The never ending parade of products that pass through Chaos Manor continues. Some are clear winners, and some are, well... less than that. And this month look for artist David Em's impressions of the revolution in computer graphics. You'll find them in "Of Bug-Hunting and a New Frontier" in the February issue of BYTE.
Jerry Pournelle
Zip is the name of Iomega's removable-cartridge drive.
It's also the name of a file-compression algorithm. At one time, you compressed files by running a stand-alone program called PKZip, but now there are drag-and-drop zip control utilities. The best know
n of these is WinZip.
Although I like WinZip, there's one I like better. RT Computer's PROZip does everything WinZip does, and I find the interface a lot easier to use, remember, and understand. The interface is similar to Drag And File Gold Desktop's (Canyon Software), which will do zip operations, for that matter; but I find the PROZip interface more intuitive for archiving, and, of course, there are more
functions. With PROZip, you can drag and drop zipped files between archives without extracting them first. You can also use full or relative paths in creating directory structures for archives.
There's a big race between disk capacity and file size, and although disk capacity is winning just now -- it's astonishing how cheap a gigabyte has become -- I never underestimate the ability of applications programmers to use up disk space. I don't need to compress files for archiving this year, but by next year, who knows? And, of course, if you do much work on the Interne
t, you'll need good intuitive zip tools like PROZip, since many of the files you want come in zip format.
PROZip has a built-in capability to make self-extracting command files and the ability to build and use multivolume archives created by PKZip. WinZip can do that too, but it costs extra. PROZip is inexpensive, and you get all its functions, including encryption, for the same price. It's not PGP encryption, but for most of us it's good enough. (PROZip can be exported, so NSA must find it a snap to break. Oh, well.)
PROZip gives you the ability to comment archives and launch programs without extracting them. It comes with extensive on-line help. You can get a free extract-only version from
http://www.PROZip.com
. If you use a credit card -- on-line or by phone -- to send them $40, you get a 10-digit number
that unlocks the rest of the program's features.
Fair warnings, one minor, one major. Minor: I had some installation problems. They were solved by reading the readme file. Major, at least for some: PROZip doesn't yet handle long filenames. That's coming this year; it will be a free upgrade. On the other hand, most of the stuff I'm archiving comes from older DOS and Windows 3.x systems or from the Internet, and those all use short filenames, so I haven't noticed the limitation.
Try PROZip. You'll like it. Recommended.
Eric Pobirs, Chaos Manor's intern, has this to say about Zip Unleashed,
the new Zip-drive rechargeable battery pack:
"I've subjected Zip Unleashed to a battery of tests, so to speak. These may not be the sort of tasks someone would do out in the field, but they were demanding.
"First, I downloaded Netscape Navigator Gold 3.0 for Windows 3.1, a 5485-KB file. The Internet was being unusually cooperative in that the transfer went slowly but not slow enough to giv
e the drive more than a few seconds of inactivity. After completing the download, I installed the software and reconnected to search for more material. Over the course of nearly 2 hours, I obtained a total of 12 MB of material before the low-power light came on.
"This was for a parallel-port Zip drive. A SCSI unit with a better modem connection may last longer by performing more writes with the same amount of power. Normal usage with long idle periods should give up to 4 hours of use while also extending the battery life of the computer.
"The battery pack itself is a clever design, in keeping with recent Iomega standards. In use, it neatly clips to the top of the Zip drive and matches its appearance. The recharging prongs can turn to both 270 and 180 degrees for easy access to wall outlets and power strips. When not in use, the prongs and the AC power arm tuck away neatly to make a slim package a little larger than a pack of cigarettes.
"Iomega is due to release an internal Zip drive for laptops s
oon, but Zip Unleashed lets older machines take advantage of existing drives. In traditional Chaos Manor parlance, if you need Zip Unleashed, you probably need it bad."
Reader Daniel Dias reports that he had terrible problems:
he'd set WebWhacker to finding and downloading files, only to come back to find that his system crashed. This went on for weeks, until I told him by e-mail to look into his BIOS and shut down the energy management features.
That took care of his problem.
The "green" features on most computers are far too stupid to be useful. They look for keystrokes and mouse-moves, and die if they don't see any. They don't know about long downloads.
Thus, you have two choices: disable the silly things or don't leave your system unattended for long downloads; instead, wiggle the mouse once in a while.
Note that these things live at the BIOS level and can't be turned off in Windows 3.x, Windows 95 (Win 95), or DOS; you have to catch your machine at boot-up time, when
it will -- often very briefly -- tell you how to get to SETUP or something synonymous. (Ctrl-F1 or Del are the usual keystrokes.) After that, it depends on the BIOS. Sometimes the green features are out in the open; other times they are hidden under other menu titles. Some BIOSes make it clear what to do to change settings, such as watching interrupt request (IRQ) 3 so the computer stays awake when the modem's in use. Some don't. Some use the space bar to make changes. Others use the up and down arrow keys to change settings, right and left arrow to move through the menu, which is hardly intuitive.
My advice is, if you don't know what you're doing,
keep a good log
of what you've done. Log everything: how you got there, what the values were before you changed anything, how you exited. Don't write these notes on an old scrap of paper. Put them in a real logbook, one you'll keep. I now have nine volumes of computer logbooks. The first ones were those composition books sold in drugstores, but the pro
blem with those is there are no page numbers. I now use the Boorum and Pease 09-9132, which has page numbers, margins, and ruled lines. The big discount stationery stores don't often have them, but our local nonchain store orders them for me by the dozen -- I use them as my regular logbooks as well as computer logs.
One day, perhaps, energy-saving features will be ready for prime time. Microsoft has been flogging their OnNow plan for nine months now. When it's finally done, energy saving should be built so deeply into the OS that your computer will stay "awake enough" to do that long download, without your needing to know how or why. OnNow is essentially Advanced Power Management, version 3; in Microsoft tradition, the third time's the charm. Until OnNow is ready, though, APM just isn't reliable in this situation. Do yourself a favor and turn those green features off before they do something awful to you.
New products and new versions of old products continue to pile up
at Chaos Manor
.
If you use fonts, you need Adobe Type Manager Deluxe 4.0. It installs easily, manages fonts nicely, and is no trouble to use. Early users of ATM will recall that it was essentially ignorant of TrueType fonts; this version handles PostScript and TrueType fonts with equal skill.
It's pretty hard to report on perfection: ATM Deluxe 4.0 works about the way you wish a type manager would work. I don't use it an awful lot, because I tend to write either in Q&A Write or with a single font in Microsoft Word, and I almost never print anything. Every once in a while, I have to design something more complicated, and when I do, I'm glad I have ATM Deluxe 4.0. You may not need this, but if you do, you need it bad. Recommended.
Then there's L3 Systems' Keyat Keyboard Port Adapter. This is a small box that you connect with cables, one to the target PC or PCs, one to a keyboard, and one to an RS-232 port on a control PC. Now you can program the control PC to send keystrokes to the target or targets. You can also
record all keystrokes sent from the keyboard to the target and thus build test scripts.
Most of you won't need to do this, but if you're testing software for compatibility, error recovery, and the like, this lets you build test suites and execute them automatically. You can also send randomly generated keystrokes at various speeds. The Keyat Keyboard Port Adapter is another product most won't need, but some will need it badly.
And yet one more: the Neato CD Labeler Kit. This lets you design, print, and install professional-looking labels on CDs. More and more systems, like Joizy, my wife's Gateway 2000 P5-200XL, come with the ability to write data (or sounds for that matter) to a CD. Once you've done that, Neato's labeler can make it look like a professional job. The kit comes with everything you need, including 100 labels in gold, silver, and white. Sure, you could use a felt-tip pen, but if you've gone to the trouble to make a CD, don't you want it to look nice? The Neato CD Labeler Kit will take c
are of that.
Incidentally, while CD-ROMs are
read
by looking through the bottom (shiny) side, the data are actually stored on the
top
; thus, you want to be careful what you use to write on the label side with, because if you scratch the top, you've ruined the disc. I've had no problems with felt-tip pens using both water- and alcohol-based inks, but you sure wouldn't want to use a pencil or a ballpoint pen.
Pentafluge's CD-ROM drive works, but the door mechanism broke, so I went to Fry's to find a replacement. Two things: you can't buy a six-speed or slower IDE CD-ROM drive, and at Fry's, IDE starts at 10-speed (SCSI lags a bit; I got a six-speed SCSI). Second, the horrible caddies are gone! Gone! I hated those disc caddies from the first moment I saw them. I got a lot of hate mail when I denounced them. Now they're gone. Vindication. I gloat.
I have mixed feelings about SuperTutor Geometry from Accurate Research.
First, fair warning: this runs only in VGA mode.
You can get it running with Win 95 set at 1024 by 768 pixels, but the small window that forms on your screen cuts off the right side of the display. There's nothing for it but to go to Control Panel, change the display, and reset your machine. This makes it hard to do anything else when you're running the SuperTutor Geometry "tutorial."
Second, while it advertises itself as an interactive tutoring program, it really isn't. Instead, it's a well-structured and well-detailed series of illustrated lectures. The "interactive" feature consists of telling it to read the screen aloud, whereupon a pleasant female voice does just that; and here and there you'll find a button marked "show" or "display" that will bring up a rather disappointing animated illustration.
The good part is that SuperTutor Geometry is a complete course organized into digestible doses. Whether it's a better way to learn than from a book is another story: it is if the student will use this when a book would be left gathering dust. On the
other hand, my recollection -- from years ago, of course -- is that I learned as much from constructing figures and diagrams as I did from studying theorems. You're not likely to do that with this program, since it does that for you.
Many of today's students can't read. This program reads the book to you. I fear that's like putting a Band-Aid on a broken leg. With few exceptions, anyone who could learn geometry can learn to read, and learning to read is much higher in priority.
This program would be suitable as a supplement to geometry lessons, particularly from bad teachers, and as a way for precocious students to take geometry before their school will let them. Whether it's better than a good book depends on the student and study habits. Certainly it's harder to write marginal notes on the screen in pencil.
How fallen are the mighty.
Long ago, I got Datastorm's Procomm and then updated to Procomm Plus. I still have Procomm Plus in a DOS window, although I don't use it much any m
ore because for reasons I don't understand, it has a bad interaction with Win 95 and BIX that prevents ZMODEM uploads. Procomm Plus had a neat command-line structure that was pretty intuitive. Alt-D would take you into dial mode, Alt-H would hang up the phone, and Alt-X would exit the program.
When Datastorm brought out a Procomm Plus for Windows, it wasn't anything like the same program. Most of the intuitive commands were gone, and you had to take your hands off the keyboard and grab the mouse to accomplish much. I threw that version in the trash and stayed with the DOS version.
Now Quarterdeck has bought Procomm Plus and has put out a new Win 95 version. It has terminal, Internet, fax, and telnet capabilities, so at first glance it looks like just what I need. However, I do most of my e-mail communications through BIX, and for that I use Galahad, an automated program that goes out and gets all my mail and conference information. My Internet connection is done by direct dial to EarthLink using Earth
Link Network's EarthLink Total Access software. I use Netscape Navigator, Eudora Pro for mail, and Free Agent to look at newsgroups and such. Thus, I don't need a new communications program. On the other hand, Procomm Plus for DOS was so useful that I thought the new-and-improved one might do the same for communications in Win 95.
It doesn't. The installation is simple until you get to the last few screens; then, suddenly, it was asking for my newsgroup log-on name and password. I don't have either of those, so I left them blank and told it to proceed: after which I was facing the black screen of death. It took hardware reset, and when I did that, my system came up in safe mode.
Persistence got me past all that -- I have no idea what was wrong or what fixed it -- after which it was time to try Procomm Plus for Windows 95. It works, but it's awkward compared to the old Procomm Plus. There's no simple table to enter phone number, speed, data and stop bits, parity, and suchlike; instead, you have to clic
k your way through a bunch of menus. You can't see all the information at once or see what settings you've used to connect elsewhere while building a new entry. That data book is very awkward to use. In fact, I hate it.
The new-and-improved Procomm pays a lot of attention to Internet access and comes with Microsoft Internet Explorer 3.0. Of course, you can get Internet Explorer anywhere; they're practically dropping copies from airplanes. Moreover, your Internet service provider (ISP) should have -- and good ones will have -- easily installed programs for dial-up access. You don't need to buy a separate program for that, and the new-and-improved Procomm isn't a great improvement anyway.
In a word, Procomm has been "improved" in ways that don't help and often make it a lot less useful. It works, but HyperAccess works better and is at least as easy to set up and use. I was a Procomm fan for years, but this isn't the Procomm I was a fan of. Oh, well.
Readers of the "Web Exclusive" part of thi
s column on the BYTE Web site
may recall graphic artist David Em's problems negotiating with Seagate over a failed hard drive. We're happy to report they have sent him his new drive under the warranty, and it's better than the one he bought. Seagate makes some good top-end hard drives.
To help out, we lent David the Diamond Flower Doubleshot 133 dual-Pentium system. Because David does high-end graphics work, this gave him an opportunity to push the Doubleshot in ways that are well beyond what we do here at Chaos Manor. He loves that machine.
David helped me out, too. This month, I've got his impressions from years spent using a great deal of high-end graphics equipment, which I'm passing on to you. You'll want to check the printed version of this column for a full report.
Finally, here's the tip of the month:
Corel Office for Java. Look into it at the Corel Web site (
http://www.corel.com
). This may be the shape of things to come.
Product Information
Adobe Type Manager Deluxe 4.0.............$99.95 Windows and Mac
Adobe Systems, Inc.
Mountain View, CA
Phone: (800) 833-6687
Phone: (415) 961-4400
Fax: (415) 961-3769
Internet:
http://www.adobe.com
Keyat Keyboard Port Adapter...............$99.00
L3 Systems
Redmond, WA
Phone: (206) 836-5438
Fax: (206) 868-8706
Internet:
http://www.aa.net/L3
Neato CD Labeler Kit......................$79.95
Neato, Division of MicroPatent
East Haven, CT
Phone: (800) 984-9800
Phone: (203) 466-5170
Fax: (203) 466-5178
Internet:
http://www.neato.com
Procomm Plus 95....................about $139.95
Quarterdeck Corp.
Marina Del Rey, CA
Phone: (800) 683-6696
Phone: (310) 309-3700
Internet:
http://www.quarterdeck.com
PROZip....................................$39.95
RT Computer, Inc.
Rio Rancho, NM
Phone: (800) 891-1600
Phone: (505) 891-1600
Fax: (505) 891-1350
Internet:
http://www.prozip.com
SuperTutor Geometry.......................$34.95
Accurate Research, Inc.
Sunnyvale, CA
Phone: (800) 199-8802
Phone: (408) 523-4788
Fax: (408) 523-4789
Internet:
http://www.drcdrom.com
Zip Unleashed.............................$49.95
Iomega Corp.
Roy, UT
Phone: (800) 697-8833
Phone: (801) 778-1000
Fax: (801) 778-5763
Internet:
http:
//www.iomega.com
HotBYTEs
- information on products covered or advertised in BYTE
Jerry Pournelle is a science fiction writer and BYTE's senior contributing editor. You can write to Jerry c/o BYTE, One Phoenix Mill Lane, Peterborough, NH 03458. Please include a self-addressed, stamped envelope and put your address on the letter as well as on the envelope. Due to the high volume of letters, Jerry cannot guarantee a personal reply. You can also contact him on the Internet or BIX at
jerryp@bix.com
.
WEB EXCLUSIVE: Some I Like; Some I Don't
