INI file. VPD.386 is used for LPT contention management and MONOUMB.386 provides additional UMB space for DOS-based applications. --------------- EXCEL 4.0 They say that it takes Microsoft at least until Version 3 of any product to get it right. Well, they got it right and then some with Excel 4.0. Excel has been a favorite since it was first released for the PC. Rather than go through a feature list, here are my impressions. I love the drag-and-drop editing. This cut-and-paste nonsense was always cumbersome to me. Now, I can copy or move a range with just a mouse click. The same goes for the intelligent autofill. When setting up a worksheet it's so much easier to just highlight a range and have it fill with data. Lots of possibilities here. I like the revised button bar. And the Workbook metaphor is much improved over the Workspace idea. So what's wrong with it. Well, I want to play with all the features, but there's too much to read. I want to do it now! I can't see anything wrong with it. If you presently use Windows, this is THE spreadsheet (forget 1-2-3/W). If you're firmly anchored in the character-based world, then I'm sorry. This is state-of-the-art spreadsheeting for sure. --------------- CHEAP TRICKS These two items come from PC Magazine and Aldus Magazine and I thought you might find them interesting. Using Windows 3.1, bring up the Program Manager. Hold down Control and Shift, then select About from the Help menu. Double- click one of the four panes of the Windows 3.1 icon in the dialog box. Close the About dialog box. The second time you do this, you'll see a flag waving. The third time, you'll see a scrolling list of the people involved in the creation of Windows. One of several figures announces this list, one of which is a bear and the rest resemble certain Microsoft Executives. (If you're still stuck with Windows 3.0, hold down F3 and successively tap WIN3, release F3, and press Backspace. Your desktop background will be replaced by a list of Windows 3.0's creators. Click on the background to get rid of it.) Have you ever wished you could get a piece of artwork into the computer but you don't have access to a scanner? Photocopy the artwork onto acetate and press it on the screen where you can use it as a guide to trace it. Sometimes, static electricity will hold the acetate in place on the screen. One useful purpose for this technique could be for reproducing a map. --------------- NEXT MONTH Coming in August, I hope to take a peek at Corel Draw 3.0. I'm still waiting for Sierra On-Line to get on the stick and release Pinball for Windows (either ship the product or stop your advertising of it). Someday . . . --------------- PEERSONAL NOTE I'm sure there are readers somewhere out there who have left me mail on GEnie or America Online, only to find it unanswered in recent months. Since about mid-March, I've been having difficulties with the local phone company and have been unable to access the pay services. If anyone out there has connections that will let us get a local Telenet (or similar) node, please pull the strings. I have badgered GTE since about 1985 with no luck. It's bad enough to have to pay for the services, then tack long distance charges on top of that. HELP!! ================================= DISCLAIMER RAndY's RumOR RaG is published on a monthly basis by AINSWORTH COMPUTER SERVICES and is available on various BBS's, GEnie, and America Online as well as in Modem News. In case anyone cares, RAndY's RumOR RaG is produced on a DTK 386-33 with 16 megs of memory, Cyrix Fasmath co-processor, ATI VGA Wonder+ card (1 MB), 105 MB Toshiba IDE hard drive, Teac 1.2 MB, 360K, and 1.44 MB floppies, Sceptre SVGA display, Pro Audio Spectrum 16 sound card, Microsoft mouse, WordPerfect for Windows and transmitted through a US Robotics HST Dual Standard modem. Opinions expressed are those of the author. Comments should be addressed to Ainsworth Computer Services on GEnie, America Online, phone, analog mail, or whatever method makes you feel good. AINSWORTH COMPUTER SERVICES 605 W. Wishkah Aberdeen, WA 98520-6031 (206) 533-6647 GEnie Address: RAG America Online: RumOR RaG