The Latest Trumors

By Beverly Rosenbaum

The Sound of Falling Prices

According to a recent issue of PCWeek, the cost of DRAM is finally coming down, and should continue to drop through the end of the year. Bob Brown, executive vice-president of Toshiba America Electronic Components Semiconductor Group, said the price may fall as much as 30 percent between now and the fourth quarter.

Win95 Virus Fix

Trend Micro Devices of Cupertino, CA, an antivirus software maker, has updated its products with code required to detect and eradicate Boza, the new class of virus targeting Win95.

Boza attaches to executable files, modifying them so that the virus executes first and then returns control to the host program. Users can download a free, 30-day version of PCcillin 95 that will cleanse a system of Boza virus at http://www.antivirus.com.

New Home for WordPerfect

Corel Corp. has recently purchased the WordPerfect family of applications from Novell. Specifically, Corel has purchased all rights to WordPerfect for Windows, DOS, Mac and UNIX; Quattro Pro for Windows, DOS; Presentations for Windows, DOS; InfoCentral; and other related products and technologies. Novell will keep GroupWise, but will license the GroupWise client to Corel, providing with upgrades and updates automatically, and Corel has the right to bundle it with any Corel application. They have also licensed Envoy, the QuickFinder text search engine, linguistics technology, and other technologies for inclusion in various Corel products.

In an open letter Corel assured users that is is coordinating with Novell to ensure a seamless transition. Corel will honor existing WordPerfect customer service and technical support obligations. Corel plans to market the flagship Corel WordPerfect 7 word processor standalone and with Corel PerfectOffice 7 as a suite of office products. The first Corel/WordPerfect bundle, Corel PerfectOffice 7, a Windows 95 and Windows NT version of PerfectOffice, is scheduled for an April 1996 release. In terms of Internet utility, WordPerfect will allow direct publication to the World Wide Web in Web Author mode, and converts legacy documents to HTML, making them Webready. Quattro Pro will save selected data as HTML tables, and can update data for a particular location on the Web. Presentations can save runtime slide shows to HTML format. In addition, Novell's Envoy, Quattro Pro spreadsheet technology, and the QuickFinder text search engine will open up new ways of accessing, viewing and publishing World Wide Web documentation.

When Novell acquired WordPerfect in March 1994, the user base was estimated at 12-18 million. The total WordPerfect/Quattro Pro/Perfect Office user base is estimated at 25 million. WordPerfect products operate under DOS, Windows, Macintosh, and Unix.

Corel will assume both technical support and customer service responsibilities. They promise a seamless transition in technical support and customer service. Corel will provide service and support directly or through thirdparty service providers worldwide.

WordPerfect for DOS will also continue to be provided, and development will continue on the Mac and UNIX platforms while extending NT development.

Is Backing Up So Hard To Do?

Windows 95 supports the following tape drives: Floppy controller drives QIC40, QIC80, QIC3010, QICWidth with QIC80 tapes only (not Travan or QIC wide tapes), and parallel port drives Colorado Trakker 120, 250 and 3010. MS Backup supports the new 350 MB tapes and all QIC80 and 2120 format tapes. There is no support for dedicated tape controller cards or SCSI PowerTape or DAT drives.

At the time of Win95's release, Colorado Jumbo and Trakker 120, 250, 350 and 700 drives were supported. If you own a new HP Colorado T1000 drive, you may try that drive with the DC2120 or DC2120XL tapes. Backup sets from MS Backup 6.0 and 6.22 cannot be used with Windows 95 Backup. You will only be able to use Windows 95 Backup sets with Win95. Colorado Backup for Windows 95 (CBW95) software is now available at no charge, and will support all of the drives listed, as well as add support for HP Colorado T1000, and Jumbo 1400 Drives, CMS tape controller boards, HP Colorado PowerTape and PowerDAT drives.

The CBW95 software also includes hands off installation, uninstall feature, scheduler, desktop Icon for full system backup, the ability to do selective restores from the full system backups (MS Backup could only do total restores from this backup), unerase, rename, and tape retention.

To obtain a free copy of CBW95 software, the following 4 options are available:
1) Hewlett Packard Information Storage BBS at 9706350650 (8N1 - download CBW95.EXE.
2) Hewlett Packard Information Storage FTPSite at col.hp.com - Anonymous login, use your e-mail address for a password and download cbw95.exe from the /dist/hp-colorado/win95 directory.
3) Fulfillment Plus: Call 8004695150 or 9703464196 24 hours a day, 7 days a week to order Disk and CBW 95 manual for $7.95 shipping and handling charge.
4) Order a software upgrade kit from HPColorado at 9706351500, 7am to 5 pm Mountain Time. The $24.95 kit contains Colorado Backup for Windows 95, Windows 3.1 and DOS, as well as a user's guide.

Your Electronic Briefcase

A useful new feature found in Windows 95, the Briefcase , is not installed by default. In order to install it, you can do so in one of three ways:
1)If you choose the Portable option during Setup, Briefcase will be installed by default.
2)If you choose the Custom option during Setup, you can select to install Briefcase.
3)If Briefcase was not installed during Setup, go to the Control Panel and select "Add/Remove Programs" and click the Windows Setup tab. Highlight "Accessories", click the Details button and select "Briefcase".

To use this feature, start by copying to Briefcase the file(s) you want to work with. This creates a "link" between the original file and the copy in the Briefcase. You can then move the Briefcase to a diskette, a laptop or another computer on your network.

Once the Briefcase is at the remote location, you can work with the files. An important point to remember: Once at the remote location, you must keep the files in the briefcase, because if the files are moved out of the Briefcase, the link to the original is lost. When the Briefcase is returned to its original location, you can then select to update the original files. If you use the same files on two different computers, Briefcase will help keep those files in sync with each other.

Netscape Personal Edition

Many users of Netscape Navigator Personal Edition v. 1.1 have upgraded to Windows 95. If you did NOT install the Windows 95 networking software as part of your installation process, you can use Personal Edition v. 1.1 with Windows 95.

However, the TCP/IP and PPP software in the Netscape Navigator Personal Edition v 1.1 conflicts with any networking components in Windows 95. If you HAVE installed any Windows 95 networking components, such as an Ethernet card, or DialUp Networking, you will need to remove the TCP/IP and PPP software included in the Netscape Navigator Personal Edition v 1.1. To remove the TCP/IP and PPP software from Netscape Navigator Personal Edition v 1.1, and configure the Windows 95 DialUp Networking, follow these steps provided by Netscape Communications Corporation:

1. In the Windows Explorer, find the .SR file for your Internet Service Provider in the \netscape\dialer directory. Save this file to disk or to another directory on your hard drive. You can also print the contents of this text file. The file contains dialing information, IP and DNS addresses for your ISP. You will need this information in order to configure the Windows dialer.

2. In the Windows Explorer, find the bookmark.html file, probably located in your \netscape directory. Save this file to disk or to another directory on your hard drive. You can copy this file back into your \netscape directory after you have reinstalled Netscape Navigator.

3. Go to Start | Settings | Control Panel and doubleclick on Add/Remove Programs. Click on Netscape Navigator to Remove the Netscape Navigator Personal Edition from your hard drive.

4. Follow the above instructions for installing and configuring Microsoft's DialUp Networking and TCP/IP protocol.

5. Use the information provided in your .SR file to configure the Microsoft Dialer to connect to your ISP.

6. Reinstall Personal Edition 1.1, using the custom install option. Install only the Navigator and Eudora Light portions of the package. Do not install the Shiva PPP or NTS TCP/IP stack. These are the components that conflict with the Windows 95 networking components.

7. Doubleclick on your Windows 95 dialer icon to connect to your ISP.

8. Doubleclick on the Netscape icon to start the Netscape Navigator.

Software subscriptions to Netscape are somewhat complicated. The subscription is an upgrade product that provides minor upgrades, major upgrades, and new platform upgrades during the term of the software subscription agreement. For example, if you have Netscape Navigator on Windows 3.1 and purchase a software subscription, then you can upgrade freely to Netscape Navigator 2.0 when you wish. And later, when you upgrade to Windows 95, you can freely upgrade to Netscape Navigator 2.0 for Windows 95. Or, if you start with Netscape Navigator 1.1 for Unix, you can freely upgrade to any version for Windows 95.

But major upgrades and the purchase of a software subscription are not equivalent. If you have the 16bit Windows Navigator and you buy only the major upgrade, you have bought the right to use the 16bit Windows Navigator 2.0, but you cannot switch to the 32bit Windows 95 version. If you purchase the Netscape Navigator Jump Start, you WILL have the right to move from a 16bit Windows Navigator to a 32bit Windows 95 Netscape Navigator 2.0.

This subscription applies only to the Netscape Navigator application. Personal Edition customers can buy a software subscription and download the minor and major upgrades of the Netscape Navigator application as they become available. In the subscription program, updates to the stack and dialer are not distributed.

Beverly Rosenbaum is a HAL-PC member. Questions can be left for her via the User Journal section of HALNet's home page. Copyright 1996 by Beverly Rosenbaum.

E-mail me at webmaster@hal-pc.org with any comments you have and tell me what you want to see here.

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