Q–I have a Mustek Scanner and we use it a lot for copying a letter into a file and it works fine in that regard. Is it possible to scan in a number of pages to the same file, rather than make a separate file for each page?
The Mustek user’s guide is useless, and their technical support people speak in another language! As you can guess, this is all pretty new to me (the computer and I are barely on speaking terms).
I would appreciate any suggestions you might have, including thinking seriously about a different scanner.
— Ed Sypolt, Cincinnati
A–You don’t need another scanner, Mr. S.; your problem demands new software for a solution, and my personal favorite has become the $80 PaperPort Deluxe Scanner Suite sold by competing scanner manufacturer Visioneer Inc.
Scanners like yours use a connection with computers called, somewhat facetiously, TWAIN (technology without an interesting name), which is designed to accept the pictures that the devices make of scanned documents. It then feeds those pictures into whatever software is going to be used, such as optical character recognition, which converts the pictured words into computer-readable text. The limitations you dislike are due to the TWAIN-compliant software included with the scanner.
PaperPort uses an ingenious system that lets you collect each page of a multipage document in a special stack that can be opened later to read on screen, copy into a single document or print out.
This is just one of a wealth of features that makes this software ideal for organizing scanned documents and performing feats like mimicking a copy machine by printing out pictures of documents as they are scanned and tweaking photographs to remove imperfections after they are copied.
Q–My mother has boldly proclaimed that she is tired of feeling left out of the computer age and has purchased a strawberry-colored iMac. She’s making slow but steady progress with the computer, but not with my father. I told Mom it’s all right to leave the computer on during the day; the screen turns dark after a few minutes.
I explained that this is better than constantly restarting the machine. My father claims this is a blatant waste of electricity and is scolding my mother for following my instructions. She shuts it down each night, but leaves it on during the day. Didn’t I tell her correctly? Could you help convince my father of his misguided concerns? Just how much extra power does a sleeping computer use, anyway?
— Sherry Underhill, Newark, Ill.
A–When that iMac (or a similarly equipped PC, for that matter) goes into the sleep mode, a technology called ACPI (advanced configuration and power interface) goes to work and reduces power consumption to little more than one gets from a flashlight battery, juice so small it is almost impossible to monitor.
When you hit the little triangular power-restore key, the machine essentially turns itself back on.
Tell your father that he may be overreacting a bit here, but keep in mind that the reason we’re all at the happy state where we can afford these expensive computers is because of the strength of character of his generation.
Q–I agree with your recent advice that America Online is the best place for new computer users to start, but here in Ft. Myers, Fla., so many people have signed up that AOL gets busy and the system keeps shutting down on many of us. I am constantly being frozen while using AOL and have to restart the computer and start all over again. I have reinstalled AOL 4.0 and have the same problem.
Therefore, I would love to switch to another service, but having to notify everyone of my new e-mail address and starting a new “Favorite Places,” address book and losing the Instant Messenger service has deterred me. Should I decide to bite the bullet and change, what provider would you recommend that I could use both in Baltimore and in Ft. Myers?
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— Henry Nathan @aol.com
A–Next to America Online, the easiest Internet service hands down is the Microsoft Network because, like AOL, the MSN software comes loaded on virtually every PC sold.
Setting up MSN is as easy as clicking on its icon on your desktop, and it offers Internet access through the rock-solid Uunet network that almost always outshines the connections sold by America Online, even though both are controlled by the same company, MCI WorldCom.
Despite its connection to Microsoft, MSN is a very distant second in sheer numbers of users, which makes its phone lines (called POPs, or points of presence) far less busy.
MSN uses the Microsoft Internet Explorer as its core software, which would replace the AOL interface. Your e-mail would come through Microsoft Outlook Explorer, which is a stunning improvement over AOL’s dismal e-mail software,
May I suggest, however, that if you are really wed to AOL for features like Favorites and the Buddy List instant messaging, you can subscribe to MSN for roughly $20 per month and then change your AOL service to the $10 “roll your own” option. Under that plan, you connect to the Internet by a provider other than America Online and then log on to AOL through your Internet service provider’s TCP/IP connection instead of dialing AOL directly.
For $30 instead of your current $20 per month, you could have the best of both worlds and your hang-ups from AOL would be a thing of the past because you avoid AOL’s busy lines.
Q–Are there Web sites out there that you can type in the company name and obtain its Web site address?
Brant Lee, Chicago
A–In my opinion, the hands-down best Internet directory of corporate Web offerings is found under the heading of Business and Economy on the Yahoo! portal service at www.yahoo.com. It includes a search engine to call up sites by company name and also finds companies by categories and keywords, such as automotive, retail sales, etc.
Q–I’m a freelancer and need to keep track of my billable time. Is there some sort of software out there that can automatically keep track of time spent working on a particular file, or in a particular directory?
Jill Ellis, Wheaton
A–Microsoft Office, the suite of programs including such business software as word processor, spreadsheet, e-mail, contact manager, database and other modules also includes a feature called Journal as part of Microsoft Outlook that automatically records each office program as it is opened and closed, thus creating a time line ideal for billing purposes.
The fly in the Outlook ointment is that Journal only tracks work done in Microsoft Office programs, so you would need to record time spent in non-Microsoft programs by using a manual insertion feature to add it to the Journal. But if you keep Journal running in the background, this can be done with a single mouse-click that will bring up the exact time and duration.
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Contact Jim Coates via e-mail at [email protected] or snail mail at the baiduhai, Room 400, 435 N. Michigan Ave., Chicago 60611. If you think you’ve got a better answer to any of these questions, add your point of view at www.chicagotribune.com/go/askjim.