Number 258 - November 2004

UPDATE
Carl's At It Again!    Carl Tenning has again come up with two short articles relating to his computing problems or experiences. If you are interested in saving E-mails for future reference and wish to avoid losing them in a system crash, take a look in the Communications section for his note on Backing Up MSN E-Mail. Later in Software Notes section you will find his note saying he Cannot Install SP1 for Microsoft Office 2003. A previous installation of software had wiped out his registry key but Carl's research found out how to restore the Registry key. Read it and learn!    Also in the Communications section Danbury's Jeffrey Setaro writes about protecting (Hardening IE) against Spyware. He lists several sources for software to "clean up" your system as well as illustrations of the screens where you can select the level of security you need. General Interest    In the General Interest section unimpressed Danbury author Mike Kaltschnee comments on the expectations of visionaries (like flying cars) that never quite seemed to happen the way they predicted.    Cajun Clicker Sherry Zorzi comments, mostly favorably, on the gadgets that have become part of what we are and do. Some have been developed over the years and insinuated themselves into our daily lives to a remarkable extent. What would we do without them?	Hardware Tips    In the article Backing Up Your Hard Drive, Gene Barlow updates procedures for backing up your hard drive to include new software and the use of recent hardware developments including external hard drives.    In Quiet Please, Vinny La Bash of Sarasota, Florida talks about some sources of computer-generated noise and heat that you may find surprising. He suggests some corrective soundproofing and cooling measures, commenting on advantages and disadvantages of each. Worth a read! Operating System    Fellow Floridian Dr Brian Lewis discusses the XP SP2 upgrade in some detail (one and a half newsletter pages worth). Among several other things his article includes a discussion of a security features including one called data execution prevention (DEP) which will not allow executable code to run in a memory page designated for data.    Vinny La Bash talks about tailoring the Notification area to your needs. This is the area on your desktop usually referred to as the System Tray. This area of your desktop has been updated to provide more information such as the little balloons that pop up to advise you of something happening that needs attention. Ths article tells you how you might want to customize this area to suit your personal needs.
Number 258 - November 2004