Q–As you know, Windows 98 offers a program called Microsoft Windows TV. I installed it and have the little TV screen icon on my task bar. When I log on, I get fancy diagrams but nothing moves when I try to use the mouse to turn on the television.
Using that old cliche, when all else fails, read the instructions, I did and see where I missed the last instruction that said “install antenna.” There is no port on the back of my PC that says “antenna.” Can you help me?
Hal Fitzpatrick, Palatine
A–Count yourself among the hordes of Microsoft customers who have had their hopes built up about getting television programs on their PCs by misleading directions built into Windows 98. As your own experience underscores, the Windows set-up screens falsely indicate that any PC running Windows 98 can receive broadcast video in the WinTV module of Windows.
The reality is that this feature is merely a software module that works when computer owners install special cards into machines that have built-in television tuners, which, of course, include a plug for the antenna.
Because these PC video cards all come with software that almost always is better than the Windows 98 video program anyway, this has become a particularly rankling example of misleading advertising from the world’s largest PC software company.
Q–I use a computer every day at home and at work, but my knowledge is limited to using e-mail and accounting and word-processing software. I would like to be able to see photos I have taken. I would like to learn more about the whole process of printing photos and storing them on my computer, but I don’t know where to start. (This is important to a brand-new grandmother with boxes and boxes of photos of our granddaughter already–and she is only 10 months old!)
Fran Neal @juno.com
A–You are a prime candidate for one of the new flatbed scanners now flooding the marketplace and designed to connect either through the parallel (printer) port or through the new universal serial bus connectors included on Windows 98-compliant PCs.
I am partial to the Visioneer One
Touch line of flatbed scanners (www.visioneer.com) because they come with a particularly easy-to-use software package called PaperPort that greatly simplifies keeping track of large numbers of scanned photos and works particularly well in letting a user send pictures to friends and family as e-mail attachments.
With a price range between $150 and $300, One Touch models let you scan color prints and then do things like print them out, fax them or attach them to e-mail merely by dragging icons.
Let me add that the USB scanner connections are far better than those that must share a connection with a printer because the USB eliminates a raft of problems associated with conflicting hardware settings. USB is much faster as well, so if your PC offers USB, don’t even think about a parallel-port scanner.
Q–I work with my 200 mHz IBM Aptiva (Model 2162-S9C) with 4.2 gigabytes of memory, but I have only about 700 megabytes free. I’d like to upgrade the hard drive memory but can’t get a straight answer on whether IBM is so proprietary that it won’t accept a store-bought hard drive. I can’t get a straight answer about whether I would lose data and I can’t even get a straight answer about whether there’s room in my tower case for a second hard drive.
Is it time to buy another computer or can I upgrade my computer without sending it back to IBM (and without doing what I’d really like to do with it)?
Bruce Levin @mediaone.net
A–I fear somebody might have to call the police if you really did what you wanted to do with that otherwise perfectly serviceable Aptiva in light of the runaround you’re getting, Mr. L.
Yes, there is room in that tower for a new drive. Your solution is to take the machine to a shop and have that 4.2 gigabyte hard drive upgraded to a 10 gigabyte drive. You will need to pay a bench fee, probably around $75, and a couple of hundred dollars for the new drive, but the technicians will be able to transfer the contents of your 4.2 gigabyte drive onto the 10 gigabyte replacement in short order. They can then reformat your smaller drive to act as a slave drive to the 10 gigabyte one, thereby giving you a machine with roughly three times your current capacity.
Q–In a recent “Ask Jim” column, the implication was made that one can be an AOL user and still use Netscape. Could you explain how one does this? Also, I went to Netscape on the Web, thinking I would download it. When I got to the site there were way too many options for the uneducated to comprehend. I run a Power Mac. Thank you for your column. I never miss it; however, I wish it addressed Mac users more often.
Victoria Jicha @aol.com
A–I try to include one Macintosh-related item in each column, which works out to roughly the same ratio Apple enjoys in the marketplace. My Mac-using friends like to joke that their machines work so well out of the box that they don’t need to Ask Jim very much anyway. Would that it were so.
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Anyway, Ms. J., the way you use Netscape with an AOL connection on your Macintosh is to simply run the America Online software and then open the Finder and run Netscape. You will find that your Mac will use the AOL connection to establish a MacPPP connection to the Internet to pump data into Netscape just as it does with the America Online software itself.
If you check www.netscape.com, you will find that you can order a CD with the software and have it sent by mail rather than wrestling with confusing downloads. A final option is to drop by a Mac-friendly computer store and buy a shrink-wrapped box of Netscape.
Q–Recently I acquired a new Dell laptop with 10 gigabytes of disk (and 128 megabytes main memory). My problem is figuring out how to back up the 3.4 gigabytes I have used so far. Using my old Iomega Zip drive is out because I don’t want to purchase 34 additional Zip disks.
I found a CD Writer from Phillips (CDRW400) that uses the USB port. Although at $299 it was cheaper than those Zip disks would have been, the user interface is confusing and there is no backup software with it. I tried to use Microsoft’s backup program, but they haven’t gotten around to enabling it to handle multiple disks, so I can’t even create a backup of the Windows directory! Got any ideas? How can such an obvious need in the market go unnoticed and unaddressed by all these big companies?
Michael J. Webb, Oak Park
A–Your problem is that you’re trying to use storage devices designed for general consumers when your huge 3.2 gigabytes of data actually require the heavy-duty backup resources of a proper business tape system.
I recommend that you take a look at the Ditto tape backup system created by Zip-drive manufacturer Iomega Inc. and recently sold to Tecmar Technologies www.tecmar.com.
An external Ditto drive costs $249 and comes with software to back up as much as 10 gigabytes of data on $22 tape cassettes. It’s a shame you’re saddled with that CD-RW drive, although I’ll bet you’ll find all sorts of uses for it such as copying music CDs or backing up your various applications. But, believe me, Mr. W., when you start talking 3 gigabytes of data, the long-established tape backups remain the way to go, despite all of today’s glitzy new gadgets.
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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.