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1. President s Report January Prize Winners Fly West for questions and answers Reuse recycle files being in use by the operating system Version 4 0 adds native Windows gt Dune Petrie s corer 95 98 and NT Workstation versions PartitionMagic analyzes Training Review all the partitions you are trying to modify If there are no files in use it Hightech Training Company does the modifications within the native application Otherwise it Hardware L paare queues up a batch job and then runs it either from MS DOS mode for Book Review Windows 95 98 or before the full operating system loads on the next Desktop scanners boot in the case of NT PartitionMagic is not intended for use on NT Server although the box simply states Windows 3 x 95 98 NT or DOS 5 0 or later Outside of a single sentence on page xviii in the user manual the only place I Next meeting WEDNESDAY February 3 1999 Coming Up Psion Handheld Computer Ultra portable computers have recently mesmerized users with their versatility and power Palm computers are prized for their compactness however everyone does not embrace their lack of a keyboard Current hand held computers with keyboards usually employ Windows CE as the operating system modem and a PC Card formerly PCMCIA adaptor Two AA penlight cells normally provide 35 40 hours of use although an AC power supply is available as an option2. 2 Ottawa PC User s Group February 1999 President s Report 1998 in Review s snop 1998 was an eventful year for the OPCUG a year in which we saw much activity and made a lot of connections It might be said that the past year was one of getting people connected The biggest change was the implementation of PUB II our club s communications server PUB II was overhauled to include Internet access at our new permanent home http opcug ottawa com Thanks to the devotion of our sysop and web developers people can now connect to each other through the Internet while maintaining dial up access Care was taken to maintain essential member services messaging notices file downloads and enhance the PUB with new features like the listserves and statistics reports The Internet access route has opened our doors to a much wider potential audience Our club also enjoyed our monthly bricks and mortar meeting place through a strategic partnership with the National Museum of Science and Technology Special thanks are extended to Paula Kirton and Rita Signorini of the Museum for their hospitality The club newsletter continues to keep us informed of what s going on and what s happening Kudos to Dunc Petrie editor Jean Vaumoron layout and all who contributed articles We re always looking for content if you have something to say put it in writing and submit it After all it s YOUR newsletter Feedback
3. gt gt It s time for a change At our February meeting come and see an attractive alternate the Psion Series 5 that PC Magazine awarded an Editor s Choice in March 1998 While less well known perhaps than its Windows CE cousins it uses a more powerful proprietary true multi tasking operating system complete with its own programming language The Psion can synchronize its data with any Windows 9x or NT machine What can it do Word processing spreadsheets personal information management calculator sketch pad and even a voice recorder are standard features Unlike many hand helds it has adequate key spacing to type without hitting multiple keys The user interface employs icons and a 640 x 240 backlit touch screen Equipped with 8 MB of RAM it accepts flash cards to increase on board memory Other accessories include a Calendar Meetings Date Time and venue February 3 Psion Handheld Computer OPCUG Genera Mooting 50 Coming up article above a March 3 To be announced Ottawa Paradox Users Group Third Thursday of each month 6 15 pm Inly Systems 1221a Cyrville Rd 7 15 pm Sir Jean Talon Building FOX Pro Developers SIG To be announced Conference room Tunney s Pasture Holland Ave north of Scott St February 3 After all the other SIG s All questions be they serious or not PIG SIG or is it WING SIG Good Times cafe at Shoppers City West Baseline and Woodroffe
4. OTTAWA ZAAPC NEWS Vol 16 No 2 The newsletter of the Ottawa PC Users Group February 1999 Software Review PartitionMagic 4 0 Chris Taylor Last spring Harald Freise wrote a review of PartitionMagic 3 0 Well found reference to PartitionMagic not working on the folks at PowerQuest have not been sitting idle since then Last fall NT Server was in angry complaints in the they released version 4 0 of this terrific program support forums at PowerQuest ServerMagic a new much more expensive program from Powerful PowerQuest is specifically designed for NT Server PartitionMagic is the most advanced program available for manipulating partitions on your hard disks It supports FAT FAT32 NTFS HPFS Linux Ext2 and Linux Swap partitions It can create any of these partitions and resize them without data loss It can convert back and forth between FAT and FAT32 as well as convert IN SI DE one way from FAT to NTFS the actual conversion is done by the NT utility Convert and FAT to HPFS Additionally you can copy partitions which is a great way to upgrade from a smaller to larger disk or to create a backup Continued on page 3 Coming up February meeting Meeting calendar Previous versions of amp PartitionMagic were DOS executables dressed up to look like Windows apps This gave complete control to PartitionMagic to do whatever it wanted xt S N without worrying about Club news Club life
5. What is your favourite bus Recently EIDE has produced Ultra presumably to maintain the vocabulary race with SCSI Then there is ISA PCI AGP and the universal USB Tired of the acronyms Want it all to end Not just yet allow me to introduce maybe the new kid on the block IEEE 1894 or Firewire It has many similarities with USB however it is a lot faster Features faster than USB currently 100 200 Megabits per second Mbps versus USB s 12 Mbps a high speed relative to its predecessors like serial parallel or USB digital interface for both data and networking up to 63 devices daisy chained neglecting cable length practicality and power requirements maximum cable length of the daisy chain up to four meters optical cables are under consideration no hubs necessary Practically longer daisy chains and additional power for peripherals may necessitate a rethink power for peripherals is included up to 1 5 amps versus USB s 0 5 amps minimal consumer of system resources hot pluggable and configurable on the fly data transfers possible without a host computer Firewire developed initially by Apple Computers was intended as an engineering solution to replace the Continued on next page February 1999 Ottawa PC User s Group 5 Dunc Petrie s corner continued from page 5 Not another bus Continued plethora of bus standards much less a problem in the M
6. button starts the actual modifications There are wizards to create new partitions distribute free space among partitions reclaim space by converting to FAT32 and or reducing the cluster size prepare to install an additional operating system and recommend changes While they may be of use to a real novice they are not Continued on page 4 February 1999 Ottawa PC User s Group 3 Partition Magic 4 0 continued from page 3 likely to be of use to most people who will be buying this product I certainly recommend that people just roll up their sleeves and do it themselves You have much better control over things when they are done manually and the choices made by the wizards on your behalf are questionable Freebies PowerQuest includes an application called MagicMover that is designed to move applications from one partition to another It scans all your partitions to gain information about applications and then allows you to select an app from either the Start Menu or your Desktop alternately you can browse your disks to find it Once you select it and choose a destination drive MagicMover will look in Autoexec bat Config sys any INI file in the Windows directory the Windows Registry Microsoft STF setup files and shortcuts for any references to the path to the application then it modifies them to point to the new path Next it copies the files in the source directory to the destination directory and deletes the
7. Cayer Robert Power and J P Rouleau each won a copy of the newly released version 5 2 Red Hat LINUX distribution Congratulations to our winners and thanks to David Skoll of ChipWorks and the Ottawa LINUX Users Group gt gt Reuse recycle Bring your old computer magazines books or any other computer paraphernalia you want to GIVE AWAY to the general meetings and leave them in the area specified If you don t bring something you may want to TAKE AWAY something of interest so look in on this area Any item left over at the end of the meeting will be sent to the recycle bin gt gt Fly West The Good Times cafe at Shoppers City West Baseline and Woodroffe for chicken wings and a drink after the General meeting may be the best and most informative SIG meeting of the evening See you there Club News all about Club Life To receive the newsletter by e mail send the message subscribe Newslettertxt or subscribe NewsletterPDF without quotes to listserve opcug ottawa com Did you know that the PDF issue was in color Ottawa PC User s Group February 1999
8. I ve received indicates that people are happy with the content of the past year s General Meetings We ve had guest presenters from developers of exciting new hardware and software Centrepoint Adobe Corel Vorton Microsoft informed users HTML Javascript Linux and from within our own membership DTP SIG Sysop We even had a little fun and games with Bloom Microtech before the holidays Thanks to all who took the time to prepare these presentations for us The SIGs within the club have morphed in 1998 We witnessed the rebirth of the Internet SIG and a successful merger with another O8 2 group If you feel there is a void in our group s Special Interest Groups and are willing to coordinate a SIG please contact one of the Board of Directors We continue to reach out to the community at large OPCUG held our perennial public swap meet in November and staffed an information booth for the Museum s swap meet just last month Volunteers also worked at the Computer Fair held at the Nepean Sportsplex to spread the word of Users Helping Users We continue to alert the media of our upcoming events Sometimes we connect with each other informally the WING SIG cold beverages and chicken wings is a good place to meet after the meeting to chat and chew I sometimes think that the most valuable information I get comes from these get togethers I would be remiss if I didn t thank the long list of members who tirelessly g
9. 280 Mbps USB presently offers 12 Mbps The Standard Parallel Port offers only 40 300 Kbps Kilobits per second e EPP ECP Parallel Ports support transfers up to 2Mbps The current Serial Port supports up to 115 2 Kbps e ISA Bus transfers range from 2 8 33 Mbps The PCI Bus has various implementations that support up to 182 MBps e AGP can support up to 528 Mbps Both Firewire and USB have inconveniences While Firewire can provide more power in both cases the available power on the bus must be divided among the installed peripherals Reasonably beyond two or three devices additional power would probably have to be supplied this increases costs and complexity D a Bandwidth is also a shared commodity for both protocols the more devices on the daisy chain the less bandwidth is accessible to each device Given these realities the maximum number of devices 127 for USB and 63 for Firewire allowed under these protocols is wildly optimistic in practice SIL EJL The conclusion Firewire has the potential to compete directly with if not usurp a lot of the competition The question that is hanging will it Both Firewire and USB share the capabilities of the tried and true serial and parallel ports Firewire also leaves USB in its dust however the latter is less expensive to implement and achieved mainstream status first Microsoft provides some support for Firewire in Windows 98 and has suggested t
10. acintosh world than for PCs with a single simple connector A less expensive replacement for SCSI was seen as an attractive by product To date this bus basks in obscurity digital video applications are its only credit although the transfer rates could also support colour printers DAT audio scanners and cable modems The bandwidth is also suitable for mass storage devices with BIOS support as appropriate However at least initially and particularly on PC compatibles this avenue would most likely be left to the various flavours of EIDE Bus Data Rate Comparison The following values are approximations and are theoretical however they do provide a common basis for relative comparisons Actual results would depend upon a variety of factors and system configurations JEEE1394 Firewire is presently 100 200 Mbps proposed IEEE1394a standard would double it to 400 Mbps Aside more than 3 times 100BaseT Ethernet JEEE1394b standard under development would initially promise 800 Mbps and incidently more robust power supply capabilities Future extensions advocate up to 3 2 Gbps no guarantee of ratification e EIDE amp UDMA offer 33 MBps Megabytes per second or approximately 260 Mbps SCSI has various flavours that range from 10 MBps 80 Mbps to 40 MBps 820 Mbps e SCSI 3 the newest offering will range from 40 MBps 820 Mbps to 80 MBps 640 Mbps There are proposals to achieve 160 MBps 1
11. ave their time and skills to keep the OPCUG running We all know the familiar faces that show up at every meeting to carry out the often thankless tasks of checking the facilities doing the finances and keeping tabs of memberships and meeting minutes A huge thank you to everyone who has exemplified the spirit of the club by putting in some effort and saying TI help As the much anticipated feared Y2K looms on the horizon we have much to look forward to in the coming year I sincerely hope that the OPCUG continues to thrive and help people get connected lt gt Partition Magic 4 0 continued from page 1 One of the nice additions to version 4 0 is the ability to queue multiple operations and then perform them all at once Previous versions did not allow this which sometimes meant lengthy waits while one operation finished before you could carry on with another Another benefit of queuing operations is that you can set up multiple changes and see what the overall effect will be before committing the changes Easy to use The user interface is very clean and uncluttered You can clearly see how the partitions are laid out on your disk and obtain detailed information on things like cluster sizes lost disk space due to slack space technical information on the file system and more Resizing partitions is a simple operation of dragging graphical sliders Once you are satisfied with the modifications a click on the Apply
12. creates little demand This is further complicated by the clamour to prevent instant obsolescence of all the legacy hardware There is logic in adding integrated Firewire support initially to high end workstations that can best utilize the bandwidth and hot plug capabilities Trickle down would not be unique to Firewire On the other hand could delay in reaching critical mass mean that Firewire is relegated to obscurity To succeed Firewire must go mainstream it must discard its primarily video niche and attract the gamut of hardware manufacturers that has endorsed USB Therein lies the dilemma why should manufacturers tinker with success From a manufacturer s standpoint the fewer the variables the less the cost of production Alternately expressed Why make two when one will do Firewire holds potential for the future it possesses the bandwidth that USB lacks while offering a cheap alternate to SCSI Can it succeed To have a hope it must gain a respectable place That is it needs dedicated system integration on the motherboard or at least be blended into the much faster AGP architecture instead of its current PCI expansion slot status that limits bandwidth and robs the incentive to pursue enhanced specifications Stay tuned 4 Desktop Scanners Image Quality Eva I u at O n By Robert Gann Most books on scanning are how to me texts that address all the technical issues to obtain a g
13. d more complete background technical information on disks and partitioning There is an additional 50 page printed manual for BootMagic P P Conclusions I tested PartitionMagic on Windows 98 with a 6 4GB hard disk partitioned into two FAT32 partitions and did multiple resizes with no problems I also tested it on NT4 SP3 with a 4 1GB disk partitioned into two NTFS partitions I performed several resizes there as well I am not overly impressed with the add on programs DriveMapper and MagicMover I think that most people should just reinstall affected applications BootMagic seems serviceable for those who need a boot manager to handle multiple operating systems PartitionMagic shines at its basic task of resizing partitions with an absolute minimum of fuss and bother You should be able to find PartitionMagic around town for about 70 You can also order it from PowerQuest at the User Group discount price of US 30 The kicker is they add on US 10 for shipping which brings the cost to about CAN 60 If you want to go this route you can do so at http Awwwugr com orderhtml You need to enter our User Group Code which is UGFLYER see 4 Ottawa PC User s Group February 1999 WINDOWS DUNC PETRIE S CORNER BEGINNERS Hightech Training Company Editor s Note I am not associated with this company or its principals I wrote this article since I believe that this is a novel method for self education in
14. hat the Windows 99 PC specification will tighten the standards for drivers A few Compaq and Sony computers incorporate Firewire within their systemes architecture to provide video editing support Regardless this does not constitute mainstream acceptance To gain legitimacy Firewire needs support from motherboard and chipset manufacturers Intel is the linchpin since it has barely launched its own creation AGP Would it discard that and introduce Firewire onto its motherboards or perhaps blend AGP and Firewire together into a hybrid slot Presumably AGP has potential beyond a single video board dedicated slot Intel has suggested that studies to support AGP expansion exist however its marketing strategy is unknown After all projected implementations of AGP bandwidths are more consistent with Firewire than PCI While I am unversed in the engineering technicalities of motherboard design this must introduce major design headaches Motherboards already have hard and floppy connectors ISA bus slots PCI bus slots an AGP bus slot USB connectors parallel and serial ports to name a few All these demand finite motherboard resources still manufacturers clamour for more of the same Firewire Continued on next page 6 Ottawa PC User s Group February 1999 Dunc Petrie s corner continued from page 6 Not another bus Continued faces Catch 22 little demand means minimal manufacturer support and limited support
15. iple operating systems It automatically makes the appropriate partition active and then boots from the operating system installed there wer hee 0 co co co co 8 9 When adding and deleting partitions you can end up with existing partitions changing drive letter designations DriveMapper an included program is designed to change drive letter references in shortcuts INI files and the Registry so that your applications continue to run But be aware the support forums at PowerQuest have messages from upset users who had Registry and ini file entries like file changed to filf when DriveMapper changed references of drive E to F According to PowerQuest this bug is squashed in version 4 01 due real soon If you are using NT 4 with SP4 and NTFS partitions wait for the 4 01 PartitionMagic patch SP4 makes numerous changes to NTFS and in some cases these can prevent PartitionMagic from working If you are modifying a partition that has no open files you LUCKY OF Ped S should be fine but if the program has to 4 re boot and do its work before the OS R loads you are likely to run into a failure Ss In an age where Windows help files seem ny J the rule and printed manuals are reduced to booklets that tell you how to install the program PartitionMagic offers a s refreshing change The 150 page manual is clear and complete although I seem to recall that the version 3 0 manual ha
16. n Ontario K2G 186 Telephone answering machine Web address Http opcug ottawa com Bulletin board the PUB BBS Up to 33 6 kbps V 34 Chairman Bert Schopf bert blackbirdpcd com Treasurer Willem Bill Vandijk bvdijk igs net Secretary David Reeves dlreeves iname com Membership Chairman Mark Cayer cayemar statcan ca BBS Sysop Chris Taylor ctaylor nrean ge ca Newsletter Duncan Petrie editor gdpetriet trytel com Mr Jean Vaumoron layout vaumojav magi com 731 7847 Mr Jocelyn Doire editor and distributor electronic version please contact via PUB Jocelyn Doiretopcug ottawa com 723 1329 228 0665 232 8427 256 3054 723 9658 823 0354 723 1329 841 6119 Publicity Chris Seal c_seal fox nstn ca Facilities Bob Walker 831 0280 skywalk istar net 489 2084 Beginners and Windows SIG coordinator Duncan Petrie gdpetrie trytel com DTP SIG coordinator Bert Schopf bert blackbirdped com Fox SIG coordinator Andrew MacNeill andrew aksel com Fox SIG web page www aksel com foxsig Internet SIG coordinator Bob Gowan gowanb inac gc ca OS 2 SIG coordinator Mr Jocelyn Doire please contact via PUB Jocelyn Doiretopcug ottawa com 05 2 web address http os2 ottawa com Paradox SIG coordinator John Ladds laddsj statcan ca Director without portfolio Terance Mahoney terancep cyberus ca 225 2630 232 8427 851 4496 951 4581 January prize wi nners by Mark
17. ood scan for example color bit depth resolution and image editing Many will also discuss which type page or flatbed the interface the complexities of the TWAIN driver and the capabilities of the bundled software Lost With the explosion of choices available in the retail marketplace the answer to the question Which scanner should I buy has become hopelessly complicated Granted everyone assumes logically that 600 pixels per inch resolution or 36 bit colour are better respectively than 300 pixels per inch or 24 bit colour However if the price of the superior specification model is below that of the inferior are you curious Better yet do you shake your head and walk away Now the more advanced texts will enter the realm of the technical and discuss the unfathomable for example dynamic range dark current and non linear response Many are unable to link these obscure technical concepts to the quality of the scan let alone see the difference No longer On the other hand there is the old adage A picture is worth a thousand words How can an end user determine if a scanner can provide a high quality scan More practically if you had just scanned an image do you think that you could label it as good or bad Why What should you look for Where SCANNERS If these questions are un nerving and you did not understand the technical presentations in those other books then yo
18. originals PICK YOUR MagicMover moves entire directories and their subdirectories not just single applications If you installed multiple programs to a single directory perhaps a utility directory that contains a number of small programs each with one or two related files MagicMover will move all the applications in that directory I never used MagicMover to actually move any applications During its analysis phase and before I selected an application to move the Microsoft Office 2000 Installer popped up multiple times and wanted the Office 2000 CD ROM I have no idea what triggered it or what it modified in my installation scary Forgive me but I am familiar enough with Windows to think that the best approach is to un install the application and re install it in the new location One reason for creating multiple partitions is to support multiple operating systems In some cases you can have multiple operating systems supported on a single partition with no add on product required For example you can install Windows NT Windows 95 Windows 3 1 and DOS all ona single partition with no need for additional software to support it But in many cases it is safer and simpler to separate your operating systems onto different partitions and not allow them to see each other BootMagic is a boot manager that comes with PartitionMagic It provides a somewhat garish mouse and keyboard enabled menu on bootup that allows you to select from mult
19. tune with today s hectic pace The New Year is a recurring theme in this issue I had an opportunity to have a look and test the waters of this company Its niche is computer assisted training using a do it yourself proceed at your own pace approach The study material is provided on interactive CD ROM each student decides his her own pace of study Apart from the computer sessions dedicated students will need to practice what they have learned at home or office before returning to advance to the next module The array of topics is impressive and has likely expanded since my brief visit there were over 60 choices that included operating systems Windows 95 NT applications Internet theory of browsers HTML programming Visual Basic C C image editing Photoshop and MCSE training The knowledge levels ranged from beginner to advanced While there I demo d a portion of a course on HTML coding This approach is deceiving On one hand it is a relaxed environment with state of the art equipment on the other large amounts of knowledge are provided in a short period of time Yes eager students will have homework Each module offers a review quiz and an offer to review less certain topics As a product of the old school I can assure you that my education was never like this Have a look at the company s web site www hightechtraining net see Hardware Update Not another bus
20. u may want to have a look at i this book ISBN 0 13 080904 7 The author Robert Gann is a design engineer who is responsible for image quality specification and evaluation at Hewlett Packard Here the theory is explained simply the mathematics are presented optional you can understand without it and the evidence is there to see in a number of colour image plates and on the included CD ROM Not only does the author explain the theories of for example over sharpening over compression non uniformity of the scanner s response and thermal noise but also he lets you see the result in the sample colour images You know what to look for now Using the knowledge in this book take that newly purchased scanner for a test drive I do hope that you got your money s worth gt gt February 1999 Ottawa PC User s Group 7 OTTAWA PC NEWS Ottawa PC News is the newsletter of the Ottawa PC Users Group OPCUG and is published monthly except in July The opinions expressed in this newsletter may not necessarily represent the views of the club or its members Deadline for submissions is four Saturdays before the general meeting Group Meetings OPCUG normally meets on the first Wednesday in the month except in July and August at the National Museum of Science and Technology 1867 St Laurent Blvd Ottawa Meeting times are 7 30 p m to 10 p m Fees Membership 25 per year Mailing Address 3 Thatcher St Nepea
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