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Jocelyn Doire Newsletter Emailing OPCUG Secretary ____________________________ Vol. 21 number 2 February 2004 The newsletter of the Ottawa PC Users' Group Calendar ****************************************************** OPCUG meeting dates juggled Please note that due to some conflicts with the museum schedule, we are unable to meet on the regular second Wednesday of the month in February. For this month only, the meetings will be as follows: Thursday, February 12th, 2004 ****************************************************** OPCUG General Meeting National Museum of Science and Technology 1867 St. Laurent Blvd. Second Wednesday of each month, 7:30pm Feb 12 *Thursday*: Corel Smart Graphics Studio and SVG Mar 10: Apr 14: Peter Andrews of SoftMap Publishing, Digital Maps Internet SIG (I-SIG) After the OPCUG General Meeting, at the Museum. Orphan SIG After the OPCUG General Meeting, at the Museum. Digital Imaging SIG After the OPCUG General Meeting, at the Museum. Developers SIG After the OPCUG General Meeting, at the Museum, and occasionally at other locations in the region. Delphi User Group, 8:00 p.m. To Be Announced PIG (or Wing?) SIG, after all the other SIGs, at 10 p.m. Chances "R", 1365 Woodroffe (at Baseline), College Square Please note that unless otherwise noted, SIGs meet at 9:00 p.m. (immediately following the OPCUG General Meeting). ____________________________ Coming Up... Rob Williamson Product Manager Corel Smart Graphics Studio (http://www.smartgraphics.com/Default.shtml) Rob Williamson is the Product Manager for Corel Smart Graphics Studio. Coming out of the New Ventures team at Corel, his history includes developing and launching new technology products to address emerging markets based on quantifiable business needs. Abstract: Introducing Smart Graphics Studio - an enterprise product for building and deploying graphical applications bound to data. Common uses include Technical Graphics, Web Mapping, Systems Automation, and Business Intelligence. This general overview will focus on how to leverage new Web Service standards using Scalable Vector Graphic (SVG) interfaces. Web services have been recognized throughout the industry for their open architecture, promise of component reuse, platform independence, and drag and drop tools. But to date, their development has tended to be limited to back-end connectivity and infrastructure. SVG is the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) standard for graphics. Based on XML, SVG's graphical capabilities make it a compelling graphics format for any enterprise project where application longevity and interoperability is a critical success factor. Combining SVG with Web Services is one compelling method to deliver Smart Graphics solutions. Smart Graphics are drawn from data, dynamic, bi-directional, multi-channel and printable. Smart Graphics Studio is a product for building Smart Graphics and it will be demonstrated during this presentation. NOTE: The February meeting takes place on Thursday, February 12. ____________________________ February Raffle At the February general meeting, due to the generosity of McAfee Canada, we have a copy of McAfee VirusScan v7.0. This program includes protection from over 67,000 different virus and Trojan threats and even includes firewall protection to keep the hackers at bay. Raffle tickets are $1 for one, $2 for three, or $5 for ten. Help keep your membership dues low and take a chance (or ten) on this prize, valued at approximately $60. March Raffle Save up your loonies for the March raffle! Thanks to Microsoft Canada's Ottawa office, we have a copy of Microsoft Office 2003 Professional Edition that will be going to a lucky winner in March. Yes, that's right. The complete Professional Edition including Word, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint, Access, Publisher, and Business Contact Manager for Outlook. This package has a local store price of $650.00. For more information about Microsoft Office 2003, see www.microsoft.com/office. ____________________________ Orphans' SIG Word from the Interim Coordinator At a recent meeting of the club's Board of Directors, there were five (count them - 5!) expressions of interest in making presentations to the Orphans' SIG on topics of interest from our list. Now, we just need a volunteer to coordinate them... Please indicate your interest in the latter, and I will provide details of the former. At the same Board meeting an idea for a new kind of Orphans' SIG session was born -- T3. Do you have a specific problem with your computer's hardware, or have trouble with a particular software package? Is your system in a real mess and really needs some tender loving care? Or, would you just like to make the organization of your machine a little more efficient? We will try our best to troubleshoot, tune-up, and provide technical tips for your system -- T3! But, we don't do house calls. You will have to bring your system to the computer doctor(s) at an Orphans' SIG meeting at the museum. You will also have to be willing to have us tinker with your machine. But, of course, you do make regular backups of everything -- don't you? Practically, we will only be able to deal with one machine at a SIG meeting, so it will be necessary to have your T3 session pre-arranged. Contact the (Interim) SIG Coordinator by return mail, indicating your specific needs, and we'll see what we can do. One of the above will provide a topic for the next Orphans' SIG meeting that, as usual, will follow the monthly club meeting. However, take note that February's meeting will be on THURSDAY, February 12. Alan German ____________________________ Election Report for 2004 by Wayne Houston In the November and December issues of Ottawa PC News, there was a call for nominations for members interested in being members of the Board of Directors for 2004. As election chairman, I received the nominations. As of December 31, I had received only eight nominations: Jocelyn Doire, Alan German, Bob Gowan, Brigitte Lord, Vince Pizzamiglio, Chris Taylor, Morris Turpin, Bob Walker As there are nine positions on the Board, only eight nominations were received, there will not be an election. Since one position is vacant the Board of Directors will be looking for someone to fill the position. If you are interested in helping out with the running of the OPCUG in any capacity, please see any of the Board members mentioned above (contact information can be found at the bottom of this issue). ____________________________ Thank you, Hemera! We offer many thanks to last month's presenter, Hemera Technologies, for giving the OPCUG a copy of their Big Box of Art. As newsletter editor of the club, I was the lucky recipient of this amazing collection of images. And just as they demonstrated, the search engine is superb at finding just what you want in this huge compilation (615,000 images). Thanks also to Mark Cayer, our membership coordinator, for pointing Hemera in my direction. You can find Hemera images on pages 3 and 8 of the PDF and paper issues of this newsletter. Brigitte Lord ____________________________ Winners List At our general meeting of Jan. 14th 2004: Apart from the numerous Hemera Ball Caps and other freebies... George Campbell won a copy of the Hemera Photo Objects Collection. Ted McDorman won a copy of the Hemera Biz Art Image collection. Henry Sims won a one year subscription to the Hemera on-line image library. Keith Martinsen won our raffle prize, a copy of McAfee FireWall software. Congratulations to our winners and a big thank you to Hemera Technologies and McAfee for the prizes. As well a special thank you to Hemera Technologies for donating a copy of their "The Big Box of Art" collection to the OPCUG for use in our newsletters as well as the discount offer they extended to all members at the meeting. ____________________________ Product Review VirusScan 7.0 - Home Edition, Part 2 Alan German So, now for the good news about VirusScan and Personal Firewall. But first, a quick recap for anyone who missed Part 1 of this review. The installation process for VirusScan Home Edition does not activate the firewall portion of the software before telling the user to go out to McAfee's web site to obtain on-line updates. Blindly following these instructions will leave your machine open to attack by web-based malware. Check Part 1 of the article which indicates how to ensure that both VirusScan and the Personal Firewall are installed and activated before using the update feature. Once I had worked around the initial installation problems, and both programs were indeed operational on my machine, it was time to undertake the update process. The package has a very nice Instant Updater feature. The main menu screen for the updater indicates the various steps that must be completed: Registering customer information, Querying for product information, Select updates, Downloading product update, Applying product update and, finally, a Summary of the operations completed. Most of these are performed automatically, with a minimum of user input. In fact, it is only necessary to confirm the selected update(s) in the third stage of the process, and to acknowledge the summary report at the end. The first time I ran the updater, just about every component of the package, Central, Instant Updater, Personal Firewall, and VirusScan, required updating. There were lots of file downloads, with individual files running between 0.5 and 5.5 MB, and an occasional reboot of the machine being required. In particular, straight out of the box, VirusScan was noted as being 401 days old! This provides some indication of the shelf life of shrink-wrapped software. Needless to say, this part of the package needed some major updates with a series of 76 files, each around 150 KB, being downloaded to revise the virus signature files, and a couple of the multi- megabyte files noted above being needed for the scan engine and program interface. The really good news is that this is essentially a one-time operation. Once the package has been brought up to date, far fewer downloads are necessary to maintain the software in a current state. In fact, the program can be set to automatically "silently check for and apply updates when an Internet connection is made." The normal updating process is actually much more efficient than downloading and applying a new DAT file which, for me, was previously a very regular operation. For example, downloading 4310DAT.EXE (2.4 MB) by FTP and completing the installation of this file took about 13 minutes over a dial- up connection. Updating the virus signature files to the same level using Instant Updater required a 95 KB download and the entire process took less than two minutes. Furthermore, if you opt for the background updating process, you don't even notice the events taking place. Very slick. The program interfaces for both VirusScan and Personal Firewall are now much more colourful than previous versions and are integrated such that menu links allow toggling between the two programs. VirusScan lets you know the type of scanning currently in place, e.g. automatic file scanning, and whether or not the current version is up to date. A window also indicates the Firewall status, such as it being set to filter network traffic. Menu items allow for the selection of a scan for viruses, configuration of automatic protection settings, and checking for updates. Advanced tasks include scheduling scans, managing quarantined files, and configuring Instant Updater. One interesting option, buried in VirusScan's options, is "Enable Microsoft Office Integration" which (the manual says) scans Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents even if background scanning is disabled. This shows up, for example, as a "Requesting Virus Scan" message on Word's status bar each time a new file is opened. Another new feature is "Hostile Activity Watch Kernel" (HAWK) that looks for virus-like activity such as mass E-mailings. HAWK works with various mailers, including Eudora, and I had this feature trip a warning message when I was sending out a mailing to a distribution list of several hundred individuals. The main menu for the Firewall shows if the firewall is running, its update status, the number of programs communicating to the web, and the number of alerts that have been logged. Both of the latter have links to allow the user to view more details. Menu items allow various aspects of the program's operations to be configured, such as allowing a specific program to access the Internet, setting alert preferences, etc. Similarly, advanced features allow setting up the firewall for use on a home network, blocking individual IP addresses, and so on. Overall, the system seems to be quite comprehensive and very powerful. It certainly has many more features than I am likely to use. My preferences are quite basic, on-access scanning so that files are checked when they are opened or saved, scanning files attached to E-mail, and providing an alert when a program tries to access the Internet. VirusScan correctly identified the Jumper boot-sector virus on a floppy disk that I keep around specifically to make sure that my virus scanner is working. Personal Firewall warned me when I tried to connect to PUB II with Wildcat and let me specify that this connection was always to be allowed in future. A check using Shields UP! showed that Firewall had closed all necessary ports and was denying my machine's existence to unwanted external inquiries. Firewall also dutifully records attempts to access the system in (to me) meaningless combinations of incoming UDP packets, remote port numbers, IP addresses, and descriptions of network adapters. The program was configured so as not to provide alerts of such intrusions so the process is basically transparent to me. I can readily view the logs of Internet activity and warnings if necessary, and can easily clear these logs at the press of a button. And, to be fair, the package has a good on-disk help system, which is context sensitive, and has lots of words to explain all of the above for those who want to know. In addition, there are easily used links to McAfee's web site for a wide range of further information. So, all in all, I find the program to be an improvement over previous versions. One has to be careful with the installation process, but the mode of operation of the combination of VirusScan and Personal Firewall seems to do an adequate job compared to my earlier use of a previous version of VirusScan and ZoneAlarm. I like the new program interface, with its integrated menu system, and especially appreciate the efficiency of the instant updater feature. Bottom Line: VirusScan 7.0 $59.99 (for currently available VirusScan 8.0) McAfee Security: http://mcafee-at-home.com Shields UP! website: http://grc.com ____________________________ Product Review Drive Image 7 by Jocelyn Doire One of the most famous programs made by PowerQuest is Partition Magic, which can resize a partition, something that was considered impossible. Since that time they have done other software, but most are related to the hard drive including Drive Image 7. The purpose of Drive Image 7 is to save a complete image of a drive, which can be restored in full or one file at a time. Drive Image 7 is not meant to copy a drive to another one (for that you can look at PowerQuest's Drive Copy), nor to backup individual files or directories (such as NTI Backup). The software comes on two CDs, one for Windows Me, 98, 95 and NT called "Drive Image 2002", and a second CD for Windows XP and 2000 Professional called Drive Image 7, both in English, French and Deutsch. The box also includes a slim manual on how to get started. Even before I started the review, someone told me that the installation of Drive Image 7 had messed his machine, and a bit later I read that the software was huge, taking up to 45MB plus 40MB for .NET Framework, which is in contrast to Drive Image 5, which could fit on a single floppy. At that point I seriously considered dropping the review; the initial info I got was not reassuring, I did not understand why it took so much space to make a simple copy of a partition, and I was reluctant to install the .NET framework. PowerQuest appears quite cozy with Microsoft: they are a Microsoft Certified Partner, they use the .NET technology, and their password meets the Microsoft's Designed For Windows XP Gold certification (which means that when the administrator password changes, you MUST also update the password for the V2i Protector service). If there is any support for Linux, I have not been able to see any trace of it. Once the installation disk starts you are welcomed with a menu giving you the choice to install Drive Image 7, view the manual and installation guide, do a product tour, get a tutorial and change the language. The tour is a multi-media overview of the features and how to use the program in about 10 minutes. The tutorial then goes into much more detail on how to do various tasks, again using a multi-media presentation, plus a web page linking to many resources, info, etc. The installation took me about 15 minutes, including a reboot and registration. The installation is fairly simple with its usual licence agreement, directory selection, etc. It then asks you the permission to install the .NET framework which takes a few minutes to do, and then it asks you to reboot. When starting the program for the first time, it will ask you to enter the serial number, and offer you to register it on their web site. Before starting a backup, it's probably a good idea to clean up your hard drive of superfluous files you no longer need as well as temporary files that Windows creates, by opening the file explorer, right-clicking on the hard drive, selecting "Properties", and finally clicking on the "Disk Cleanup" button. Similarly, you can delete temporary internet files by clicking on "tools" from Internet Explorer, the Internet Options and finally "Delete Files". Drive Image 7 has two main interfaces, the "Basic View" and the "Advanced View", but given that the Basic View shows less and requires more clicking to do the same things, I prefer the Advanced View" (shown below). The process of backing up a drive is fairly simple. First you click on "Back Up Drive", select the drive to backup, select the destination (local file, network or CD/DVD), change any of the options if desired (compression, verify, description) and finally start the backup. To backup a partition of 4.87GB with 1.58GB of data on it into a different partition took: - 3:16 minutes and generated a file of 808 MB using normal compression - 4:46 minutes and generated a file of 661MB using high compression The same backup on CD took: - 15:47 minutes and generated two files of 659MB and 256MB, using high compression (Includes a few minutes because of the "second CD" errors, see below for more) To backup a partition of 29.2GB with 4.63 GB of data on it into 4 CDs took me 46 minutes to complete, using high compression and verification. The software got into trouble when came the time to load the second blank CD; not only did it trigger my CD Software Roxio to start, but it generated a series of error messages and prompts to load the first and last CD. After a while, I found out that I needed to insert the CD, wait until the CD Drive's LED turned off, and only then could I click on OK. The fact that you have to toggle between the first and last CD's many times made the delays even more annoying. One of the more surprising features of Drive Image 7 is that it can backup the drive that you booted from, and keep working without any interruption. I'm not sure how it gets around the locked files, but as far as I can tell, everything was backed up properly. You can also schedule the backups weekly or monthly. Drive Image 7 can also copy a drive to another drive, something that can be useful if you upgrade your hard drive to a bigger one without having to go through the backup process. Restoring a drive is also quite simple. Select "Restore Drive", select the backup file then the destination drive, change any of the options if desired and finally restore it. To restore individual files, strangely I had to go to the basic view and select "Restore Files or Folders", which lets you choose the backup image and then opens a browser very much like the file manager. Once the file or the directory is selected, right-click on "restore" and choose the destination folder. Should your hard drive become unusable, you can boot from the installation CD in about 5 minutes, provided that your BIOS supports that feature. The boot CD has everything that is needed to restore a system, including the utilities to format a drive, partition it, connect to the network, select the image, and finally restore all the files or just some of them. For $69.95 USD, the software is not the cheapest you can find, but it worked very well for me. I really liked that it could backup while I was still working, and for a corporation environment, its support for network is also nice. For more information you can check the PowerQuest web site at http://www.powerquest.com/driveimage/. Note: - PowerQuest was purchased by Symantec in December 2003. - Drive Image 7 can be updated to version 7.01 from their support web site. ____________________________ Internet SIG Internet Search Engines For Beginners by Eric Clyde, Coordinator of the Internet SIG What is a search engine and how does it work? A search engine is the term used for the way in which the millions of pages of information on the World Wide Web are indexed so that you can find the information when you need it. There are two main types: human-based and crawler- or spider-based. As you would expect, in the first group human editors do the indexing, basing their choice of terms on a short description of the site, if one has been submitted, or one that they have written. Searching is thus based on the terms chosen by the indexers, which can be a disadvantage if you don't search using these terms. An example of such a search engine is LookSmart (www.looksmart.com). Crawler- or spider-based engines create their listings automatically by using special programs called crawlers or spiders which regularly visit and read all the web pages they can find, and follow links to other web pages. Everything the spider finds goes to the second part of the engine, sometimes called the catalogue, where all significant words are indexed. There may be a delay of a day or two, to a year or more before a web page is indexed. For the most popular search engines, which index millions if not billions of web pages, the average delay seems to be about a month. The third part is the software used to find matches for your search terms. The actual ways used to present the hits in ranked order of relevance are closely guarded secrets, but these engines generally do an amazingly good job. The most popular crawler-based engine is Google (www.google.com). Hybrid engines combine both methods. For example, MSN Search is likely to present human powered listings from LookSmart, followed by crawler-based results from the Inktomi (www.inktomi.com) search engine. Google, Part 1 Google is probably the most commonly used search engine, and with good reason, for it indexes millions of pages and very quickly presents the information it finds. Unless the query is very specific, though, there can be hundreds if not thousands of hits. But if you are not trying for an exhaustive search, the information required can usually be found in the top few entries. One of the easiest ways to quickly access Google is to use its tool bar. This can be downloaded from http://toolbar.google.com. If you install it on your computer, a new bar appears near the top of the screen when you are hooked up to the Internet. I have been using the Google tool bar successfully and without problems for months now. The same is not true of a more recent innovation, the Google desk bar, which is still in the beta, i.e. use at your own risk, stage. It worked as claimed, but wiped out some of my settings on my keyboard! (Fortunately I am using Windows XP, so System Restore saved my bacon!) If you want to try it, it can be downloaded from http://toolbar.google.com/deskbar/index.html To make the most effective use of Google, search terms (keywords) should be as specific as possible. Only web pages containing all of the keywords used will be listed - if too many hits are returned, add more keywords if possible. In the following, I have put the keywords within square brackets to simulate the box used, e.g., in Google. Capitalization does not matter - [ottawa] and [oTtAwA] will produce the same results, but singular and plural does, so [computer] and [computers] will not, unless both terms are used on the web page. Normally insignificant words such as "the" and "but" and single digit numbers are not indexed, but if they are important to the query, they should be included, prefaced by "+" or, if part of a title, the whole title should be included in quotation marks. To search for the book title War and Peace, you could use [war +and peace] or ["war and peace"], but it will also include pages like "Institute for War and Peace." Note that the first would also return pages containing the words "peace", "and", and "war"! Other methods of limiting searches include the use of "-", meaning "not," and "OR". Examples would be [mars -planet], to return pages not dealing with astronomy, and [vacations london OR paris], for information on holidays in either London or Paris (or both). Note that "OR" has to be in capital letters. Google has many other useful features. Some of these will be covered in future articles in this series, as will other search engines. ____________________________ OTTAWA PC NEWS Ottawa PC News is the newsletter of the Ottawa PC Users' Group (OPCUG), and is published monthly except in July and August. The opinions expressed in this newsletter may not necessarily represent the views of the club or its members. Member participation is encouraged! If you would like to contribute an article to Ottawa PC News, please submit it to the newsletter editor (contact info below). Deadline for submissions is three Saturdays before the General Meeting. Group meetings OPCUG normally meets on the first Wednesday in the month, except in July and August, at the National Museum of Science and Technology, 1867 St. Laurent Blvd, Ottawa. Meetings are 7:30-9:00 p.m. and Special Interest Groups go until 10 p.m. Fees: OPCUG annual membership: $25 per year. Mailing address: 3 Thatcher St., Nepean, Ontario, K2G 1S6 Web address: http://opcug.ca/ President and System Administrator: Chris Taylor, chris.taylor@@opcug.ca, 727-5453 Meeting Coordinator Bob Gowan, bob.gowan@@opcug.ca Treasurer: Vince Pizzamiglio, vince@@monisys.ca Webmaster Brigitte Lord, opcug-webmaster@@opcug.ca Secretary: (Mr.) Jocelyn Doire, jocelyn.doire@@opcug.ca Membership Chairman: Mark Cayer, Mark.Cayer@@opcug.ca, 823-0354 Newsletter: Brigitte Lord, brigitte.lord@@opcug.ca Email: (Mr.)Jocelyn Doire, Jocelyn.Doire@@opcug.ca Public Relations: Morris Turpin, morris.turpin@@opcug.ca, 729-6955 Historian: Ted May, tamay@@rogers.com Directors without portfolio Alan German, alan.german@@opcug.ca Facilities: Bob Walker, skywalk@@iname.ca, 489-2084 Beginners' and Windows SIG coordinator: Duncan Petrie, gdpetr@@hotmail.com, 841-6119 Internet SIG coordinator: Eric Clyde, eclyde@@rogers.com, 749-2387 Delphi SIG coordinator Martin Pagnan, mpagnan@@cyberus.ca Orphan SIG Coordinator We are looking for a volunteer. Developers' SIG Bob Thomas, BobThomas@@msn.com Digital Imaging SIG Chris Taylor, chris.taylor@@opcug.ca, 727-5453 Note: We added an extra "@" to the emails to reduce spam. (c) OPCUG 2004. Reprints permission is granted* to non- profit organizations, provided credits is given to the author and The Ottawa PC News. OPCUG request a copy of the newsletter in which reprints appear. *Permission is granted only for articles written by OPCUG members, and not copyrighted by the author. ____________________________ Newsletter by email: To receive the newsletter by e-mail, send a message to listserve@@opcug.ca with the plain text "subscribe NewsletterTXT" or "subscribe NewsletterPDF" (without quotes nor HTML code) in the body of the message. No subject line is required. Cancelling the Paper Newsletter: You can help the environment and save us some costs by sending an email to Mark.Cayer@@opcug.ca asking to cancel the delivery of the paper version of the newsletter (or ask him in person - Mark is usually at the back of the auditorium at General Meetings). Announcements Mailing List: To subscribe to the Announcements List send an email to listserve@@opcug.ca, leave the subject blank and in the body of the message put "subscribe announcements" (without the quotes nor HTML code). Within a couple of minutes you will receive a confirmation message from the list server. OPCUG mugs and multi-tools: Check out these great thermal coffee mugs and multi-tools sporting our club logo at the back of the auditorium at General Meetings! OPCUG insulated mugs are $15 and OPCUG multi-tools are $20. Reuse, recycle: Bring your old computer books, software, hardware, and paraphernalia you want to GIVE AWAY to the general meetings, and leave them at the table near the auditorium's entrance. Please limit your magazines to publication dates of less than two years old. If you don't bring something, you may want to TAKE AWAY something of interest, so look in on this area. Any item left over at the end of the meeting will be sent to the... recycle bin.