Chain mail
I received an email from Microsoft with "the latest version of security update, the March 2003, Cumulative Patch update which eliminates all known security vulnerabilities affecting Internet Explorer, Outlook and Outlook Express". There's an attachment I haven't opened. I'm suspicious. Is it genuine or a hoax?
Andrew Steed
Microsoft does not write to people at random, never distributes security patches by email, and will not ask you to phone a premium rate phone line. Further, as similar emails suggest, Microsoft has not taken over the Catholic Church, and there is no way Bill Gates is going to send you $1,000. In fact, you can safely assume that 100% of all security fixes, virus warnings, chain letters and spams are hoaxes, except the ones that are attempts at criminal fraud. Fortunately, it is very easy to confirm that a suspicious message is actually a hoax: just paste the keyword(s) from the email into Google with the word hoax. For example, JDBGMGR hoax gets 23,500 hits, while SULFNBK hoax gets 14,200. Alternatively, the Virus Myths website has an A-Z of hundreds of email "viruses" at http://vmyths.com/ hoax.cfm, from the !0000 trick to the Yukon3U Trojan/virus. If an email warning was serious, it would come directly from a reputable anti-virus company such as F-Secure, McAfee, Sophos or Symantec, usually in a newsletter, and contain links to further information on their website. If an email warning has been forwarded by eight people in five countries on its way to you, you can assume you would already have heard about anything important from sources that are not so ludicrously easy to fake.
Web it
I have many documents that I want to put on the web, but the effort of removing all the formatting and then reformatting for web pages is time-consuming.
Margaret Levy
You don't need to do any reformatting to create simple web pages. All you have to do is load your document into Microsoft Word or similar word processor, select File|Save As from the menu, and save it in HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) format. All being well, the resulting web page will look exactly the same as it does in Microsoft Word. You will probably not win any prizes for web design, usability or HTML coding but it does the job. However, this approach can get tedious if you need to convert more than a few pages, so you might want to try a program with a "batch conversion" facility. Simtel's directory of HTML Conversion Utilities offers a few, such as tohtm131.exe and p2d100.zip. Another option is CZ-Doc2Htm V3.0.
Thumbs down
I use a laptop with a touchpad. When typing, my thumbs accidentally graze the touchpad, which highlights a portion of the text and deletes it. How can I deactivate the touchpad when typing?
Dr Krisantha Weerasuriya
This is a common problem, and sometimes manufacturers try to deal with it intelligently. Hewlett-Packard, for example, has tried putting a recessed on/off button next to the touchpad. Otherwise, the most common approach is to disable it via the Windows Control Panel. Double-click the System icon and select the tab marked Device Manager. Click the plus sign next to Mouse, and select whatever pad is installed, such as a Synaptics PS/2 TouchPad. Click Properties, and tick the box that says: Disable in this hardware profile. An alternative is to cover the pad with a stiff piece of plastic, such as a credit card. However, I would never buy a notebook PC with a touchpad. I think the TrackPoint miniature joystick invented by IBM is far superior, and you can get these mainly in IBM ThinkPad and Toshiba notebooks. As a touch- typist, I would also try to avoid any notebook computer with the keyboard placed inconveniently at the back of the base, instead of the front; unfortunately, this stupid design feature seems to be almost universal. Many notebooks are now unsuitable for serious typing unless you can plug in a proper external keyboard, such as the IBM Model M or "clicky AT" keyboard.
Hot lap
Some time ago, I bought a Hi-Grade laptop, which failed and had to be fitted with a new motherboard. After repair, the cooling fan rarely ran, and I challenged Hi-Grade, suggesting that the original assembly must have been faulty, because the fan ran continuously. Recently, I purchased a high spec Dell laptop. Shortly after start-up, the fan ran continuously at full speed. I demanded a full refund, to which they agreed. Surely, if an aim of manufacturers is to maximise laptop battery life, then a constantly running cooling fan defeats this object.
Leonard Fort
Wrong way round: failure is less likely if the fan runs continuously. Processors fail when they overheat, so the default behaviour ought to be to run the fan in borderline cases. Intel's Pentium 4 is designed to turn itself off before it fries, but if a fan fails, a processor without this kind of protection can burn up in about a minute. For this reason, Intel recommends the use of Mobile Pentiums in notebooks, not desktop chips such as the P4. The Pentium-M uses a heat-exchanger to remove heat, but even so, it can run at 22 watts and the core can reach at 100F. If you want to minimise fan noise, go for a slower processor or consider a PC based on Intel's new Banias Mobile Pentium, which is part of the Centrino chip set. This has been designed to use less power and therefore it generates less heat, while delivering better performance than comparable Pentium chips with the same nominal clock speed. Another alternative is the Transmeta Crusoe processor, though the lack of performance may be noticeable. If noise is not an issue, running a fan doesn't consume a significant amount of battery power.
Email software
Can you recommend any alternative email software? I use Outlook Express, like most people.
Adrian Greeman
There are lots of alternatives, but preferences tend to be personal. You could try Eudora, Pegasus and The Bat - which I think is in order of popularity, or possibly reverse order of merit. Also-rans include QuickMail for Windows and Mac, AvirMail, and Popcorn. For more examples, see http://masl.to/?Z5E1320C3.
The Outlook email software in the next version of Microsoft Office looks good, and should be out this summer.
Backchat
· Jamie Clark hated the RealOne player. He wanted to go back to an earlier version, and I pointed him to the Oldversion.com website. Bill Best from Sheffield points out that "legacy versions of a lot of RealNetworks software can be found at http://forms.real.com/real/player/blackjack.html".
· Keith Arrowsmith wanted a UK-oriented replacement for My BBC, a discontinued news service that allowed users to select subjects from pre-defined panels. Chris Sealey suggests www.newsglance.co.uk, which is nice but not configurable.
· Andy Northedge wanted to remove the games from Windows 2000. Andy Williams adds that it is possible to disable specific applications using Group Policy Object (GPO) settings. Go to Start|Run, type gpedit.msc and change the Local Computer Policy|User Configuration|Administrative Templates|System|Don't Run Specific Windows Applications to include the games files in the System32 folder. There is a Microsoft Knowledge Base article about it at http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=322176.
