Shuttle Corporation's technology of super compact regular desktop computers is forecast to have an astounding eight-times growth rate in the next few years. Shuttle has been making the small components for years, and has just recently been turning out their own brand that have a very small footprint with very fast and capable systems. But if you buy one of them, essentially there are very few options or pathways to upgrade the hardware. There isn't room to even add another hard drive. They are especially effective ion a cluttered desktop.
Maxtor seems to be having production problems as a friend's system integrator has been having about a 20% failure rate. When I needed a few over-200 GB drives, I chose to dump the Maxtors in favor of Western Digital at about the same price. Then the downloaded Western Digital HDD test program was run on the new HDD to eliminate infancy failure problems. The Western Digital passed with flying colors after being run for about 8 hours.
I get a chuckle because the Apple people have just entered the realm of the Trojan Horse problem.
MailWasher still seems to be doing a great job for filtering out spam. The key is the facility to look at the email while still on the server to help decide if the email is legitimate or junk. This is after Earthlink throws away about 10 times the amount of spam that I EVER see.
The guys have completed the SPAUG Mid 04 CD and thus we are going to devote the June meeting to its unveiling.
As of this writing, the fate of the Clinic is not known. I haven't yet decided whether to open the Clinic for May. [N.B. If you are planning on attending the Clinic, be absolutely sure to make a reservation in advance!]
As the environment of worms, viruses, bots and other general malware continues to grow, when SPAUG members leave the Clinic, the following structure is put into place:
You should assure the same on yours.
Digital Living 2010 - by Gary Sasaki
The presentation “Digital Living 2010” covered some of the hot spots in the world of Digital Consumer Electronics, where the industry is going, and what your mediaplex will be like in 2010. Topics included the shift from the PC to the CE space, HDTV, AV Networking and Digital Photo-Video. Evidence of these topics was abundant at the Consumer Electronics Show in January 2004. Many of the new products introduced then, and some since, were also mentioned and discussed. There was also a short discussion of where the industry is going in the future, along with some of the key strategic plays some of the major vendors (HP, IBM, Panasonic, Sony, Samsung, Intel, etc.) are making.
Gary Sasaki was with the Hewlett-Packard Company for 30 years. During the last ten years he was in HP Labs, where he was responsible for finding and helping to initiate new billion dollar businesses, helping HP to grow in emerging markets. As it became obvious that the PC and printer markets were maturing, his focus turned to digital consumer electronics. Previous positions held include being an R&D Manager of a 100 person lab involved in three number one worldwide product lines, and various other R&D and Marketing roles.
Gary's full presentation, including the slides he skipped due to time constraints, can be downloaded at www.digdia.com
Does your computer experiences sporadic blue screens, lockups, or other strange behavior? When your computer acts unpredictably, chances are good that a buggy device driver is at fault.
If you're experiencing unexplained computer problems, a powerful troubleshooting tool called Driver Verifier Manager (commonly called Verifier) is a terrific way to identify flawed device drivers. Instead of your computer locking up at a most inopportune time with a misleading Blue Screen of Death (BSOD), with Verifier your computer stops predictably at startup with a BSOD that accurately explains the true problem. Although this doesn't sound like a huge improvement (your system still doesn't work, after all), Verifier performs a critical troubleshooting step: identifying the problem. You can then correct the problem by removing or replacing the offending driver. (If you're satisfied that the driver really is okay despite Verifier's warning, you can turn off Verifier for all drivers or for a specific driver. Any driver that Verifier chokes on should be regarded with suspicion, but some legitimate drivers bend the rules without causing problems.) Verifier works at startup to thoroughly exercise each driver. It performs many of the same tests that are done by WHQL as part of the certification and signing process, such as checking for the way the driver accesses memory.
Beware: If Driver Verifier Manager finds a nonconforming driver—even one that seems not to cause any problems—it will prevent your system from starting. Use Verifier only if you're having problems. In other words, if it ain't broke...
To use Driver Verifier Manager, at a command prompt type verifier. In Verifier's initial dialog box select Create Standard Settings. In the next dialog box, select the type of drivers you want to verify; unsigned drivers are a likely cause of problems. Complete the wizard and restart your computer.
[illo]
If your computer stops with a blue screen when you next log on, you've identified a problem driver! The error message includes the name of the offending driver and an error code. For information about the error codes, see Microsoft Knowledge Base article Q315252, "A Partial List of Driver Error Codes That the Driver Verifier Tool Uses to Report Problems." To resolve the problem, boot into Safe Mode (press F8 during startup) and disable or uninstall the problem driver. You'll then want to check with the device vendor to get a working driver that you can install.
To disable Driver Verifier Manager so that it no longer performs its verification checks at startup, run Verifier and select Delete Existing Settings in its initial dialog box. Alternatively, at a command prompt type verifier /reset. (If you haven't yet solved the driver problem, of course, you'll be stopped at a BSOD-unable to disable Verifier. In that case, boot into Safe Mode and then disable Verifier.)
You can configure Verifier so that it checks only certain drivers. To do that, after you select Create Standard Settings and click Next, select the last option, Select Driver Names From A List. This option lets you exempt a particular driver from Verifier's scrutiny—such as one that Verifier flags but you are certain is not the cause of your problem.
You can read more about Verifier online here.
Jon Bjerke of www.bobcat.comadds, "to check your computer's memory, try MemTest86, found at www.memtest.org."
I've been happily using a program called Magic Mail (MM) for a couple years now. During that time I gave Mailwasher a try on another computer but after a month or so abandoned it in favor of Magic Mail. (N.B. - all of my experience with this program is with Win98se, no information on WinXP/Win2K) At first it seemed a little tricky to setup, but once I doped it out I loved it.
MM checks mail on all the accounts you want and you can adjust when it does so. It is pretty flexible as to how it notifies you. I originally had it set to run at startup (using a shortcut in the Startup folder), but it kept getting tangled up with ZoneAlarm, so now I start by double-clicking a shortcut on the desktop after the computer is done booting up.
When launched, MM checks my POP3 accounts and shows me what's on the servers (for each message, it lists mailbox name, sender, subject, date/time and size of message). I can then decide whether or not to delete it from the server, or leave it there for Eudora to download when I'm ready. If there's a message that I want to check out, I double-click the item in the MM window, and it opens as a text document (AFTER Norton automatically checks it out). If it is an HTML message, I have to wade through a bunch of HTML code, but I can generally tell if I want to let it onto my computer or not. All of this is stuff Mailwasher does, but MM is a little smaller and simpler without the bells 'n whistles; i.e., no blacklist, no friends list, and no bouncing (I agree with some others, bouncing spam is like ... um ... spitting into the wind). And the price is right if you need to check multiple mail accounts — it's FREE.
Once I've deleted the junk, I launch Eudora and download the messages I want. I've set Eudora to download upon launching and then never again until I ask. Meanwhile, MM is checking the mail servers every few minutes, and it lets me know when mail arrives by popping up a window (you can set it to play a sound file of your choice if you like), at which time I can delete or download.
It takes a little effort from me (very little), but it's simple enough and keeps the crud out of my machine. I like it, and recommend it to the class. Here's the link:
www.geeba.org/magic