Do You Need a PDA?

You’ve seen them and they look seductive, those tiny electronic devices that are half appointment book and half Star Trek tricorder. But do you really need one? Do you already have an organizer that works? If you’re committed to your paper planner or to a calendar function on your desktop computer, it may be more trouble than it’s worth to switch to a PDA. Do you travel often? Travelers often find PDAs attractive for two reasons: their small size and the automatic backup of data to a computer at home or work. Losing a paper planner while traveling can be traumatic. Losing a PDA is a little less so, since at least you know that you haven’t lost the information, just the information container. Are you happy with gadgets? If your VCR is unprogrammed and you regularly swear at your desktop computer, a PDA might be more than you want to wrestle with. However, most PDAs have good interfaces and can be learned quickly, even by the most tech-averse of users. What kind of information do you need to access? If you only need a basic calendar, names and phone numbers, and a calculator, there are smaller, less expensive electronic devices that may meet your needs at any office supply store. Check them out before springing for a larger PDA. Will your desktop computer support a PDA? Many older computers may not have the USB (universal serial bus) connectors that modern PDAs require. Adapters are available but are an extra expense and may add to your setup and troubleshooting time.You don’t want to have to upgrade your entire system just to use a PDA. Will your desktop software support a PDA? One of the main advantages to using a PDA is being able to synchronize data from your desktop applications to the PDA. If your company mandates a particular e-mail, meeting coordination, or calendar software, make sure that it will ‘sync’ with your PDA. Otherwise, you’ll spend a lot of time manually entering information, or wishing you had.

How to Protect Yourself from Hoaxes, Frauds, and Identity Theft

There are two basic categories of Internet lies: frauds, where the object is to get your money, and hoaxes, where the primary object is just to pull your chain, but there can be far-reaching consequences as well. Hoaxes give the perpetrators ego gratification as they watch their creation spread throughout the Internet. Frauds may give the perpetrators your life savings, and give you months—maybe years—of hassle as you try to repair your credit record and retrieve your very identity. Hoaxes—Hoaxes are spread by e-mail and come in an endless variety of guises. There are, for example, fake virus warnings, chain letters promising riches if you follow their instructions (or threatening dire consequences if you don’t); urban myths about women in peril, dogs in microwaves, and hypodermic needles on theater seats; letters that tug at your heart strings or appeal to your greedy side; Internet petitions (often based on false information); and letters claiming that Bill Gates wants to give you money. Yeah, right. Even the most “innocent” hoaxes are harmful. At the very least, they take up your time, and they try to get you to forward them to other people as well. If you forward a letter to just 40 people, and each of them does the same, and so on, then after just four steps, more than two and a half million copies will have been sent out. That’s a lot of wasted time and wasted bandwidth. These letters can also contain dangerous misinformation and bad advice. One example is a common letter advising women not to stop when pulled over by the highway patrol, but instead to dial #77 on their cell phones to talk to the police—a wrong number in 48 of the 50 states! Perhaps the most common example is the virus hoax—typically a letter forwarded by someone you know warning you that if you find a certain file on your computer it means you are infected with a virus.

Fifty Web Sites You Should Know

Ain’t It Cool News http://www.aicn.com/ Rabid fans gossip, preview, and review movies. The Internet in microcosm: unruly, but ultimately rewarding. Arts & Letters Daily http://www.artsandlettersdaily.com/ A continuously revised collection of links to thoughtful articles on thinking subjects. AskOxford http://www.askoxford.com/ Oxford University Press offers the best answers to common language-related questions, free words-of-the-day e-mails, and tools for better writing. B3ta http://www.b3ta.com/ British site with goofy images, hilarious image-editing contests, and endless punter commentary in the forums. Babel Fish http://babelfish.altavista.com/ Translate text and web sites to and from dozens of languages. Not perfect, but as good as it gets for free. Bartleby http://www.bartleby.com/ As an impressive collection of scholarly reference works and classic literature, and a site you can quote with certainty and authority. Blogdex http://blogdex.net/ Keeps track of the most-linked new content on the Internet: memes, news, jokes, videos, whatever. BoingBoing http://www.boingboing.net/ A counter-culture group blog, presenting novel and interesting items from the front edge of pop culture.

Ten Great Computer Games You Should (or Maybe Shouldn’t) Know

Computers aren’t just for writing letters, calculating how much money you’ve lost in the stock market, or e-mailing the entire family about the cancer-stricken boy who is collecting business cards (or is it get-well cards?). No, computers also have a more useful purpose—gaming. Here are ten games that you can waste many hours of your life playing. Tetris (http://www.tetris.com)—Polygons fall from the sky. Make rows of bricks out of the polygons. Repeat. Simple. . .until the polygons are dropping so fast you have less than second to find a place for the current piece and the incomplete rows start building up. . .game over. So you play again. . .you’re addicted. Simple enough for a three year old to play, yet so baffling that the kid will probably outscore you. University students have turned high-rise buildings into giant Tetris games, the record holder being a 15 story academic tower in the Netherlands. Solitaire (probably on your computer right now)—Along with Minesweeper and Hearts, this is how we wasted time at work in the days before we had Internet access at our desks and could check scores on ESPN’s Web site all day. Civilization I/II/III (http://www.civ3.com/)—A sandbox for your Napoleon complex. Start from the Iron Age and lead your people into the nuclear age by investing in scientific research and exploring new terrain. Make friends with other civilizations, or roll your tanks right up to their doorsteps. Deus Ex (http://www.deusex.com/)—Like other first-person shooter games (such as Doom and Quake), this game is gory and not for kids. Unlike Doom and Quake, you don’t have to shoot everything that moves to win. Stealth, non-lethal methods of neutralizing the enemy, and an open mind will get you through this game of near-future intrigue. Everquest (http://everquest.station.sony.com/)—The most well known MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game). Dungeons and Dragons players no longer have to leave their house and interact with real people. This is probably the only game on this list given as a reason for divorce.

Multimedia and You

While we haven’t yet reached the age of true interactive Internet, there are many video, audio and multimedia formats you will encounter that can enrich your computing experience. The big three are Windows Media Player, Quicktime, and RealPlayer. All three are compatible with Macintosh and Windows, although you may have to download them. Each handles streaming audio and video, and downloadable formats such as MP3 and MPEG. All three programs will automatically download software, if available, when they need it to play a file, and each has plugins which are automatically installed for use by your web browser, so you can play multimedia content directly from a web page. Be aware that the three programs will battle for control over which program plays which files. All three have preference settings which will allow you to make that program the default player for your chosen formats. However, each also handles a couple of proprietary formats which the others do not, so it’s good to have all three. Besides playing audio and video, the latest versions of Windows Media Player (http://windowsmedia.com/) can help you make audio CDs or import music from CDs to your hard drive. Be aware that if you rip music from your CD collection to certain Windows Media formats, those files might not be playable on other computers. WMP plays files ending in the suffixes .wmv and .wma, among others. Quicktime (http://www.apple.com/quicktime/) and iTunes (http://www.apple.com/itunes/) together handle audio and video playing, as well as advanced functions of CD-burning and music-importing. iTunes also offers the ability to share song lists over your local network—even between Macs and PCs—to convert music to MP3s, and to interface with an iPod. Quicktime plays files ending in the suffix .mov, among others. RealOne (http://www.real.com/) is the latest version of RealPlayer, which plays its own proprietary streaming formats, as well as many of the standard formats. It comes in free and pay versions, although you may have to dig for the free version. RealOne plays files ending with the suffixes .rm and .ram, among others.

Which Operating System Is Right For You?

It’s the age-old computer question, approached with the same intensity as politics and sports: which operating system (OS for short) is right for you? But ask yourself a more fundamental question first: what will you use your computer for? Is it casual word processing and e-mail? The Great American Novel? Number crunching? The Internet? Recreational gaming? Video editing? Graphic design? The point is this: how you use your computer determines what software you need, and the availability of that software for a given operating system in turn guides your choice of OS. But remember, an operating system is linked to a specific kind of computer. For the home buyer, that means, essentially, a choice between a Mac and a PC. And your comfort level, as you try out different user interfaces, will ultimately have a profound effect on your choice of computer and operating system. Broadly, there are three popular OS families currently available: Windows, Macintosh OS’s, and countless flavors of Linux. Windows—If we include versions from Win 95 on, Microsoft Windows has the largest present and potential market share— so much so that many third-party software companies simply cannot afford to develop programs for any other OS. This alone is reason enough for many people to choose it. But others point out that just because 100 million cows eat grass, that doesn’t mean that they should eat it too. For those dissident cows among us, there are indeed some conspicuous cons to consider: Windows (particularly in its older incarnations—95 through ME) is notorious for its frequent crashes as well as its dangerous security holes, with Microsoft having to release dozens of security patches annually. And nearly all of those nasty computer viruses, trojans, and worms that you hear about are written to exploit its weaknesses. In addition, a Windows PC generally requires more technical support over its lifetime than an Apple Macintosh. On the other hand, there are pros to balance the cons. Recent versions of the OS (2000, XP, and beyond) are much more reliable, Microsoft promises updates and long-term support, and—more important—Windows systems are compatible with the largest variety of the latest software applications (from office suites, reference works, and utilities to vast quantities of games) as well as with the newest peripherals.

A Quick Guide to Writing Online English

What is Online English? Online English is simply the English that people use online. That’s it. That’s all. Unfortunately, “Online English” when described that way, seems to bring with it an air of either trepidation or disdain. Trepidation, in that many people believe that they will not be able to understand what “these kids today” are writing online, or disdain, in that they can’t imagine why anyone would care what “these kids today” are writing online. The mental image is of a chatroom screen filled with TLAs (three-letter acronyms), emoticons, and enough exclamation points to outfit an entire shelf of melodramatic novels. The emoticons and acronyms are but a small part of Online English. The secret of Online English is this: it’s very close to a language you already know, and know well: Informal English. The confusion comes about because, offline, you speak Informal English much more than you write it. Sure, you might dash off a quick postcard to a friend, or leave a sticky note on a co-worker’s chair, but for the most part, when you are using Informal English, you’re speaking it. Online, of course, you write much more than you talk—it’s just that your online writing is (or should be, for the most part) much like conversation. The different kinds of Online English can be described much like the different kinds of conversation. At the most formal, Online English can be like the conversation at a professional meeting, with prepared remarks and considered dialogue. Many blogs and academic discussion groups have this tone. The point of these online discussions is to get ideas across clearly and succinctly, with a certain amount of style—not stiltedly or slangily, but certainly with the end goal of clarity and mutual understanding. Many blogs, if printed out and divorced from their web associations, would read just as well as many newspaper op-ed columns. No emoticons here! Think of this level as being the same as an informal business memo.

Buying a Computer

Aprevious essay (see “Which Operating System Is Right for You,” p. 16), pointed out that your choice of hardware depends largely on your choice of operating system. So let’s assume that you’ve made up your mind and decided whether you want a Mac or a PC. The next question is whether you want a desktop or a laptop. Ask yourself a couple of relevant questions. Do you work in one place or you are a “road warrier”? Is space a consideration? Will this be your only computer? And how much can you afford? Feature for feature, desktops are cheaper than laptops. Normally, they are also more expandable. You can add more RAM, a better video card, an additional hard drive, a DVD or CD burner, or any of a number of other devices—provided that there are empty slots on the motherboard for additional expansion boards and empty drive bays in the case. You might eventually be able to add a more powerful processor, thus prolonging the useful life of your computer. Desktop cases are relatively easy to open, making it possible for intrepid users to install these items themselves. So check for expandability before you buy. You’ll need a monitor, of course. You’ll pay a bit less for one that comes with your desktop computer, but the dread sign in computer ads saying, “Monitor sold separately,” may not be such a bad thing. You may want something better than your computer vendor is offering. Having a large, steady, clear monitor can make a real difference in the quality of your computing experience. Broadly, there are two kinds to choose from now, and both flat-panel monitors and CRTs have distinct advantages. Sales of flat-panel monitors are fast catching up with those of CRTs, but—as always—your choice will depend on how you plan to use your computer, how much space you have, and the extent to which you are seduced by beauty and coolness. Flat-panel monitors, with their clean, slender profiles, are indeed appealing. (To find out why, see “The Ten Best Tools and Peripherals You Didn’t Know About,” p. 196.) New flat panels (and, by the way, laptop screens) come with TFT displays (that is, active-matrix, not the older, fuzzier passive-matrix displays), and their glare-free screens are easy on the eyes.

The Ten Worst E-mail Mistakes

Anyone who uses e-mail should avoid the following mistakes: Giving confidential information in an unsecured e-mail. Your credit card number, for instance, can easily be sent throughout the world. It’s best to send credit-card information only through secure Web sites. See “How to Shop Safely Online” on p.143. Opening attachments from strangers. Never open an e-mail that has an attachment that is vague or says “Check this out!” A virus may spread by invading the contact list on a computer and sending itself to every e-mail address on the list. Opening unsolicited e-mail without first scanning for viruses. There are several free anti-virus programs available, and they should be updated regularly. Hitting “reply” to an unsolicited e-mail when asking to be taken off the sender’s list. By hitting “reply” you may be opening up your account to a deluge of spam. Hitting “reply all” when only the sender needs a response. Does everyone really need to know your reply? Think before you reply, especially if the e-mail was sent to a very large group. Forwarding hoaxes or jokes. Most people get too much e-mail, and they would prefer a real note from you, not a hoary joke or, worse, a scaremongering urban legend or false charity scam. If something sounds too good (or too shocking) to be true, it probably is. Check the web for information before you send something on; www.snopes.com is a great site for checking stories. Sending an e-mail without a signature. It’s helpful to include at least your name and e-mail address at the bottom of your message, especially if you are e-mailing someone for the first time. Don’t use a vCard (virtual business card). It may be mistaken for a virus. Sending an e-mail without spell-checking it. Most e-mail systems spell-check as you type or have a “spell-check before sending” setting. Sending large files or pictures. Don’t clog up your recipient’s mailbox—ask before sending big files. Sending e-mail without a “subject” line or with a vague subject line. Be specific.A subject that reads “Looking forward to dinner Saturday!” will get more attention than one that reads “hi” or “see you soon?” A blank subject line may get no attention at all.

The Ten Best Tools and Peripherals You Didn’t Know About

1. Flat-panel monitors—OK, you not only know about flatpanel monitors, you’ve longed for one for years. But if you haven’t checked the prices recently, check again—this may be the time to buy. These monitors are now brighter, sharper, and clearer than ever. A 17-, 19-, even a 20-inch display has become more affordable, especially as part of a new computer system. With no border inside the frame, you see much more display area than with a CRT that boasts the same screen size. Some can even be rotated between portrait and landscape views. In the bargain, flat-panel monitors weigh less, emit fewer UV rays, use less electricity, and generate far less heat.They really are cool! 2. Multifunction printers—MFPs (multi-function printers), or all-in-ones, actually do do it all: print, copy, scan, and (usually) fax. Conventional wisdom cautions against hardware that performs more than one function, on the theory that if one part fails the whole thing goes south. But modern MFPs are solid and reliable. And they’re vastly more simple to set up and use than four separate machines (think software, wires, and space). Laser MFPs usually print, copy, and fax in black and white but scan in color. Ink-jet models do everything in color. Ink jets are initially less expensive, but if you factor in the cost of rapidly consumed color cartridges, laser is cheaper in the long run— especially if your primary output is text. 3. Photo printers—On the other hand, specialized ink-jet photo printers, which make it a breeze to print color images from your digital camera, are growing more and more popular. Some of them are flexible enough to print directly—not only from digital cameras but from memory cards and wireless devices, like PDAs and camera phones. Others connect through your PC. Some even allow you to print labels and photos onto special CDs! But primarily, you are freed to print stunningly clear, professional-looking, borderless pictures without leaving home. See brands from, among others, Epson, Canon, and Hewlett Packard.