NWA-PCUG Newsletter Article
April 2001 Meeting Follow-up
by Dale Oliver, President, May 2001
d_oliver@swbell.net
(click to email author)


Thanks to Cliff's excellent job of moderating our last meeting, we had another very informative Q&A session. We must be getting smarter collectively, since the program stayed within our desired time limit without leaving people hanging at the end. Cliff and I have been trading off writing this newsletter column, and this month is my turn, so I will recap the things we learned.

Power and surge protection: One of the topics that came up for discussion again revolved around uninterruptible power supplies and surge protectors. This is a good time to discuss this again, since spring and early summer weather can produce strong electrical storms without much notice in this part of the country. The same conclusion was reached this time as last time: Cheap surge protectors are not sufficient to protect your computer equipment. Consider purchasing a well-known brand such as APC http://www.apc.com. Some additional helpful information follows.

John Clark brought up an MEI Micro catalog that had an APC 650VA model advertised for $99.00. That's a steal. They regularly go for about twice that price. Check their website at http://www.mei-microcenter.com/.

Whether you decide to purchase a surge suppressor or battery backup system, be sure to purchase a model that can protect your Internet connection, whether it happens to be a dial-up telephone line, DSL, or cable modem.

Remember, do not plug a laser printer into a battery backup system. Laser printers draw too much current when they are powered on or when they "wake up" after being in standby mode. Plugging a laser printer into a battery backup unit might even void the warranty.

APC's PowerChute software uses a cable (often a serial cable) to allow your battery backup unit to communicate with your computer. If the power goes out, based on the default options or those you have specified, the battery backup unit will begin systematically closing your software applications and shutting down the computer in an orderly fashion. You can configure PowerChute to start shutting down immediately upon power failure, or to delay shutdown for a specified amount of time.

David Hinds and Charles Blanchard both shared amazing stories about multiple lightning strikes and the effectiveness of the battery backup units. Again, the APC name kept coming up.

Oh yes, don't plug cheap surge suppressors into your battery backup system, either. Bad idea. If you find yourself short of power outlets, use a power strip without any surge suppressor functionality built into it. Doing this can cause your battery backup to become confused or even fail, or worse yet, can even evoke the wrath of our illustrious Webmaster and Software Librarian, John Clark, who has cautioned us not to do this on multiple occasions.

Last, but not least, if you purchase a new battery backup unit, be sure to open it up and check to make sure the battery is connected. The units are frequently shipped and stored with the battery disconnected.

Power management on your PC: Speaking of power, there have also been some questions regarding PC power management and how to configure it. To set up the power management on your PC, click the Start button, then click Settings and Control Panel. Double-click the Power Management icon to bring up the Power Management Properties window where you can specify how long you want the system to be idle before it goes into standby, turn off the monitor, or turn off the hard drive(s). This is a good thing to set up for those of you who leave their systems running for extended periods of time when they are not being used.

As a side note, it is generally accepted as a good idea to disable power management features before running system utilities such as hard drive defragmentation, scan disk, etc. Simply open the power management window as discussed above and select the Always On power scheme. You can set it back after the system utilities have finished.

Find Fast "feature:" Some members have mentioned that their diskette drives spring to life for no apparent reason, grinding away and making all kinds of strange racket for ten seconds or so, then stopping just as unexpectedly. This is most likely due to the "feature" known as Find Fast. The purpose of Find Fast is to go out and check your drives periodically and build indexes based on what it finds on them so you can quickly find and open files in Microsoft Office or Outlook software products. If you find the diskette access annoying, you can configure the Find Fast options to your liking by opening the Control Panel and double-clicking the Find Fast icon.

DSL coverage is getting better: Southwestern Bell's DSL coverage in our area is expanding. If you have your heart set on a broadband connection, but don't have cable modem availability, consider calling Southwestern Bell to ask if you are in the DSL zone. Or consider going to their website http://www.southwesternbell.com. and clicking on the DSL link. From there, you can check availability by entering the telephone number of the location you are considering having DSL service installed.

System and disk cleanup utilities: Fix- It is a system utility program that helps you clean up and repair your hard drive and system registry, diagnose system problems, monitor system resources, etc. You can learn more about it at http://www.ontrack.com.. Other system utilities that users swear by (as opposed to swearing at) include System Mechanic http://www.iolo.com. and Norton Utilities http://www.symantec.com.. If you are interested in a product of this type, I encourage you to visit each of these websites and peruse the various product features and prices to determine which one is right for you.

Windows Task Scheduler: I wrote about this neat little software product in the March 2001 President's Column when we discussed system maintenance. You can grab your filed paper copy of that newsletter or read the article on our club website http://pcgroup.nwark.com/pres--31.htm.. The Task Scheduler software comes with Windows, and its purpose is to help you automate tasks and run programs automatically, even at times when you are away from the computer. Someone asked about disabling the Task Scheduler software at the last Q&A session, so in case you decide that you don't want to use it for whatever reason, simply do this: Double-click the Task Scheduler icon from your system tray. The icon looks like a program window with a small calendar and clock inset in it. From the Scheduled Tasks window that appears, click Advanced from the main menu, and then from the pull-down menu that appears either select Pause Task Scheduler or Stop Using Task Scheduler depending on your preference.

Windows Disk Defragmenter runs forever: First of all, bear in mind that running the Windows defragmentation utility will generally take a long time. That's why programs like the Task Scheduler are so handy. You can have these tasks run while you sleep or are away from the computer (in case these happen to be mutually exclusive events). If you find that Disk Defragmenter simply will not finish, here are some different things to try:

1) Upon running the Disk Defragmenter software, click the Settings button and UNcheck the "Rearrange program files so my programs start faster" option. This option basically forces the defrag software to start from scratch every time it runs instead of leaving defragmented portions of the disk alone and only fixing fragmented portions.

2) Disable power management features. If your system takes after you and goes to sleep in the middle of running system utilities, the task obviously won't finish in a timely fashion. See the "Power management on your PC" section earlier in this article for more details about how to address this.

3) Disable your pretty screen saver. Pretty graphical screen savers take an inordinate amount of computer power to move all those nifty graphics around. If your system is grinding through processor- and disk-intensive tasks such as defragmenting your hard drive, the screen saver graphics can easily cause it to take many times longer to complete.

4) Unplug your USB cables and devices. Depending on your computer's USB configuration, and whether you use an external or internal USB hub, your computer can spend a lot of time communicating with the USB ports. If the disk defragmentation takes forever, or continually starts over again and again, this may be the culprit.

5) Consider purchasing an aftermarket disk defragmentation utility such as Norton SpeedDisk http://www.symantec.com..

Developed photos on CD-ROM: When you have photos put onto CD-ROM disks by film photo developers such as Wal-Mart, many times the file format used is the PCD or PCT format, which some users may be unfamiliar with. Two programs worth considering to view these images are IRView, aka Irfanview http://www.irfanview.com., and Paint Shop Pro http://www.jasc.com. IRView is freeware. Simply download it and use it. Paint Shop Pro is a modestly priced software package that allows you to download evaluation versions before buying.

New Linux user group: For those of you who use Linux, or simply wish you could, you may wish to consider attending the new Linux user group. The group meets the third Tuesday of each month at the Fayetteville Public Library at 6:00 PM.

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