Rogue mail
I'm sure that there are lots of us who are unhappy with being transferred from BT Internet to BT Yahoo!, not just because of the advertisements but because it is cumbersome - and more expensive on pay-as-you-go. Could you suggest an alternative please? Geoffrey Smith
Jack Schofield replies: I can't see any point in using either BT Yahoo! mail service unless you want to keep your BT email address. If not, you could sign up with Yahoo! directly, and pay the extra for POP3 access, or find an alternative. There are still a few free POP3 services that work with mail programs such as Outlook Express and Eudora. I did recommend Novell's My Real Box but it is no longer accepting new users. I've also recommended GMX, but it has abandoned its English language interface. That leaves HotPOP, which I have not tried, and others listed at www.emailaddresses.com.
If you are willing to pay, look at Runbox and MailSnare. Runbox is a Norwegian company and the official email provider for TV 2, Norway's largest commercial television company. It offers 100MB of storage, POP3/SMTP, IMAP and web mail access for $29.95 a year.
In the long term, it would be better to register your own domain name with a company that includes free email forwarding. That way you can keep your email address even if you change your ISP or email provider.
Virus threat
Does using KaZaA mean I'm at risk from viruses? Charles Hall
JS: Any internet connection puts you at some risk, whether it is from email, instant messaging, a peer-to-peer file-swapping service, or anything else. You can minimise the risk by running a firewall, only sharing a single folder, checking downloads with an up-to-date anti-virus program, and making sure that you can see the full filename before running any file (hit F2 as if you were renaming the file). This is because Windows viruses often come with filenames that look safe (cheapthrills.jpg, cheapthrills.txt) because the real executable file extension is hidden (cheapthrills.jpg.pif or whatever). Go to Windows Explorer, select Tools|Folder Options, and click View. Make sure the box that says "Hide file extensions for known file types" is not checked. Of course, this won't stop you downloading and running viruses called Password Cracker.exe, Free Porn.exe and so on: lots of people do.
KaZaA now includes a virus checker. KaZaA v2.1.1 and some earlier versions have BullGuard Lite, but it is turned off by default. Version 2.5 and above come with BullGuard P2P turned on, but your usual anti-virus program should find any nasties. If you are particularly worried about KaZaA, try WinMX instead.
Closing Windows
Our company PCs run Windows 98SE and our IT supplier has written to say that "little or no new application or utility software supports either [Windows] 95 or 98," and "neither will 95/98 work with new USB hardware as these drivers have faults which Microsoft will not fix." Is this accurate? Jack Cummins
JS: I would agree that Windows 3.1, 95 and 98 are past their sensible use-by date, unless they are stable installations used for specific tasks, and will not need to cope with new software and peripherals. Support for Windows 98SE and Me is certainly declining, but they could have a few more years of life. They can usually cope with USB peripherals if you make sure you install any drivers before you plug in the device. However, I expect that after Windows XP SP2 appears this summer, continuing to use these systems for business will be a false economy. It is time to move on. PCs that run 98SE/Me are usually fine with XP if you add enough memory, and memory is much cheaper than time. If you need to replace PCs, you can now do perfectly good corporate computing with, say, ASUS Pundit bare-bones systems or cheap Dell PCs.
Backchat
· Last week, Stewart Boyle wanted to listen to his music files on a decent hi-fi. Neil Mercer has taken the opposite approach, by upgrading his PC with noise-reducing features (quiet fan and power supply) and installing a TerraTec soundcard and hi-fi speakers. "It comes with a pre-amp/mixer input unit that sits in your PC's front panel. I can plug my old turntable/arm/cartridge straight into it," he says. TerraTec has 5.1 and 7.1 versions .
· Three months ago, I mentioned Metronomy, which was offering free PCs in exchange for watching advertisements. Several readers have received a letter that says Metronomy is worried about people not following its terms, and "we have reluctantly decided to release only a limited number of PCs in the first instance, in order to fully test our security procedures and technical infrastructure before a wider roll-out in the autumn." So far, no one has reported receiving a free PC.
