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November 1997 Newsbyte | |
EDITOR'S
CORNER
November and elections! Where did summer and fall go?? I marvel that the
older one gets the faster time flies. When you get my age, it just shoots by. Hope all
of you can make the November meeting to participate in the elction of officers for 1998.
Earl has done a good job in 1997 so I'll nominate him for 1998. Come and exercise
your constitutional right.
Here at computer ranch, things are humming along nicely. I read a
review of the new Epson Color Stylus - 600 and had to have one. The colors are out of
this world and at 5 - 6 pages per minute in black, I can do 15 copies of the newsletter in
no time compared to the HP-540. I think it took nearly a minute to do a page. First
trials are excellent. But then you expect that from Epson!!
Speaking of new developments, I went to a Hamfest recently and saw a black
and white TV camera that was delivering a beautiful picture of the attendees' -- what is
so remarkable about that you ask? The camera was only ½" cube!! The article on
cameras in this issue reminded me of this. Immagine a camera that small, although
only black and white, it was sharp and clear.
Brian Powell and I have worked out a constitution for the club. It will be
available to you our web page, and by request in December. Stay tuned fans!!!
| 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 |
With the introduction of more than 20 new models so far this year, digital
cameras are now a plentiful species. But if the latest litter is any indication, they are still
a long way from bearing any family resemblance.
Sony's Mavica ($599) is a large, boxy, heavy camera, but it houses something
that's comfortingly familiar: a standard floppy disk. That makes transferring images from
camera to computer very easy. (Most cameras store their pictures on miniature flash
memory cards and rely on cables to transfer pictures to PCs.) The Mavica also has a
relatively generous 2.5-inch color LCD viewfinder, and in the $799 version, a 10x
power zoom.
Sharp's VE-LC1 ($749) has the same large LCD, but in a much smaller, lighter
package. And it has a built-in infrared port for transmitting images wirelessly to a
computer (an infrared adapter for PCs is also included). It lacks a flash, but has a
video-out port for showing pictures on a TV. Toshiba's even smaller PDR-2 ($499)
takes another route toward getting its digital pictures into computers: The camera's
back panel flips open and slides into a laptop's PC Card reader. Toshiba also says it
plans to offer an adapter enabling its removable memory cards to fit into a floppy
drive.
Thinking small? Mitsubishi's DJ-1000 ($249) is the slimmest, lightest digital
camera yet, at less than 1 inch thick and weighing a mere 2 ounces. Neither it nor the
Toshiba model sports an LCD screen or flash, however. Panasonic's CoolShot 601A
($549) is slim, too, but it's vertically oriented like a portable tape recorder, with an
attachable LCD screen. You actually can talk into Nikon's Coolpix 300 ($699), which
looks like a handheld organizer and lets you record voice snippets and handwritten
notations (with an included stylus), and snap pictures as well. More conventional
cameras, such as Fuji's DX-5 ($399) and Ricoh's RDC-300 ($450), round out an
increasingly affordable digital field.
While most of these cameras record images in VGA resolution (640 by 480), not
everyone has forsaken higher pixel counts. Epson's new PhotoPC 600 snaps digital
pictures at 1,024 by 768 pixels.
There is still a "gotcha" with many of these new digital cameras: Battery life can
be very brief, typically ranging from 30 to 60 minutes on models with LCD screens.
Sony's Mavica is the exception. Its rechargeable lithium-ion battery pack delivers up to
3.5 hours of use in playback or recording mode. -- Chris O'Malley
So what do you do with your electronic pictures once you snap them with a
digital camera? Well, you can print them with a color inkjet printer, or you can do what
you do with your 35mm film: Have someone else turn them into prints.
Several companies are offering to turn digital snapshots into prints.
Kodak already offers
that option through Microsoft's Picture-It software. Simply choose the Print at Kodak
option and send the pictures via modem. Kodak is broadening that approach with its
new online Kodak Picture Network, which by fall will enable you to upload pictures from
any digital camera and receive prints by mail or
send prints of your digital images to family or friends. Fuji is readying a similar system
called the Fujifilm Digital Imaging Service. Kodak and Fuji are also experimenting with
retail services that would let you bring digital camera memory cards or floppy disks into
a store and have the images converted to prints.
Such services go beyond traditional photofinishers, too. A new company called
http://www.pictra.com/. Pictra offers a digital processing service called PictraNet that
lets you upload digital pictures, order prints or enlargements, send electronic postcards
via e-mail, or publish photos on a Web site. -- Chris O'Malley
Virgin Interactive's SubSpace, a space shoot-'em-up game, handles up to
120 players. You can team up with other players or go it alone. To get around latency
issues, Virgin gives the spaceships large turning radiuses. This enables your computer
to more accurately predict the movement of opponents, resulting in smoother
play.
Not all of the new Net games are of the action genre. Role-playing games like
Origin System's Ultima Online and simulation games like Cryo Interactive's
Intervention (a God simulation game) and Imagic Online's Warbirds 2.0 (a World War
II air-combat simulator) have been designed for human interplay via the Internet.
--Suzanne Kantra Kirschner
On the heels of the first DVD players aimed at replacing VCRs, the first wave of
home computers with DVD-ROM drives instead of familiar CD-ROM readers is now
here.
Several new DVD-ROM computers are due by late summer or early fall,
including new versions of Compaq's Presario models, IBM's Aptiva series, and
Toshiba's Infinia line. DVD-ROM drives will show up first in high-performance models
costing $2,500 to $3,500, but are expected to rapidly work their way down the price
scale. Several big PC makers, including Apple and Packard Bell, have yet to introduce
computers with DVD-ROM drives but say it's only a matter of time.
What does DVD-ROM in a home PC buy you? Not much for now, save for the
dubious privilege of playing DVD movies in your computer. Few DVD-ROM titles are
available, though many of today's multidisc CD-ROM titles, such as phone directories
and sophisticated games, should
be on DVD discs soon. But DVD-ROM drives can play standard CD-ROM discs
in the meantime.
DVD-ROM is a more compelling addition in PC-TV combinations, since the new
drive can serve both as your DVD movie player and computer disc reader. To that end,
Gateway has just introduced a new DVD version of its Destination Big Screen PC. --
Chris O'Malley
Here's a tip for Windows 95 users from the PCHelp Desk team: Windows
95 provides several ways for you to copy files. One of the easiest
ways is to click on the file in any Explorer or My Computer window,
then select Copy (Ctrl+C) in the Edit Menu. Open a window where you
want to place the copy and select Paste (Ctrl+V) from the Edit menu,
and your file will be copied.
Another way to copy a file is to have both the window where the file
is, and the window to where the file will be copied to open at the
same time on the desktop. Hold the Ctrl key down, and drag the file
to its new location.