Dr. Bob's Hot TipsDr. Bob's Hot TipsNeed a little "spice" in your life? Getting bored with the usual surfing products on the net? Want a little different slant on the Web? Dr. Bob Lade spends a bit of time each day surfing for those unusual yet entertaining Web sites he thinks most of you CyberNetters might find amusing. Some of these links are serious, some just plain fun. We'll try to update the listing monthly,but if a hot URL shows up, it will be added ASAP.
This month I'm going to address some of the newer software that's available right on the 'net. This software is either freeware or shareware and I'll list some of the URLs so you can easly access it. As most of you know, I don't have a sound card on my notebook, so I'll omit most of the neat multimedia stuff out there. Maybe the Easter bunny will slip a PCMCIA card in my basket this year. Santa let me down!!
The most popular place to acquire internet-related software is Forrest
Stroud's Consummate Winsock
Applications page. I personally like the formatting of the page and
the fact that Forrest keeps it up-to-date. It's unusual to find him more
than a day or two late even during final exam week (Stroud is a senior
at the University of Texas). The software is reviewed and rated by
Stroud using a star system with 5 stars being a top rating. The packages
are also catalogued so that Windows 95 users can easily find the newest
and greatest stuff for their 32 bit operating environment.
As good as Forrest's page is, he has competition! Another excellent source
of internet software is The Ultimate
Collection of Winsock Software. Whereas Stroud's page rates the packages
by the number of stars, UCOWS uses (what else?) COWS!
Obviously, one site could never handle all the traffic during the rush when a new version of some popular package comes out, so "mirror sites" have been established across the country and, indeed, across the globe in some cases. To avoid this problem, make sure that some day when you're browsing on of the Applications pages be sure to put one or two of the mirror site URLs in your bookmarks list. That way you'll be prepared when you can't get into a particular site.
BrowsersYou can read all about this browser at the source sites, but I'll add a word from my own experience. Ten months ago I bought a notebook computer when I got started with the internet. It was a 75 MHz 486 machine with 8 Megs of RAM. Pentiums weren't available "way back then". I had Netscape .9 running on my machine and a friend's 386/4 Meg notebook as well. When Netscape 1.0N became available I loaded it onto both machines. It ran just fine on my laptop, but it was just too much for the little 386/4. I have been running Netscape 1.2 for awhile with excellent results and about three weeks ago I put 2.0b3 on. Seemed to work OK, a little slower and the bookmarks had some bugs, but over all an OK upgrade. A week or so ago I d/l'ed version 2.0b4. The bookmark bugs are gone, the integration of mail/news/web is neat, but if I even mention the word java my little notebook just collapses! I can watch the hard drive icon light up and it pretty much stays lit! It's as tho I'm defragging the disk. Obviously, adding another 8-12 meg of RAM would solve the problem, but I guess what I'm saying is that on a modest machine like mine it's OK to use the latest version, but expect slow performance. If you don't mind using other client software for news and mail (and I don't) you may be better off with version 1.22 of Netscape.
Microsoft's Network explorer, Mosaic, Cello, and many other browsers are also available, but space and time constraints won't allow my discussing them. I'll stick to those packages I'm using and give you my personal evaluation of them.
Mail Readers
While there's pretty much unanimity in the web browser discussions (Microsoft
employees excluded, of course) there is much more variety with the other
clients. Mail readers are a good example. The two top contenders are
Pegasus and Eudora. In an effort to review both of these packages for this
newletter, I d/l'ed Pegasus and began to use it. After a day or so I started
to get GPF errors. I checked the FAQ list and found what should have been
a fix, but no luck. Thus I can only report on
Eudora.
There are several versions of Eudora out at the moment. Eudora Lite 1.5.2 is the version I'm using and I really like it. I do a lot of emailing for business and pleasure and find both the earlier version 1.4.4 and the newer one to be excellent for my usage. I like the new setup features of 1.5.2 and also find it to be *much* more stable than the older version. I leave my mail clients active while I read the news and browse so that I can be notified if any new mail comes in. It is not uncommon to have 1.4.4 generate a GPF at least once a day, but 1.5.2 has yet to crash on me. In the old days of Windows 3.1 that meant rebooting the system and a major headache. Nowadays, with 95, I just close the application and continue on. One of the MAJOR features of W95 IMHO!!!
Most computer people are pretty poor spellers. If a spell checker is important for you, consider going to Eudora Pro. You'll have to pay a little for it, but it is a nice feature to have. (My spell checker is my wife, Nancy! If you find any errors, please notify her ;-)
News Readers
This is one of my favorite areas of the 'net. I spend a lot of time
in the newsgroups and I must admit that although there is a lot of
"garbage" out there, there is an awful lot of useful information too.
I started out reading about a couple of my other hobbies (boating, guns,
and ham radio) but now I find I'm restricting my reading more and more to
computer and internet type of things. Here are a list of my current favorite
newsgroups (excluding the binaries, of course ;-)
alt.winsock
comp.infosystems.www.browsers.misc
comp.infosystems.www.misc
comp.os.ms-windows.apps.misc
comp.os.ms-windows.apps.winsock.misc
comp.os.ms-windows.misc
comp.os.ms-windows.win95.setup
I think you get the idea. My all time favorite news reader is Free Agent
version 1.0. It's still only a 16 bit application, but it is stable, and a
dream to use. News Readers, like Mail Readers become a personal thing and
once you get used to them it's hard to make the change. I started out with
WinVN (who didn't?), but once I used
Free Agent 1.0 (earlier it was ver. .55) I
became an advocate.
Some of its features are the ability to change the font styles and sizes for
the groups, headers and message bodies. Color coding helps keep track of
what you've read and what you haven't, and most importantly, Free Agent has
extensive capabilities to help in organizing your groups and articles. You can
select what to purge and when. If you haven't had a chance to use this
client, take a few minutes of your time to down load it and take a look. Try
it, you'll like it!
File Transfer Clients
If you don't maintain a home page or host a personal ftp site, this
client group may not be of much interest to you. But a lot of the fun of
the web is to put up a home page and keep it current. OK, OK ego has a lot
to do with it, but what the heck...
I've tried a number of ftp clients but keep coming back to
WS_FTP. The
earlier versions had some problems, but the latest version, WS_FTP-32
ver 951221 is so stable, and so intuitive that I just can't see using
anything else. John Junod has been updating this client for a long time
and each version gets better and better. There is an extensive help file
available, but I've never had need to access it. Just put the remote host
address into the database, click save and click connect and you're on your
way. The screen shows two windows--one for your local computer and the
other for the remote. Just get to the correct directory (whoops, folder now)
for each machine highlight the file to be transmitted and click the arrow
button to select the direction you want to send the info. It's as easy as
that! I'm using the 32 bit version, but there is a 16 bit executable
included in the file when you download it. Highly recommended.
Internet Relay Chat (IRC)
I always catagorize the 'net into five parts: the web, email, newsgroups,
file transfer, and internet relay chat. As most of you know, IRC is not my
favorite part of the 'net, but lately I decided I'd make an effort to explore
this area a little more. I had been using WS_IRC and it is very easy to use
and has quite a few features. I had been reading alot about
mIRC in the
newsgroups (yes, most of what I know I have learned from reading the
newsgroups). Just a couple of days ago I got around to download the latest
version which is ver 3.9. Actually, this version just came out on Dec. 28 and
the site was *very* busy and I didn't get in until the 31st. Now that I've
had it up and running I'm enjoying the IRC activities much more. I don't think
it will ever replace browsing as my favorite pastime, but I'm finding myself
chatting a whole lot more than in the past. This version will allow you to
chat in as many "channels" as you wish (as many as you can keep track of).
Each channel has it's own window and there are separate windows for the
channel list, and any /whois queries that are active. To request a private
chat, just right click the person's name and his "phone" rings. He can just
click to begin a private chat or ignore you as he choses.
mIRC has a lot of options not available in some of the other clients. I
especially like the ability to auto send messages to people signing off,
logging in, reacting to key words (auto-sending "hello yourself" to someone
logging in and saying "hello")--that kind of thing. As an impetus to
learn more about mIRC, if time permits, I'll spend a few minutes during the
next SIG meeting (see below) discussing this program.
I've got lots more "fun" spots to explore, but they'll have to wait until next time. In the meantime, if you run into something you would like to have me add to this list, give me a URL and short description via e-mail.
Don't forget to contact me if you would like to be put on an e-mail list for announcements for the Internet Special Interest Group (ISIG) meetings in the southwest Florida area. We plan on normally holding them monthly on the first Tuesday of the month. This month's meeting is going to be held on Tuesday, January 9th at Frankentech's office complex. Yes, that's not the first Tuesday, but hey, Florida plays for the national championship the night of the 2nd and nobody would show up! Frankentech's offices are located above the Outback Steak House on Cleveland Avenue. The address is 12995 S. Cleveland Ave., Suite 203. Their offices face U.S. 41. The meeting time is 7 p.m. and I look forward to seeing many of you there. Walter Peterson has agreed to put on a demo of the IRC Phone client and if time permits, I'll demo the new version of mIRC. Looks like it's going to be an evening dedicated to chatting!
New schedules for the introductory internet course are being drawn up. If you have an interest in this class, or know of someone who is, drop a note to Frankentech, or give them a call at 936-6647. Have a friend interested in joining the fun on the internet? Have him call Frank and we'll get him started with the Frankentech introductory package.
In addition to the introductory class, I am also available for advanced instruction on the internet, Windows95, Word Processing, or what have you. My rates are $20/hour. Reasonable for individual instruction, I believe. Give me a call at 334-3803, or send me an e-mail message and we can talk about your particular needs.
Comments about this page should be sent to Dr. Bob Lade .Reactions, positive or negative will be carefully considered. You're also invited to visit my Web Page to learn a little more about me, my family and our lifestyle.
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