Low-rise PC
I am hoping to replace our PC this year. Due to lack of space I am looking for a non-tower system with the traditional processor unit below the monitor. I cannot find a suitable one in our local shops. Do you know of any new PCs that still use a non-tower system?
Phil Stevens
PhilG3SES@aol.com

Jack Schofield replies: You should buy the largest system that will fit. A big box allows more room for expansion cards such as graphics accelerators, extra hard drives and other add-ons. It should also run cooler, so it should be more reliable and last longer. Is there room for a tower if you stand it on the floor?

If that does not persuade you, then some "direct suppliers" sell traditional systems. Dan (www.dan.co.uk) is one.

If you don't play games, and don't need an expandable system, you could consider Hewlett-Packard's small e-PC, which hs sold by Jungle. However, it is really aimed at business users.

There is also the Paysan M Series PC, right, which claims to be the smallest PC in the world: it fits in the palm of your hand. See www.paysan.co.uk. The Capital Sound and Vision group, which includes Unbeatable, Harrods and others, sells the machine.

For maximum space saving, buy a full-spec notebook PC and keep it in a drawer when not in use. The drawbacks are that notebooks are usually slower than their desktop equivalents but can be twice the price.

Mac protect
Zone Alarm may well be a good free firewall for PCs (June 7), but what about Macs? I duly logged on to Zonelabs.com only to find, once again, that Mac users have been forgotten.
Jill Webster
jillweb_uk@yahoo.co.uk

JS: I don't know of a Mac equivalent to Zone Alarm, but you can read about Mac offerings at www.firewallguide.com/macintosh.htm

Cable guy
I am about to receive a cable modem from NTL. What precautions should I take now that I am about to enter into the realm of always-on internet connection? Also, the cable modem being supplied has a USB connection. Would a dedicated network card connection offer any speed advantages?
Faiz Rehman
faiz79@hotmail.com

JS: I would certainly install a firewall such as Zone Alarm or the Tiny Personal Firewall, and test the security of my PC at one of the "probe sites" such as the Shields Up. See www.doshelp.com/dostest.htm for plenty of alternatives.

Although an Ethernet network card is technically faster than USB, tests show that USB can work fast enough to handle your cable network's bandwidth. See www.cabledatacomnews.com oct00/oct00-6.html

There is a good web site to help people new to broadband in the UK. Go to: www.broadband-help.com

Print screen
On many occasions I would like to print exactly what appears on my screen, or a highlighted portion of it. I have not been able to do this with my PrintScrn/SysRq button. How do I do it in Windows 98?
H S Grunewald
thehawthorns@onetel.net.uk

JS: To capture a screen, first open the Microsoft Paint program (if you have installed it) or any paint program, such as Paint Shop Pro. Press the Print Screen key to capture the screen image to the clipboard. Now switch to Paint and press Ctrl-V - or right-click with the mouse and select Paste - and paste in the image. Finally, press Alt-F then A (or File|Save As) to save the image. As a Windows bitmap (bmp) file, it will be rather large, but if you save it as a JPEG (jpg) file, it will take up much less room for a slight loss in quality.

If you want to capture an active window - for example, a browser - rather than the whole screen, press Alt-Print Screen.

Programs such as Paint Shop Pro offer more choices and will also let you draw a box on the screen and capture what is inside it.

On the Apple Macintosh, you can capture a screen image by holding down the Command and Shift keys then pressing the number 3. The Mac will make a camera sound and save a screen image to the hard drive as Picture 1.

Browser tip
When opening a new browsing window in Internet Explorer, how can I make it open at home page (ie like it does in Netscape)? Also, how can I make it open full screen (maximised), as opposed to being a small window?
Edward Webster
edwardwebster@interbeat.freeserve.co.uk

JS: This is a workaround. You have an icon for Internet Explorer in the quick launch tray on the left hand side of the Task Bar. Right-click that and select Properties. Go to the Run box and click the down-arrow on the far right: select Maximised. Now a single click on the icon in the quick launch tray will open a full-screen IE window at your home page.

Correction

Last week I gave an MS-DOS disk formatting command as Format C: \s \v when it should have been Format C: /s /v (the slashes were the wrong way round). I picked up the mistake from the website I quoted as a reference (see www.ehow.com/eHow/eHow/0,1053,6026,00.html ), which is not an excuse, but a warning. If in doubt about any DOS command, add /? to it to get the syntax (eg format/?).