GREATER BOSTON SENIOR COMPUTER GROUP NEWSLETTER
Issue No.42, October 9, 2002
CHAIRPERSON:: Arline Ekman, AVE@alumni.unh.edu
EDITOR: Harriet Mandell, harrietd@rcn.com
WEB PAGE: Garry Ziffer, http://users.rcn.com/gbscg
LIAISON: Eve Welts, ewelts@rcn.com
************************************************************
TECH HELP AVAILABLE 24/7 at many internet sites. For help with Outlook Explorer try the talented Tom at http://www.tomsterdam.com/insideoe. You will find answers to questions you didn’t know you had as well as how to import your address book and mail folders and messages if they seem unavailable.
************************************************************
ANOTHER RESOURCE http://www.virtualdr.com where you can join discussions, post your problems and get help. This group is a part of another site of interest http://www.internet.com.
************************************************************
SAVE SOME MONEY by using third-party papers, though you will have to experiment to see which brands work with your printer. The bottom line: Select your printing hardware and supplies carefully, because printers, inks, and papers are not created equal. Read the Fade Factor in http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,105461,tk,wb100702x,00.asp
************************************************************
REPRINTED FROM THE WEBPAGE http://users.rcn.com/gbscg/bulletin.shtml by Garry Ziffer Go there for directions to the eicar program! To protect yourself against viruses, trojans and worms, you need to keep your anti-virus program up to date. Even more important, the anti-virus program needs to be turned on and working properly. It is important to verify this or you won't get much protection. For test purposes, there is a program called eicar.com which is totally harmless but is recognized by all anti-virus programs as a "virus". I have compressed the eicar.com file into eicar.zip. Eicar should be detected even in compressed form but not necessarily deleted. Click on the link on the bulletin board to download it and see if it gets detected. If it doesn't, figure out why because otherwise you won't have any protection.. As a second step, you might also want to check if your system detects viruses in e-mail attachments. To do that, download eicar.zip, turning off your anti-virus program if necessary, and send yourself some e-mail with eicar.zip as an attachment. After turning your virus protection back on, download your e-mail. Ideally, you should immediately be notified that an attachment has a virus. Since writing the above, I've been told that Norton Anti-Virus doesn't detect viruses inside zipped files. That's not so good. However, you can still check out your system by unzipping eicar.zip and using eicar.com as an attachment. That should certainly trigger an alarm. If it doesn't, you don't have much protection against viruses
************************************************************
CHECK OUT http://answersthatwork.com to understand what shows up in your task list when you press “control-alt-del” to see what is running on your system in the background. Sent by Eve.
************************************************************
LOOKING FOR FREE SOFTWARE? Earle Barcus invites us to try http://www.djbdesigns.com/wtvzone/downloads.html
************************************************************
MEL RICHMOND ASKS, “Own a scanner and a printer? Why not combine those two into a copy machine? Photcopier will help you. Just put a document on your scanner’s glass, start the Photocopier program and press its Copy button. After a few moments, your printer produces a copy of the document. Eliminates the need to scan the document first. Best of all this is a free program which can be downloaded from http//www.nicocuppen.com
************************************************************
WONDERING WHETHER that email warning you received about a virus is a hoax? Don’t panic! First check it out with DOE’s Computer Incident Advisory capability at http://hoaxbusters.ciac.org/ says Chan Touart.
************************************************************
WORD 2000 PROVIDES many ready-made shapes, called AutoShapes, that you can add to your documents. Word can only display AutoShapes in the Print Layout and Web Layout views. To place an AutoShape in your document, follow these steps: Choose View, Toolbars, Drawing to display the Drawing toolbar. Click AutoShapes. Click the type of AutoShape you want to add. Click the AutoShape you want to add. Position the mouse plus sign where you want to begin drawing the AutoShape. Drag the mouse plus sign until the AutoShape is the size you want. The AutoShape appears in your document. The handles around the AutoShape let you change the size of it. To hide the handles click outside the AutoShape anywhere in your document.
************************************************************
THE FIND OF THE MONTH is http://boston.craigslist.org/ for placing classifieds for sale or wanted as well as many other issues. This is like the non-corporate environment of the computer from the era of bulletin boards and displays a community spirit. There is no fee and you manage your own listings. Although it has a nationwide access, you can choose to limit it to the Boston area. If anyone uses this successfully, please let me know.
************************************************************
XP COMPATABILITY WITH OLD PROGRAMS...one of the most powerful features of Windows XP is its capability to run programs designed for earlier systems, even DOS. If you have one of those programs in your possession, browse to the application file for the program in Windows Explorer, right click to Properties and click the “Run this program in compatability Mode for” box. Select the Windows version for which the program was intended and click the Display Settings checkbox appropriate for the program, if you know the correct settings. Click OK, then double click on the program file and use the program.
************************************************************
WANTED: URL's of web sites; Helpful hints for Mac users, Win 95/98/ME/XP. Software reviews, desired topics for future meetings. Send these items via email to the editor. Please sign your email with your name. We will publish your email address, but not your name, phone number or address without your permission