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December 1997 Newsbyte | |
EDITOR'S
CORNER
December and Election!! Christmas and New Years days. A New Year!! Who
would have thought that 1998 could have gotten here so soon!!
Things are Quiet here at computer ranch in the woods. The snow and cold keep
the birds and fur people close to their warm dens and burrows. Never
realized how many birds roost in brush piles. I always pictured them as
being arboreal, not ground type people.
Last month started my seventh year as editor of this great newsletter.
Hope it suits everyone. With the advent of e-mail, the cost to the club
is almost nothing now. Now if we can just get the membership back up
where it belongs..... I've discussed this over the phone with several
officers and members and we pretty well came to the conclusion that the
drop in membership was due primarily to the Windows 95 operating system,
and not as many people having problems with DOS and programs as in the
past. What is your idea? We'd like to know!!!! Keep us posted will
you?
Above all,
HOW DO WE GET OUR
MEMBERSHIP NUMBERS UP????
(Webmaster's Note: If you have any ideas, send us them! E-mail us at membership@tricountycc.org)
| President | Earl McGaha | 264-7950 |
| Vice Presidents | Jim Pfaff | 262-6805 |
| Tom Zimmerman | 264-5521 | |
| Secretary-Treasurer | Pat Johnston | 264-8726 |
| Librarians | Joe Luster | 682-7815 |
| Phillip Crosby | 264-1444 | |
| Editor | Harry Geiser | 682-7486 |
Make room for yet another must-know acronym in your computing lexicon: AGP.
The new Accelerated Graphics Port interface is designed to speed up the display of
graphics on Windows PCs -- particularly games with 3-D graphics. It should also have
pleasant side effects -- reducing the need for so much dedicated video memory on 3-D
graphics cards, which may, in turn, reduce their cost.
AGP is actually an internal interface or link between the graphics-controller
chips on today's 3-D cards and your PC's system memory (or RAM). This express lane
bypasses the PC's main data artery, or bus, speeding transfers of high-volume
graphics information from controller to screen. PCs with AGP can move graphics data
up to four times faster than today's models, which can result in more detailed and fluid
images onscreen. And since AGP allows a video card to use a system memory for 3-D
functions such as texture mapping and z-buffering, there's less need to load up video
cards with dedicated memory of their own. Many 3-D cards now come with 4- or even
8MB of dedicated video memory, which hikes their cost (or the cost of the new system
that they come with).
Getting AGP is not as simple as plugging in a new 3-D card, however. AGP
requires a new motherboard design, which will be incorporated into many new PCs
later this year. Most will be systems using either Pentium II or Pentium Pro
microprocessors. Acer, Compaq, Dell, Gateway, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, NEC, Sony,
and Toshiba are among the computer makers who say they'll incorporate the AGP in
their new systems. All of the major 3-D card makers say they'll support AGP as well.
Existing 3-D games and other graphics software will work with AGP without
modification. New games can be optimized for use with AGP. Some new arcade game
machines built around Pentium II chips will use AGP, too.--C.O.
Snail mail may soon be getting some electronic legs. The U.S. Postal Service is
quietly working with several companies to begin offering electronic stamps later this
year -- and possibly a host of other computerized mailing services down the road as
well.
Postage meters will be first to go digital. The Postal Service says it will soon
authorize several companies to sell electronic postage over the Internet. Upstart firms
such as E-Stamp Corp. of Palo Alto, California, and Neopost of Hayward, California,
have developed electronic postage meters, and meter king Pitney Bowes is working on
a similar system. The E-Stamp and Neopost schemes would each enable you to
purchase postage credits from a Web site, which would be downloaded to a small
electronic device that sits between your PC and printer. You can then print a special
postal bar code, or indicia, onto envelopes or labels. Security software would keep out
anyone who might be seeking to pilfer your printer's postage.
The Postal Service is expected to authorize one or more of these systems by
year-end as part of its goal to replace mechanical meters by March 1999. Eventually,
the Postal Service intends to offer a series of electronic services, including an e-mail
postmarking system that uses encryption. Thanks to a new postal "digital signature,"
the system lets e-mail senders and recipients verify when an e-mail was sent and be
sure it has not been tampered with. Return receipt, certified, and registered e-mail
services are in the works, too. Many of these services should be available in 1998 -- if
the post office delivers on time.--C.O.
For more than a decade, about the only thing you needed to know about the
sound card in your MS-DOS or Windows PC was whether it was compatible with
Creative Labs' Sound Blaster cards. You may want to take a closer look -- or listen --
to your next sound card, however.
Creative Labs is still at the forefront. Its new Sound Blaster Awe64 card can play
as many as 64 distinct voices. And in addition to wavetable synthesis, which plays back
the prerecorded sounds of actual instruments, the Awe64's software supports the
physical modeling of sounds, a mathematical approach that can produce a wider range
of sounds.
The next audio frontier for PCs is better surround sound. Creative and Diamond
Multimedia are among those using new "positional audio," which can not only deliver
the perception of sounds coming from the right and left (as 3-D audio does), but also
from above and below.
The prospect of a computer conversing with a host of "smart" appliances in your
home may be a giant step closer to reality, thanks to a breakthrough in wireless
technology at IBM's T.J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, N.Y.
IBM researchers have developed a radio frequency (RF) wireless transmission
system that can send and receive data without errors at speeds up to 10 megabits per
second (Mbps), comparable with the wired Ethernet networks used in many companies
today. Current wireless networking systems usually max out at 2Mbps. More important,
perhaps, IBM says it has achieved wireless speeds as high as 38Mbps under
laboratory conditions -- a speed that could easily transmit full-motion video and other
high-bandwidth types of information.
RF is considered a key technology for future home networks because of its low
cost and simplicity. There would be no need to rewire your home, for example, and
radio signals can work through walls, ceilings, and furniture (unlike light-beam
technologies, such as infrared). The key to IBM's breakthroughs is new algorithms and
codes that eliminate the multipath, or signal, reflection problems associated with indoor
RF systems. IBM's patent-pending system is the first to use the FCC's recently
allocated radio range that is known as the Unlicensed National Information
Infrastructure spectrum.--C.O.
Haven't looked up the definition of Patience, but that is one thing that the
computer has lots of. Have you ever noticed, how your computer will wait patiently for
hours, or days if necessary for the keystroke it is looking for before it can go on to the
next task? Unfortunately, I don't have that much patience. I spent over a month trying
to network two computers together, and in desperation took the cards out and put them
on the shelf for later sale or try again.
I really wanted to network the two "Beasts" together to facilitate backup of both,
and be able to send large files to the other computer. How do you get a 21MB file from
one computer to another? Or for that matter, 2MB? Especially if the file is already
compressed. PKZip and ZCP are fantastic programs, but are easily baffled by large
files.
I did find a rather expensive fix. Especially after the expense of buying the cards
and coaxial cables for the network cards. I followed a friend's advice and bought an
Iomega Zip Drive with 6 - 100MB disks. It is fantastic, and highly recommended for
those large files, backups, and just moving data in big 100MB chunks from one
computer to another.
Another place patience is needed is in the things I send out to members. I sent
a virus warning that I received over the Internet. Quite a few people E-Mailed me to
ask what happened to the file? WELLL, I LOST IT!!! My meticulous saving of
everything failed me!!! It was about a file named AOLTOOLS.EXE if you get it delete
it.... Harry