Kokomo PC Users Group

Volume 15 Issue 9...September 2001

Presidents Message:

Well, Labor Day is past and we are almost ready for the beginning of regular season football. You know what that means .... Yes, we are ready for the beginning of the PC computing season. I know it is hard to get serious about computing when the days are long and the grass is growing like weeds, (or in my case the weeds are growing like grass), but it is almost time for cooler weather and time to snuggle down in front of the cheery glow of your monitor and really give the mouse a workout.

Our last meeting was a good one. We had a very successful Question and Answer session. Almost everyone participated as an asker or an answerer. We also had a delightful presentation by Tim Kling on 'Ripping MP3 files'. MP3 files are the most popular format for storing music on the Internet. Tim gave us a good walk-through of how you find, download and listen to MP3 files. We kept getting distracted with discussions of CD-RW drives because once you have all this great music at your fingertips, you want to burn CDs to take it with you.

We are still in search of a Treasurer for the Group. If you would like to help out and want to take a Iow stress office, then Treasurer is for you. We make about 12 deposits and write 24 checks a year. It is not hard to keep track of 36 transactions. Other duties include keeping the mailing list and membership status up to date.

I am starting to feel more comfortable as President again. I have a good crew of officers and they did a great job with the presentation and newsletter this month. My thanks to everyone who helped out.

We voted at the last officers meeting to move our website from Home.com to a site managed by Tim Kling. The Home.com site was getting ready to charge us a monthly fee for maintaining the home page. Tim is willing to host us for the cost of registering our domain name at about $10 per year.

This month we will test our first month of the new 'low stress' meeting presentation. We will have a panel discussion of the Windows Operating System past, present and future. We will look at how XP, NT and ME relate to 2000, 98 and 95 which came from 3.1, 3.0 and 286. We will also try to answer the questions "Which Windows is right for me?" and "How do I get the most out of the Windows I have?".

I am also interested in what topics you would like to see covered in future meetings. They can be the mundane "How to use a Word Processor" to the exotic "Wireless networking". We plan to keep mostly to the basics, but might throw in a few exotic ones, now and again, to spice things up.

Hope to see you at the next meeting. If you have any concerns or questions about the Group, please contact me or one of the other officers, we are here to serve you.

Mark Pendergast

Da Prez

[email protected] 765-455-2229

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Microsoft Works - Small Package - Big Value

Microsoft Works is the office suite that comes free with most new computers. If you paid extra to upgrade to Microsoft Office, you do not know what you are missing. I have been a Works user since version 1.1. I have seen the package grow and believe it now meets nearly all my needs for home computing. I am going to describe Works 4.5. I have Works 6.0, but have not gotten around to loading it.

The Works Package comes with several modular programs all woven into a powerful office suite. It is very easy to move information back and forth between the programs. The menu commands are all very similar so it is easy to move from program to program. The Works environment Multiple documents at the same time. You can easily switch between them or arrange them on the screen side by side.

Works starts up in the task launcher application. This is like a home page where you can access the various functions of the Works suite. The task launcher has three options that are shown as tabs on the launcher: Existing Documents, Works Tools and Task Wizards.

The Existing Documents tab show§ all the works files you have saved recently. This is very handy if you have created a document and forgot what you named it or where you put it. It is also a quick way to get at recent documents that might be stored all over the place without having to navigate endlessly in Windows Explorer.

The Works Tools tab allows you to launch each of the tools to create a new empty document. The four Works tools are Word Processor, Spreadsheet,

Database and Communications.

The Word Processor is fast and full featured. It is easy to learn and has several important advantages over the free Wordpad program that comes with Windows. The most important advantage in my book is that Works has a spelling checker. I can not live without this handy accessory. There is also a very good thesaurus so you can look up the word 'excellent' instead of saying 'very good' for the tenth time.

Works supports headers and footers as well as footnotes. There is a very useful Page Layout view that allows detailed control over the look of the final printed document. East Text allows you to insert text passages that you tend to repeat without retyping them over and over. The Page Break and Special Characters are handy to get just the look you want. Works also supports the creation of simple tables.

Another handy feature is the ability to split one document into two independently scrollable sections that allow you to look at the top .and bottom of a document at the same time. A feature of the Word Processor that uses the tight integration between programs is the Mail Merge function. This can be used to access data in the database program to make mailing labels and form letters.

There are several features that are in Microsoft office that are not available in Works, but these are for high end users that are doing more than writing a letter to the editor. These include the VBA macro language, real time spelling check, a grammar checker, sections, frames and other formatting functionality.

The Spreadsheet is also fast and full featured. It is easy to learn and can be quite useful in tracking list of things that you need to sort or where you need to calculate formulas on the data. The spreadsheet has the ability to automatically fill rows or columns with constant data. It supports named data ranges for easy creation of formulas. The Easy Calc feature is a wizard that walks you through the creation of formulas. It is very handy when you are not sure how to use a particular formula.

The Spreadsheet has very powerful supports for charts. There are several basic formats and several variations within each basic type. It even supports three-dimensional graphics. You have pretty good control over the formatting of the charts.

The Spreadsheet does not have all the fancy features of Microsoft Office. There is no support for the Visual Basic for Applications macro language. You can not use all the advanced formulas that are available in a high end package. Each file holds only one worksheet and not multiple worksheets in a workbook.

The Database is mainly used to support mail merge and label printing. With mail

merge you can link fields from the database into a Word Processor document. A special command then prints the document over and over while it fills in all the database entries. This allows you to send out identical letters with personalized information filled in automatically. Label printing is just a mail merge with pre-formatted label templates and more than one database entry per page.

The Database also provides simple tabular reports with simple data summaries. The single table format of the database limits its application for industrial strength data management. High end databases like MS Access have multiple database tables with links and sophisticated reporting.

The Communications is not as useful now that the Web has replaced Electronic Bulletin Boards. It is still available and can be helpful in dealing with older data systems.

The Task Wizards tab shows several categories of information and allows you to develop documents to do routine tasks with that information. The Wizards are small programs that will customize a template document to meet your specific needs. The Wizard will ask you a few questions and then create a document that meets your needs.

One example of a Wizard world be an Address book creator. There are several wizards that create different types of address books (business or personal). The wizard than asks you several questions about optional fields and how the book should be organized. Then it creates a Works document that meets your needs. The document can then be further customized to get exactly what you need.

I would recommend Works to anyone who has the need for a simple tool to record their information and present it in an organized manner. I enjoy the speed of operation and the ease of use.

Do not confuse Works with the Works Suite. The Works Suite appears to be Works bundled with a number of other programs. The big surprise is that the Works Word Processor has been replaced with MS Word. This not only slows down your Word Processing, but also slows 'down your whole computer. MS Word loads tons of stuff on your computer and clogs up your registry. I found this out the hard way and had to un-install the Suite to get my performance back.

Mark Pendergast

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Search Engines

Search Engines are just like the name implies. Search Engines allow you to look for information on the Internet. Usually when you go to a search site there is a blank space for you to type in your query. Most of the time one can type in several key words and then information will be brought up. If there is allot of information, like several thousand web sites you may have to narrow your search to be more specific with more keywords. Search Engines organize the information on the Internet so it is somewhat like a giant encyclopedia with a lot of information. It is good to use 2 or 3 search engines to look for information on the same subject or keyword(s) to get better information. Some Search Engine web sites are shown below for you to use in your search for information.

AltaVista http://www.altavista.com/
Ask Jeeves http://www.ask.com/index.asp?
Excite http://www.excite.com/
Google http://www.gooqle.com/
Hot Bot http://hotbot.lycos.com/

Shareware / Freeware ·

If you are looking for inexpensive computer programs to suit your application check out web sites for shareware and freeware. When you download shareware you,are expected to pay for a program after you try it out. Usually there is a 30-· day trial period. If you do not like the program or if it does not suit your application then you can erase it form your computer. This is a good idea because you have a chance to check out the program before purchase. Freeware as the name implies stands for free computer programs or applications and there is no cost involved for using the programs. Sometimes you can find some really neat programs on the Internet, its almost like mining for a nice program. Most of the sites for obtaining Shareware or Freeware have search capability, again by typing in keywords, which briefly describe the program you are looking for. One disadvantage of Shareware or Freeware is that you have to download the program, unzip the program, and then install the program in order to use it. So, if you do not have a program for unzipping other programs or files the first thing you will need is a program for unzipping files. A good program to use for doing this is called "Winzip" and you can find it at Zdnet.

Shareware.com http://shareware.cnet.com/
Zdnet Download http://www.zdnet.comldownloads/
Freewareweb.com http://freewareweb.coml
Freewareworld http://freewareworld.coml

By: Rodney Malkoff

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