Specifications

shock performance, adding to the overall superior mobile experience of the Travelstar 7K60. At 60 Gigabytes (GB)
of storage, the 7K60 is also the industry's most capacious 7200 RPM mobile hard drive." Two of our members
commented from personal experience on the changes these companies have made in their plant in San Jose,
California, where the old IBM sign has been taken down, and the new Hitachi sign has taken its place. Fluid-
bearing technology motors are being used in laptops to reduce power consumption, and Alan noted that these
motors will appear in desktop hard drives at some later date.
Adobe has a flash demo for the new Version 6.0 of their Adobe Acrobat PDF software at:
http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/demo/main.html
, a newly titled free reader, without the old "Acrobat"
name, at: http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html.. It is just called "Adobe Reader" for simplicity.
The download at 15.3 MB [Full] version is recommended by Alan, instead of the 8.7 MB [Basic] version. Do not use
the Adobe Download Manager, if you want to control your choice of storage location.
The advantage of using the larger version is that the improved search function is enabled, which is not the same in
the other smaller, basic reader. Alan demonstrated a search for "root" in a Linux document. The results were
displayed in a new window, with links to the original document. You can even search for images, if I understand the
discussion correctly. Moving data out of the reader is done via copy and paste, to edit it or rotate images in another
application. There is also a "Snapshot" tool to copy graphics with text, instead of the older either/or method, and
Alan showed a paste into WordPad as an example. We also saw a paste into Publisher, which is another popular
application for text and graphics. When Nancy Watts asked about rotating the pasted image, we struggled with
several programs, and finally succeeded with IrfanView, ver. 8.0 . With this version 6.0 and the previous version,
also, you could complete a typical form PDF document, and print it, but not save the modified file. Several
questions related to the opening speed of version 5.1 vs. 6.0 were answered, as well as a quick demo of how to
associate the correct version of the reader or distiller with the PDF file type.
Another member asked about "Snagit" a screen capture program that can save a complete window, even if it is
only partially displayed [See:
http://www.techsmith.com/products/snagit/default.asp
for details]. Also mentioned
was Capture Professional, another popular screen capture program. Their information is at:
http://www.creativesoftworx.com/default.html, and you can purchase Ver.5.0 on-line for $34.95 .
We heard a warning about Seagate, Maxtor, and Hitachi hard drives defect rates on 40 & 80 GB which are as high
as 10 percent. Western Digital drives do not seem to be affected, as they are not made in "offshore" facilities,
according to the review in PC Magazine. IBM is still making Microdrives, Pete Lawn remarked in the background.
A quick look back at the Microsoft Update issue from the previous meeting, had Alan recommending setting our
Update Preferences to "Prompt me" or "I'll do it manually". There are fifteen known security holes in Internet
Explorer, reported by Kapersky's Lab [
http://www.kaspersky.com/news.html
]. Look in Google for any information
related to the Microsoft Q-811493 on their Knowledge Base, both in the Internet and Newsgroups, and if anyone
else is having trouble with that update, stay away from it for a little while, at least. Use Drive Image to protect
yourself, also. You will know right away if there is a problem, if you experience slow operations and poor shutdown
procedures. (Editor's note: See below what Alan has to say about this subject).
Microsoft and Netscape/AOL have agreed to use Internet Explorer recently, and 90 percent of Websites are written
for MSIE. Alternatives still exist such as Mozilla, Opera, and SlimBrowser, recommended by one of our members in
a background comment. See
http://www.flashpeak.com/download.htm
to download the 869K file for free!
We shared a peek at the new Drive Image release information. We will be ready to try it as soon as they are ready
to sell it. Unfortunately my tape ran out just as the details were revealed, so I can not share them with you at this
time. Stay tuned to the PowerQuest site for the news. *** Stop the Press! *** As of June 14, 2003 this information
appeared on their site:
"DRIVE IMAGE 7 NOW AVAILABLE!"
"Drive Image 7 is the premier computer backup solution. Easily backup everything from your priceless digital photos
to your entire operating system." See
http://www.powerquest.com/
The XP Autorun feature for USB removable hard drives and CD-ROM drives is "On" by default, so Alan showed us
how he uses TweakUI for XP to allow selection of autorun on a drive, even though it is not available via the XP
Device Manager. This is handy for dummy operation of CD pictures via IrfanView by an inexperienced user. The
autorun.inf file is added to the CD ROM, and there are switches to add to the autorun command line for IrfanView,
to launch the slide show automatically. This would also work for PowerPoint presentations, as well.
Ray stopped the show, so we could not go shopping, but Alan gave us the homework assignment to go to