3rd April 2001

With the demise of JAG's System 6 list, I've been asked to step into the void. I've just completed the FAQ and set everything up for System6, an email list for those who choose to stick with System 6.0.x.

The FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/lists/system6.html

To subscribe to the email list: mailto:system6-on@mail.maclaunch.com
Subscriptions will require verification to keep spammers off the llist.

Note that System6 is *not* a hardware list -- there are plenty of those. This list is all about System 6.0.x and the things that work with it.

Dan Knight

26th February 2001

Seems a while since we last heard anything about the anti-trust case. Well, since Microsoft lauched its appeal against the verdict to split the company into two most of the action has been on paper. Each side has provided written submissions to support its view. Microsoft has questioned the fairness of the judge in their comments.

Microsoft say, 'The district court judge's public comments would lead a reasonable observer to question his impartiality and, together with other procedural irregularities, the fairness of the entire proceedings.'

These comments may have something to do with what Judge Thomas Penfold Jackson told the New Yorker last November. He said, 'I think he (Gates) has a Napoleonic concept of himself and his company, an arrogance that derives from power and unalloyed success, with no leavening hard experience, no reverses. ... Microsoft executives don't act like grown-ups. ... If I were able to propose a remedy of my devising, I'd require Mr. Gates to write a book report on the biography of Napoleon to make him realise the errors of his ways.' The judge also compared Microsoft's claims of innocence to the protestations of gangland killers.

I guess the Americans are proud of their justice system and the impartiality of their judges!

In any event, it gets back to the courts this week, when each side has two and a half hours to put their case. The appeal judges then have to decide whether to uphold the earlier decision to split up Microsoft. There is no timescale on when the verdict has to be given.

If Microsoft manage to get the split up overturned the case will be sent back to the district courts to decide on new remedies. Watch this space for comment on the decision when it happens.

Brian Grainger

15th February 2001

This time last year I was reporting how Corel were very upbeat about their future, especially as they had entered the Linux fray in a big way and had apparently picked up Borland/Inprise. It was not long after that the wheels fell off the wagon. Corel reported bad figures, the shares plummeted and the Borland deal was called off because of that.

Finally, in October last year I reported that with Corel needing money desperately Microsoft had taken a stake in Corel. I was suspicious as to the reasons. Time would perhaps tell, I said at the time.

Well, at the beginning of this month we may have had the answer. Corel announced plans to sell its Linux division! At the time of the Microsoft buy-in Corel said its position on Linux would not change. Even now they say it will retain a stake in the sold off division.

What is Corel going to do next? Well, depending on which report you read, it is going to look at the web content and graphics market or it was going to cater for its customers who use Corel Draw and WordPerfect. The latter is going back to what it did before and it certainly will not harm Microsoft.

Jack Schofield in Computer Weekly points out that Corel have jumped on every band wagon that has rolled by. They were going to rewrite their Office suite in Java. They were going to produce a network computer. They were going to produce an Office suite for Linux. Surely, it seems a little strange that it is going to drop Linux and go back and do what it used to do, fairly successfully, in the old days?

Do I detect the hand of Microsoft somewhere? Clearly, the US Justice Department thinks so. It has launched an investigation of Microsoft's investments in Corel. This time they might have a realistic charge to level at the Seattle Svengalis.

Brian Grainger

9th January 2001

Following the sending of a URL to ICPUG recently I took my first steps in on-line gaming. The game in question was FreeCell, which I fnd quite addictive as it is a patience game that is possible, it appears, to get out, if enough thought is given to the process. The game itself can be found at:

http://server41.hypermart.net/christinewhite/

Because it is located on a free web server an ad pops up when you connect. It is easy enough to get rid of that junk. (It also puts a cookie on your machine which you may wish to get rid of). After choosing a name and password, purely for storing and recovering your scores, you can play away! Unfortunately, I do not have a fixed price unlimited time connection to the internet so I did not play too long, just sufficient to see that it works efficiently. I am told the game is written in Java and it ran fast enough for me. I can see that if the UK ever gets a cheap fixed price broadband Internet option this could be the way we play games in the future.

As with all the Internet the world is without boundaries. This game is hosted in South Africa. Perhaps one day it will not be necessary to pander to Chess Grand Master idiosyncracies to get them to play a World Championship. Just get them to play from their own preferered habitat over the Internet!

Brian Grainger

3rd January 2001

Robert Cringely in his book, 'Accidental Empires', written in 1992, forecast that the millennium bug would finally kill off the mainframe. Well, he did not get that right but maybe he was not far out in his thinking. In November 2000 IBM was left as the only maker of IBM compatible mainframes. Amdahl, its last competitor, announced it was discontinuing sales of its mainframe from March 2002. Hitachi and Comparex had finished earlier in the year. Even IBM itself has reported falling sales for over a year. Amdahl stated that new applications were going on to Unix and NT platforms so there was no money in the mainframe business.

One thing that Cringely did not mention in his book was the rise of the Internet, which shows how difficult forecasting can be. However, it may give rise to a new use for the mainframe. IBM have been very active of late in the e-business market and they have recently mentioned the support for Linux on its mainframes. Now comes news of a major step forward in this area. Telia, Scandanavia's largest telecommunications company, is replacing 70 web hosting servers with one IBM mainframe and a storage server, both running Linux. The S/390 mainframe can host more than 1500 virtual internet servers simultaneously. Telia says that having Linux on an S/390 means there is only one large system to support which almost never crashes. Telia has drastically reduced the time it takes to create a new web server because they no longer have to set up a new server every time.

Brian Grainger

11th October 2000

MICROSOFT TAKES A STAKE IN COREL

It was reported last week that Microsoft is to take a roughly 25% stake in Corel. Corel seem to have been floundering this year especially after their merger with Inprise was called off. The news of Microsoft's involvement immediately perked up Corel's share price. The official reason for the acquisition is to provide the foundation for an alliance for the .Net strategy. It all seems a bit odd to me. What does Corel have that Microsoft wants? A lousy rival to Microsoft Office? As Computing said recently - Corel Office is good but has a long way to catch up on MS Offfice. Perhaps MS are having trouble turning Office into a web based application and Corel have the expertise.

Some have suggested that it is to keep a rival company alive to appease the DOJ in the appeal hearings. Now that the appeal on the antitrust judgement has to be heard in the lower courts it is going to run for years so that the results will be of no effect by the time they are finished. I cannot see what use keeping a competitor, (a lousy one at that), alive. IBM and Sun are the real competitors to Microsoft with similar products. No doubt we will find out in due course, assuming Microsoft is allowed to acquire part of Corel by the regulators.

EVEN MICROSOFT CANNOT FIND THEIR WAY AROUND THEIR OWN WEB SITE!

For a little while now Microsoft have been advertising askIT in the trade press with the following blurb:

Searching for Microsoft information can sometimes be a difficult process, choosing the wrong route will often lead you back to where you started. But if you want to know where to find out about patches, downloads, Microsoft products and services, licensing, training, events and much more - contact Microsoft askIT - the information directory for IT professionals.

If Microsoft recognise moving around their sites can be tortuous why don't they make it easier rather than create another link! I tried askIT and it did seem to get me to the knowledge base much quicker than when I follow the normal routes. For all you non-professionals who want help the askIT link is www.microsoft.com/uk/askIT

BILL TURNS UP IN THE DAILY TELEGRAPH BRIDGE COLUMN

I think Bill must be thinking of retiring. He spent some time watching the Olympics and before then he competed in the Mixed Teams event at the US Summer Nationals Bridge tournament! He reached the finals apparently, but eventually finished up below average. However, he was good enough to have the honour of one of the hands he played discussed in the Bridge column of the Daily Telegraph (11 Oct 2000).

A USER'S REPORT OF WINDOWS MILLENNIUM

Phil Mortiboy writes:

I purchased Windows Me at the Airport on Wednesday prior to a trip for Pisa. It was £34 - bargain! (Ed: It is on special offer everywhere at the moment). I took a giant leap and installed it on Thursday. The whole process lasted at least two hours. I spent the next one trying to figure out why my modem didn't work.   The new help screens are brilliant, (they do take a couple of minutes to boot up mind you). They offered up so many solutions to my problem;WSOCK32.DLL, conflict with the infrared ports,  telephone number change by my ISP.......   It was then it occurred to me my whole machine was running like a dog. It hung like one now and again as well! Old windows never die they only linger on your screen - the graphics were also pretty sluggish.   Friday I discovered Windows ME's best feature - uninstall.   Now I am back to Windows 98 and ME is going on sale tomorrow.

(Ed: No operating system should take 2 hours to install. What the hell does Millennium do for that time? This is the last straw. I'm sick at the way Microsoft are taking Windows. I won't be installing Millennium.)

Brian Grainger

13th September 2000

It is beginning to look as if the US Justice Department has a personal vendetta against Bill Gates. It is now reported to be interested in Bill's other company. Back in 1989, Bill started a company to create a photographic archive. It now trades under the name of Corbis and over the past few years has grown by acquisition. It has built up a large archive of celebrity, historical and sports images. Corbis licences the images it has for others to use. The DOJ is reported to be talking to the industry to discover whether Corbis is developing a monopoly. (If you were a competitor what would you say?).

Apparently one of the competitors of Corbis is Getty Images. Both have rights to about the same number of images but Getty's revenues are thought to be 4 times those of Corbis. What justification does the DOJ have for even thinking that Corbis is a monopoly? Has somebody got a personal grudge against Bill?

Whatever is going on Bill seems to be taking it in his stride. A week or so ago Bill celebrated the 25th anniversary of the founding of his more famous supposed monopoly by closing headquarters for a day, giving 20,000 employees the day off and hiring Seatle's baseball stadium to host a free concert.

Brian Grainger

9th September 2000

The company where I currently work issued the following to staff on the 7th July.

The company has received an e-mail entitled 'U.S. President - FBI Top Secret'. It contains a virus. If you receive such an e-mail delete it immediately - DO NOT OPEN IT. Early information is that it corrupts GIF, JPG type files and MS Outlook.

Sounds like a Love Bug type virus that we need to be on the look out for.

Brian Grainger

22nd August 2000

IBM CREATES SECURITY CHIP

IBM have announced a chip which holds a security password is available for use on desktop and laptop computers. When set up the chip is embedded into the motherboard of the PC. The chip gives enhanced security over existing PC password schemes in that the password is heavily encrypted and cannot be removed by disconnecting the on-board battery.

As with all security solutions the big problem is going to be when the user forgets their password? How easy is it going to be to recover use of the PC? And how easy is it to change the password when the machine is allocated to another user?

MICROSOFT GIVES FREE INTERNATIONAL PHONE CALLS

Microsoft's MSN Messenger service has been enhanced with a voice chat facility which enables free PC to phone telephone calls from anywhere in the world to North America. Users will only pay their normal ISP charges. Additional routes are planned for the future.

MICROSOFT PROFITS MARGINALLY UP

Microsoft profits for the quarter ending 30th June were $2.41 billion (from revenues of $5.8 billion) compared with $2.2 billion (from $5.76 billion) for the same period last year. Kind of interesting to note that 41% of revenues is profit!

COREL CREATES PARTNERSHIP WITH HP

In late June Corel announced it was bundling Print House 2000 with certain HP products. More recently they have said that they will bundle PhotoPaint 8 for Power Macintosh and Corel Print Office 2000 for Windows with HP Scanjet 5370C scanner.

STAR OFFICE TO BECOME OPEN SOURCE

Star Office, Sun's free Office suite, will become open source software in October. On the 13th of that month the source code for the suite is to appear on the web at www.openoffice.org. The aim is to allow development to continue at community pace, with the hope that a serious rival to Microsoft Office will appear, I guess.

ASP PRICES

At the end of July a company called FutureLink announced prices for RENTING Microsoft Office. The starting price is £79 per user per month. At these prices there does not seem much point in the ASP model. After 2 months you could have bought a copy at the full retail price!

WHISTLER

The interface of the next incarnation of Windows, code named Whistler, was shown off recently by Microsoft. The Start Menu of Windows 9x is replaced be a web based interface. Options called Start Panel and Start Page replace the Windows 9x Start Menu and Active Desktop. The Start Panel has two columns, one of which has icons for Internet Explorer and the most recently accessed applications. The second column, My Places, has links to common system locations and utilities. The Start Page is a bucket for frequently used programs, document, etc. within a desktop environment.

I am getting sick of a new interface with every leap of Windows, each one getting more banal than the previous one. Microsoft can dumb down the interface as much as they like, novice users will still not be able to make use of a PC properly! Time to turn to Linux and get a real man's interface?

Brian Grainger

25th July 2000

In the past few days Microsoft have quietly released the latest version of Internet Explorer for the PC. It is version 5.5 and being a point release is not a great change from the last version 5.1. In fact there are very few noticeable changes on the surface. However, underneath the bonnet there are several new and revised APIs that can be used by developers to enhance the brwoser interface. I.E. 5.5 is the first step along the path of Microsoft's recently announced .Net strategy. Bill Gates said that the browser becomes the interface with developers building aplications upon it. This is the reason for modifying the APIs.

I.E. 5.5 has improved support for dynamic HTML and cascading style sheets as well as including new graphic manipulation enhancements. The security patches to cope with recently released viruses such as Love Bug and Kak Worm are also in as standard.

I.E. 5.5 is/will be available from the usual download sources and will be included in the first service pack for Windows 2000, which is to be released very soon.

Brian Grainger

18th July 2000

By now BT should be rolling out the its ADSL technology, if it stuck to its original plans. ADSL is the cheaper form of ISDN which allows unlimited Internet access for a fixed fee per month, along with vastly superior speeds to the 56K modem. Germany has had ADSL for some time. BT has been dragging its feet in implementing a UK version. Some commentators have suggested this is because it would undermine the profits made on their notoriously expensive ISDN system.

Just recently BT have announced that they are delaying the rollout of ADSL, saying that it needs more testing time. BT has said that mass rollout of ADSL could result in a poor service for customers because of interference between lines and that the trials so far have been too small to identify problems. This interference problem was known about, (from the German experience), before BT started its ADSL trials so why did it not size them appropriately from the start? Clearly BT are using it as an excuse to continue their delay on ADSL.

BT is also coming under fire for delaying access to telecoms links needed by ISPs such as Alta Vista in order to provide their unmetered Internet access products.Oftel ruled at the end of May that BT should provide a wholesale product to other teleoms within a reasonable time. Some are saying the delay is deliberate so that Surftime, its own offering, gets a head start in the market.

It seems to me that Oftel is a paper tiger. It is good at making pronouncements against BT but absolutely useless in ensuring BT adheres to them. They have said BT must open the local loop to competition by July 2001. Why so long and are they doing anything to ensure BT actually meets the date? The European Union have now stepped in and said that BT must open up the local loop by the end of this year! I suspect they will have as much success at that as getting the French to lift its ban on British beef.

Brian Grainger

16th July 2000

Do you remember when Kevin Mitnick was convicted for cracking in the USA? Back in 1995 he pleaded guilty, after being caught accessing computer systems of banks, telecom companies and computer companies. It was not proven that he stole anything and he said he ws motivated by the intellectual challenge. However, after three years of trying he was caught and he got a tough sentance.

Kevin was released in Jnauary of this year and part of the conditions of release were that he did not work in the computer industry nor use modems, software, mobile phones or anything else that could link him to the Internet.

Now a judge has ruled he cannot even use a typewriter! Using the typewriter he was to write a column for a new website but his probation officer forbade it. The judge confirmed this was justified. Kevin has also been banned from travelling to teach a senate committee about computer security.

After the judges ruling Mitnick said he was only trying to make a living.

I thought when you had done your time you were supposed to be free to pursue a normal life, not be persecuted forever?

Brian Grainger

5th July 2000

You may have read recently about a computer error in a Sheffield hospital which resulted in some pregnant women being wrongly advised that their babies were at a low risk of developing Downs Syndrome. It now turns out that the reason was a programming error discovered in the hospital's Pathlan system. This system calculates the risk of Down's Syndrome from an analysis of blood test results and the mother's age amongst other things. Apparently the program calculates the mother's age from her date of birth and, after January 4th, 2000, the calculation was done incorrectly. The hospital has refused to say whether the error was due to the programmer ignoring the Y2K effect but investigations are ongoing.

Brian Grainger

27th June 2000

In the trade newspapers Novell has started to rerun its advertisement. It starts as follows:

'*When you take a look at the success of Benetton Formula 1, you'll find Novell....'

It ends:

'... So when Benetton Formula 1 races, Novell guarantees there's a little extra in the tank.'

When I first saw the ad, around the time of the British Grand Prix, Benetton, with 8 points, languished in joint 4th place in the Constructors Championship. Almost half way through the season they have climbed to 3rd with 18 points behind Ferrari's 84 and Mclaren's 66. That's hardly championship winning success. Strikes me that the little extra in the tank guranteed by Novell is water, not petrol!

Still, full marks for an advert which tells the truth for once! Arguably, Novell are now in 3rd or 4th place (behind Linux, NT, Unix) in terms of new network systems sales.

Brian Grainger

20th June 2000

This time last year, when the Amiga was in Gateway's hands, some of us were expecting Gateway to use Amiga technology as the basis for their entry into the Internet Appliance market (IAM). However, a year is a long time in computing and Amiga is no longer part of Gateway. Nevertheless, Gateway still wants to hit the market and just recently they announced their intentions. The announcement highlights the potential for the IAM to create a paradigm shift away from the present Wintel hegemony. Intel and Microsoft are nowhere to be seen in Gateway's plans.

Instead of using an Intel chip the Gateway IA will use Crusoe chips from Transmeta. The TM3120 and TM5400 are pencilled in for use in the Gateway IA range.

Linus Torvalds, (of Linux fame), works for Transmeta. For much of last year they had a web page that said - "This page is not here yet". It finally appeared at the beginning of this year with announcements of a new type of microprocessor that, by the use of software, can emulate any other processor. One of its major features is the novel way it works, thereby reducing the amount of battery power required when used in a portable device. The chips are also cheaper than Intel alternatives.

As well as using the Transmeta chips Gateway have also moved away from Windows for their IA. They will be using a version of Linux. This should help to reduce costs still further. The IA device is expected to cost around $500.

Brian Grainger

13th June 2000

In my 2nd March piece about Corel I mentioned that they had picked up Inprise and their development tools. At that time the merger was going through the motions but things came to a halt recently. In February, Inprise shareholders were to get about 0.75 of a Corel share for each Inprise share, but since then the Corel share price dropped 66%! This may be due in part to the first quarter loss of £7.9m announced in March. Total revenues were £28m with the Linux contribution being £1.5m. The Chief Executive had predicted Linux revenues of £13-19m for the full year so he has some catching up to do in the next three quarters!

After Inprise asked for a review by an investment bank the deal was called off. The question remains, Where does Corel go from here? They had warned the Canadian Securities and Exchange Commission that the money could run out unless the merger with Inprise went ahead. Watch this space!

Brian Grainger

Update 21st June 2000

Corel has cut just over 20% of the workforce, mainly from their headquarters in Canada. However around 70 workers in the international divisions have been laid off. In true altruistic mode the Chief Executive, Michael Cowpland has opted to forego his salary. Corel are looking for cuts of $40 million.

Brian Grainger

5th June 2000

Have you bought a PC in Y2K and found it reboots itself or hangs for no reason? If so you may have fallen foul of Intel's latest cock up. (Remember the Pentium that couldn't add up?) PCs with motherboards using the i820 chip set and fitted with SDRAM will certainly exhibit the problem. Other motherboards may be affected.

The i820 chip set includes a memory translator hub (MTH) chip which allows the motherboard to support the new RamBus memory or the cheaper SDRAM. It is the MTH chip that is the source of the problem, which only occurs when SDRAM is used. If RamBus (RBRAM) memory is fitted there is no problem. Any motherboards using the MTH chip with SDRAM may be affected. Intel have released a tool to determine if a PC is affected at www.intel.com/support/MTH/.

Hewlett Packard have had to issue an alert concerning their Kayak XM600 and XU800 models and will upgrade the SDRAM to RBRAM for affected customers. Dell say that all their i820 based PCs have had RBRAM fitted so they are not affected. Gigabyte, the motherboard manufacturer, have released a customer letter offering a refund but claim that their products do not appear to be affected.

Intel have not said when a corrected MTH chip will be released but some reports suggest it could be as late as 3rd quarter 2000.

Brian Grainger

18th May 2000

Dave Rose has sent me the following:

                       *#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#* BIG BIG WARNING *#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#*

                THERE IS ANOTHER PARTICULARLY NASTY VIRUS GOING AROUND ON THE COMPUTER

                IF YOU GET AN EMAIL WITH "LET'S WATCH TV" IN IT DO NOT OPEN IT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES

                IT WILL TOTALLY DESTROY YOUR COMPUTER AND AND ANY INFORMATION ON IT, UNREPAIRABLE !!!!!

            WORLD WIDE WARNINGS ARE BEING SPREAD ABOUT THIS AFTER THE RECENT

            "I LOVE YOU" VIRUS THAT CRIPPLED COMPUTERS ALL AROUND THE WORLD,

             PASS THIS MESSAGE ON TO ANY FRIENDS WITH COMPUTERS.

It has been written using some code from Norton Utilities, therefore it can get under the OS and overwrite some system vectors. First thing it does is wrap the harddrive heads around the hub of the drive. Second it resets all of the voltages stored in the bios to absolute maximum. Depending on the power pack this will put close on 24 volt through circuits designed for 5 and 12 volt. Result the motherboard and everything attached to it are instantly TOASTED. Go buy a new computer, Thank you..............
Delete the unopened attachment and you are safe.

 

                        *#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#*

I am putting this message here just in case. I am, however, a bit sceptical and wonder whether it is a hoax, playing on the Love Bug disaster. Having checked my BIOS manual I see no settings that would allow voltages to be reset. It monitors some voltages and will start and stop the computer by various means but the ability to adjust voltages seems highly unlikely to me. Anyway, the simple approach to combat all such viruses is not to open any attachments that you do not know about, especially if they are .exe or .vbs files!

News Update: 23 May 2000

The above virus now appears to be confirmed as a hoax. Have a look at:

http://www.sophos.com/virusinfo/scares/kali.html

Although the text is slightly different to that given on the Sophos site the Subject is the same and since it is a hoax the hoaxer could alter the text at will.

Brian Grainger

16th April 2000

Corel is heavily commited to the open source movement and WordPerfect Office, DRAW and Photo-Paint are being ported to the LINUX platform.

Corel LINUX OS can be downloaded for free at www.corel.com.  However, for customers that don't want to incur a lengthy Internet connection time, the product can be purchased from many UK retail outlets for somewhere between £60-£70.
(Brian Grainger: Corel Linux OS plus Wordperfect 8 Light is available as a cover disk on the May 2000 Issue of Personal Computer World. Presumably this is equivalent to the download version.
I have now seen the retail version advertised by Technomatic at £41.11 inc. VAT plus £10 delivery and at £46.99 plus free delivery from The PC Bookshops).

Please be aware that the box product purchased through retail outlets contains a user guide, 30 days installation only technical support, Netscape Communicator, Adobe Acrobat Reader, Instant Messenger, 20 additional Bitstream and Type 1 fonts and Corel WordPerfect 8 for LINUX.  The download version does not contain these extra features.

Corel WordPerfect 8 for LINUX has been offered free of charge on the front of some UK PC magazines over the past few weeks - some magazines have added it without Corel's knowledge or consent!

Please note that WordPerfect Office 2000 for LINUX is releasing this month (which will include WordPerfect 9 for LINUX).  We're fully aware that StarOffice is being offered for free, however it is my understanding that StarOffice is not fully compatible with Microsoft Office.

We've seen some 100,000 downloads of Corel LINUX OS over the past 3 months which now means we have around a 32% market share (based on US figures).

Pauline Munro-Thomson
Corporate Account Manager

6th December 1999

Horace Delaney has started a very useful service for PC users who buy computer magazines for the programs on the cover disks. His web site at www.covercd.co.uk lists programs available on the major UK PC magazines cover disks. Brief descriptions are given together with any restrictions that apply. The site also includes a search engine to find that program and also supports an e-mail forum which looks quite interesting. Now you do not have to buy the mags unless there is something on it that you want..

3rd November 1999

I have had a couple of queries concerned with setting up Eudora to work with Freeserve. The problem seems to be a conflict between where Freeserve puts the @ in the e-mail address and where Eudora expects it to be. Tery Connell had this problem and he eventually solved it by having a look at:

www.leuty.freeserve.co.uk/freeserve/otppp.html

The pages there explain how to set up Eudora on a Macintosh for access to Freeserve.

22nd October 1999

Now it has been found that Windows 98 Second Edition doesn't like AMD processors of 350Mhz and over, just like Windows 95. The latest finding is that the above combination and any USB device "might not work properly" when set up on a motherboard with a VIA chipset, such as the MVP3 or the VIA Apollo Pro and Pro+.

Windows 98 original is presumably OK.

There is a fix to download from -

http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q240/0/75.asp

In the last edition of the paper newsletter an article gave a little program in Microsoft Word 6 Macro Language to solve anagrams. This program would work on single words only. If you are looking for something that will work with and provide phrases then look no further. It is written in DOS and it is crude but it does the job perfectly.

Have a look at Jim Williamson's website for a neat little salmon ravager, I mean anagram solver.

Are you looking for a good Computer deal? Either a new model, or an upgrade? Then look no further than Brian Fowler Computers Ltd. Everything from AMIGA to PC. Visit our Website for full details.

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