Windows XP SP2, HP OfficeJet 6110 review, What is IMAP? Product Activation, Outlook Tasks

C O N T E N T S **** NewsBytes **** Service Pack 2 for Windows XP HP OfficeJet 6110 review What is IMAP? Licence To Bill Outlook Tasks: getting on with the job Why PCs can be really slow Clicks of the Trade - make your browser go zoooom !

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Co-Op's 15,000th sale Its taken over 15 years to reach this milestone and, no it wasn't for a network or major support contract - it was a box of backup tapes". But, as they say, "every little counts" and, in a way, the fact that such a big milestone was such a small thing is a nice reminder of our aim to provide an all round service to our clients. The picture shows Euginuia Lolomari from the Howard League for Penal Reform who popped down to our offices to collect their prize - a Multi Function Device (Copier/Printer/Scanner) - and also to receive a complimentary gift of champagne from Chris Harris of Co-Op Systems. We hope to have many more milestones and hope to give away loads more prizes! Euginuia asked whether the plasma screen in the picture was on offer as an additional 'thank you', but sadly our hospitality budget doesn't quite run to that! Perhaps when we get to 20,000. SP 2 go Microsoft issued a further end of the month delay to its widely-publicised Service Pack 2 (SP2) upgrade for Windows XP systems in order to allow time for large enterprises to assess the upgrade's impact on their in-house networks. The 80MB or so SP2 free download was to have be made available immediately through Microsoft's Windows Updates service and would have streamed on to machines ready to accept it. Microsoft have issued a blocking toolkit to temporarily prevent SP2 downloading automatically. The Service Pack still has issues with some applications failing to install. Read more about Windows XP SP2. UK gobbles up media Ofcom's latest stats show the UK to be a relentless consumer of digital media, whether it's via broadband, TV or mobiles. Week figures for 1999 to 2004 show that while TV and radio usage went up by 2% and 6% respectively, the average household's Internet usage (dial up) moved from 19 minutes to 94 minutes and broadband soared from nowhere to 3 hours a week. Estimates are that mid-September 2004 will see a third of UK households with broadband Internet access, equating to 5 million subscribers.	AirPort under attack Apple's AirPort Express wireless hub, that allows wireless streaming of music via the new AirTunes plug-in, is claimed to have been 'grounded'. In an attempt to publicise criticisms that Apple is restricting access to the music capabilities of AirPort Express, Norwegian hacker 'DVD Jon' has apparently broken Airport's encryption. DVD Jon gained past notoriety for breaking the copy protection on DVDs and winning an acquittal in the subsequent case brought by the film industry. Phone calls delivered to your door The Royal Mail Group has linked up with 3 companies including Cable & Wireless to launch a fixed line telephony service called Post Office® HomePhone from early 2005. Aimed at the 21 million customers who use BT as a fixed line telephone provider, charities with home and teleworkers may find cost benefits from the new service. With its network of 16,000 branches, the company hopes to sign up a million customers within 5 years. Ironically, British Telecom's pre-privatisation owner was the General Post Office; what goes around comes around? Royal Mail press release. Data mining down under Three Australian companies and one individual have received injunctions for data mining the UK register of domains, held by Nominet UK, and for issuing misleading registration documents. The parties admitted copyright theft in a settlement of the case. Free online services seminar A seminar, entitled 'Mind the Gap', will show organisations how to enhance their online services with member registrations, events booking, surveys, merchandising, document downloads and other facilities. This free event held by the Computer Software Group (CSG) takes place at the Institute of Quality Assurance in London on Thursday 30th September 2004 and is aimed at charities and public sector organisations. Register in advance by email to david.brown@computersoftware.com or by contacting David Brown at CSG on 020 8241 4443. Read more in the CSG press release (PDF format 145 KBytes).
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	1. Service Pack 2 for Windows XP ... is finally out! Is it Triumph or Triage?
More help at hand. All the back issues just a click away	The last time a Microsoft launch made the no.1 slot on TV news headlines was for the Windows XP launch on 25th October 2001. This time it is for a service pack upgrade, but it's a biggie! Unfortunately the hype and the hypochondria surrounding Service Pack 2 is just as intense as it was nearly 3 years ago. The triumphant 2001 launch heralded by Bill Gates as "the best operating system we've ever done" was followed within a matter of weeks by announcements that hackers had broken XP's defences. Me 2 Dogged by continual claims of insecurity and then counter claims from Microsoft, the XP Service Pack 2 (aka XP SP2) drama soap has been played out since the beginning of 2004, with delays in the release of SP2 being the result. The most recent exchange of words arguably leaves Microsoft with the upper hand and thus a clear path to releasing SP2 to its expanding base of Windows XP customers, who want to know that the upgrade is a safe bet. There's no doubt that Windows XP is gaining ground in the popularity stakes; of the percentage of visitors to our site www.coopsys.net last month, XP users climbed to the no.1 spot, 'outvisiting' other operating systems and superseding the previous Windows 2000 leader. Harking back to the days of the Windows 98 succession to Windows 95, this latest upgrade too is more like a major new operating system than a simple collection of fixes to existing flaws. Security-versus-access is not a new dilemma, nor one that is unique to Windows operating systems One of the most touted features of SP2 is one the favourites (at least within the IT industry), but also one the most trivially effected: changing the Windows Firewall (previously called Internet Connection Firewall or ICF) default setting from "Off" to "On". This simple expedient renders Windows XP computers (those that have SP2 applied) a lot more secure against attacks from the word go, rather than leaving the responsibility of security settings at the mercy of naive first-time users. As with previous service packs to Windows 2000 and earlier operating systems, it's all largely concerned with dull (some might say) bug fixes. Extra features are included too though, and one of the prominent ones here in XP SP2 is (at last) support for Bluetooth technology to connect with mobile devices. What's in the Pack? SP2 is a free download and has already started to be delivered automatically via Windows Updates - a hefty 80MB plus though - that should stun even fast broadband connections for a while. XP SP2 Blocker Don't want SP2 just yet? Microsoft has made available a small (96KB) Toolkit that temporarily blocks delivery of Windows XP SP2 to a PC through Automatic Updates, allowing more time for any possible problems to be resolved before installing SP2. The toolkit can be downloaded here. For those users that aren't quite ready for SP2 (and that includes a good many corporate enterprises - see news item), Microsoft has granted a kind 'stay of (file) execution' in the form of a blocking toolkit (see panel). So what do you get? We look at a couple of features and then a run through a small selection of those many fixes. New features Bluetooth® wireless technology At long last, and by popular customer demand, Microsoft has provided support for Bluetooth within Windows XP Service Pack 2. The low cost, short-range wireless technology we have all had for years on our mobile phones has arrived at the Windows desktop. With this release, you can typically: Connect Bluetooth devices - like a keyboard, mouse, printer or mobile phone - to a Windows XP SP2 computer. Transfer files to or from Bluetooth devices, eg print to a Bluetooth printer, share documents on a network via Bluetooth connection. Browse the Internet or read email through a Bluetooth mobile phone from a Windows XP SP2 laptop. Make Internet voice calls from your Windows XP computer using a Bluetooth headset. Synchronise contacts and calendars with a Bluetooth smartphone or personal digital assistant (PDA), using the appropriate software. Windows Media Player 9 Windows Media Player 9 Series is all about handling Digital Rights Management (DRM) and essentially providing copy protection for artistes. WM9 handles digital content licences differently to its earlier siblings and although you may need to re-acquire some licences for digital content purchased before SP2 was applied, there are also many questions answered in the FAQ section that help avoid 'protecting your own material from yourself'. Among the new features in WM9 are Mini-Player Mode, crossfading, auto volume-levelling, and variable speed playback. Fixes Better defence against viruses, worms, and hackers For those Windows XP users already running a firewall, for instance, the popular ZoneAlarm, a new tool in the Service Pack detects active third-party firewall and anti-virus products and notifies the user if they are enabled. New network connections added to the Windows XP system (wireless, network shares, etc) are automatically protected by the "On-by-Default" feature in the Windows Firewall (previously ICF). An ICF exception list can be defined to embrace trusted computers, say, those on a local area network or within a known household network. Data execution prevention Stops attackers inserting their own program code into data on the XP machine which can then be run to perform unauthorised commands. Limited simultaneous outbound connections By monitoring its own patterns of behaviour and an XP computer can detect when it makes an abnormally large number of connections. Bursts of activity are typical of attempted attacks by infected PCs, thus limiting helps mitigate attacks by viruses and worms, in particular: the spread of virus infection to other computers Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks scanning of other computer ports to detect their weaknesses Connection rates beyond the normal limit are put in a local queue and resolved at a fixed rate. One of the useful side-effects is that infected and thus potentially 'rogue' or 'zombie' machines will consume less Internet bandwidth attempting to make connections for their dubious activities. Normal operation is unaffected by rate-limiting, with applications connecting to their required servers at valid IP addresses as usual. Active X protection Not a powerful deodorant, but new measures within Internet Explorer to guard against malicious scripts and program code downloaded from web sites of the type that made email attachment viruses like SoBig.F such successful spreaders. Remote Procedure Call (RPC) RPC has new registry keys defined that control the manner in which applications authenticate themselves to each other, reducing the possible number of attacks which, to date, have been considerable by the RPC route. This and the exploits of the 'buffer overrun' by attackers have been some the bugbears of Microsoft Windows in recent years. The latter has been used by hackers to replace the program code with code of their own when data in an unchecked buffer overflows. SP2 considerably reduces these threats though doesn't entirely eliminate their occurrences. Windows Messenger Windows Messenger now runs a series of checks to block unsafe file transfers and protect Instant Message users from malicious files. Better manageability and control for IT professionals A streamlined installer for SP2 reduces the amount of data required to be downloaded to a single machine to about 100 MB A 270 MB network installer version allows SP2 updates to be distributed on a network without impacting Internet bandwidth Remote connectivity and allows remote administration of XP desktops but the tools require the use of TCP port 445. The default configuration of Windows Firewall in Windows XP Service Pack 2 blocks incoming network traffic on this port and may generate error messages if not configured correctly Drawbacks The inevitable side-effect of turning a firewall fully on by default is that no communication is possible - it's very safe but isolating! Users of ZoneAlarm will have experienced this, but ZA's unique and accessible interface makes it easy to approve the communication allowed by genuine applications while censuring dubious ones. Likewise, a newly Service-packed (SP2) XP machine will now appear 'clamped down' from a security point of view and inexperienced users may find essential applications don't work until suitably configured. These will mostly concern incoming connections but the solutions may not be immediately obvious to beginners and first-time purchasers of XP. Will SP2 work? Some programs may need some attention after an XP SP2 upgrade. BackupExec, WordPerfect, Netshield, Norton and other anti-virus applications all feature among the 40 or so on the tables: Programs that will probably stop working when installed. Programs that will probably behave differently when installed. Security-versus-access is not a new dilemma, nor one that is unique to Windows operating systems, but it's one that more and more sufferers of attacks - and that is basically anyone who connects to the Internet - should be apprised of. The Distributed Component Object Model (DCOM) allows applications to be distributed across locations, eg installing new applications remotely and automatically in another branch office. Earlier COM server permissions were imprecise and could allow unchecked applications to run riot on local machines. Changes in SP2 to the way permissions for local actions are allowed on any local machine may render existing distribution mechanisms ineffective, although all that may be required is a rethink of the distribution strategy. While this may sound like an area that has relevance in more complex (and vastly better funded!) corporate IT systems - yes, it does - don't forget that one crucial area in which organisations of all sorts are now involved is Windows Updates. Rolling these out automatically on a server-centred basis has many advantages, but the very act of replacing local machine system files requires the appropriate permissions (often administrator permissions) so a new post-SP2 strategy may need to be developed; better-defined COM permissions will render rollouts a less exposed activity. Contacts Changes to Functionality in Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 2 Trustworthy Computing Defined Upgrade or Wipe-and-Load: Choosing the Best Scenario for Deploying Windows XP Professional Interpreting Bluetooth technology, InfoBulletin April 2002 -IB- Acknowledgements: Ken Flury, Spencer Buck	Good read? Rate this article Print this page
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	2. HP OfficeJet 6110 review
More help at hand. All the back issues just a click away	Multi-Function Printers (MFPs) or Multi-Function Devices (MFDs) didn't have a good start in the early days. Complicated operation and software driver problems got them a bad press. Now they are essential and reliable office workhorses. With several months experience of handling our own all-in-one device, Sarah Hartop put her thoughts down to elaborate on the good and bad points of the Co-Operative Systems HP OfficeJet 6110. Benefits Overall The HP OfficeJet 6110 has everything that an office would need in the one machine It fits neatly on a desk and, since you don’t have to worry about a separate photocopier, scanner, fax machine and printer, you don't need to set aside much room Very simple to use and install All of the functions are labelled clearly and the buttons of a reasonable size to avoid confusion Presents like a good quality machine all round Faxing You can store 6 speed dials which comes in useful for fast faxing Faxes can be received automatically, A report prints out to let you know if the fax has been sent or not and if any errors were incurred The Re-dial function means no wasting time standing over the machine waiting for it to finish Photocopying A number of pages and quantities can be left in the HP 6110 to photocopy at once You can adjust the quality/darkness of the copy The normal setting for copying is very good, best is very detailed. Draft is really not that bad either! Scanning Very easy step-by-step guides in HP Director Scans are of a very high quality Printing Very useful for a few print outs, of a high quality Drawbacks Overall Slightly temperamental paper tray on top that has a habit of becoming dislodged or going out of line, so care is needed to line up the paper In common with almost all inkjet-based machines, it does tend to use up a lot of ink Faxing Faxing a lot of pages at the same time sometimes needs a manual feed to avoid them getting caught up together Photocopying Generally very good, although you do get the odd paper jam! Scanning Seems a bit of a long procedure at first, but fine once you have mastered it Printing Think twice about print out absolutely everything - ink consumable consumption will shoot up! Overview Hewlett-Packard labels the Officejet 6110 as "a complete home office solution with exceptional photo quality printing and scanning, combined with walk-up faxing and copying". The latter functions avoid the need to switch on the PC thus allowing maximum staff access. Features in brief Colour printing at up to 4800-optimised dots per inch (dpi). Ability to produce borderless 10x15 cm photo prints. Print speeds of up to 19 pages per minute (ppm) in black and 15 ppm in colour. Copy at up to 19 copies per minute (cpm) in black and 14 in colour. Copy controls include reduce/enlarge (25-400%) and set up to 99 copies. Automatic media detection optimises print quality. 35-page automatic document feed allows best use of available time. Walk-up scanning, faxing and copying means there’s no need to turn on your PC. How much Under £200. How to make it happen Get the HP Officejet 6110 All-in-One now. -IB- Acknowledgements: Sarah Hartop	Good read? Rate this article Print this page
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	4. Licence To Bill Not so long ago licences were something software manufacturers trusted you to acquire. Suddenly, the Internet has changed all that.
More help at hand. All the back issues just a click away	J'Accepte Right from the beginning licencing software was a problem. Somehow, the clicking of a virtual button on a computer screen that says "I Accept" is somehow less daunting than the signing of an equally legal piece of documentation that, say, accepts the loan of several thousand from a mortgage company. To combat this, software houses used a variety of techniques. Even in the early 90s, Aldus - then owner the de facto layout application, PageMaker® - had developed a scheme whereby PageMaker would recognise and disable live, unlicenced copies of itself running illegally, even across a network. A basis of trust is still the most common policy though, as it's inexpensive to police. Volume licencing programmes via resellers take the slog out of managing large numbers of numbers and, by effectively offering 'discounts for bulk purchase', also remove the stigma and temptation to cheat. Nevertheless, cases have been known where it was threatened to send lawyers in to a suspected customer's premises. After all, if a company has just bought one licence for a computer aided design program, yet the following week they book 20 people on the training course, it kind of gives the game away, doesn't it? The backup problem One fundamental hiccup in the licencing policy that dictates "thou shalt not copy - absolutely" is that the unique existence of that particular program software effectively becomes a piece of hardware, and that means it subject to failure, theft, loss and so on. By the simple expedient of copying the program software elsewhere, the purchaser retains a ready fallback to resort to. Another valid use is to make a copy of frequently-installed software available on the network, so that you don't have to go and dig around in the fire safe every time an Office setup is required. This is the one aspect of an End User Licence Agreement that purchasers should pay particular attention to. However, the slippery slope between copying for backup and copying for distribution is one that suppliers have continually tried to prevent their customers descending, to say nothing of pirates who copy wilfully for profit. J'Accuse In the last 2 years, the manufacturers have turned the tables - quite literally. Where we (customers, end-users and in-house IT Managers) once constructed our tables, lists, spreadsheets or even databases of software licencing and certificates, the process (or chore if you prefer) of keeping tabs on our own legality is gradually being taken out of our hands. The logic being that, if customers can keep databases, then the suppliers can do it just as well, perhaps better. Let's face it, they have a heck of a vested interest, with the majority of their income depending on some sort of copy protection that works. EULA-la ! How to read an End User Licence Agreement in under 30 seconds EULAs contain a lot of small print and, if you can't cope with examining the detail, there's a simple way to skim and recognise the standard paragraphs thus saving eyeball strain to spot 'unusual extras'. Broadly, they are often similarly structured, falling into 3 nominal parts: First a EULA defines The Terms, shorthand for The Abbreviations Bit, thus shrinking "The Customer" to "You", "Netherby's Famous Number Calculating Program" to "The Software", and so on. What you can use the software for. This is the crucial bit and normally defines whether it's free (and all those derivations of 'free'), shareware (buy on trial) or commercial. It will state how many times the software can be used, eg on several machines, by several people, by a whole site or campus or for a limited period of time (for evaluations). There is often a rider saying you can make one copy for backup purposes but anything beyond that and you're on dodgy ground. Decoding the entire work and re-assembling and reselling it for your own profit is usually a no-no for commercial software. "It might just do what is says on the tin - but we didn't promise that." The AS IS clause. An easy to spot section, often being in CAPITALS, AS IF THAT'S SUPPOSED TO MAKE IT ALL EASIER TO READ and generally denying any responsibility for your expectations of the software, any resultant side effects (like losing your entire thesis), that it even works at all, injury to small pets, the outbreak of global famine and pestilence ... and so it goes on. Additional sections you might encounter include limitations on countries the software is not allowed in, normally associated with American bans on trade. Anything that departs radically from these generic blocks YOU SHOULD READ VERY CAREFULLY, even if they are written in tiresome caps. Agreeable terms? Of course you should always read the licence agreement that comes with any software application or operating system, but these days that's no mean feat - the larger the company, the longer the terms! However, with a practised skimming technique (see panel), it's possible to check that any new tome crossing your desk conforms to the broad categories found in an End User Licence Agreement. Pro Activity And the name of this new game is: "Product Activation" Whereas before, we received the software and its licence number together, now the delivery of the two are separated, a bit like a credit card and its PIN. The 'blank' software (compare a credit card) is useless until it is registered with the supplier (compare confirmation of receiving a PIN), only the difference here is that confirmation is often transacted via the Internet and, crucially, the emergence of 'always-on' broadband connections makes that trivial for us, the consumers. Furthermore, the development of registration components built into the application we want to get up and running makes the capture and transmission of our licencing details a trivial affair for suppliers. So a piece of boxed software, that was once out of the box and running in a matter of minutes, now has to be 'product activated' or 'licence activated'. This means the program must first 'talk to its maker' to ensure its not being abused and verify its owner (you) before you can use it at all. To be fair, alternatives to an Internet connection are being provided in the form of free phone numbers, but with the prevalence of imported US-made software, a 1-800-xxxx-xxxx call to the States is not a freebie call for non-US purchasers. A further palliative to those who expect to be up-n-running in the time it takes to say "Next" and "Finish" is that some applications (eg Microsoft Office) allow a run time of say 30 days before you are required to go through the product activation. Unlike product registration, which is an optional process about creating a dialogue or relationship between you and the supplier (for the purposes of support, upgrades, promotions, news, etc), while activation concerns the digital dialogue between the product software and its supplier. It is important to understand the difference, because the seamlessness of the broadband Internet and the lack of standards available to indicate an activation process is required makes the two dialogues easy to confuse. Activation channels Microsoft Find the product activation home page for Office 2003 and Windows XP at: www.microsoft.com/piracy/activation.mspx Macromedia software Macromedia introduced product activation and an expanded licence agreement with the release Contribute 2. Find the Product Activation Centre at: www.macromedia.com/software/activation/ QuarkXPress™ software Software licence activation is anonymous and quick. For multi-seat installations, Quark™ License Administrator (QLA) manages all your software licences and software activation by individual users is not necessary. For single copies of QuarkXPress™ software, see further information on licence activation Novell For NetWare, Small Business, ZENworks and other products see Novell's Activation program at: www.novell.com/products/activation/ Cheating goes out of the Windows Suddenly, the switch in emphasis means that consumers are obliged to trust the suppliers, which is why we see privacy statements popping up claiming that only details relevant to the application and its registration are captured. How do we know that our new purchase isn't rifling through our most confidential documents and log files beaming back credit card numbers and passwords? There is no way to check other than to analyse the software code - though so-called 'reverse-engineering' is in itself an illegal activity, quite apart from the fact that said activity is within the skills of a few percent of software engineers. Even more than before, the subject of whether you trust a supplier of software comes to the fore. You may find the most tantalisingly friendly accountancy program is available for a mere $15 online, but if it requires product activation via www.holeinyourwallet.com, that may (indeed, should!) put you off at least a little. As always, the detail is in their small print and the circulation of product activation details between companies within the same commercial group may become an issue, given the proliferation of take-overs by giants in the software industry. In the news ... Intuit discontinues product activation Intuit dropped its Macrovision-based digital-rights-management software from its TurboTax and all future products for the foreseeable future after widespread complaints from customers about failed installations. More from ExtremeTech Symantec begins product activation Security software company Symantec went ahead with product activation for its latest Norton Antivirus 2004 after fixing initial glitches caused during installation. The measures attempt to stem the annual tide of an estimated 3.6 million pirated copies or Norton software. More from CNET News Which companies provide software product activation? Suppose you are a software developer instead of a consumer. Well, the good news is that a bevy of small software coders has sprung up to supply the needs of enterprises, both large and small, who want to protect the effort put into their code-writing before unleashing it on the pirate-ridden high seas of consumers. Rather than repeat good research already undertaken by others, it's simplest to start with a good answer prepared by "tisme-ga" at Google's newsgroup answers that list around 10 product activation suppliers. Summary Lump it or loathe it, product activation is not a fad that's going to disappear; companies like Microsoft, Novell, Macromedia, Symantec and Quark have all jumped on board. although Intuit has 'come a cropper' with implementation and customer relations in the past. One can sense that, by relying on its own databases of collected customer info, rather than the honesty (or otherwise) of consumers, the software supply industry has finally got the licencing bit between its teeth and isn't going to let go. Contacts Microsoft product activation FAQ How do I skip the Product Activation in Windows XP? -IB-	Good read? Rate this article Print this page
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	5. Outlook Tasks: getting on with the job
More help at hand. All the back issues just a click away	In Outlook, tasks are a good way of tracking jobs until they're done. But the elegant way to handle them is by drag-and-drop. Minimise the typing, maximise your time. Outlook Tasks have useful facets, such as: Date: when the task started and when it is due to finish Status: Not started, In Progress, Completed, Waiting on someone else, Deferred You can even set tasks to recur : every day (check an enquiries list), every week (assess a project's progress), odd multiples of days or a certain date every month (team meetings) or even trigger another copy to start some time after the existing one has completed (set up the next trustee meeting). The managers amongst you will be already reaching for the "Assign Task" button. Steady! Although you can cheerfully delegate your way into an extra week off with just a few clicks, your team mates may not view this feature with the same happy-go-lucky attitude. So tread carefully. A friendly email, or even better a friendly word, will help avoid diplomatic blunders. You can employ Tasks like the To-Do list in any organiser or PDA; indeed this is where most portable devices will synchronise to if you hook them up with appropriate transfer software. Starting a new task - like the artist's proverbial blank canvas - is easy enough in theory, but requires you to gather information and slows the intuitive process of 'just making a note'. By contrast, dragging a relevant email into Tasks fills in the information in all the right boxes and allows you concentrate on the "when" rather than the detail of "how". Escalation Here's an example about information that hangs around, a distant speck on your everyday horizon, until it suddenly looms and requires you to act on it. Suppose you receive an email that's initially of some interest - an exhibition maybe. You might choose to "Flag it for Follow Up", perhaps even by a certain date, since the exhibition will close by the end of September. When you hear that a colleague is going too, you really need to turn that 'interest' into an action (book ticket or assign AN Other to book a ticket). That's the time to drag it into Tasks. A few clicks and almost no typing and it's done, with prompts and reminder alarms so that the booking doesn't get forgotten. Tasks adapts to anything with a natural flow process, like orders, purchases, circulation of papers, venue bookings, etc. How to make it happen There are broadly 3 ways to create tasks. By the numbers (from the menu) The Slick way (drag-and-drop) Sheer elegance (drag with context) Let's go through them. By the numbers (from the menu) From the File menu, select New and click Task. ( | File | New | Task ) (Alternatively, you could just press CTRL+SHIFT+K on the keyboard). Now just type in your task details (Subject, Body, Due date, etc). Ho-hum. A fair, but dogged process. The Slick way (drag-and-drop) Simply drag the message or item on to the Tasks button on the Outlook bar. (Tip: If you can't see the Outlook bar as a left-hand pane, pull down | View | Outlook Bar). Alternatively, drag it on to the Tasks folder on the Folder List. (Tip: If you can't see the Folder List as a left-hand pane, pull down | View | Folder List). Sheer elegance (drag with context) Do the same as drag-and-drop above, but instead right-click and drag with the mouse. When you let go of the right button, a new context menu appears, with options like : Copy Here as Task with Text ... copies in the original message details (good for instant view when opening the task again) Copy Here as Task with Shortcut ... makes a link to the original message (good if you hate duplicating info everywhere) Copy Here as Task with Attachment ... adds an attachment (good if you want to send the task on and retain the original format) Of course, you can perform all these actions from Outlook items other than emails too. Items dragged from Calendar will have any reminders transferred to the new task and Contacts can transferred as a task Assigned to the addressee. Contacts Read "Countdown to failure:" in Introducing new technologies - get the culture right, InfoBulletin February 2001 -IB-	Good read? Rate this article Print this page
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	6. Why PCs can be really slow PC looks like it has crashed/hung/frozen? Maybe it's just taking its own sweet time.
More help at hand. All the back issues just a click away	When your PC is down in the dumps, it behaves somewhat like a sulky child. The symptoms it exhibits (PC, not child) can point you to the right help, but as with any diagnosis, a little patience is needed to treat the patients. Here's a brief guide Symptom When you launch any application (especially large ones like Word or Access), it takes an age (maybe tens of seconds) to get to the state where they are accessible, ie you can start typing. This delay is always fairly consistent, but annoying. What's going on An inherently slow disc is a possibility. Discs that spin slowly affect the startup of a program more than anything else. Once the program is in memory (SDRAM, DDR RAM, EDO RAM or of whatever sort) its access is much faster. Modern desktop PCs should have a disc spin speed of 7200rpm, while older slower discs will only manage 5400rpm or less. Current miniature notebook drives achieve only 4200rpm. Symptom A sudden surge in disc activity whenever you click any icon. If the disc is too quiet to hear, look for the drive light/LED (usually green) on the front of your computer case. Something often triggers this catastrophically, like opening just one more application. Thus it doesn't happen with just one small single application like WordPad. Typically you don't experience any sluggish performance until some time after switch on. What's going on Applications like Word, Excel, Access and graphics/layout programs that deal with a lot of colours may place a relatively large demand on memory and you can only fit so many of them into the memory chips you have on board, eg 256MB, 512MB or whatever. The upshot of reaching the memory's 'comfortable' limit is that it then spills over whatever instructions it can't cope with into 'Virtual Memory' - a euphemism for "let's use some free disc space temporarily". A dandy plan that hails back to Windows95, except that the speed at which you can shove data around a hard disc is a mighty lot slower than that for hardware chip memory - possibly up to 100 times slower! The result is that the PC grinds away waiting for the disc to finish each instruction it gets. Go to | Control Panel | System | Performance tab (Windows 98) Go to | Programs | Accessories | System Tools | System information | Summary (Windows 2000) This shows what percentage of resources are free. Task Manager's performance tab also gives a clear picture of current resource use. Less than 20% of available memory is not realistic to continue with, and you either need to close applications (or use fewer simultaneously) or upgrade the memory by purchasing and fitting extra memory modules. Ask us if you want help here. Now we get to the ones that really drive you bananas .... ! Symptom As above, but the performance degrades dramatically after a few minutes. Within half an hour of switching on the PC, the hard drive is whirring away so continuously that it seems you can't 'get a word in edgeways' to do any work. The situation is repeatable every time you switch on from scratch. A likely cause in these times is any permutation of virus infection, Trojans and instances of spyware or adware running. We have seen severe cases where, after a while, it may take as much as 5 minutes just to open applications like Word, let alone start editing a document. Unusable. Viruses and ad-serving software communicating with their host sites were the cause. Remedial action: Ensure you have an active firewall running between your machine and the Internet. Update your anti-virus software immediately and run a scan of all your local drives. Run a reputable spyware/adware detector like "Spybot - Search & Destroy" from safer-networking.org and clear out adware and spy programs to get computer back to working for you, instead of for someone else! Symptom The PC spends minutes and minutes (aaargh!) apparently idle or with an hourglass showing, while not letting you in on the game. There is no clue as to what it's doing or how you can stop it. What's going on Typical activities that provoke this laggardly behaviour are: Exploring Network Places or Network Neighbourhood; Saving a document to a network drive; Copying pictures or other files to a USB-connected memory stick; Printing to a network printer. On the whole, a PC's own components (drives, mouse, keyboard and so on) don't become detached very easily or often. However, notice that the above items all involve external computerised bits of equipment in their own right and, as such are susceptible to being 'removed', whether by accident or deliberately. If you think about it, Windows (as with other operating systems) has to allow for this by defining a time-out (actually many different time-outs) after which it will give up looking for 'lost' network connections, mail servers or peripherals like add-on disc drives and memory sticks. Because these peripherals act so directly with your local applications and system and because 'finding' those bits of hardware in the first place is such a crucial and (normally) trivial activity, the operator (you) doesn't get much of a say in the process. That means, it's no good clicking the mouse like mad because Windows isn't expecting any input from you! Pressing the Numlock or CapsLock keys will indicate whether you still have control to a degree (these functions being entirely local) and you can be assured at least that your machine hasn't frozen. In such situations, waiting some minutes for Windows to finish pondering is the best and most cautious approach; in the long run it's less damaging than not waiting for Windows to relinquish control. Patience should be your guide. Let the water cooler and the teapot beckon! Take to the chance to get a screen-break and a life! Benefits Understanding will help preserve the integrity of your machine - and maybe your state of mind! -IB-	Good read? Rate this article Print this page
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	Clicks of the Trade - make your browser go zoooom ! --- Quick tips for happier clicks! ---
More help at hand. All the back issues just a click away	How to make it happen In a browser, the menu option for zooming the text size up and down isn't exactly handy. Nor consistent. (In Internet Explorer, | View | text size) (In Mozilla Firefox, | View | Increase or decrease text) However, you can forget all those menus and use the mouse instead! Do this: Hold down the Ctrl key and roll the mouse scroller button one notch at a time ie, Ctrl + Scroll One notch up = smaller text One notch down = larger text Sounds perverse, but the movement is in line with the way the browser window scrolls up and down from a mouse scroll action. ** try it now ** -IB-	Good read? Rate this article
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