by Beverly Rosenbaum
No matter how appealing those new 56K modems may sound, your transfer speed is only as good as your phone line. If you’re wondering whether your modem is performing up to speed, you can test it with a dial-up phone line diagnostic utility, thanks to HAL- PC member and volunteer Bill Garfield.
The host utility program is running on 713/693-0399. When you dial up, the utility does a reverse scan of your phone line and displays the results onscreen. It includes a graphic representation of your telephone line’s bandwidth and frequency response c urve, providing some insight as to whether or not your line is good enough to be used with the new X2 and K56Flex modems.
To use it you must call using a V.34 (at least 28.8 capable) modem. It will NOT work with 19.2 or 14.4 (or slower) modems. You should use a communications program like Procomm, Qmodem, Telix, Crosstalk, etc. DO NOT use your Internet Software - - it doesn ’t work that way. Dial in just like you would call the BBS.
The system is only running on a single node, but shouldn’t be too busy as each call only takes about a minute. It will run faster if you respond to the prompts, but it will also run all by itself even if you do nothing but watch.
Bigger Displays
Displays on notebooks have already reached 13.3 inches, approaching the size of the typical 15 inch office monitor. Prototypes for the next level 14.1 inch screens were demonstrated in June at the Computex trade show in Taiwan. They are expected to app ear on high end notebooks by year-end or early next year from Gateway 2000, Hewlett-Packard, and Packard Bell NEC.
NEC has added a 20.1 inch model to its MultiSync LCD series. The monitor measures 8.7 inches deep, weighs 22 pounds and consumes 85 watts. It boasts a 60% reduction in footprint, 70% reduction in weight, and 40% reduction in power versus a comparable CR T monitor. The MultiSync LCD2000 supports seven modes of resolution from 640 X 480 to 1280 X 1024 while emitting virtually no magnetic field.
Look, No Wires!
A New York-based wireless Internet service will allow users to download at 500 Kbps. The service is based on a technology called local multi-point distribution services. This fall the FCC is expected to auction off a portion of the radio spectrum to o ther companies who will offer a similar service in other markets. There is a downside, however. The high speed transfer is only one-way: users will only be able to upload at 28.8 Kbps at first.
Another Microsoft Fix Posted
Office 97 users who have been plagued with backward compatibility problems in Word can download a converter that will allow them to save a Word document in a binary format with a .DOC extension, instead of .RTF files. According to Matthew Price, a group product manager, Microsoft “totally underestimated how large an issue” backward file compatibility would be with Office.
Because of problems with the increased size of saving Word 97 files with the .RTF extension and compatibility with FrontPage, Corel WordPerfect, Adobe Pagemaker, and other programs the file converter has been posted at http://www.microsoft .com/Officefreestuff/word/dlpages/wrd6ex32.htm. It is part of a service release scheduled to ship in July, along with other improvements to the suite.
There will also be access to a migration support hotline and a free month of TechNet, the company’s CD support database.
Microsoft had previously released a converter that would allow previous versions of Word to open Word 97 documents directly, but compatibility problem complaints continued.
The “free stuff” web site also offers an Avery products wizard, a Word 97 viewer, and various other wizards and templates. In addition, there is an Active-X component, Microsoft Draw 97, that replaces Word’s built-in picture editor with a more natural, i n-place server user interface (UI), provides connector tools to help Word users make diagrams, and makes exporting Office Art graphics to Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) easier.
Beverly Rosenbaum is a HAL-PC member who can be contacted at brosen@hal-pc.org .
E-mail me at webmaster@hal-pc.org with any comments you have and tell me what you want to see here.