Computer Info – March 20, 2002

(** obtain handouts at http://www.hdprint.co.uk/ftp/florida **)

This Week’s Program

Steve West will demonstrate a registry cleaner. Howard Aders has volunteered to bring in a computer to let Steve do this on. After that, it the usual question and answer session.

Maintenance of Your PC

Let’s start with a little note on preventive maintenance. When uninstalling a program, always check the ADD/REMOVE PROGRAMS feature first. Then look for an Uninstall program that came with the program. A good reason to make sure you remove programs properly is to avoid leaving old registry keys. You need to keep your registry in tip-top condition because it really affects how well your system runs.

When you uninstall an application with the Windows Add/Remove Programs feature or the programs uninstall program, you may be presented with a baffling decision. Windows may tell you that programs no longer use certain files, sometimes with the .DLL file extension. It will then ask you if you wish the file to be deleted. Bitter experience has taught us to answer No To All. It never fails that some program really did need one of the files, leading to teeth-gnashing errors later. Forget the space they take up and keep them. (This info from Smart Computing – May 2002)

You can check the current status of your registry by running the REGISTRY CHECKER in Windows 98 and Windows ME. The Registry Checker runs every time you turn on your computer, scanning your registry and making a backup copy. To run it on your own, click START – PROGRAMS – ACCESSORIES – SYSTEM TOOLS – SYSTEM INFORMATION. In SYSTEM INFORMATION, choose TOOLS from the menu and then choose REGISTRY CHECKER. Windows XP does not come with a builtin registry checker.

Run ScanDisk (known as Error-Checking in Windows XP) – then DeFrag.

DISK CLEANUP -- You find this by right clicking on your C drive (hard drive) in MY COMPUTER. It will empty your RECYCLE BIN for you – delete the Temporary Internet Files – delete any temporary files that were left behind when a program was exited incorrectly.

FAT32 or NTFS

FAT32 and NTFS are both file systems – it is the way that they format your hard drive. When we had Windows 95, almost everyone was running FAT16. Along came Windows 98 and the FAT32 file system. The default for Windows XP is NTFS. NTFS is a bit faster and more secure and is capable of compressing individual files or folders. It also lets you encrypt a whole drive, folder or file. If a drive that is running NTFS is interrupted (as from a power failure or while saving a file), it is less likely to be corrupted than one running FAT32.

If your hard drive is formatted with the NTFS file system, then you can not install Windows 98 on it – unless you delete the partitions using FDISK and then format the drive again using the FAT32 file system. This method means that you will lose all of your information that you have on your hard drive.

US Postal Service and Memory Cards

(info from Smart Computing – May, 2002)

The US Postal Service now uses an electron-beam irradiation process to safeguard mail against anthrax attacks. This irradiation process destroys the data on memory cards and renders them inoperable. Use caution when buying memory cards through the mail.

At the time this article was written, UPS and FedEx were not irradiating packages.

The US Postal Service is researching ways to irradiate mail without destroying memory cards. Meanwhile, if you are purchasing or sending a memory card through the mail, your safest bet is to check with the memory card manufacturer and the agency delivering it.

DV Camcorders

A DV (digital video) camcorder records digital signals to tape rather than analog signals and records video at a higher resolution than an analog camcorder. The higher the resolution at which the video is recorded, the better the quality of the video. DV camcorders record video at 500 lines of resolution while analog camcorders range from 230 to 400 lines depending upon the format used.

Video recorded with a DV camcorder is of higher quality, and it preserves the quality when you make copies. Every time you copy an analog recording, you lose video and audio quality because the copying process loses some of the information from the original tape. The analog copy is never as good as the original while the digital copy will retain the quality of the original.

DV camcorders use miniDV tapes (sometimes called DVC, or digital video cassette tapes), which can store about 60 to 90 minutes of video and typically cost about $7 to $9 each.

Most DV camcorders have optical zoom and digital zoom features. Optical zoom operates just like a zoom lens on a standard film camera. The lens zooms in on the scene to magnify it. Digital zoom simply magnifies the pixels in the image to make the image look larger. However, this reduces the quality of the image. Optical zoom is preferable.

Video Editing

If you have a digital (or DV) camcorder, a firewire connection on your computer and analog inputs on your camcorder – you can transfer and edit your VCR tapes on your computer.

You would connect your VCR outputs to the inputs on the digital camcorder – connect the DV camcorder to your computer via a firewire (IEEE 1394) cable.

The DV camcorder will convert the analog video signal into a digital signal and send the digital signal to your computer.

v.92 Modems

It is becoming harder to find v.90 modems. U.S. Robotics no longer ships v.90 modems. As a result, it is likely the next modem you buy will be a v.92 modem.

The v.92 gives you Modem On Hold. This feature lets users with call waiting put their Internet connections on hold while they switch over to take phone calls. When they hang up, they can resume their Internet connections without having to reconnect.

The v.92 also gives you faster upload speeds. This will benefit users who send large e-mail attachments or frequently upload Web site updates.