Margin of error: YAU PC
by Alan Zisman
(c) 1999. First
published in Toronto Computes,
September,
1999
Phil Ragusa asked:
I have a rather elementary question for you but I sure
can't seem to
handle it. In Word97, how does one get the left and right margins set
to
where what is typed in between margins will be the data that is
printed? My right margin seems to be set and stuck at 5.5". The margin
settings SHOULD be what is printed... and what you see on screen should
(more or less) echo what you'll get on paper.
Alan answered:
To set the margins:
File/Page Setup/Margins... you should see settings for
left, right,
top, bottom margins and more-- along with a page preview, showing what
those settings will look like when printed.
Note that on screen display can be changed (using the
View menu items)
between Normal view and Page Layout view-- find which you prefer.
Page Layout (which may be the default on your system)
shows margins
etc. more accurately-- but will be somewhat slower on older hardware--
and confuses people when they get to the bottom of the page. Normal is
more like traditional word processors-- showing left & right
margins,
but not top/bottom or header/footer.
Allan Guest wondered:
My friend has a really slow computer a 486-25mhz
with a 33.6 modem
and was wondering if it is possible at all to get on the Internet
with a computer like that? They are also running Windows 95, he is able
to run a later version of Netscape with it. And if he is even possible
able to run it how slow would he be looking at?
Alan replied:
1) Yes-- it is possible to get on the Internet with
that computer...
the TV commercials suggesting people buy new computers for I-net access
are way over-hyped.
I think I started web surfing w. a 386-33 running Win
3.1, with a 14.4
kbs modem.
2) While web-surfing on that computer WILL be slower
than on a newer,
more powerful system, it will be less of a limitation than you might
think--
most of the limitations on the speed of web surfing are outside your
own
computer.
Even the 33.6 modem isn't bad-- on one system, I'm
using a 28.8 modem,
and it's not that much slower than using a so-called 56k modem-- most
of
my 56k connections actually turn out to be 40 or 44k.
So in summary, if the computer can run W95, it can
access the Internet.
(As with all Win95 systems, upgrading the Ram to 32 meg or more can
work
wonders on overall performance).
Bob Leggate wrote in:
Jason Lamb's question in the July YAU about a
"screen print" struck
a chord - I have been
using a freebie program for several years now called
"PrintKey"
which is available at several software sites (ZD Net etc.) It is an
independant
program which in essence reactivates the old "PrintScreen" button. It
gives
a "snapshot" of the page on the screen, with several additional graphic
toys to try - partial screen, magnifier, etc. For a free program,
it?s great. Have a look.
Alan replied:
Thanks for the tip!
Jesse Canfield queried:
I have a cd-rw drive and use Adaptec?s EZ CD
Creator Deluxe to create
cds. I was wondering if there is a program or something that I
could
use to be able to use my cd-rw drive as if it were a zip drive or a
hard
drive so that I could just send files there instead of having to open
the
software, add
the files into the group, and then burn the cd.
Alan suggested:
Adaptec makes another product: Direct CD, which allows
this. It is bundled
with many, but not all, CD-R/RW hardware.
When Direct CD is running in the background, if you
insert a blank CD,
you get the option of putting it under Direct CD's control-- if you do
so, you can copy/move files to the CD-R disk, just as if it were a
large
floppy drive.
The penalty for doing so is that it eats up additional
drive space--
I've had disks fill up with 400 megs or so of data. Check on the
company?s
website?www.adaptec.com for more details.
Wes Clark wrote in:
Could you explain to me the simplest ways (without
having to purchase
an expensive
commercial program) of duplicating a Win98 setup on
another drive/system?
Would copying the ini files from the Windows directory and all the
files
from the Windows\system directory to a newly installed Win98 on another
system do the job? ( I run a simple Win98 plus IE4.0 setup, but I have
many shortcuts to hardware/software troubleshooting/info sites on my
desktop.)
Would it be better to make a backup and then
install the backup on
the second system? (If it makes any difference, my main system is a
P150;
my second system is a 486DX2-66 with 16MB of memory). Is the backup
software
that comes with Win98 reliable? (In the DOS\Win31 days, it had a
reputation
of being unreliable.)
P.S. I was at a used computer outlet the other
day. This salesman
was telling someone that for Win98 you had to use a SVGA monitor; Last
night I hooked up a IBM mono monitor (black and white) to my test
system.
Win98 runs fine.
Alan Zisman answered:
Probably the most efficient way is to connect the
drive from the 2nd
system into your first, setting it as the slave drive. Then, after
booting
to Win98, you can copy of the contents of your C:\Windows folder (and
sub-folders)
onto the second drive. You can use Windows? Explorer to drag everything
(except the swapfile Win386.swp) from one drive to the other.
Alternatively, DOS XCOPY is a good way to copy it--
with appropriate
switches, as in the following example: Xcopy c:\*.* /h /i /c /k /e /r
/y
d:
(which would copy everything from the first hard drive to the second...
including hidden files, empty sub-directories, etc.)
Remove the 2nd drive, reset it as master, install it
into the second
computer
When W98 starts up, expect some confusion, as it
discovers different
hardware than on the first machine... you may need to insert your W98
CD
as it discovers it needs different video drivers, etc.
In order to use the backup program-- what would you
backup to? Not floppy
disks, I hope! The Win98 backup is not bad (a version of Seagate's
Backup
Exec backup program) -- but copying directly from one hard drive to the
other is MUCH faster-- if you're not afraid to crack open the cases.
Salesmen say a lot of BS-- but your monochrome VGA
monitor would count
as an SVGA monitor... you can't run it with Hercules monochrome (or
EGA,
for that matter)... and that may be what the salesman was referring to.