by Andy Goodman
Hello SVCS members. Those of you who looked for the link mentioned last month (95 patches) can now find it on my Web Page at www.12c4pc.com Also in the very near future you will be able to read back copies of my articles as they were written before the censors chopped them up. Well I’m looking for another home for the Hardware and NT Sigs as the deal with Adaptec fell through. Seems my contact there has been downsized. I would like to try to warn you again of a couple of situations I have run into, so you can avoid them;
WARNING 1
Anyone thinking of going to Comdex in November. Let me warn you about Comfort Inn South. I had the misfortune to stay there last year. The place is overrun with Cockroaches and the management is rude and insulting. I went to the desk to complain about the uninvited guests in my room and they called me a liar. They would not come to the room to see them and they would not reduce the bill at all. I wrote "Signed Under Protest Cockroaches" on the credit card slip and went home I wrote to the head office of Comfort Inns and they told me it was between the individual motel and me, they would not get involved.
WARNING 2
Anyone who believes the story the banks tell us that goes "use your credit card and you are protected". Well I fell for that one and charged the room at Comfort Inn South to my Chase Bank Card. When I called Chase to tell them not to pay Comfort they told me to wait till the bill showed up. When the bill showed up I wrote to them to stop payment like they advised me to. Including a copy of the credit card slip which I had previously written on "Signed Under Protest Cockroaches". 6 months later after numerous calls I got a letter that said they would not reverse the charge. It seems whether or not you are protected is at their whim. You have no say in the matter or the decision.
Yes I am going to Comdex again this year even though I was so disappointed last year. So if you have any special subjects you would like me to look into please send your requests to Comdex@12c4pc.com
Well the long awaited patch for Office 97 is out. You can Download Service Pack 1 at http://www.microsoft.com/officefreestuff/office/dlpages/sr1off97.htm or go to the DownHome Computers Site at www.12c4pc.com and follow the link there.
Microsoft* Does a Clinton style policy reversal. The folks in Redmond finally admitted that Windows NT 4.0* does have a fragmentation problem. It turns out that after about three to four weeks of uptime the system has a noticeable slowdown due to fragmentation. Microsoft is going to be including a watered down version of the DiskKeeper* de-fragmentation utility in Windows NT 5.0*. However for those of you using NT4.0 today I recommend Executive Software’s* regular DiskKeeper*. It is available now and the workstation version is $75.00 the only difference between the workstation and server versions is automation so if you only have 1 or two servers and don’t mind running the program yourself you can save a few hundred bucks. www.execsoft.com
I bought the Smart & Friendly 2006 internal CD-R drive, after hearing so many good things about it. I found it to be not so smart or friendly. It seems the help file which is the install mechanism can not be read from Win95 SRP2 or NT 4.0, so I called Smart and Friendly and they could not even help me through a manual install. Their recommendation was to install the older version of Win95. When I asked about a rewrite of the file and a new install disk they told me there was not one in the works. So if your stuck like I was you can go into the individual software directories on the installation CD and do separate installs which will get you up and recording but you will not be able to read the help file unless you put it in a old computer. Maybe I’m old fashioned but it does not sound like a smart or friendly product to me.
About the Author
Andy Goodman is a past Officer and Director of the SVCS, Inc. as well as a Licensed Microsoft OEM and Intel Registered IPD. He also owns and operates DownHome Computers a System Integration house in Santa Clara, CA. Andy has been involved with the electronics industry since 1975.
*All trademarks and copyrights are property of their respective owners.
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