Byte size
I run a photographic library and need to send a large file to clients in America. They have asked us to put the image on our website or an FTP server so they can download it. Could you tell me where I can find information about how to do this, and why it might be better than just emailing the image? Jason Hawkes
www.jasonhawkes.com

Jack Schofield replies: Email was designed to send small texts and is an inefficient, inconvenient and insecure way of sending large binary files. To send them by email, they have to be encoded, which makes them larger. Also, you may have to split them into a series of smaller files so as not to clog up mail servers. This is tedious. However, with FTP (file transfer protocol), you can upload and download large files quickly, securely and conveniently. In this case, "large" can be 100 megabytes or more, though 5MB is a more common size.

There are two ways to approach FTP. The first is to use a commercial host's FTP file space, which is much the same as using commercial web space. You use an FTP client program to upload the file to the host's server, and the recipient uses an FTP client to download it.

The second way is to do the file transfer directly, peer-to-peer. You can run an FTP server on a home computer and someone else can use FTP client software to connect to the server and download the file.

For a selection of free FTP clients for Windows, see www.webattack.com/Freeware/network/fwftp.shtml; for free FTP servers, see www.webattack.com/Freeware/server/fwftpserver.shtml. War FTP is a popular server for Windows. There is a tutorial on how to install it at http://g-lea.tamu. edu/warftpd.htm . Also, for a beginner's guide to FTP, see www.ftpplanet.com/ftpresources/ftpmain.htm

However, for sharing small files (less than 5MB), Yahoo's Briefcase system is easier than FTP, and for your application, Streamload might be the best choice. You can upload as many files as you like, and "beam" them straight to one or more clients' accounts. You can try the system by signing up as a freeloader.

For Macs
Can you please suggest a Mac program equivalent to the SmartFTP recommended in your last column? I find Fetch confusing. Jack Gordon
jlgordon@dircon.co.uk

JS: Start by trying FTP Wizard: it makes the Fetch FTP client easier to use, and it is free. You can download it from www.cyberkare.com/products.html

Otherwise there does not seem to be a wealth of high-quality free FTP programs for the Mac, unless readers can recommend one. Fetch costs $25, and the main rivals are slightly more expensive. You could try Interarchy (which was Anarchie) because it works like Finder. It costs $45 to register (see www.stairways.com). Another alternative is NetFinder, which costs $35.

Search me
Sadly searching the FT global archive for your guide to cleaning Windows only turned up this week's mention (September 6), and Guardian Unlimited is not sure you exist at all! So, sadly, your invaluable article is beyond the reach of those of us unhappy souls who missed the original, and our computers gurn interminably - unless you have any further suggestions as to how we can find it. Joanna Gardner
Joanna@gardnermull.demon.co.uk

JS: I suggested searching the FT database ( http://global archive.ft.com/globalarchive/ search.html ) for "windows untidy litter" because it worked when I wrote it and it still works today. Indeed, any combination of words from the original (schofield clean windows temporary internet files) should work: try a few variations until you find what you want. Ask for the results to be sorted by Relevance rather than date, and if an article is more than three months old, click the link for "refine search". This lets you select a period that ranges from today to five years.

However, after a heroic struggle, I finally managed to find the article using Guardian Unlimited's search engine. The magic words are: cleaning windows. If you want to set the date, it was July 12, 2001.

· For our convenience and continued sanity, couldn't you just put a link on the Ask Jack page?
Tony Morris
tony.morris@bigfoot.com

JS: For future reference, the article is at: www.theguardian.com/Archive/Article/0,4273,4219755,00.html

Backchat
· Clem Dye has caught me out for saying that Power Archiver was free. Well, for the first six versions, it was a very good freeware program. With version 7 it has changed into an average shareware program. But as Clem points out, there is still Info-Zip.

· Emma Duke-Williams, Antony Hawkins, John King, John Pound and others wrote in to explain how Jacob Brauner could make his Pegasus email program work with Internet Explorer in Windows. In Pegasus, go to Tools|Options|Hyperlinks and click the button labelled MSIE mailer. Unfortunately, Jacob says the MSIE mailer button is greyed out on his system - it is there but unusable. The mystery remains.