CompuNotes Notes from The Cutting Edge of Personal Computing June 21, 1997 Issue 82 +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+= To subscribe, send an e-mail to listserv@peach.ease.lsoft.com SUBSCRIBE COMPUNOTES-L FirstName LastName To unsubscribe, send an e-mail to listserv@peach.ease.lsoft.com SIGNOFF COMPUNOTES-L +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+= CONTENTS My Notes: 1=> READ THIS NOW! Our new website and links contest . . ., mailto:pgrote@i1.net 2=> The End is Near, Commentary by Patrick Grote, mailto:pgrote@i1.net 3=> This Issue's Winner! Reviews: 4=> Product: Crystal INFO; Workgroup decision support application. Version 4.5 - applications/business Reviewed By: Richard Malinski, mailto:richard@acs.ryerson.ca 5=> Product: Internet InfoScavenger - periodical/internet Reviewed By: Doug Reed, mailto:dr2web@sprynet.com 6=> Clickables! --- BEGIN ISSUE 1=> Notes . . . We are close to unveiling our new web site. Yes, we secured a domain name and everything . . . As part of our new site we want your links! If you have a link to us on your page with the new web address we'll link to yours. To spur people to help us do this I am giving away a software suite that includes: PC Handyman by Symantec Partition It by Quarterdeck Kiloblaster Thunderscape by SSI Internet Utilities by Starfish Software Even if you have a current link with us you need to resubmit your link. When you send your email message to me at mailto:pgrote@i1.net make sure you include your fully qualified page name and the page name that has our link on it. Page Name: URL: Contact Name: URL Where CompuNotes Link will Be: Doug or I will respond with the exact URL for CompuNotes. The drawing will be random and will be made by my 7 year old daughter. She loves picking names from a hat . . . 2=> The End is Near or How Computers are Ruining our World Commentary by Patrick Grote, mailto:pgrote@i1.net Two things happened lately to convince me the end of the golden age of PCs is near: Batman and Robin and Microsoft devouring WebTV. Yes, I am a big Batman fan. Been to every premiere and actually think Michael Keaton was the last great Batman. It was with much anticipation I looked forward to last Friday. My lovely wife had bought two tickets for Batman and Robin as a Father's Day gift. As the days grew near I heard more and more about the movie. Roger Ebert eluded to the point of my commentary when he said, "My prescription for the series remains unchanged: scale down. We don't need to see $2 million on the screen every single minute." Of course, I arrived at the theatre 40 minutes early to ensure a decent seat. The theatre was stadium seating and DTS equipped so I knew we would enjoy the technical aspects of the movie. My wife arrived during the promos and then the movie started. From the opening scene throughout the whole movie there were two constants: my wife trying to stay awake and the inordinate amount of computer generated garbage passing as "special effects". In my book special effects are just that, special. If everyone has them they aren't special. Batman and Robin was filled with boring, computer generated candy that was an absolute bore to watch. It didn't add to the movie, in fact, it detracted. As we drove home I began to think about all the movies I have seen lately. Almost all of them featured special effects for special effects sake. All of which were aided by computers. Whether the scenes were rendered in a computer or the explosions on the set were timed by computers, they all had computers associated with them. I then started thinking where will it end? Of course, I then saw Steve Balmer's speech from PC Expo where he blabbered about wanting "Windows everywhere" again. Then I started thinking about Microsoft's recent purchase of WebTV. Couple this with the previews of Memphis that have included channel like capabilities and you have all the makings of a integrated PC/TV using the digital broadcast transmission format. Microsoft has basically said 1998 will be the year of the PC/TV. Great! Just what I want . . . Windows 95 reliability and scalability on my TV . . . Ok, you get one guess on this. Why do people like TV so much? THEY DON'T HAVE TO DO A DARN THING TO DO IT! They turn it on and watch. Period. They don't constantly look at the paper for statistics of the basketball players playing the game. They aren't searching through three big books to see what Siskel, Ebert or whomever has to say about the movie they are watching. They just watch. PC/TV integration will be nice for some folks. The truly weird. The truly rich. The truly lame. Both of these points just prove that computers have a place in our lives, but they are becoming too encompassing. Too intrusive. Too utilized. A favorite saying of mine is "People who are good with hammers see all problems as nails." Could there not be a better phrase to describe the computer in our society right now? 3=> Winner! This issue's winner: dougdal@INDY.NET 4=> Product: Crystal INFO; Workgroup decision support application. Version 4.5 Reviewed By: Richard Malinski, mailto:richard@acs.ryerson.ca Requirements: Windows 3.1+, Win95 or WinNT 3.51 with a minimum of 8MB RAM but a recommendation of 16MB RAM and 35MB to 54MB disk space depending on components installed. MSRP: $1350 ($1750 Canadian) for 5 user license This is a "complex decision support system" that is designed to provide timely and secure access to information to members of an entire organization through accessing, analyzing and reporting from a myriad data sources. These few words can't really do justice to the power and flexibility of this product. Crystal INFO's system control, data analysis and report generation facilities are daunting at first but as you install it and work with the guides, you begin to see its value and use. While the product is a workgroup product, you can start off small in a standalone operation and grow by adding network resources. INSTALLATION - The installation procedure enables you to install only those components you need on each machine. Ram and hard disk space requirements for each component/operating system combination varies as noted above. The whole process is direct, straight forward and runs without a hitch. I loaded it on a standalone machine (486/66mhz with 16mb ram running Win3.11) in order to evaluate this product. I didn't use the networking features or get into the Win95 details. It should be mentioned here that some of the configurations mentioned in the Administrators Manual are not yet supported for Win95. CONCEPT - Crystal INFO is engineered in three layers for client/server environments. The INFO DESKTOP is the end users' interface for easy access to workgroup information. The INFO LIBRARY stores shared information and data. These first two are used by the end users in organizing, analyzing and reporting their information. The INFO MANAGEMENT system provides centralized control of the network and its resources. It is composed of the APS(automated process scheduler), Administrator and Info Server components. This INFO MANAGEMENT system is used by the information systems people to deal with such technical items as network traffic, database activity, machine use, info views for use in the INFO LIBRARY and user access and privileges.. MANUALS - Much of this material is readily available in the very extensive readme file and accompanying manuals. The documentation is excellent. With the four guides walking through the set up, learning the rules, evaluating it for your use and understanding the details, are easily accomplished. The Administrator's Manual (180pages) explains the product and how it can be set up on the network and at individual workstations. The Technical Guide (39pages) provides an overview of the architecture and capabilities using both text and diagrams. The diagrams were cartoon style flow charts or linkages for various operations. While they were 'cute', they were a very helpful visual presentation! The Design Guide for Reports & Queries (336pages) contains the detailed information on creating and designing reports. The Evaluation Guide (36pages) is a simple but essential piece of the documentation. It provides a step by step example of how three people might use Crystal INFO. By seeing the product from the perspective of a decision maker, a marketing manager and an information systems professional, Crystal INFO comes alive! You'll need some time to work through these manuals but it is well worth it if you are interested in incorporating a workgroup decision tool like this in your organization. COMPONENTS - Another way of understanding Crystal INFO is to see it as five components. Each of these is described briefly below to give you an overview of what they do and what the total product is capable of accomplishing. It is essential that you understand the relationship of these five because you do not need to install all of them on all the machines on your network. DESKTOP. This is the primary user interface, the front end. It gives the user access to a range of tools, reports, queries and programs. The desktop enables you to view your folders with data; schedule requests for immediate, recurring or delayed processing; query your data and create reports; and design reports. If the installation is on a network there are features (e-mail functionality) which provide access to workgroup information for day-to-day decisions and information dissemination. ADMINISTRATOR. This is the control facility that you use to set up and manage Crystal INFO for your organization. You use this component to configure the system (security and audit functions); add, modify or remove users or groups and their privileges; set up events to trigger jobs; or set up calendar or special scheduling templates. Once you invoke this function, you simply check the dialogue boxes and the system uses the new settings. APS. This is the background scheduling engine for Crystal INFO. With it you assign jobs to Info Servers on your network(s) for processing or controlling jobs. By having several APS's on your network you can activate or control access to and use of the Info Servers as you determine. To quote the Crystal INFO manual, "It is highly recommended that you run your APS(s) on NT machines". INFO SERVER. This is a machine that you have designated to run jobs. You can dedicate it for a specific purpose or have it used when it's not being use for other activities. The number of Info Servers really depends on the size of your network and how you want to configure it and the access to them by the users. There is great flexibility in setting these Info Servers. They are not file servers or database servers nor do they have to be system servers. They can be workstations available for processing on which to off-load tasks. SENTINEL. This component is the network communication heart. Whenever you install a Crystal INFO component on a network computer, the installation facility automatically installs a Sentinel on that computer as well. All messages between Crystal INFO components flow through the Sentinel so a Sentinel must be active on every machine that will be using Crystal INFO. INPUTS/OUTPUTS - Data sources for Crystal INFO can be a myriad of databases and spreadsheets. PC databases that can be accessed are MS Access, Paradox, Foxpro, ACT!2.0, Clipper, MS Excel, dBASE and Crystal data dictionaries and Info Views. With the ODBC (Open Database Connectivity) interface you can retrieve data that are in systems that use SQL for accessing the data. Examples of these are Oracle, DB2/2, Sybase SQL server, Scalable SQL, Gupta SQL and any ODBC data source. When the need to export data is required, there are over 15 formats available. These vary from ASCII to RTF or DIF formats to tab- separated text or tab-separated values to MS Word WordPerfect or Lotus 123, Quattro Pro or Excel. Once again there is great flexibility in exporting data. A quote from the Seagate home page says it all, "Seagate Software, a subsidiary of Seagate Technology, Inc., develops tools and applications in the areas of information management and infrastructure management, including network, systems and storage management. Its industry leading software solutions are developed as integral components of a total data management product strategy supporting all major operating environments". Are you a disbeliever? Check out the home page for a tour of the next step, CRYSTAL REPORTS version 5, and really see what this product can do. CRYSTAL, A Seagate Software Company 1095 West Pender Street, 4th Floor Vancouver, British Columbia, CANADA V6E 2M6 Telephone: 604-681-3435 Facts-on-demand: 604-681-3450 Fax: 604-681-2934 Internet: http://www.img.seagatesoftware.com Installation - Gold User friendliness - Gold Quality of product- Gold 5=> Product: Internet InfoScavenger - periodical/internet Reviewed By: Doug Reed, mailto:dr2web@sprynet.com MSRP: $149, one year subscription to both print and web format Okay, so you decided to take your business on the web. Where do you start? How do you advertise? What are the pitfalls to avoid, and can you succeed where others have failed? Internet InfoScavenger is a monthly magazine designed to answer those very questions in a meaningful way for a business looking to profit more and surf less. I'll be honest I had never heard of Internet InfoScavenger until I was contacted by Cathy Dupre (Cathy is the Publisher responsible for Internet InfoScavenger). Cathy asked if we'd be interested in doing a review of InfoScavenger for CompuNotes and I said Sure, send it to me and I'll do a quick write-up. A couple of days later I got the package in the mail and I opened it up to see three of the latest issues. My first thought was gee, these issues sure are small for the price! Issues of InfoScavenger are exactly eight pages long. But then I grabbed a soda and began to read the first issue November of 1996. The front page had a Special Report on making your web page show up early on search engines. The text was clear and well written, but beyond that it was concise, incredibly useful information. The more I read, the more impressed I became. What Internet InfoScavenger lacks in bulk in more than makes up for in content. I would think this would be ideal for the busy businessperson trying to balance the rest of their workload while developing an Internet presence "Just the facts, ma'am". The December and January issues were also well done, presenting information on marketing tips for the web, locating customers, and strategies for attracting people to your site. Issues of InfoScavenger come loaded with links to additional information on all of the topics discussed a very nicely done touch that adds additional value. The issues are also already punched to fit nicely into a three-ring binder for easy reference at a later date. Check it out! InfoScavenger Communications 1153 Bergen Parkway, Suite 473 Evergreen, CO 80439 1-800-449-8533 Email: bizinfo@infoscavenger.com Web: http://www.infoscavenger.com 7=> Clickables! Sites Doug and I have come across this week you may be interested in: Mailing Buddies - Looking for a penpal? Build your own PC - This site shows you how . . . Internet Lore - Things Floating around the net forever . . . Computer Complaints - Post Them Here! +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+= Managing Editor: Patrick Grote -- mailto:pgrote@i1.net Assistant Editor: Writer Liaison: Doug Reed-- mailto:dr2web@sprynet.com Archives: ftp://ftp.uu.net/published/compunotes/ Website: e-mail: mailto:notes@inlink.com fax: (314) 909-1662 voice: (314) 909-1662 +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+= CompuNotes is: Available weekly via e-mail and on-line. We cover the PC computing world with comprehensive reviews, news, hot web sites, great columns and interviews. We also give away one software package a week to a lucky winner for just reading our fine publication! Never dull, sometimes tardy, we are here to bring you the computing world the way it is! Please tell every on-line friend you know about us! 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