The Champaign-Urbana Computer Users Group

The Status Register - April, 2000


This newsletter will never appear on CUCUG.ORG before the monthly CUCUG meeting it is intended to announce. This is in deference to actual CUCUG members. They get each edition hot off the presses. If you'd like to join our group, you can get the pertinent facts by looking in the "Information About CUCUG" page. If you'd care to look at prior editions of the newsletter, they may be found via the Status Register Newsletter page.
News     Common     PC     Mac     Amiga     CUCUG

April 2000


To move quickly to an article of your choice, use the search feature of your reader or the hypertext directory above. Enjoy.

April News:

The April Meeting

The next CUCUG meeting will be held on our regular third Thursday of the month: Thursday, April 20th, at 7:00 pm, at the Bresnan Community Center. Directions to the Bresnan are at the end of this newsletter.

The April 20 gathering will be one of our split SIG meetings. Jack Melby will be giving the Macintosh SIG a closer look at ViaVoice, IBM's speech recognition software. The PC SIG is a bit of a mystery. I'm sure the WinSIGgers have something up their collective sleeves. They just haven't divulged what it is.

ToC

Welcome New Members

We'd like to welcome the newest members of our group, joining us in the last month: Steve Anderson (PowerMac G4), Christopher Alan Raffety (A500/2000/4000), Downtown Amiga, Inc. (A500/1000/1200/2000/3000/4000, and others).

We'd also like to thanks renewing members Don Shaffer, William B. and Nancy Smith, and Jim D. Hughey.

We welcome any kind of input or feedback from members. Have an article or review you'd like to submit? Send it in. Have a comment? Email any officer you like. Involvement is the driving force of any user group. Welcome to the group.

ToC

Microsoft Violated Anti-Trust Laws

TidBITS#525/03-Apr-00

U.S. District Court Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson has ruled that Microsoft Corporation violated the Sherman Anti-Trust Act by using its position in the Web browser market to "the detriment of competitors." The judge also found that Microsoft could be liable under state anti- competition laws. Judge Jackson must now schedule hearings later this year to consider remedies for Microsoft's actions, which could include structural changes to the company, business restrictions, or an actual breakup of the company. The only major point on which Judge Jackson disagreed with the government's case was that Microsoft's marketing arrangements with other companies did not ultimately exclude Netscape's browser software from the worldwide browser market. Microsoft has repeatedly said it would appeal any ruling against it; experts estimate the case could easily drag out to the year 2002. Microsoft stock was down nearly 15 percent in anticipation of Judge Jackson's announcement, dragging the NASDAQ index down 7.63 percent in its largest single- day point decline in history. [GD]


ToC

800MHz to 1GHz Macs

Macintosh News Network and Czech Amiga News

(3/28/00) Apple may ship 800MHz Power Macs before the end of the year, with 1GHz Macs coming in the first quarter of 2001, using a new reduced power version of the G4 chip with an integrated 256k Level-2 cache as well as support for 64- and 128-bit MaxBus, backside caches of up to 4Mb, and a second AltiVec vector-processing unit, according to MacUser UK.

Motorola sources are now reporting that the first fully functional G4e prototypes to be demonstrated outside the company have recently rolled off the production line.

Running at 600-700MHz, these processors sport more than double the performance of current G4s with a number of very attractive features:

These same Moto sources had originally reported that fully functional G4es would likely not be available to third party developers (Apple, etc.) until June. It is much too early to draw major conclusions from this, but it does foster hope that Motorola is going all-out to introduce this revved-up G4 that may be the answer to many of today's clock speed and shrinking performance advantage woes.

In fact, if progress continues at this rate, we may see the first G4e-based PowerMacs shipping this Summer, rather than the previously projected early-Autumn estimates.

ToC

Amiga 2K: A Synthesis

from various sources, with special thanks to Roger Wyatt, Corinna Cohn, Joe Obrin, and Gary Peake

The Amiga 2000 show in St. Louis (March 31 - April 2) may turn out to have been a watershed event. Below is a synthesis and synopsis of the information that came out of the show from a myriad of sources.

Amiga's President Bill McEwen has made it clear he understands the strength of the Amiga is its community. The thrust of his plans aims at building a new community with even greater strength than before by uniting three separate communities. He wants to unite the current Amiga community, bring about an alliance with the Linux community, and ally with the Java developer's community. To this end, at Amiga 2000 and in the intervening period since, we have seen overtures to the factions in the existing Amiga community: Haage and Partner (the PPC Amiga and original OS factions) and the Phoenix developers group (the QNX faction). The announced partnerships with Corel and Red Hat on the Linux front. Finally, the most recent announcement of Amiga's plans to embrace Sun's Java technology as the software platform for some forthcoming new Amiga products.

On the OS front, Amiga is pursuing a two pronged approach: hosted and native. In carpenter's terms, one could look at this as a "veneer" and "hardwood" approach. The developer box will be Tao/Elate hosted on top of Linux, to get things rolling for developers. The final consumer box will be native Tao/Elate, not Linux, though, of course, anyone could dual or multi-boot Tao/Elate, Linux, and QNX.

The core of the new Amiga is Elate.

The developer machine specification is a K6-2 500Mhz, 64MB, nVidia Geforce 256 video card, Sound Blaster PCI 16, Linux and Elate - cheap, runs the Tao system very well. In the $750 range, the developer machine should be available in the summer. The consumer system should be out before the end of the year.

Reporting on the Banquet at Amiga2K, Roger Wyatt wrote "Bill McEwen's after dinner talk and demonstration was stunning in its sweep, complexity, and scope." Here are a few highlights:

Newtek has placed its source code for the Toaster and Flyer into Open Source status. See www.toaster.amiga.org for details.

Greenboy of the Phoenix Group joined Amiga's Gary Peake on stage to shake hands and announce that there was no split in the Amiga community. Phoenix and Amiga are working together.

Sun is a strategic partner of Amiga. Bill McEwen: "Our success will be the embrace of Java." Expect to see many Java apps for Amiga.

Red Hat is another strategic partner. So is Corel. McEwen stated that there were 18 different versions of Linux now, and by the end of the year there would be 40 different versions available. Fragmentation is a growing problem in the Linux market. Amiga will be the common consumer application layer for 26 different versions of Linux. The new Amiga developer environment will run on top of a Red Hat Linux base and foundation. Amiga will be the common consumer interface for Corel Linux apps. Thus Amiga will provide Java and Linux with a common interface. Amiga will be extensible running on cell phones to servers.

This is a list of Amiga companies developing for the new Amiga: Epic, ACT, DCE, Met@box, Scala, Amiga Development, Titan, Haage & Partner, Digital Images, Hyperion, Crystal Software. They are porting/developing 117 titles for the Tao based New Amiga OS.

There will be a new version of Scala for the new OS.

Espial is providing an 800k Java web browser for New Amiga. It's probably Escape. Escape v4.0 is a web browser that delivers big functionality in a small footprint of less than 800KB. Supporting advanced Internet standards including HTML 4.0, forms, frames, tables, applets, images, JavaScript 1.4, SSL v.2.0/3.0, DHTML, DOM, CSS... Escape v4.0 offers the most extensible plug-in capability of any browser available to the embedded market. Popular multimedia browser plug-ins including Real Networks G2 media player, Macromedia Flash, MP3, QuickTime, MIDI and more can be supported by Espial Escape v4.0. Escape 4.0 also integrates support for Sun's JMF (Java Media Framework), enabling it to load audio or visual media.

Three animators from Disney donated conceptual designs for the look of the new hardware reference designs. They are beautiful (or gruesome, depending on your point of view). Pictures of them will be going up soon on the Amiga website. Disney used over 500 Amigas to produce computer animation for their films. The Disney animators, who submitted new hardware reference designs, were Patrick Roberts, Michael Daugherty, and Arthur Argote. They are lead designers for the new Disney movie "Dinosaurs".

Amiga is aligned with an array of consumer electronic firms including Sony, JVC, and others.

Other long term strategic partners: Motorola, LSI, Criterion, and ARM.

There will be an upcoming announcement regarding Amiga participation in a global ISP alliance.

In the weeks to come Tech Head Stories will provide both in-depth analysis of the Amiga announcements in streaming video, text, and graphic formats.

If Bill McEwen's Banquet speech sounded a lot like that of Jim Collas from last year that's because Bill wrote Jim's speech.

Amiga is aiming at two markets: the digital adventurer - an extension of the current Amiga market, and then the Domestic Digital Habitat, for those who hate computers but love devices.

Amiga has no UAE or other emulation in current development. Although, they are talking to 2 or 3 companies or groups who have different approaches.

In his report on Amiga2K, Joe Obrin quotes Bill McEwen as saying, "This is not a PC company. There is no PC money in this company. That's the first time that has happened - ever. The people we got our money from 'got it'."

McEwen and his two partners - Fleecy Moss and Randy Hughes - hold 70% of Amiga Inc., with their Venture Capital investors (arranged by Francis Charig of Tao) holding the other 30%. Even those investors are not committed to the PC. So, for the first time, Amigans are in charge of the Amiga.

Fleecy Moss and Bill McEwen had met in an airport, when both were on their way to meet their new boss, Jeff Schindler, at Gateway Amiga for the first time. Fleecy and Bill hit it off immediately, finding that they shared a vision about where the future of computing would be. Ironically, neither Fleecy nor Bill ever became regular employees of Gateway. They were both contractors during their entire association with the company.

Fleecy and Bill, while sometimes diametrically opposed on some topics, are great friends and are not constantly "butting heads", although they don't always agree on everything.

The third partner in Amino Development - the company that was eventually to buy Amiga - was Randy Hughes. Randy met Bill and Fleecy when he was working at QNX. Randy also lost his job because of Gateway Amiga, when Collas reversed Schindler's decision to use QNX as the kernel, and to deploy a Linux kernel instead (of course, no kernel ever did get used).

When Bill, Randy, and Fleecy formed Amino, their only intent was to buy Amiga. This was the whole purpose of their company.

McEwen assured the crowd at the banquet that "We will always be the owners of the Amiga. The three of us will always be the major stockholders, and will remain in control of the company".

Jim Collas has nothing to do with AI and doesn't have one dime invested in it. He has formed a new business incubator called IdeaEdge Ventures based in San Diego with Rick LeFaivre, Tom Schmidt, and Ted Waitt, among others. He had the chance and declined.

The first issue that was addressed at the Banquet was the dealers. Amiga had previously not had a warehouse and distribution center in the US, so McEwen established one. He also has made a commitment to lower prices worldwide for Amiga products, and consistent international pricing. As an example, the Amiga 1200 will now retail for $200 US everywhere.

Amiga is working together with their dealers to make the Amiga 1200 retail for less than $200. Unfortunately, there is no design database left for the Amiga 1200. This was known for some time, but now the last silicon fabrication line which would produce technology with this large a feature size is shut down. This means that it is no longer possible to produce the AGA chip set. When the current stock of A1200s is depleted, there can be no more. There are 17 thousand A1200s left in Amiga's inventory, but only 1,000 of those are NTSC.

At the $200 price point, Amiga is loosing money on the A1200s, but they want to keep the community as strong as possible for the launch of the new product. An A1200 with a PPC accelerator will be able to run the new Amiga OS.

Fletcher Haug has been brought on as the editor of Amiga World, which will be the official publication of the Amiga company. This publication will be available both in print and in downloadable form. It will focus on real news, not rumors. In particular, it will serve as a vehicle for Amiga to make official announcements about products and plans.

Anti Gravity Systems has acquired the rights to the BoXeR - lock, stock and barrel - from Access Innovations, as of March 31. Mick Tinker, the original designer of the Boxer, has joined the Anti Gravity team as Director of BoXeR Development, along with Paul Le Surf from Blittersoft who was assisting in bringing the Boxer to market. AI wants the BoXeR as a transitional machine and is willing to "help" if they can. Expect to see it released sooner rather than later. The Boxer is just the first project with Anti Gravity Products that Amiga is interested in. The relationship with Anti Gravity is a long term relationship. It is anticipated that Anti Gravity Product will be producing machines capable of running the new Amiga OS for some time to come. So, Anti Gravity will be at least one manufacturer that the Amiga enthusiast can turn to for a purely Amiga box. Dan Lutz from Anti Gravity gave a very short speech at the Banquet describing the status of the Boxer project, which appears to be entering final test.

The dearth of PPC accelerators for the Amiga was also discussed. McEwen stated that Amiga is working very closely with MetaBox to produce the new AmiJoe PPC accelerator for the A1200, and that this accelerator was assured of being able to run the new OS. McEwen also stated that Amiga was working with MetaBox to bring the price of this accelerator in at under $200. Where possible, Amiga is now working with third party developers to help drive the cost of third party products down.

Amiga is also working closely with DCE, who acquired the rights to produce Phase 5's old designs. McEwen said that among steps they would take would be to guarantee runs for third parties like DCE. The DCE accelerators are also certain to run the new OS when it arrives.

Because of the situation with the Amiga custom chip sets and the impending arrival of the new machine, Amiga will pursue no new development on the current platform. But, a properly accelerated classic Amiga can be used in conjunction with the new OS.

In addition to the exciting technology which Tao represents, they bring along with them their various impressive technology partners. Tao's partners include Motorola, Sony, Sun, JVC, LSI, and Criterion. McEwen stated that every company on this list is now in active discussions with Amiga, because of Amiga's relationship to Tao.

The main reason that the new Amiga OS will not run on a 68K is that Motorola is an investor in Tao, Amiga's OS partner. Motorola is attempting to move all of their customers away from the 68K family of processors, and has requested that Tao not to develop their OS for the 68K. Tao is already available for various other processors, including the M-core (Motorola's new embedded CPU of choice), the MIPs, Power PC, the ARM, the Strong Arm, and the x86.

Unofficially, the new Amiga may arrive by the end of summer 2000. When it is released, the goal is to have more applications available concurrent with system release than for the release of any other new platform in history. By the end of the year, there are 127 applications projected to be released for the new machine.

ToC

Collas and Crew located

Czech Amiga News

(4/13/2000) - Since the destruction of Gateway's Amiga Inc., several people in the community have expressed a deep-rooted curiousity about where Jim Collas and crew disappeared to. Thanks to the group from Amiganet's #Amiga channel, we've located not only Collas, but Tom Schmidt and Rick LeFaivre as well. Of particular interest is the fact that with one exception, none of them even mentions having worked with/for Amiga Inc. The exception is Tom Schmidt (What an irony).

IdeaEDGE Ventures crew

ToC

First public release of Miami Deluxe

Ukiah, April 12th, 2000

Nordic Global Inc. is happy to announce the first public release, version 1.0c, of "Miami Deluxe", our new high-end TCP/IP router stack for Internet and LAN access (short: "MiamiDx").

MiamiDx is the successor of our successful "Miami" software, the most widely installed TCP/IP Internet software for AmigaOS, and winner of the "Amiga Achievement Award International" in 1998 for its functionality and ease of use.

Compared to Miami, MiamiDx provides the following additional features:

MiamiDx 1.0c is available for download from www.nordicglobal.com. A demo version (with a time limit and other limitations) is available for free. The full registration costs US$ 60.00. An upgrade from a registered version of Miami (any version) costs US$ 30.00.

The easiest way to register or upgrade is directly from your Amiga, after installing MiamiDx, using our one-step "QuickRegistration" scheme, paying by credit card. Registrations are also available from our web site and by email.

Holger Kruse
kruse@nordicglobal.com
http://www.nordicglobal.com

ToC

Metabox's AmiJoe G3

amiga-news.de

(4/10/2000) - Talks between Haage & Partner and Metabox concerning the 68k emulation have not been finished sadly, which still delays production and delivery of the cards.

ToC

Cloanto For You

Czech Amiga News

Today (4/11/2000) Cloanto have made three of their Amiga commercial programs free for private, non-commercial and non-profit uses:

ToC

Voyager 3.1 Released

Amiga Network News

(08 Apr 2000) - The latest incarnation of the V3 Portal for all users of Voyager has been released. This is not just one update, but three - and then some! Voyager 3.1 is out, with a zillion more bugs fixed and suggestions implemented. Read a full list of changes and download the archive from Vapor UK FTP or from one of the many mirror sites. VFlash 1.2 available, for all your Flash needs! The PPC module is complete, but please install ppc.library 46.31 first Vpdf plugin released - view Adobe Acrobat (PDF) files as embedded objects!

ToC

Win95/98 compatible file system for the Amiga

Short:    Win95/98 compatible file system
Author:   t.jager@gmx.de (Torsten Jager)
Uploader: t.jager@gmx.de (Torsten Jager)
Version:  1.22
Type:     disk/misc
Kurz:     Win95/98-kompatibles Dateisystem
Date:     20-Mar-2000

Purpose

"fat95" is a DOS handler to mount and use Win95/98 volumes just as if they were AMIGA volumes.

System requirements

Features

And finally...

Best regards to H.J. "Buccaneer" Pinkert for spending hours on testing and bug reporting!!! Thanks also for his FATMOCYB: mountlist.

I have been enjoying "fat95" for some time already as part of my private "sneaker net" to the internet PC at work. Harddisks seem to work now, too (although still a bit slow).

On massive public demand, I'm preparing for FAT32.

Feel free to send me an email on your experiences with "fat95"!

Have Fun!

ToC

iBook, PowerBook Data Loss Problem Noted

TidBITS#521/13-Mar-00

Apple has issued a Tech Info Library article cautioning iBook and PowerBook (FireWire) owners of a potential data loss problem with those portable Macs. Under certain low-memory situations, putting the machine to sleep with the "Preserve memory contents on sleep" option enabled can overwrite essential file system data. When restarted, the laptops display a flashing question mark; after booting from a CD-ROM, the hard disk fails to appear and Disk First Aid reports errors that cannot be repaired. Apple is working on a software fix to be released at the end of March. In the meantime, Apple recommends disabling the "Preserve memory contents on sleep" feature. [JLC]

http://til.info.apple.com/techinfo.nsf/artnum/n25130

ToC

Sleep Memory Extension Blocks Laptop Bug

TidBITS#522/20-Mar-00

Apple's new Sleep Memory Extension helps protect iBook and PowerBook (FireWire) computers from data loss or corruption when using the "Preserve memory contents on sleep" feature under low memory situations (see "iBook, PowerBook Data Loss Problem Noted" in TidBITS-521_). The extension, a 184K download, disables the "Preserve memory contents on sleep" checkbox in the Energy Saver control panel. This disables the computer's capability to preserve memory contents to disk for recovery in the event of total power loss during sleep; however, it also prevents users from stumbling into the data loss problem associated with the feature. We still expect Apple to address the actual problem in an upcoming software release; in the meantime, this extension keeps users out of harm's way. The extension works on English and localized versions of the Mac OS, though the ReadMe file is available in only English. [GD]

http://asu.info.apple.com/swupdates.nsf/artnum/n11602
http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=05839

ToC

Look Elsewhere for PowerBook (FireWire) Security

TidBITS#522/20-Mar-00

Apple has issued a Tech Info Library article warning owners of new PowerBook (FireWire) machines not to install the Password Security control panel. Although the control panel shipped with Mac OS 8.6 (it isn't included by default on laptops using Mac OS 9), copying it from another machine for use on a PowerBook (FireWire) can result in damaged or lost data. Apple recommends that owners instead use the password feature found in the Multiple Users control panel. (See "Major Features in Mac OS 9" in TidBITS-503_ for more on working with Multiple Users.) [JLC]

http://til.info.apple.com/techinfo.nsf/artnum/n58612
http://www.apple.com/powerbook/
http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=05625

ToC

Connectix Ships Virtual PC with Linux

TidBITS#522/20-Mar-00

Connectix has shipped a version of its Virtual PC Pentium emulation product bundled with a pre-installed copy of Red Hat Linux. Running Linux within Virtual PC removes some of the performance advantages of running versions of Linux compiled for the Mac's native CPU (such as LinuxPPC and Yellow Dog Linux), but makes up for it with increased installation simplicity and compatibility with more software that's compiled to run on Linux-based PCs rather than on Linux- based Macs. Since Virtual PC runs in a window on the Mac, switching between the Mac OS and Linux doesn't require rebooting. Virtual PC with Red Hat Linux costs $100 and sports the hefty system requirements of a PowerPC G3 or G4 running at 350 MHz or faster, 1.1 GB of disk space, Mac OS 8.6 or later, and 96 MB of RAM (128 MB recommended). [ACE]

http://www.connectix.com/products/vpc3_linux.html
http://www.redhat.com/
http://www.linuxppc.com/
http://www.yellowdoglinux.com/

ToC

FileMaker 5.0v3 Update Available

TidBITS#523/27-Mar-00

After an earlier abortive release, FileMaker, Inc. has released Macintosh updaters for FileMaker Pro 5.0v3 that can be applied to Worldwide English or Japanese versions of either FileMaker Pro 5.0v1 or 5.0v2 (See "FileMaker Pro 5 Released to Controversy" in TidBITS-499_ for an overview of FileMaker Pro 5's features and functionality.) A new feature in FileMaker 5.0v3 enables a user to open the Define Fields dialog box for a database hosted on FileMaker Pro Server so long as no other guests are connected. FileMaker Pro 5.0v3 also fixes problems with JPEG images, correctly imports data with blank repetitions in repeating fields, and addresses numerous issues with the Import Update feature for synchronizing database files. FileMaker has published a list of fixes on its Web site; the update itself includes a more complete list. The updater is a 3.9 MB download. [GD]

http://www.filemaker.com/support/updaters.html
http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=05576
http://www.filemaker.com/support/fm5v3.htm

ToC

Corel buys MetaCreations' graphic products

by Dennis Sellers (dsellers@maccentral.com)
April 10, 2000, 9:30 am ET

Corel has bought several products from MetaCreations, including Painter, Painter Classic, Painter 3D, Art Dabbler, Kai's Power Tools (KPT), KPT-X, Vector Effects and Bryce. All the products are Mac and Windows compatible.

"The acquisition fits our strategic vision of offering world-class applications for multiple platforms," says Michael Cowpland, president and chief executive officer of Corel, in a press release. Corel is committed to developing new versions of the Painter, KPT and Bryce product lines and supporting the existing customer base worldwide."

ToC

Darwin 1.0 & VPC with Windows 2000 Available

TidBITS#526/10-Apr-00

Apple has released Darwin 1.0, the open source core of Mac OS X. Based on FreeBSD and Mach 3.0 technologies, Darwin enables registered developers to customize and enhance the kernel of Apple's forthcoming operating system. Darwin 1.0 also includes preliminary support for Intel processors. In addition, Apple released an update to Darwin Streaming Server, used for streaming QuickTime content over the Internet. Darwin 1.0 is available for free for Power Macintosh G3 and G4, PowerBook G3 (Bronze keyboard), iBook, and iMac systems with a minimum of 32 MB of RAM and 800 MB hard disk space. A single installer is available as a 221 MB download or as 11 segments.

http://www.publicsource.apple.com/

Mac users who require access to the latest version of Microsoft Windows can now purchase Connectix's Virtual PC with Windows 2000. As with other versions of Virtual PC, you can run Windows 2000 from within the Mac OS, exchange files between operating systems, and have full USB support under Mac OS 9. Virtual PC with Windows 2000 requires a G3 or G4 processor that's 350 MHz or faster, Mac OS 8.6 or later, 1.1 GB hard disk space, and 96 MB of RAM.

http://www.connectix.com/products/vpc3_advanced.html

Tangentially related, Be, Inc. recently announced the free BeOS 5 Personal Edition for Intel systems. A Pro edition that works on older PowerPC-based systems should be available from Be's distributors (who will also set its pricing). Be does not support Apple's G3 or G4 systems, apparently because Apple will not provide technical information about their architecture. Be, Inc. was the subject of much industry speculation three and a half years ago when Apple was reportedly considering the BeOS as a future Macintosh operating system; instead, Apple bought NeXT, whose technology forms the backbone of the forthcoming Mac OS X. [JLC]

http://www.be.com/products/freebeos/
http://www.be.com/support/faqs/mac.html
http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=00831

ToC

Netscape 6 Preview

TidBITS#526/10-Apr-00

Netscape Communications has released a preview version of Netscape 6, its forthcoming Internet application suite based in part on the open source Mozilla project - though we recommend it only for the most adventurous of Web users. Netscape 6 permits access to multiple email accounts (including AOL accounts) and boasts a customizable sidebar plus much-improved support for Internet standards like Cascading Style Sheets and XML. Netscape 6 doesn't resemble a Macintosh application - that could change with time - and demonstrates the results of Netscape's acquisition by AOL with near-frantic integration of specialized content and services. The Netscape 6 preview requires Mac OS 8.5 or better with at least a 200 MHz 604 processor; be prepared to allocate at least 25 MB of RAM to the behemoth. The active installer is less than 200K, while a standalone installer is about 10.6 MB. You might also check out recent discussions in TidBITS Talk of Netscape 6 and Mozilla 5. [GD]

http://www.netscape.com/download/previewrelease.html
ftp://ftp.netscape.com/pub/netscape6/english/6_PR1/mac/macos8.5/sea/
http://www.mozilla.org/
http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tlkthrd=998+981

ToC

Apple Releases Mac OS 9.0.4 Update

by Geoff Duncan (geoff@tidbits.com)
TidBITS#526/10-Apr-00

Apple Computer has released a free Mac OS 9.0.4 which claims to offer enhanced USB and FireWire support, provide improved networking and power management, plus improve video, graphics, and audio functionality. Mac OS 9.0.4 is a maintenance release; it does not add new features. The update itself is a 12.2 MB download, and it is available either from Apple's servers or from Mac OS 9's Software Update control panel. As of this writing, versions are available for North American English (at the first URL below) plus International English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Spanish, and Swedish. Additional localized versions should be available soon.

http://asu.info.apple.com/swupdates.nsf/artnum/n11610
http://asu.info.apple.com/swupdates.nsf/productsearch?searchview& query=Mac+OS+9.0.4

Owners of Power Mac G4s, PowerBook (FireWire) systems, and slot- loading iMacs will also need to download and install Apple DVD Player 2.2 to support their systems' software-based DVD decoding. Owners of blue and white G3 systems, PowerBook G3 Series, and PowerBook (Bronze keyboard) can stick with Apple DVD Player 1.3, since their systems decode DVDs in hardware.

What's New

You'd think a 12 MB system software update would include a ReadMe file explaining the changes - but in this case, you'd be wrong. Also missing is an uninstall option: once you've upgraded to Mac OS 9.0.4, reverting to a previous version of Mac OS 9 involves re-installing from scratch. As with any system software update, be sure to do a _complete_backup_ before installation, just in case.

The limited information Apple has released indicates Mac OS 9.0.4 should address DVD playback problems on recent Macintosh systems, fix a bug preventing slot-loading iMacs from going to sleep with an active PPP connection, and improve compatibility with third- party FireWire cards. Apple has published a developer technical note on Mac OS 9.0.4, although it mashes together information from Mac OS 9.0 as well as the hardware-specific Mac OS 9.0.2 (for some iBooks, Power Mac G4s, and FireWire-equipped PowerBooks) and Mac 9.0.3 (for some slot-loading iMacs), and contains a number of apparently inaccurate statements.

http://asu.info.apple.com/swupdates.nsf/artnum/n11624
http://developer.apple.com/technotes/tn/tn1194.html

So far, our limited experience with Mac OS 9.0.4 and our interpretation of the information available about the update indicates you can expect the following additional tweaks:

What's Not Fixed

Mac OS 9.0.4 does not address the data corruption problem effecting iBook and PowerBook (FireWire) systems using the "preserve memory contents on sleep" option in the Energy Saver control panel; like Apple's Sleep Memory Extension, Mac OS 9.0.4 merely blocks access to the feature. We've also received numerous reports of problems connecting to USB devices under Mac OS 9.0.4, especially HotSyncing with Palm devices. In addition, devices like TV tuner cards from the now-defunct ixMicro which had audio difficulties under previous versions of Mac OS 9 may lose audio capability altogether.

http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=05839
http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=05851

Our Advice

The benefits of Mac OS 9.0.4 are mainly aimed at newer Apple hardware, so if you have an older Mac (without USB and/or FireWire) the update may not be useful unless you're suffering from one of the few specific problems it fixes. Otherwise, the update is a good idea, but watch out for problems it introduces.

ToC

Common Ground:

MS admits planting secret password

from ZDNet

Microsoft Corp. acknowledged Thursday (4-13-00) that its engineers included in some of its Internet software a secret password -- a phrase deriding their rivals at Netscape as "weenies" -- that could be used to gain illicit access to hundreds of thousands of Internet sites worldwide.

The manager of Microsoft's security-response center, Steve Lipner, acknowledged the online-security risk in an interview Thursday and described such a backdoor password as "absolutely against our policy" and a firing offense for the as-yet-unidentified employees.

The company planned to warn customers as soon as possible with an e-mail bulletin and an advisory published on its corporate Web site. Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) urged customers to delete the computer file--called "dvwssr.dll"--containing the offending code. The file is installed on the company's Internet-server software with Frontpage 98 extensions.

While there are no reports that the alleged security flaw has been exploited, the affected software is believed to be used by many Web sites. By using the so-called back door, a hacker may be able to gain access to key Web-site management files, which could in turn provide a road map to such things as customer credit-card numbers, said security experts who discovered the password.

Two security experts discovered the rogue computer code -- part of which was the denigrating comment "Netscape engineers are weenies!" -- buried within the 3-year-old piece of software. It was apparently written by a Microsoft employee near the peak of the hard-fought wars between Netscape Communications Corp. and Microsoft over their versions of Internet-browser software. Netscape later was acquired by America Online Inc.

One of the experts who helped identify the file is a professional security consultant known widely among the Internet underground as "Rain Forest Puppy." Despite his unusual moniker, he is highly regarded by experts and helped publicize a serious flaw in Microsoft's Internet-server software last summer that put hundreds of high-profile Web sites at risk of intrusion.

Almost every Web-hosting provider

Russ Cooper, who runs the popular NT Bugtraq discussion forum on the Internet, estimated that the problem threatened "almost every Web-hosting provider."

"It's a serious flaw," Cooper said. "Chances are, you're going to find some major sites that still have it enabled." Lipner of Microsoft said the company will warn the nation's largest Web-site providers directly.

In an e-mail to Microsoft earlier Thursday, Rain Forest Puppy complained that the affected code threatened to "improve a hacker's experience." Experts said the risk was greatest at commercial Internet-hosting providers, which maintain hundreds or thousands of separate Web sites for different organizations.

Lipner said the problem doesn't affect Internet servers running Windows 2000 or the latest version of its server extensions included in Frontpage 2000.

The digital gaffe initially was discovered by a Europe-based employee of ClientLogic Corp. (www.clientlogic.com) of Nashville, Tenn., which sells e-commerce technology. The company declined to comment because of its coming stock sale. The other expert, Rain Forest Puppy, said he was tipped off to the code by a ClientLogic employee.

When asked about the hidden insult Thursday, Jon Mittelhauser, one of Netscape's original engineers, called it "classic engineer rivalry."

ToC

Apex AD-600A DVD Player

review by Chris Maynard of The Digital Bits

Performance Ratings (Video/Audio): C+/A-

The AD-600A could use a better MPEG decoder, but for non-critical viewing it provides a adequate picture. Audio quality is surprisingly excellent - truly a mystery considering the price point.

Ease-of-Use Rating: B-

The remote probably could not have been worse if they had tried. Other than that, it's no more difficult to use this player than any other I have run across. Setup menus are nicely done and easy to navigate.

Value/Overall Rating: A+/B

While I would not recommend this as your primary DVD player, with an SRP of $189, you can add it as a second player and shouldn't have to break into any trust funds. This unit has a "Geek Toy Coolness Factor" that is simply off the scale!

Specs and Features

Performance Features: Karaoke, MP3 Playback, Screen Saver, 2 Microphone Jacks with Volume Control, Karaoke Vocal Assist Function, Basic Remote, Supports DVD/CD/VCD/SVCD/CDR/CDRW Playback

Output Terminals: (1) Coaxial (AC3)/DTS Output, (2) Analog Audio Outs, (1) S-video Out, (1) Composite Video Out

Other Features: 90 Days Labor/1 Year Parts Warranty

Review

Most of you have probably heard something by now about our new little friend - the Apex AD-600A. So what's all the hype about? Let me try to explain. What would you say if I told you that there was a player available that has component video out, passes DTS, plays CDRs, CDRWs and discs with MP3 music files... AND gives you a secret menu option to bypass Macrovision and Region Coding? If that's not enough, then how about if I tell you it costs less than $200? How does that grab you? It definitely caught my attention, so I ran down (I actually drove, I don't run very fast) to my local Circuit City and picked up one of these little imported gadgets to see for myself.

One note: this player is also rumored to be capable of playing PAL discs on NTSC monitors, however we have not tested this feature.

Out of the Box

As I opened the box in excitement and pulled out the player, all I could think was: "...and people thought the Panasonic A110 was light". This little baby weights in at just over 8 lbs wet. In all honesty, I seem to remember that the A110 weighed about the same (but since then I have grown more accustomed to beefier players which have a more substantial feel to them). The overall look of the player is somewhat pleasing, but still has the essence of the sub $300 players you see in all the standard retail outlets - lacking any special appeal or glamour that most electronic enthusiasts desire.

Front Panel

The front panel has most of the standard buttons found on today's DVD players. There is an Open/Close Door button, Stop, Play, Pause, and Chapter Skip and Chapter Reverse. You will also find two microphone inputs with separate level adjustments for the, uh... do I dare say... Karaoke feature. There will be no recitals of George Michael's Careless Whisper at my house, thank you very much.

Rear Panel Connections

On the back, you will find clearly marked inputs and outputs. There is one each of component, s-video and composite video connections. Audio connections consist of two analog outs and one coaxial digital connection. The only animal missing from this party is the old toslink optical connection. Most people seem to prefer coaxial for the digital connection, but this may be a problem for owners of certain receivers that boast more toslink connections than coaxial. An interesting side note is the sticker that indicates "Assembled in China", with a second line that states "APEX Digital Inc. USA". So while the player seems to be manufactured and assembled in China, there is a US business set up to distribute them. This is not uncommon practice in consumer electronics.

A Look Inside

I decided to look inside the Apex to see what went into a $200 DVD player. I had heard that there was just a standard DVD-ROM drive in it. They were right. The unit has a DVS DVD-ROM player that looks like it came straight out of a PC. To re-enforce that gut feeling, there's the 40-pin IDE cable connecting the player to the internal circuit board. I had read on the Home Theater Forum that somebody had actually taken the time to connect this unit up to their computer, and Windows 98 detected it without a problem. Interesting to say the least.

Player Performance

My first test with the video was connecting it to my Toshiba 65" widescreen television via the component video connection. I popped in my Region 2 copy of Mulholland Falls and immediately noticed that the colors were highly over-saturated to the point that they were glowing. After I tested several other discs, I found they all were having the same results. I was unable to reasonably compensate for this through my user controls on the television without compromising other source material that may play through that input. So much for component - the next stop was s-video. This is where things got much better. The color saturation looked more natural and the picture really started to surprise me with its superb sharpness and detail. As I looked through more and more DVD titles, I did notice more MPEG and motion artifacts than I have grown accustom to with my other players. I would venture to guess that if you were to use a smaller display device, these problems would be less apparent and not quite as distracting. But they will still be noticeable.

Anamorphic DVD down-conversion is always a hot topic for owners of standard 4:3 television screens. The shimmering and waving artifacts from line removal can be very distracting when watching your favorite movie. Again, the Apex excels in keeping a sharp and finely tuned picture performing this daunting task. I would compare its down-conversion ability with that of my Pioneer 414, which is definitely no slouch.

One of the many highlights of this player is the audio section. I was pleasantly surprised that the audio output was crystal clear and sounded just as good as my far more expensive Toshiba 5109. The Apex is very fast on switching audio tracks and I still have not heard a single digital "pop" error after the many discs I have run through it. What I found next really surprised me. The D/A converters in this unit are shockingly excellent in their performance. I played some of my favorite music CDs using the analog outputs and was simply floored by the clarity. My normal CD transport is the famous Pioneer CLD 704 laserdisc player, which is known for being a superb CD transport. The Apex hung in there with almost the same level of sound quality and soundstage reproduction. The audio section is truly amazing, all things considered.

When you are checking out DVD players, you find yourself going through all the menus and items to be found. The Apex makes this process easy with its super-fast menu access. Navigation is so fast, that it makes your other DVD players seem slow - almost like your first personal computer back in the 80s. You can zip through the menus of your favorite special edition DVDs with Ninja quickness and cat-like reflexes. Along with the speed comes the fastest layer change I have ever seen in a DVD player, regardless of price. In fact, I am unable to detect the layer switch on almost every disc I have run through it. Even the notorious layer break in The Matrix went by without a hitch. If I didn't already know the placement, I doubt I would have detected the break.

Playing MP3 Files

This is one very cool feature! More and more people are finding the many advantages of the MP3 audio compression format and it's tremendous flexibility. Now you can burn some 125 or so songs on a CDR or CDRW and play the songs right in your home theater! The player detects the MP3 files and gives you a menu list (restricted to 8 characters in length), letting you use your remote navigation keys to select and play any song on the disc. This feature alone makes the player money well spent in my eyes.

Advantages of Region Free

As I mentioned before, the Apex player lets you view discs from other regions. But why would you want to? Home Video licensing is handled differently by almost every studio. In some cases, different studios are involved in the release of a movie depending on the region in question. One example is Pulp Fiction. This Miramax film is released by Buena Vista in Region 1 and by Miramax themselves in the other regions. The Region 2 transfer of this film is not only anamorphic widescreen, but it's also an entirely superior transfer. Many DVD releases, which are 4:3 letterboxed in Region 1, can be found in other regions in full anamorphic widescreen glory. Being able to disable region coding gives the consumer alternate choices when choosing their version of a DVD investment. You can also find movies in other regions that are not released in Region 1, giving you more choices in expanding your home movie library.

And Now for the Bad...

It didn't take long for people to find a serious flaw with the Apex. I was positive that something bad would eventually show up, and indeed it has. A major drawback is the player's inability to handle any DVD using Seamless Branching technology. The player was unable to play either Stargate: SE or The Abyss without getting stuck in a repeating loop as soon as the first branch was up. It is my belief that more and more titles will start using this feature of DVD, and I don't think you'll want to be stuck out in the cold, being unable to play them.

Another travesty with this player is the horrid remote provided. There are tons of tiny, poorly labeled buttons which are impossible to read in the typical low lighting found in our home theaters. Not only is it difficult to navigate and use the remote, but it is darn ugly.

Summary

I think with an improved MPEG decoder board, this player would rival the best of them and be a real contender, even against players costing three and four times as much. All things considered, I am very impressed with Apex's initial offering to the DVD player market. But before you run down to your local electronics store to buy one, keep this in mind: it's rumored that the next batch of this player to hit the market will NOT feature the secret menu to disable Macrovision and Region Coding. There is a way to check for this by simply following these instructions:

With no disc in the tray, press "setup".
Scroll down to "Preferences".
Press "step".
Press "back chapter".
Press "forward chapter".

You should see the menu option to select a region or bypass them completely and the disabling of Macrosvision.

Naturally, the studios were not happy about this player's "unique" features, so I'm not surprised about the rumors of the removal of the secret menu. Stock around the United States right now is almost non-existent, so when stock DOES become available again, beware of these rumored firmware changes. That said, $180 for a home MP3 player still sounds darn good to me!

Chris Maynard
chrismaynard@thedigitalbits.com

ToC

How to Buy a PC (And Retain Your Sanity)

by Adam C. Engst (ace@tidbits.com)

It's easy for Mac users to lose sight of what the rest of the computing industry goes through when dealing with hardware. Macs are extremely coherent - there's only one vendor, there aren't many variables to consider, and pricing tends not to vary widely from reseller to reseller. None of this is true in the PC world, where the buyer can be faced with multiple manufacturers, resellers, CPUs, video cards, hard disks, motherboards, and more.

Why am I writing about buying PCs? After all, I'm primarily a Macintosh user, and most people who read TidBITS also use Macs. But we all live in the real world, and the unfortunate truth about the real world is that it's dominated by PCs, mostly running Windows. Some people try to ignore that uncomfortable fact, but many people simply cannot. Perhaps PCs are used where you work, or someone in your family uses a PC - no matter what the specifics, it's likely you'll someday be faced with buying a PC for yourself or someone else.

Over the years, I've bought four PCs: a Compaq Contura 400C 486 laptop that uses Windows 95, a no-name Pentium 90 for use with Linux, a no-name Pentium 150 running Windows 98, and, most recently, a Compaq iPaq with Windows 2000. I've used a variety of approaches researching and purchasing the computers; if you must buy a PC, take a look at the processes below before diving into the veritable can of worms that is the PC world.

Also, keep in mind that I didn't really _want_ these PCs, certainly not the way I've wanted the many Macs I've bought over the years. I don't get any rush from buying PCs: they've been necessary evils to expand my skills and to support projects like my "Crossing Platforms: A Macintosh/Windows Phrasebook" translation dictionary, and my cross-platform "Eudora for Windows & Macintosh: Visual QuickStart Guide." This lack of enthusiasm (which I suspect many Mac users would share) generally means I want to spend as little time and money on the purchase as I can.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN%3D1565925394/tidbitselectro00A/
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN%3D020135389X/tidbitselectro00A/

A Little Help from Your Friends

The simplest approach to buying a PC is to find a friend who knows a lot more about PCs than you do, ask for a recommendation, and even see if you can get your friend to place the order for you. There's no shame in this approach - after all, if you plan on remaining primarily a Mac user, you probably aren't interested in the differences between CPUs from Intel and AMD, or the relative merits of different motherboard configurations.

Make sure your friend understands what you want to do with the PC, since although PCs tend to be quite cheap, you can spend a lot of money on things like fancy video cards that are necessary only for die-hard game players.

I used this approach with the no-name Pentium 90, Some years ago in the early days of Linux, Northwest Nexus was hosting ftp.tidbits.com on one of their machines. As the traffic and load on the computer increased, they asked me to move it to a new computer. I said that I'd be happy to, but hadn't the foggiest idea what to get or how to set it up. Ralph Sims of Northwest Nexus replied that he'd be happy to deal with all of that, so I ordered exactly what he recommended from the local reseller he favored, and had them deliver the configured machine to him. He installed Linux and got everything up and running, and the machine ran with few hiccups until late in 1999 when we swapped in a new Y2K-compliant PC with a newer version of Linux (and _much_ larger hard disk). I found this method an extremely easy way to buy a PC. This machine is also the easiest to own: I've set eyes on it only once.

Think Global, Buy Local

The next easiest approach to buying a PC is to visit a local reseller that carries major brands of computers, talk to the staff at the store, and walk out with the computer that best meets your needs. I employed this approach when buying the Compaq Contura 400C back in the days of my Internet Starter Kit for Windows book. I didn't really want some beefy tower unit with a monitor taking up space, so I decided to buy a laptop, but was dismayed at the low-quality pointing devices used by PC laptops at the time. I've always hated a joystick-like nipple (as the late MacWEEK editor Robert Hess called it) mounted in the middle of the keyboard, and PC laptops then sported a variety of weird and barely usable pointing devices. By the time I'd found a laptop with a center-mounted trackball (like then- current 100-series PowerBooks) with no keys to the right of the Backspace key, I was down to the Compaq Contura.

I don't remember at which computer superstore I ended up purchasing the computer, but the superstores were quite helpful in this case, since it was before the Web was big and I liked seeing the laptops in person. I remember the sales staff being essentially clueless, but since laptops seldom have many options, it wasn't a major liability. I may have paid more than was necessary, but I had spent so much time looking at different laptops that I wasn't about to repeat the research to find the lowest price. I suspect many consumers are in similar situations - because the research of buying a PC is so daunting, they buy at the first place answers their questions reasonably and sells them a computer that meets their basic needs.

Computer superstores usually try to sell service contracts or extended warranties, which are often not worthwhile on relatively inexpensive computer hardware. On the other hand, if you're unfamiliar with PC hardware and don't wish to learn much, a service contract may be more useful than one would be for Macintosh hardware. I encourage you to read the article I wrote about AppleCare and other alternatives back in TidBITS-478_, along with the TidBITS Talk threads on the topic.

http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=05370
http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tlkthrd=590+654

Ecommerce to the Rescue

Much has been made of the millions of dollars Dell has racked up through its online ordering site, and most major PC manufacturers offer something similar. Apple was late to the game with the Apple Store and its online configuration feature, but as with many other things, I was amazed at how much easier it was to buy a Mac from the Apple Store than it was to configure a PC from well-known names like Dell, Gateway, or their brethren.

http://store.apple.com/
http://www.dell.com/
http://www.gateway.com/

The problem was twofold. The Apple Store provided significantly fewer options when customizing a purchase than most of the major PC manufacturers' sites. For instance, the main configuration page at the Apple Store for buying a Power Mac G4 offers 11 choices, followed by another 8 sections of accessories on the easily ignored subsequent page for a total of 19 options. On the Dell site's configuration page, I counted 31 options, and Gateway topped Dell with 34 options. These numbers are a little rough because the choices can vary slightly with your initial path into the configuration page, but no matter what, being faced with that many options was daunting. A few sites were good about providing a way to avoid the configuration pages, but I found that if you so much as wanted to increase the RAM of a base machine to 128 MB, you found yourself in the configuration morass.

"But isn't choice good?" you ask. Not always. When you're faced with too many options, many of which are relatively unrelated (and all of which will affect your final price), it's difficult to avoid obsessing over each one. And that's where configuring a PC becomes truly nightmarish for the innocent Macintosh user. Which of five video cards whose names you've never heard before would you like? How about these four different speaker options? Do you want a 40x or 48x CD-ROM drive, or perhaps an 8x or 12x DVD-ROM drive with software decoding, unless a CD-RW drive would be better? Even when the sites are good about providing explanations of each option, it's hard to avoid feeling overwhelmed.

If you somehow manage to stay on top of the options at one site, you'll probably fall prey to checking the slightly different options on another. After all, only Apple makes Macs, so picking an online Macintosh reseller is a relatively simple task based mainly on price. In the PC world, though, you'll have trouble creating the same configuration at any two sites - the hard disk sizes will be different, or one won't let you buy a DVD-ROM drive in place of the CD-ROM, or something like that. No matter what you do, you're unlikely to find significant price differences either, so the decision isn't simplified in that fashion. Because the differences weren't huge, it was less like comparing apples and oranges and more akin to comparing lemons and limes. And no matter where I went, I ended up with a sour taste in my mouth.

Most recently, I settled on a Compaq iPaq that I purchased through the Compaq Web site. I haven't done much with the computer yet so I can't specifically comment on it, but the reasons I chose it over more traditional options or rolling my own were as follows:

http://www.compaq.com/metrics/directplus/iPAQ499_020200.html

In the end, my advice is that if you decide to order a PC on the Web, feel free to compare configurations and prices on several sites to make sure you're not accidentally choosing an overly expensive option, but then just place the order without obsessing over the options too much. I suspect that many of these issues apply to ordering from a mail-order vendor (they're all on the Web too) over the phone, with the only advantage being that you can keep the sales representative on the line until you have everything explained.

Also keep in mind that at least Dell and Gateway sell refurbished computers that have been returned for some reason or another. They're often quite inexpensive and a good deal; the only problem is that you can't customize them at all, so finding the right configuration may prove difficult.

Some Assembly Required

With the Windows 98-based no-name Pentium 150 that I bought several years ago for a book project, I wanted to buy as cheaply as I could, and I ended up working with a local reseller where you basically walk in, tell them you want a PC, and then go down the component checklist with them. For each of the many options, I asked what the differences were and received somewhat terse answers from the sales guy. Service wasn't this store's forte, but their prices were cheap, and I got the benefits of picking all my components without the hassle of putting it all together. Plus, the PC has worked fine for my purposes.

When the time came recently to buy another PC (the purchase that resulted in the iPaq), I checked the pricing at that store's Web site and wasn't impressed, so I figured I'd try to roll my own PC from scratch. Luckily, my PC-savvy friend Alex was able to provide some guidelines about the kind of hardware that would meet my needs at good price/performance ratios. Alex also turned me on to the BookPC from Directron, which is a nicely accoutered base unit to which you add only a CPU, CPU fan, RAM, hard disk, and operating system. I didn't end up buying the $250 BookPC and the various components because Alex ordered one and the somewhat meager and non-standard 100 watt power supply failed instantly, as did the replacement he received. Directron tech support wasn't responsive to email either, which worsened an already bad situation.

http://www.directron.com/bookpc.html

Unfortunately, although I decided I couldn't risk dealing with dubious power supplies, I realized that installing a CPU, CPU fan, RAM, hard disk, and operating system for a BookPC fell within my knowledge level and hardware skills. Although I would have had to order a total of five different items, they were easily compared and readily available from various vendors. A price comparison site called PriceWatch seemed to make it simple to find the best price on all the components, though it was frustrating to slog through the vast number of companies to find one who was easy to deal with and who had the advertised component. But the prices - wow! 40 GB hard disks for under $250. Intel Celeron 500 MHz CPUs for $80. 128 MB DIMMs for $75. I could have customized a BookPC into a killer system for about $800. Drat that weak and non- standard power supply!

http://www.pricewatch.com/

By this time I was feeling pretty full of myself, since I had found what looked like good sources for the CPU, RAM, and hard disk. How hard could it be, I thought, to go all out and build the entire thing from scratch? So I spent several hours one day surfing Web sites looking for one that made it easy to combine all the parts. By the end of the day, I had nothing to show for my efforts but a splitting headache.

If you thought 30 options when buying a PC from Dell or Gateway was intimidating, just try to build a PC from its component parts. To give you an idea, consider the following shopping list of components: case, motherboard, power supply, Ethernet card (if necessary), video card (if necessary), sound card (if necessary), CPU, CPU fan, hard disk, floppy disk, DVD-ROM, RAM, monitor, keyboard, mouse, and operating system. For each component imagine having between five and fifteen choices, and those then take you into a multi-dimensional compatibility matrix. There are some standards, but the variables of finding a motherboard that contains particular network, video, sound, and modem functionality which fits in a certain case and which works with a certain CPU which draws a certain amount of power from a certain power supply are sufficient to addle the coolest head. It completely addled mine.

Next, I decided perhaps I should order everything from a single site, since they would theoretically know the compatibility issues. I quickly found a site that actually had an online configuration page (surprisingly rare among the no-name PC vendors); unfortunately, this site was so devoid of information about the company (phone number, address, etc.) it might as well have been called Fly By Night, Inc.

Then I thought perhaps I should base my search on sites that other customers liked, so I found a ratings site and checked out the top-rated vendors. This approach proved no more fruitful - either the prices weren't good or the site didn't carry what I wanted. And some of the companies I'd previously contemplated had scores like 2.4 out of 7.0 (though Directron scored 5.9 out of 7.0). It was depressing.

http://www.resellerratings.com/

Finally, I decided to try DealTime, a price comparison site that lets you specify variables such as CPU speed, amount of RAM, and hard disk size, along with a price range before showing you the best deals. I figured DealTime might be able to identify some great deal that I wasn't finding otherwise, or maybe tell me about a vendor I hadn't found, but no. After a bunch of dithering around, I finally told DealTime to show me all PCs with 500 MHz CPUs and 128 MB of RAM for less than $800. The only results? The Compaq iPaq, from some site that didn't have any in stock. I took the hint, double-checked the iPaq's specs with Alex to make sure I wasn't missing something, and ordered one directly from Compaq.

http://www.dealtime.com/

I won't pretend to be an expert on PC hardware, but I know a heck of a lot more than I used to, and knowledge is never a bad thing. So I don't regret my foray into the madding world of roll-your-own PCs, but I think it's safe to recommend that Macintosh users with my level of experience or less should probably stay away unless you have a friend who can guide you through the twisty little passages and past the many and varied pitfalls. The time you spend on research alone will eat up any cost savings you might score by doing the work yourself. I also think I'll go back to PriceWatch and DealTime in the future, since both sites cover more than just computer hardware, and I've been thinking about a digital camcorder... perhaps when I've recovered from the stress of this shopping experience.

ToC

The PC Section:

Intel releases latest chips amid shortages

from ZDNet - March 20, 2000

Intel today released new desktop processors, even though some PC makers report shortages of existing chips.

As previously reported, the Santa Clara, Calif.-based chipmaking giant announced 850-MHz and 866-MHz Pentium III processors, priced, respectively, at $765 and $776 in lots of one thousand. The chips follow the recent, accelerated introduction of a Pentium III running at 1 GHz. Price cuts are not expected on the rest of the Pentium III processors as yet. Intel cut Pentium III prices at the end of February.

While computer enthusiasts typically welcome the introduction of new processors, the tight supply of the faster Pentium IIIs continues to be a source of irritation for manufacturers and dealers who incorporate Intel processors into their computers. Dealers have been particularly hard hit because the bulk of the fast chips have been going to large manufacturers like Dell.

The 800-MHz Pentium III, which was announced in December, remains relatively difficult to find, according to dealers. The 1-GHz Pentium III is also fairly elusive. Intel announced the chip on March 8. Dell, often the company that gets new Intel parts to market first, shipped its first 1-GHz computers last week, according to a spokesman. But the wait time, as quoted by a Dell salesperson this morning, averages 28 days for 1-GHz systems.

Considering the current situation, finding the new chips will not likely be an easy task. Still, supplies have improved for Pentium IIIs running at 750 MHz and below.

Several high-level Intel executives predicted in February that the supply situation would stabilize by the end of the quarter, which concludes in two weeks. Some dealers, however, said distributors and brokers have informed them that the shortage could continue.

The shortage arises from delays last year in the release of the latest Pentium IIIs and an acceleration of the product road map. Last October, Intel released the "Coppermine" generation of Pentium IIIs before historically normal inventories of the chip existed, said Intel and several analysts. A shortage became apparent almost immediately.

Simultaneously, rival Advanced Micro Devices was finding increasing commercial success with its Athlon processor. The two companies soon began a speed race. Both Intel and AMD, for instance, originally planned to release their 1-GHz chips toward the middle of the year. Intel moved up the release to March. AMD followed suit, releasing its chip two days before Intel.

In addition, some PC executives and analysts have stated that the typical first quarter seasonal slowdown wasn't as bad as usual.

ToC

Open source Napster-like product disappears after release

from Wired Magazine

America Online on Wednesday pulled the plug on Gnutella, an enhanced Napster clone that barely got out of the gate Tuesday.

When America Online-owned Nullsoft, the development house that created the software MP3 player WinAmp, announced that their new spinoff Gnullsoft would create an open-source Napster-like utility, music fans and open-source proponents went wild.

On Tuesday, the company began to offer Gnutella through its Web site in an open beta. In this pre-release format, users were encouraged to download the program and use it to share their MP3 files.

Napster has been the target of both harsh words and threats of legal action from music industry executives, who allege that the primary purpose of the program is to promote piracy. University system administrators, too, aren't fans of Napster. They have been banning the software after findings that up to 50 percent of total university network bandwidth is hogged by the transfer of MP3s.

Gnutella was the inevitable next step in this technology. It's open source, which means that its source code is visible by anyone. Open source promotes development by many hands and is touted by its fans as being a quicker, safer and more secure way of developing software because it's always tweaked to be made a little bit better.

It's also considered safer by system administrators, who would rather see the guts of a program than blindly place it on computers without being able to analyze its strengths and weaknesses.

Slashdot, a site dedicated to high-tech news and open source evangelism, was abuzz with Gnutella's release Tuesday. With so many going to the Gnutella site, what's known as the "Slashdot effect" occurred, jamming up servers so that no one else could get in. Nullsoft quickly announced that enough people had visited and the open beta was closed.

But Slashdot readers weren't the only people hearing about Gnutella for the first time. AOL also just found out about Gnutella, and closed down the project.

AOL has announced a merger with Time Warner, the parent company of both Warner Music and CNN.com. The record company has been one of the loudest critics of Napster and MP3 piracy as a whole.

Anne Bentley, a spokesperson for AOL, called Gnutella an "unauthorized freelance project" and said the Web site had been taken down. She refused to answer any other questions and wouldn't forward questions on to Nullsoft.

A Nullsoft product manager contacted independently declined to comment on Gnutella and referred all questions to AOL public relations.

Gnutella was designed, according to a features list on the now-defunct site, to be immune to the efforts of system administrators to curb its use. To do this, it was decentralized. Napster works off one central computer and can therefore be more easily blocked.

This portion of the advertised features was copied from the site by Slashdot users before it was taken down:

Distributed nature of servant makes it pretty damned tough for college administrators to block access to the gnutella service. Ability to change the port you listen on makes it even harder for those college administrators to block access. Ability to define your own internal network with a single exit point to the rest of the Internet makes it almost (expletive) impossible for college sysadmins to block the free uninhibited transfer of information. Am I making myself painfully clear? I thought so. Nullsoft may not be able to bring this product to market, but look for a remarkably Gnutella-like device in the future. Now that it has been downloaded, it's bound to be redesigned and enhanced by enterprising programmers. There are also other open-source projects under way, including Gnap, a Napster client program for Linux.

ToC

DVD Player at Apex of Controversy

from Wired Magazine

Hidden features included in a DVD player released in January have the Motion Picture Association of America contemplating legal action. Thanks to Nerdout.com, both users and the MPAA are aware that the Apex AD-600A player's DVD copyright protection scheme and regional encoding features can be overridden.

Developed in China by Visual Disc and Digital Video Corp. (VDDV) and sold in the United States by Apex Digital Inc, the Apex player is attracting attention for reasons besides its low price of US$169.95.

Unlike other DVD players, the Apex can play DVD movies created anywhere in the world. Regions are assigned specific numbers so, for example, DVDs created in Region 1 š- the United States -š can only be played in that area. But by accessing a hidden menu in the Apex player, users can turn off regional encoding.

One of the "features" of the player is a hidden menu option to remove the Macrovision protection which prevents copying DVDs to VHS.

This ability to copy movies has piqued the interest of the MPAA.

"We are currently looking at the player to determine whether any action is warranted," said Emily Cutner, a spokeswoman for the MPAA.

The DVD player is also the first in the United States to support the controversial MP3 secure music format. Users can insert a CD-ROM full of MP3 files and the player brings up a menu on the television to play back the songs.

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) -- which has sued MP3.com over its service for converting CDs into MP3 files -- was unaware of the Apex player and its capabilities and declined to comment.

Apex's maker said the ability to remove regional encoding and CSS protection were included but were intended only for developers. End users were not supposed to be able to access that menu or those features.

"Twenty-four manufacturers use the same menu chip as in ours, so they all have the same capability," said Colton Manley, a spokesman for Apex, in Ontario, California. "Certainly our intention is not to sell anything that will cause any problems."

But users are reacting positively.

"I have no complaints! It's been running like a charm. It really is worth the purchase, you get a lot of bang for your buck," said one person on the alt.video.dvd newsgroup.

"So far I'm impressed with it. It produces a great picture, and combined with the ability to turn off region locks and macrovision, it's a real winner!" said another newsgroup posting.

Still, Apex officials said the next version of the Apex DVD player will have the hidden menu disabled.

The company is also planning to release three new DVD players as well as a car player with the same features as the AD-600A. The MD-100 will fit in a car radio slot and feature DVD, CD, and MP3 playback plus standard AM and FM playback.

Apex expects its biggest potential market will be people who drive SUVs, where manufacturers have been installing television sets in the back seat. The MD-100 will be available next month for $499. The company is still working on getting it into retail outlets.

ToC

The Joy of CD-RW Drives

Whether it's Disco Inferno or the latest Grammy winners, music of all sorts is being burned into recordable CDs to create individual music mixes. And now that the MP3 revolution has taken the Web by storm, there's even more reason to create your own compilation of music on CDs.

The one essential tool for these tasks is a disk drive that can write CD-R disks. The recording process involves heating a dye layer with a laser beam that changes the disk permanently. This is called "burning" a disk.

In recent years, however, a new technology has arrived that will also let you record and erase data from special disks, called CD-RW. This uses phase-change technology so the changes are reversible.

The best news is that it costs little more to make a CD-R drive design compatible with CD-RW. As a result, it is difficult to even find a new drive that is CD-R only. CD-RW media is more expensive than CD-R blanks, however -- $3 compared with as little as $1 each -- so the one-time recording CD-R disks are the most popular.

These drives are good for much more than making music CDs. If you have your computer working smoothly, consider making a backup of your hard drive so you can restore it easily if something should go wrong. Or if you need to archive lots of data-- such as old downloads or email files-- a CD-RW disk can hold hundreds of megabytes, freeing up space on your hard drive.

Choose the Right CD-RW

Choosing a CD-RW drive requires making a few decisions. Do you want an internal or external drive? An external drive can be easier to move from one computer to the next and requires less effort to install, but you need to have an external connection such as a USB or SCSI port.

This is closely connected to the next decision. What type of interface? EIDE is possibly the easiest option for internal drives, but you can be limited in terms of the number of devices you can install. SCSI may offer some performance advantages and supports more devices-- including external drives. USB is only for external drives and can provide acceptable performance, but there are limits to how many devices can use the USB bus at the same time.

The final choice to make is the drive's speed. Drives are rated for their CD-ROM read speed, their CD-R record speed, and their CD-RW write speed.

The ratings are made in terms of multiples of the single-speed drives, which is based on the 150 bytes/second transfer rate of audio CD drives. Most drives now read CD-ROMs at a maximum of 24x(a variable rate) but 32x drives are becoming more common.

CD-RW rates tend to be 2x or 4x, and CD-R rates can be 4x, 6x, or 8x. The newest CD-RW drives-- such as the CD Rocket Mach 12 from Smart & Friendly -- can now write CD-Rs at a blazing 12x speed.

Writing speed is not the most critical factor in choosing a CD-RW drive, however. If you have a CD with 40 minutes of music, it will take at least 10 minutes to burn on a 4x drive, five minutes on an 8x, and three and a half minutes at 12x.

The actual times will be longer because there are overhead tasks involved. But the minute and a half difference for the 12x drive compared with the 8x drive doesn't save much time unless you're making a lot of disks.

So pick a drive, hook it up, and start burning!

ToC

Protect Yourself Against Hackers

Hacker attacks are all the rage in the news these days. When aren't they? No need to cower under your covers in fear of an Information Superhighway ambush. We've got the info you need to arm yourself against hacker attacks.

Close the ports! Ports are virtual pathways into your computer from the Internet, or any network. First you'll need to find out what port numbers mean. Then figure out if you've got any open ports. If you do, sometimes you can close them in Windows, or you may need a port blocker.

If you connect via DSL or cable modem, your high-speed connection makes a tempting target for packet monkeys. Try Zone Alarm 2.0 from ZoneLabs.com, to seal up your gaping bandwidth.

So now you're all locked up nice and secure, but it's got you wondering? How do hackers do it? We've got a great article telling you where to go to find out about the hacker world and arm yourself with information. You'll want to read our review of hacker magazine 2600 especially.

Of course, if you get sucked into the world of hackers and crackers you'll want to be careful. We've got a hacker ethic for you to examine, to make sure you don't fall prey to the dark side of the Net.

Remember folks, while there are nefarious hackers and crackers out there, it's mostly safe on the Net. So don't get spooked. A little wise caution and information should be all you need.

ToC

S3 sells graphics chip biz to VIA

from ZDNet

Another company switches focus to the Web. S3 will focus on Internet-music players and information appliances.

S3 Inc. is selling graphics chip business and shifting into the Internet appliance business, the company said Tuesday. S3 is selling its unit which makes graphics chips for personal computers to a newly formed joint venture with Taiwan's VIA Technologies Inc. for about $323 million in cash and securities. The company's focus had been making multimedia acceleration hardware and software for the PC market.

But S3 will retain ownership of the add-in card business, which features the Viper and Stealth product lines used by gamers to soup up graphics on their PCs.

As part of the agreement S3 will sell 3 million shares of its stock to VIA Technologies at a price coinciding with the signing of the definitive agreement.

"With this announcement, we've effectively completed the first phase of our long-term growth plan, transforming S3 from a graphics focused semiconductor supplier to a well-positioned Internet appliance company,'' CEO and chairman Ken Potshner said in a statement.

Net appliances over chips The company said its potential growth as an Internet appliance company far outweighs that offered by PC graphics chip products. Its Internet-related businesses showed rapid growth in the most recently announced fourth quarter of 1999, up 46 percent over the previous quarter, led by a 76 percent quarter to quarter growth in revenue for its flagship Rio products. S3 acquired Rio and its Net appliance focus when it bought Diamond Multimedia last year.

S3's technology assets include its Rio family of digital audio players and HomeFree series of home networking solutions, as well as its forthcoming DSL Residential Gateway and Transmeta-powered Internet appliances.

S3 also has holdings in United Microelectronics Corporation valued at about $1 billion, and a 41 percent equity stake in RioPort.com, Inc.

S3 also said its transformation will involve exploring alternative strategies, including partnerships and joint ventures, relative to its ongoing multimedia board business.

S3 said the VIA transaction is expected to be completed prior to its third quarter and customers should not expect disruptions of any kind.

ToC

PC Tips

submitted by Kevin Hisel

Here's a super-handy web site from Windows Magazine with more Windows tips than you can shake a stick at. There are hundreds of handy tips concerning operating system, user interface and application issues. Point your browser at:

http://tips.winmag.com/

ToC

The Macintosh Section:

Mac and The Matrix

by Edwin Hadley (e-hadley@life.uiuc.edu)

I recently received "The Matrix" DVD for a birthday gift. I have a DVD in my G3 and no regular DVD player. I was expecting a great time with a great movie. I had read a review saying neat things about the disc's "extras" available via computers. Things came to a screeching halt shortly after I dropped the disc in my G3. The Apple DVD player informed me that this disc was not formatted properly. I checked the box for info as to what "format" the disc was and what software was needed. I didn't see the usual Windows or Direct X logos or mentions of Pentium II's or III's. As a matter of fact, I didn't see anything about formats or computers anywhere. That is until I got out my 10x magnifier glasses to examine the "super" fine print under the list of actors and other production people for the movie. And there it was, in bold type mind you, a disclaimer. This disc is not compatible with Macintosh computers (or something very similar).

Well, my estimate of the disc and it's producer's (Warner Home Video) intelligence went right into the trash basket. "These guys suck!" were my first thoughts. "But wait! The club's meeting is this next week and I can bounce this question off some of them!" were my next thoughts. So the meeting came and I asked. "There's a patch." was all Rich said. So the next day I looked on the web and, sure enough, there is a "work around".

I copied this from a review of "The Matrix" at The DVD Resource Page ( http://www.dvdresource.com/reviews/matrix.shtml).

Macintosh Compatibility

It takes a little effort to gain access to the DVD-ROM content in The Matrix but it is well worth it. There are two main issues that have to be overcome: one, getting the disc to mount properly; and two, gaining access to the majority of the DVD-ROM content.

Getting the disc to mount is not a given, and when it does mount it defaults to the wrong format. If you get an error message on inserting the DVD, and it gets ejected, try again by inserting the disc while holding down the key sequence command-option-i (the "command" key is also known as the "Apple" key). A generic disc icon should appear, and you should then be able to double-click the disc and see its contents.

If the disc does mount, but has the "DVD" emblem on the icon, then the disc has mounted as the wrong format. You need to control-click the icon and from the contextual menu that pops up, select "Mount as ISO9660" at which point the disc will remount and the icon will become generic. Double-clicking the disc will now yield the contents. If you get an error message, restart your computer and mount using the command-option-i trick.

Once the disc is mounted properly, you can play it via Apple DVD Player. To gain access to the DVD-ROM content, you have to use Netscape (I used Communicator version 4.6). Internet Explorer can not handle the translation of upper-case file names to lower-case.

The multimedia content uses Macromedia Flash, which you should download and install (if you don't have it already).

Here are some links to key areas (this should go without saying, but you have to have the DVD mounted in your DVD-ROM drive to access them):

The blue pill/red pill splash screen with Laurence Fishburne's narration
The blue pill/red pill selection screen that will take you to the main index
The main index
The trailer to The Matrix
The trailer to Demolition Man
The trailer to Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome
The trailer to Outland
The trailer to The Road Warrior
The trailer to Soldier

You can play the trailers in-browser if you have the QuickTime plug-in installed. Otherwise, you will need QuickTime Player.

From the main index, you can explore the majority of the content of the DVD-ROM. Going to the "Programmed Realities" area will take you to the screenplay with the storyboards and still photos. Although you can not currently get embedded playback of the video while reading the screenplay, you can play the movie concurrently using Apple DVD Player.

While this is a roundabout and somewhat convoluted process, it will have to do until the PCFriendly software becomes MacFriendly (which apparently will be when QuickTime becomes DVD-savvy).

I tried it and it worked. I was able to enjoy the movie the next weekend and view all of the items listed above. There is a "Making of The Matrix" HBO special that features the work and the people behind all the "wire work" that went on in the film. And there are websites to view. But, I don't have a modem hooked up to my G3, so I couldn't get the websites to be completely active.

The review's last little comment is needless needle and a bunch of "hoo-haa". The problem is not that Quicktime is not DVD savvy, but that the producers of the DVD were not Mac and Quicktime savvy. And definitely not Mac friendly, which may mean that I will be less friendly towards Warner Home Video, the makers of The Matrix DVD.

This "problem", or rather programming choice, is a problem with other DVD discs as well, I hear. So anyone buying DVD discs for play in your Macintosh computers had best bring a magnifying glass with them so they can read the fine print. (Who the hell can read 4 point type anyway!?! Bold or not!)

But, the movie is great. And the 26 minute HBO "Making of..." is a real nice feature to have included on the disc, as well. Too bad Warner Home Video didn't think of Macintosh users when they made their disc.

Thanks for hearing me out.

ToC

Mac OS: OS X Preview

CNET Review (3/8/00)
By Becky Waring

Mac OS X, Apple's next-generation operating system, won't hit store shelves until this summer. But recently, the company gave CNET a special preview of the OS's major new features. From what we saw, the future looks rosy for Mac heads. While OS X won't run on pre-G3 boxes, the final release promises to be faster and more stable than OS 9, and to offer more sophisticated graphics capabilities and an even friendlier interface. OS X might be just what the Mac needs to make Linux and Windows users cross over.

Up to Code

OS X aims to achieve a difficult task: to simultaneously maintain the Mac's supereasy interface design while making the OS's internal code more powerful. For instance, OS X's kernel, dubbed Darwin, is based on BSD Unix, an operating system known for its reliability. Plus, OS X's kernel is open source, which means any developer can write code to improve upon the OS. Best of all, it sports protected memory (one application crash will not bring down the whole system) and preemptive multitasking, so it can execute many commands simultaneously. You'll find these same features in other modern OSs such as Windows 2000 and Linux.

Lovely Interface

But OS X's similarity to server OSs such as Linux and NT ends there. OS X's interface, called Aqua, is much more user-friendly and graphics-heavy than any other OS we've seen. Apple chief executive Steve Jobs says OS X's main design goal was for users to want to lick the screen, and while we didn't feel compelled to do that, Aqua's brightly colored, translucent buttons and icons do look a bit like hard candy--eye pleasing.

More importantly, OS X's candylike icons are also useful. Buttons shaped like traffic lights at the top left of each window let you perform file commands. Click the red light to close, the yellow light to minimize, and the green light to maximize windows. Minimizing a window sends it to the Dock, a new feature that stores your open files as pictures along the bottom of the screen. It's much like the Windows Minimize feature, except this one is graphical. We love the Dock because it creates more screen real estate and allows you to minimize any single file or document. OS 9, on the other hand, lets you minimize only open windows.

Display Innovations

But OS X's new look isn't all flash and dash. A sophisticated new 2D-display technology, called Quartz, handles graphics for OS X. As a result, the interface is highly visual but doesn't slow you down. For instance, OS X's scroll bars and drop-down menus are semitransparent, letting you see colors, shapes, and even some details of the window underneath. And because Quartz is based on Adobe PDF, an industry standard format, it renders complex images quickly and in real time. In our preview, for example, dragging and resizing windows yielded immediate results; we didn't have to wait for images or screens to redraw.

Find It Fast

OS X's most striking improvement is its new Finder. In previous Mac OSs, you had to open multiple folders on the desktop to get to a specific file. The totally revamped file manager now shows a hierarchical directory tree of all your drives, including Network drives. Now, you can get a quick overview of your files the way you can in both Windows and Unix OSs. Plus, Finder offers a built-in search box to locate files by name, a Preview pane so that you can peek into your files without having to open them, and the ability to search the Web. Ahhhh.

Upgrade-O-Rama

Apple will gradually introduce OS X on new Macs throughout the fall, but it won't be available on all new Macs until January 2001. If you have an Apple-built G3 or a later Mac, you'll be able to upgrade to the new OS this summer (you also may need to upgrade some applications to take full advantage of OS X). And from what we've seen, you'll want to. Though we haven't tested the final version, we like this preview's stunningly graphical interface, its improved graphics handling, and its powerful new Finder. Check back for our final word this summer.

ToC

The Amiga Section:

Bill McEwen Meets With Amiga User's Groups

by Joe Obrin, RMAU
http://www.io.com/~joeobrin/A2KUGN.html

On Saturday, April 1, 2000, in conjunction with the Amiga 2K show in Saint Louis, Bill McEwen, the new leader of Amiga, met with a group of officers from Amiga users' groups. The meeting was arranged by the Users Group Network (UGN). McEwen was open, honest, and optimistic. He gave us every reason to believe that there are bright days ahead for the Amiga, and he gave us every indication that he understood how important the users groups were to the past and future successes of this machine.

Before McEwen arrived, there was a brief discussion of the UGN Times needing writers and articles. There was also some discussion about the continuing need for users group newsletter editors to share articles between them.

One of the things which McEwen discussed was the fact that Fletcher Haug, formally of the Amiga Informer and Amazing Amiga is now the editor of Amiga World. This is not the Amiga World that we all remember, from IDG Communications. Instead, this Amiga World will be the official publication of the Amiga company. It will focus on real news, not rumors. In particular, it will serve as a vehicle for Amiga to make official announcements about products and plans. This will be it's central function, and it will not, for example, offer tutorials. In time, if this function becomes less pressing, the publication will focus on the needs of third party developers.

Plans for Amiga World include distribution through the users groups and with each new Amiga sold. Amiga World will be available online in both an HTML format, and a downloadable printable format. Amiga World will also contain a listing of all other Amiga magazines, allowing new users to find other resources. Amiga World will not be directly in competition with the present Amiga magazines, as it will avoid certain types of stories, and will also allow other magazines to fill in more complete details after official announcements.

There are currently two micro breweries bidding on the rights to produce Boing Beer.

McEwen was asked about the possibility of the Amiga company providing financial support to help the users groups stay afloat. He offered one avenue, which is that Amiga will be willing on occasion to take out advertising space in club newsletters. He advised interested newsletter editors to send e-mail to kari@amiga.com, with the subject line "Advertising Request".

Kari will be the main contact at Amiga for users groups. In time, all communications between the users groups and Amiga should be directed through her.

McEwen stated that within a quarter, there would be 76 people working at Amiga. There will be a big marketing effort focused on the user's groups.

Before McEwen was dismissed at Gateway, he was in charge of, among other things, relations with the user's community. Right before he was let go, he had received approval for a 1.5 million dollar budget to work with the user's community. Clearly, McEwen does appreciate the genuine value of the Amiga user's groups.

McEwen received approval for his budget on a Friday, and was let go the following Monday. This was just a couple of days before Collas and Gateway parted ways.

McEwen said that as of this meeting, he believed the developers systems were a week away. They would sell for $750 (not including a monitor), which is below Amiga's cost to produce them.

McEwen talked briefly about the fact that Amiga would also be willing to provide sponsorship for youth sports teams in conjunction with local users groups, just to get the Amiga name back into the public eye.

In the June/July time frame, McEwen promised there would be a "user's group tour". A high ranking representative from Amiga--possibly McEwen, Fleecy, or Randy Hughes--will visit each of the local user's groups.

In talking about the rebirth of the Amiga, McEwen made an analogy to the VW Beetle. He believes that once a credible product is released, many people who had Amigas at some point will return to the market, just because it was such a positive experience for them the first time.

Amiga is working together with their dealers to make the Amiga 1200 retail for less than $200. Unfortunately, there is no design database left for the Amiga 1200. This was known for some time, but now the last silicon fabrication line which would produce technology with this large a feature size is shut down. This means that it is no longer possible to produce the AGA chip set. When the current stock of A1200s is depleted, there can be no more. There are 17 thousand A1200s left in Amiga's inventory, but only 1,000 of those are NTSC.

At the $200 price point, Amiga is loosing money on the A1200s, but they want to keep the community as strong as possible for the launch of the new product. An A1200 with a PPC accelerator will be able to run the new Amiga OS.

The dearth of PPC accelerators for the Amiga was also discussed. McEwen stated that Amiga is working very closely with MetaBox to produce the new AmiJoe PPC accelerator for the A1200, and that this accelerator was assured of being able to run the new OS. McEwen also stated that Amiga was working with MetaBox to bring the price of this accelerator in at under $200. Where possible, Amiga is now working with third party developers to help drive the cost of third party products down.

Amiga is also working closely with DCE, who acquired the rights to produce Phase 5's old designs. McEwen said that among steps they would take would be to guarantee runs for third parties like DCE. The DCE accelerators are also certain to run the new OS when it arrives.

Because of the situation with the Amiga custom chip sets and the impending arrival of the new machine, Amiga will pursue no new development on the current platform. But, a properly accelerated classic Amiga can be used in conjunction with the new OS.

The main reason that the new OS will not run on a 68K is that Motorola is an investor in Tao, Amiga's OS partner. Motorola is attempting to move all of their customers away from the 68K family of processors, and has told Tao not to develop their OS for the 68K.

Unofficially, the new Amiga may arrive by the end of summer 2000. When it is released, the goal is to have more applications available concurrent with system release than for the release of any other new platform in history. By the end of the year, there are 127 applications projected to be released for the new machine.

McEwen said that the announcement of Sun's partnership with Amiga this weekend almost included a video with McNealy (Sun's CEO). That is how excited Sun is about working with Amiga.

Sun's interest can also be seen in their cooperation in helping to make important documentation available for the new platform. As pointed out elsewhere, Java will be a cornerstone of the new Amiga architecture. There will be books made available at cost to people interested in Java development on the new Amiga, in conjunction with Sun and IDG.

In addition, Sun has donated two tickets to Java1, a developer's conference to be held this summer. These tickets will be raffled off to the user's community, probably through the user's groups. The tickets are valued at $3500 each.

Sun is also attempting to establish contact between local Sun reps and Amiga user's groups.

In addition to Sun, Red Hat and Corel were about to be announced as Amiga partners.

McEwen pointed out that although the perspective of the Amiga user's community is that the well has been dry for years (in terms of support from the parent company). But, from the perspective of the new owners of the Amiga, they have been doing this for 90 days. Naturally, there will be some difference in expectations between these groups for a while.

Scala will be available for the new Amiga. So will Real Audio, video, and jukebox. Also expect to see Quicktime and other standard multimedia formats available on the new machine at time of release.

If you are wondering what happened to Jim Collas, he has a technology incubator on the west coast that is not associated with Amiga. His partners in this venture include some people he worked with while at Gateway Amiga. Collas is *NOT* involved in any way with Amiga at this point.

McEwen said that he would never make a word processor, or any other application. He stated that Amiga would never be in the business of competing with either third party Amiga developer's or with the user's base.

McEwen stated that the user's groups and the community represented the true value of Amiga. It's why he and his partners bought the rights.

McEwen confided that he spent $4.5 million to buy Amiga. This money was provided by venture capitalists, who now own 30% of the company. McEwen and his two partners--Fleecy Moss and Randy Hughes--own the other 70%. The VC analysts have placed the value of the company at $250 million.

McEwen was asked if we should be careful about keeping these plans within the community, which we had heard from someone else who recently stood at the helm of Amiga. The real question was do we have to worry about Microsoft.

His response was "I'm not worried about Microsoft. Microsoft represents no competition to us. We will have one OS that can run on everything from a cell phone to a server. No one else has that."

McEwen pointed out that Cisco, whose only product is Internet routers, is now worth more than Microsoft, according to the value of outstanding stock. McEwen stated this indicates that the investment community believes that the PC is on it's way out, and that the future is in connecting devices together.

McEwen said that those who have been with the Amiga for a long time understood what it could have been. That is why they are still valuable as the Amiga moves forward.

McEwen pointed out that he and his partners are the first owners of the Amiga who don't do anything else but Amiga.

McEwen made an analogy for the original Amiga users, stating that "the earliest pioneers are the ones who got the arrows in the back".

ToC

The New Amiga Community

by Joe Obrin, RMAU
http://www.io.com/~joeobrin/A2KComm.html

Anyone who has really been paying attention to the Amiga saga understands one thing: The strength of the Amiga is it's community. The community of users who have kept the machine alive when it's ownership was bungled by one corporate entity after another. The community of developers who produced great products for a machine that others ignored, and who kept producing products long after it became clear they could make more money in a different market. The community of users groups who provided support to the Amiga users when there was no support forthcoming from local stores or the various owners of Amiga. And the community represented by the small handful of honest, determined dealers who did stick with us through times of a declining market.

Somehow, something about this machine--something that was just better than the other platforms--made us all stick it out even when times were awfully dark.

McEwen made it clear that he understands the strength of the Amiga is the community. On Saturday afternoon, he attended a meeting sponsored by the UGN with representatives from the Amiga user's groups. But, even beyond that he speaks of uniting three communities and building a community with even greater strength than before.

He talks about uniting the current Amiga community, and at the banquet announced agreements with long term developers Haage And Partner, and with Anti Gravity Products, who recently acquired the rights to the Boxer. They now represent the talents of Mick Tinker and some of the former talents of BlitterSoft. In addition, Amiga is working closely with Metabox and DCE (who acquired the rights to manufacture Phase 5's old designs) to produce inexpensive yet powerful PPC accelerators for classic Amigas. McEwen has made it clear that he would like to bring as many of the previous Amiga developers forward with the new machine as possible. He said "you guys are the best in the world at producing multi-media content."

He talks about bringing about an alliance with the Linux community. At the banquet, he announced partnerships with both Red Hat and Corel. He stated that there were 18 different versions of Linux now, and by the end of the year there would be 40 different versions available. He talked about how this plethora of vendors could eventually lead to a fragmentation of the market, and to incompatibilities between the various Linux versions. There comes the risk that a program written for one Linux distribution will not run on another. What the Amiga offers is an abstraction layer. This provides a common interface to which all Linux developers can write, which will guarantee that a program written once will run on any Linux box (or any other box, for that matter). All Amiga needs to run on a Linux box is the Linux kernel.

He also talks about bringing about an alliance with the Java developer's community. With the incredibly fast JVM offered by Tao, Amiga addresses Java's biggest problem--that of execution speed. And, there is also that pool of great Amiga multimedia content developers. He announced an alliance with Sun at the banquet, reading a brief statement from Sun which talked about how excited Sun was to be working with Amiga. McEwen also said during the UGN meeting that Sun would soon be encouraging all of their Java developers to be using the Amiga interface as the interface for developing multimedia content.

For the first time in the history of the Amiga, the owners of the name and technology understand that the real secret to the Amiga is the community. And they are taking steps not only to strengthen that community, but to swell it's ranks and to provide new alliances.

ToC

The New Amiga Vision

by Joe Obrin, RMAU
http://www.io.com/~joeobrin/A2KVision.html

At the banquet at Amiga 2K, we saw a demonstration of the Tao operating system running on top of a Linux box. We watched as Fleecy Moss first popped up one window after another which held various small applications, and the machine responded with out a moment's hesitation. But, then the real awe inspiring demo commenced. He opened three windows, two of which had instantiations of Quake running, and the third of which held an instantiation of Doom. All three games ran flawlessly. It was very impressive.

But, what made it really impressive was what was being demonstrated. As Fleecy ran the demo, Bill McEwen made the point from the podium that there was no hardware acceleration on this machine. It had a nice processor--a 500 MHz Pentium III--but no graphics card. Everything that we were seeing was going through the main processor.

But, there was more here than that. The machine was running a Linux OS, but it had an abstraction layer on top of it. The abstraction layer masks the Linux OS, such that the applications which were running are not specifically targeted for Linux, but are instead targeted for this abstraction layer. That is, these applications are written for a different OS--and that OS is what will become the Amiga OS.

This is really just an extension of Sun's Java concept. Indeed, Tao's operating system really is based upon a Java Virtual Machine. Sun's slogan for Java is "write once, run anywhere". The whole point of writing a program in Java is that you will be able to turn around and run that same program, without porting or even a new compile, on any machine.

Which is an exciting theory. But, everyone knows what's wrong with Java. It's slow.

But it isn't anymore.

The thing that made this a slack-jaw demonstration for anyone who understood what they were seeing--the thing that made some of us wonder if what we were seeing was even real--is that it was running at mind blurring speed, flawlessly, through an abstraction layer.

To understand the point, imagine that you are a games developer. You write the latest, hottest, 3D fantasy masterpiece, and you want to sell it to as many people as possible. In today's world, that means that you pick one of many competing game platforms--Play Station, Nintendo, PC, Mac, Amiga, etc. for which to write your game. You make your choice based upon which market you think you can sell the most games into. You write the game for that machine, getting all of the bugs out of the code, and putting together your story and graphics. Then, if the first release is a success, you *MIGHT* port the game to a different platform. But, this could take another six months to a year, and keeps you from working on the sequel, or on another brilliant idea. And, if your first release does not sell, you probably won't bother with a port at all. So, if you picked wrong, a game that may have been a success on another platform could flop on the one you picked. Plus, to get to the widest possible market requires a lot of work, as you do two or three ports.

Now, here's how Amiga is proposing to change that. Imagine that you write the game for the new Amiga. In every conceivable environment--PC, Mac, game console, or even server--there exists an Amiga abstraction layer. So, your game will run on every machine out there, as long as the end user has the Amiga abstraction layer. So, on the day you release the game for the Amiga, you also release it for the PC, the Mac, the Play Station, the Nintendo--in principal, even for workstations and servers. The basic Amiga release assumes that the end user already has the Amiga abstraction layer running on his machine. But, it wouldn't be that hard to make a "PC bundle" that included the game and the Amiga abstraction layer for the PC (which you would charge more for, and pay a license to Amiga for).

I use games as an example for several reasons. One is that there are several clearly visible competing games platforms out there, and this makes the advantages very clear. A second is that there are a lot of games released every year, and there is a lot of financial incentive for this type of approach. The third is that games really do tend to push the hardware and software performance of a system. If you can do this for games, which Amiga has demonstrated that you can (three copies of Doom, and one of Quake on a system without 3D graphics acceleration), then you can do if for anything.

And that's the other point. You can do it for anything. Write a really cool paint program once, and sell it to everyone in the graphics arts community, no matter what machine they are on. Write a good word processor, and sell it to everyone. Write a powerful financial package or database, and your end customer can run it on every machine in his office, from the PC to the mainframe.

During the UGN meeting, McEwen was asked if we should be careful about keeping these plans within the community, which we had heard from someone else who recently stood at the helm of Amiga. The real question was do we have to worry about Microsoft.

His response was "I'm not worried about Microsoft. Microsoft represents no competition to us. We will have one OS that can run on everything from a cell phone to a server. No one else has that."

One OS from a cell phone to a server. Write your application once, and run it on every box and information appliance made. That is the new Amiga vision, and it is a powerful vision indeed.

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The CUCUG Section:

March General Meeting

reported by Kevin Hopkins (kh2@uiuc.edu)

The March 16, 2000 General meeting began with President Jim Lewis introducing of club officers, your contact people for help if you need any. During the introductions, Jim made noted of a very special guest, Wayne Hamilton, the founder of the original Champaign Amiga User Group. It was great to have Wayne drop by.

President Lewis then asked Kevin Hopkins for the monthly Amiga news. Kevin began by bringing up several issues raised by the March Executive Update from Amiga Inc. Kevin said he had waited as long as he could to include the Update in the newsletter, but he finally had to send our newsletter out. Not 12 hours later the Update was posted to the Amiga website, so he sent it along as an Extra to our March newsletter. The Update was posted to Amiga.de on the 13th, but back-dated to the 10th.

Kevin reported on the reconstitution of the Amiga Advisory Council. Kevin said most of the original 30 members were back with the exception of two former members. Four new people were added, of which Bill McEwen (President and CEO of Amiga Inc.) was one. Kevin also stated that Gary Peake, coordinator of Team Amiga and an AAC member, had been hired by Amiga Inc.

Kevin noted that the Update specifically stated that the new Amiga OS would run on PowerPC cards, so those who upgraded their Amigas with PPC cards have finally had their wager covered by the parent company. Granted this is three to six years too late, but at least the path everyone had desired back when Apple was deciding to go with the PowerPC has finally been given a corporate blessing. Kevin was asked if this might mean the new AmigaOS would run on Apple PPC hardware. Kevin could not confirm this, but he said most of the interest seems to be directed toward the POP (PowerPC Open Platform) boards being developed by IBM. The mention of POP brought up a cherry round of recalling all the acronyms attached to this concept: first PREP, then CHRP, now POP. Hopefully one of them will finally hit the streets.

The discussion of the PowerPC lead to the topic of Motorola being unable to provide reliable, high MHz PPC chips in quantities to meet Apple's requirements. This had prompted Apple to go to IBM as another supplier of PPC chips. The latest rumor surrounding this supply situation is that IBM has produced faster PPCs than 500 MHz and is getting a more successful yield in their manufacturing process, which has made them a better and cheaper source than Motorola, a situation Motorola has responded to by tieing up IBM legally through their licensing agreement so that they won't be undercut. Motorola has denied they are doing such a thing, but the rumors persist and seem pretty well founded.

Kevin's final item of Amiga news is the Amiga 2000 show in St. Louis being held April 1 and 2. There will be a developer meeting on the evening of March 31. Kevin said Amiga Inc. has promised major announcements at the show. Jim asked Kevin if he was going to attend the show and Kevin said he'd like to but personal commitments might preclude that. However, Kevin said there is a lot of rumbling out there in the Amiga community and Amiga 2000 seems to be shaping up as "a gathering of the tribes".

Next, Richard Rollins related the Macintosh news. Richard announced that the iBook had been named the best selling portable for last month. He said Apple would have done even better if it hadn't been hampered by the chip shortage caused by Motorola. Richard said there is talk of Apple having a stock split, the first since the early 80s. Lastly, he made passing note of Steve Job's keynote address at the Mac show recently in Japan.

Jim Lewis then gave the PC news. Jim stated that Intel is producing too many varieties of processors and muddling the market. He said it's "a bloody nightmare for retailers and integrators". He said each processor has two versions: the OEM version, which has no case or fan and only a 90 day warranty, and the "box" version, which is sold by Intel itself with a nice case and the *best* CPU fan you can get and carrying a three year warranty. At his work, they only use "box" processors in the machines they made and they have been in short supply.

There was a rather lengthy discussion of AMD processors, their speed, their quality, their market acceptance, their history and how close a clone of the Intel chips are they. Jim said they require their own motherboard and support chips, since they aren't a pin compatible replacement for Intel units. Past problems associated with AMD processors hasn't really been their fault, but that of their support partners. Jim said now that ASUS has staked the reputation of their motherboards on the Athlon, he feels very confident AMD technical superiority over Intel will begin to pay off for AMD. ASUS is widely regarded as *the* premiere board maker. Even HP is now using ASUS for their OEM efforts, Jim said.

Jim concluded his segment by saying that the presentation for this evening would be on the Apex AD600A DVD/CD/MP3 player and a "CD creation clinic" on both the Mac and the PC.

We then launched into the Question and Answer Session:

Norris Hansel asked if anyone has gone to Mac OS 9 and what kinds of problems have they had. Selena Douglass said her office was now using OS9 and weren't having any problems. Photoshop, Illustrator and several other application that Norris had specifically asked about were performing well.

In answer to another Norris question, several members confirmed that Adaptec is very good at hardware, but their software can be a problem. Norris said his current version of Toast wouldn't work with OS9. Richard Rollins advised him to drop back one version of Toast, which does work with OS9. It seems Toast was "improved" right into a problem.

Kevin Hisel reported that AT&T is beginning to hook up cable modems in town. The charge will be $50 a month. This launched an entire discussion of cable modem versus DSL (Digital Subscriber Line) service.

The bottom line is bandwidth. With cable modem service, your bandwidth (the speed at which your connection works) is impacted greatly by the number of other subscribers that are on with you. It's just like the old party line. The bandwidth is shared with your neighbors - the more users, the slower you connection gets. You also have the security problems associated with others on a LAN. You never know who else on your system might be "listening in". Another major negative, Kevin said, is you are dealing with the cable company and these people are generally clueless when it comes to computers and data transmission.

With a DSL, you get a fixed fast bandwidth and it is more secure. Kevin said Ameritech and McLeod are both working to provide DSL by late May or early June. Soltech will be offering the service for $45 to $50 a month, $70 if you have a LAN in your house. Kevin said the bandwidth will be 768K/sec downloading and 128K uploading. DSL maxes out at 1.5 MB/sec. The only downside to DSL locally is that Ameritech has just been purchased Southwestern Bell, the company from Hell.

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The Presentation: Richard Rollins and Jim Lewis address MP3

reported by Kevin Hopkins (kh2@uiuc.edu)

The focus of the presentation for this evening was on the new Apex AD600A player. Both Richard Rollins and Dave Witt brought in their Apex players. Richard said he had been watching "Screen Savers on ZDTV and they had done a segment on the Apex AD600A. The next day he ran out and bought one. Why? Because the machine plays DVDs, CDs, VCDs, MP3s on CD-ROM and all for $160. Richard said so far Circuit City is the only one selling the Apex player. He said their first order of 5000 sold out almost immediately. Their second order of 30,000 - gone. Dave Witt purchased a floor model for $130. (A couple of days after the meeting, yours truly went out to get one and they were sold out again and they wouldn't sell me the demonstrator.)

Richard put in a copy of "The Matrix" to show what the Apex could do. The first thing Richard commented on was the freeze frame. Richard said that unlike even his best VCR, DVD provides a dead solid still frame, which can be downloaded to your computer for use or manipulation.

Richard then talked about the jacks on the Apex. He noted there were two microphone jacks on the front of the machine, which puzzled him for a while, until he discovered the Apex could be used as a Kareoke machine. On the back there are composite out, S-Video out, separate R-G-B outs, two audio outs, and a digital audio out for surround sound systems. For those with older TV sets, which don't have any of these inputs, Dave Witt said he has purchased a couple of different adapters from Radio Shack that allowed him to go from RCA to Coax. That's just for the Video. For audio, he said you need a stereo receiver or boom box that allows for auxiliary input. Or, you can just use a standard VCR that has the Aux input.

Richard said his box plays CD-RWs as well as DVDs. It has a hand control like most VCRs, which he noted is a problem since now he has yet another remote. There was a little discussion about whether the Apex could be run off a universal remote. Dave Witt seemed to think the basic functions could be handled by a universal remote. It was just unclear how many functions might be lost by doing so.

Richard played a bit of a VCD. Granted, the quality was nowhere near as good as a DVD, but that's a function of the format, not the player.

Next, there was a discussion of DVD "region" codes and the Apex's ability to circumvent them. Dave Witt explained that the DVD Region is almost like a form of copy protection. Each DVD has a region identifier burned into it. Its purpose is to keep people from bringing imported DVDs into the US, and playing them. The biggest reason the manufacturers want this feature is because of the rampant piracy of copyrighted material in Asian countries. What the "Region Code" option in the Apex does is allow you to disable the Region code (which is set for the United States) and play any DVD you want. You can either disable it all together, or, set the Region Code to different countries. A spokesman for Apex has said that this feature is a function of the chipset they use and was meant for developer use, not aiding and abetting piracy. They say as many as twenty other manufacturers of DVD players use the same chipset they do.

On the downside, the Apex only displays an 8 character file name on MP3s. (That's not 8 plus 3; that's 8 only.) The first character signifies the directory the file is in. The next five are from the song title. The last two are standard characters used in a similar way to the tilde and numeric are used by DOS to truncate long filenames. Dave Witt said there is a firmware upgrade that will allow recognition of long filenames, which means that there's a Flash ROM inside the Apex that will allow substantial improvements in its abilities. Dave said the firmware upgrade is not available to the public yet. From what he hears, it is available in the new units. The way you will get it for your older machine is when you send in your registration card, they will send you a firmware upgrade on CD. You will insert the CD, and the machine will read and write the firmware. From what Dave understands, it will also be available as a download from some web sites that will allow you to burn it to a CD yourself, and run it.

Another drawback in the current player, Richard said, is that its shuffle feature only works within a directory. He said, if you've laid out your MP3 disks with each album within its own directory, the Apex will not do a spiral shuffle, but will shuffle within each album until it's finished and then move to the next directory, beginning again. However, if you've laid out your MP3 disk in a single directory, you can get nearly 12 hours of music on one CD (sampled at 128K). But, Dave Witt said shuffle does works as you would expect, combining all the songs on a CD. Jim Lewis said another friend of his, who has an Apex, also said it worked properly. So, some comparison of notes took place after the meeting.

Richard related a story of how he was able to track down a song he'd once heard on radio, which had not been released in the U.S. He was able to go to the artist's official web site and download the MP3 of the song, convert it and put it on a CD, so he could listen to it conveniently.

Richard spoke glowingly of his Apex. He said, "I haven't stuffed a single CD into it that it won't play." There was a question about PhotoCDs. Dave Witt said he'd tried one in his machine. He was able to view two pictures, then it hung. Dave continued by saying it wouldn't play CDI, as it was a proprietary format. However, Richard said it will play MiniCDs.

The presentation then moved into the "CD creation clinic" part of the evening. Jim Lewis was running Adaptec's Easy CD Creator on his PC and Richard Rollins ran Adaptec's Toast on the club's Mac. Obviously, there were similarities between these two Adaptec products, but the difference were quite noticeable, particular in the user interface. Jim said this was because they were created by two separate teams of programmers.

Both products can create many different kinds of CDs: Data CDs, Audio CDs Mixed-Mode CDs, CD Extra and Bootable CD formats. Jim said in Easy CD Creator there is even the ability to record music from a turntable and clean up those nasty clicks and pops from your vinyl records. Creator 4.0 and higher can convert MP3s to an Audio CD on the fly. It has a drag and drop interface and you can reorder the songs simply by dragging them around. Easy CD Creator costs $79.

As the demo progressed, there was a question about quality of media. Jim said he had never had a problem with any brand of media he had purchased.

There was a little bit of friendly competition between Richard on the Mac and Jim on the PC. Richard produced a playable CD, while Jim produced three "coasters". However, to be fair, Richard's CD only had three songs on it and it was burned at a very slow speed. Jim, on the other hand, was pushing the envelop with a full disk's worth of material at a very fast burn rate. One of the "coasters" was due to trying to put too much material on the disk. The second was due to a fragmented hard drive not being able to keep up with the speed-demon burner. The third was simply because we ran out of time and Jim had to shut down his machine mid burn because we had to vacate the meeting room.

The final question of the night was about "coasters" (about all a mis-burned CD is good for). What is the principal cause of a bad CD? Jim said buffer under-run is the most common cause of a bad burn - not keeping the burner fed as it goes about its business. The fragmented drive was a good example of that. The machine couldn't fill the buffer faster than it was being emptied by the burner. Another common cause is trying to do too many other things on your machine while burning a CD in the background. If you bog the machine down, or, if something else you are working on causes the machine to crash .... coaster.

This was an evening packed with information. It was also the kind of direct exposure to new and intriguing technologies that is the user group's forte. Thanks to everyone that contributed to a great evening.

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March Board Meeting

reported by Kevin Hopkins (kh2@uiuc.edu)

The March meeting of the CUCUG executive board took place on Tuesday, March 21, 2000, at 7PM, at Kevin Hisel's house. (For anyone wishing to attend - which is encouraged, by the way - the address and phone number are both in the book). Present at the meeting were Jim Lewis, Dave Witt, Emil Cobb, Richard Rollins, Jack Melby, Charles Melby -Thomas, Anderson Yau, Kevin Hopkins, and Kevin Hisel. Due to a scheduling screw-up Kevin Hopkins didn't arrive at the meeting until almost 8PM. (I made up for it, though.)

Jim Lewis: Jim said he thought the Apex DVD player demo was well received. A lot of interest was show and there were a lot of questions from those attending. The meeting ran up against the clock and people said to the end. Jim also said he had fun participating, burning a few CDs.

Richard Hall: Rich gave his usual detailed Treasurer's report, noting that with the exception of meeting room rent, our income for the quarter covered our expenses. Room rent was an exceptional expense, since it was paid for the entire year.

Emil Cobb: Emil reported an attendance of 20 people at the last meeting.

[Richard Rollins]: Having just bought a PC, Richard said he an interest helping out people news to a platform. He suggested we create beginners CDs for both Mac and PC users. Jack Melby will do the one for the Mac with Richard's assistance and Dave Witt said he'd do the PC Beginner's CD.

As a program suggestion, Richard said he was also interested in faster modem speeds and, since we can't hook up a DSL modem at the meeting site, he'd like to see a video tape of DSL as soon as someone in the club gets one and got record how it works.

Jack Melby: Jack said that at the next Mac SIG meeting he'd be doing a more complete demonstration of Via Voice, a program he touched upon at the January meeting. He marvelled at the programs ability to learn, particularly on things like unusual name. He recounted how it had first rendered the name of one of his students, Genaro Mendex (Pronounced Hin-are-o), as "Hand Our Old Man Dead". He says he plans to hit it with another weird name at the next meeting, but he can't rehearse his demonstration because ViaVoice now learns from his voice so quickly, it's learn this name and make the test pointless.

Charles Melby-Thomas: Charlie said he was sorry he missed the last meeting, but his search for a college to attend is progressing.

[Dave Witt]: Dave addressed some of the latest news concerning the Apex DVD player he helped show at the last meeting. Dave said he wouldn't be upgrading the firmware in his machine since there has been some controversy over some of the machines capabilities and the MPAA may force some security measures which would block the Apex's ability to bypass some DVD protections.

Returning to the discussion of modems and sources of increased bandwidth coming soon to Champaign, Dave had some very negative things to say about cable delivered Internet access. Security was his primary concern. Dave mentioned a program called "Black Ice" which scans for attempts to enter your system. He said it reports incidents all the time. Dave said there are automated "bots" that are out there just looking for systems with lax security. There are things that will stop these intruders, like firewalls and proxy software (Kevin Hisel put in a good word for his LAN software "Sygate"), but Dave was less than impressed with cable systems in general.

Anderson Yau: Anderson gave a personal note that he had just returned from Florida where he had taken part in the on-road RC car race, the South Gas Championship. He said he had a lot of fun. He was ribbed mercilessly about his tan.

Kevin Hopkins: Kevin delivered an updated copy of the database for Kevin Hisel's use. He had no other business.

Kevin Hisel: Kevin had no official business to discuss.

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The Back Page:

The CUCUG is a not-for-profit corporation, originally organized in 1983 to support and advance the knowledge of area Commodore computer users. We've grown since then.

Meetings are held the third Thursday of each month at 7:00 p.m. at the Bresnan Meeting Center in the Champaign Park District Headquarters (398-2550). The Center is located at 706 Kenwood, 1/2 block south of the corner of Kenwood and John Street, in west Champaign. Kenwood is the fourth north-south street off of John as you are going west, after crossing Mattis. The Center is in the northwest corner of Centennial Park, northwest of Centennial High School.

Membership dues for individuals are $20 annually; prorated to $10 at mid year.

Our monthly newsletter, the Status Register, is delivered by email. All recent editions are available on our WWW site. To initiate a user group exchange, just send us your newsletter or contact our editor via email. As a matter of CUCUG policy, an exchange partner will be dropped after three months of no contact.

For further information, please attend the next meeting as our guest, or contact one of our officers (all at area code 217):

   President/WinSIG:   Jim Lewis                359-1342           NOSPAMlewis_j_e@yahoo.com
   Vice-President:     Emil Cobb                398-0149            e-cobb@uiuc.edu
   Secretary/Editor:   Kevin Hopkins            356-5026               kh2@uiuc.edu
   Treasurer:          Richard Hall             344-8687            rjhall1@uiuc.edu
   Corporate Agent:    Jim Lewis                359-1342           NOSPAMlewis_j_e@yahoo.com
   Board Advisor:      Richard Rollins          469-2616
   Webmaster:          Kevin Hisel              406-948-1999           khisel @ cucug.org
   Mac SIG Co-Chair:   John Melby               352-3638          jbmelby@cucug.org
   Mac SIG Co-Chair:   Charles Melby-Thompson   352-3638         charlesm@cucug.org

Surf our web site at http://www.cucug.org/

CUCUG
912 Stratford Dr.
Champaign, IL
61821

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