Q–I am in the market for a new Pentium-type desktop computer. Should I wait to buy a machine until later this year when the new consumer edition of Windows 2000 is available?
Mike Jett, Chicago
A–Superb question, Mr. J., and one that is going to be on a great many people’s minds as the buzz and hype build about the approach of Windows ME (Millennium Edition). ME will be the small office/home office version of Windows 2000, which already has shipped for business-strength customers.
While I have yet to be supplied with an advance copy of ME, based upon my reviews of Windows 2000 I am willing to go out on a limb and say that if you buy a machine now loaded with Windows 98 Second Edition, you are going to want to upgrade to ME as soon as it is available.
If Microsoft delivers on the promises made for ME, nearly everybody is going to want to upgrade because of a single set of features that I call self-healing.
The idea is that the computer keeps track of all the software that gets loaded onto the hard drive and monitors the stability of the huge number of modules like drivers, libraries and such that can get corrupted and cause chaos.
Windows ME goes beyond Windows 2000 with features designed to automatically fix any and all corrupted modules each time it is booted, thus greatly reducing crashes and cranky performance.
An ME must-have is a restore feature that keeps constant track of everything on the machine as time passes.
Then, if you mess things up, you simply type in a date or time when things were OK and the operating system restores the machine to its precise state at that time.
Since we’re months away from general availability of ME, I’d advise you to just go ahead and buy a computer now and plan to shell out around $90 later on for an upgrade.
Q–I agree with your past articles pointing out that it is a bad deal to sign up for a $400 rebate while buying a computer that binds you to a 3-year contract for Internet access at $20 per month. But some stores now offer a very good rebate deal where you get $400 off in exchange for opening a $1,000 E*Trade account.
So I bought the computer for $799 (no monitor since I had one). I sent in the paperwork and E*Trade deposited the $400 into the account I opened with $1,000. I wanted to open an account anyway and this got me started.
Now I have my computer for $400 and an E*Trade account for $1,400. The account has already gone up $150.
Bob Sears @hotmail.com
A–Between the time I read your note and its publication today, the Nasdaq has been sleeping with the fishes and I’ll bet your initial $150 profit is kelp by now.
But your point is superb for anybody willing to view investing as a long-term prospect that will last a lot longer than a $799 cut-rate PC. The fact that only a few consumer electronics retailers offer it is one sign that the E*Trade deal is better than letting Microsoft Network or CompuServe bleed you for 3 years at $20 per month.
As I have pointed out before, chances are great that most Americans will have access to far faster cable modem or DSL Internet access long before those 3-year deals for clunky telephone dial-up connections run their course.
But keep in mind that there is no free lunch at E*Trade (www.etrade.com) either and that you are going to feel substantial pressure from here on to make further investments.
Keep in mind, too, that the stock market, especially as it is played by many with on-line accounts, is a form of investing that has a lot in common with riverboat casinos where you can lose big as well as win.
More Top Picks Paper Shredder
Q–Dear John,
I recently bought a new Compaq Presario 500mHz AMD k6-2. I kept the monitor I had been using with my old computer. It is an EVEREX Model TCM-0440 14″ Super VGA color monitor and according to the manual can accommodate 640×480 to 1024×768 resolution.
However, I have not been able to get anything above the lowest setting of 640×480. It is a plug and play and the computer shows that the driver it is using for this display is “Trident Blade 3D/MVP4.” Attempts to raise the resolution to 800×600 or above with 16-bit high color or higher results only in a lined screen.
I have tried to contact Compaq on its support telephone line for help and get the usual “Blah, blah, press one,” or “Blah, blah, press two.” I finally got a number to call which was a toll-call number and have been that route before, which cost me mucho dollars. Do you have any suggestions?
Carl Brizzi, San Jose., Calif.
A–I’ve had worse Dear John letters, Mr. B., but I should tell you that the name’s James. James Coates. Well, actually, I go by Jim in this space, and I do go on, don’t I?
Anyway, and fittingly, your computer is sending you a form of Dear John letter by sending you to a driver for your monitor that you need to dump for a better one.
You need to call up the Windows 98 New Hardware module and point it to a driver for the monitor you actually own rather than the one for which Compaq had intended to be sold with your machine.
Click on the My Computer icon on the desktop and then Control Panel and Add New Hardware. Follow instructions until you get a choice where you can manually find devices connected to the computer. Pick monitors on the next screen and then scroll through the display that comes up for your brand.
Q–I use an iMac and am looking for a voice-recognition system compatible with my computer. I would like your unbiased (I hope) recommendation for such a system.
Tom Cinquina @earthlink.net
A–It’s a snap being unbiased about voice recognition on the Macintosh because there is only one player worth listening to, if you’ll pardon the expression.
With Dragon Systems postponing its Macintosh product and with Windows-oriented Lernout & Hauspie diverted from a Mac project while it tries to acquire Dragon, Mac users are best advised to move to IBM’s superb Via Voice voice software, which brings the same fine features available on the Windows side to the Mac world.
Q–I am a 15-year-old and consider myself pretty experienced with the Internet and HTML. I really enjoy reading your column every Monday. I now have my own question that I hope you can answer. If I use Outlook Express (or Outlook, for that matter) to receive/send e-mail, is there a way that I can import POP Web-based e-mail accounts to Outlook/Outlook Express so that I can receive all my e-mail there?
Aaron Brown, Fredericksburg, Va.
A–As you, at least, know, Aaron, popmail is one of the Internet’s best-kept secrets. Offered by virtually every Internet service provider in the business except America Online, popmail is a universal standard for sending and receiving messages and for attaching files to notes.
Another popmail power is that it allows most e-mail software (except America Online) to send and receive notes using multiple accounts–say the e-mail at your home, at your workplace and at your school.
You need the names of the server computer handling your e-mail and your e-mail name and password. There are two servers, one called popmail for incoming and the other called SMTP (for simple mail transfer protocol) for outgoing. The server names are on the order of pop3.earthlink.com and smpt.earthlink.net.
Once you get the server names from your service provider, run Outlook or Outlook Express and click on the Tools menu at the top of the page. Then pick Accounts and then click on the box to add a new popmail account.
You input the information and, from then on, the software will reach out to all of your e-mail accounts and download copies of each message on all of them into Outlook/Outlook Express.
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Contact Jim Coates via e-mail at [email protected] or via 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 chicagotribune.com/go/askjim.