This issue:
- The Night Before Christmas
- Hot-Tip: Preloaded Windows a Pane!
- Thesaurus and Speller problems
- Centreline given 5 stars for web site
- New Web Customers
- In the Press
- Zetafax for Windows NT
- Hot-Tip: Double the speed of your modem
- What's happening at the www.c2000.com?
- Looking for new staff
You can register to receive regular copies of the Centreline 2000 News Letter.
They always contain a mixture of product news, technical information, trade gossip - some of which you will not
hear anywhere else!
Centreline 2000 - keeping you informed.
The Night before Christmas
With apologies to Clement C. Moore
(and William McGonagal)
'Twas the night before Xmas when all through the house,
Not a computer was stirring, not even a mouse;
And the stockings were hung by the chimney with care,
In hope that St. Nicholas soon would be there;
The users were nestled all snug in their beds,
While visions of Pcaps danced in their heads;
The tape drive was whirring, umd_runix complete,
We were all tucked up tight for a long winter sleep;
When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter,
I sprang from my bed to see what was the matter.
Away to the window I flew like a flash,
Tore open the shutters and threw up the sash;
The moon on the breast of the new fallen snow,
Gave a lustre of midday to objects below;
When what to my worried eyes should I see,
But a red BMW, 2 door, Series 3;
With an odd little driver so slimy and shifty -
I turned out the lights and hid pretty quickly;
Too late, in a twinkling, I heard on the roof
Much cursing and swearing - behaviour un-couth;
As I drew in my head and was turning around,
Down the chimney St. Nichoplex came with a bound.
He was dressed all in black from his head to his foot,
And his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot;
A bundle of disks he had flung on his back,
And he looked like a peddler just opening his pack.
A wink of his eye and a twist of his head,
Soon gave me to know I had plenty to dread;
He spoke not a word but went straight to his work,
And filled all the stockings then turned with a jerk,
"Those are the updates and here is the bill,
Fixed 4 bugs in ucalc, and 1 in ufill;
"Its a major release, all the licensing's changed,
New boxes, new logo - it has all been arranged;
Don't ask for new features, enhancements, ho no!
And whatever you do, don't mention onGO.
"New contract? Yes, generous I think you'll agree,
Five hundred per user is the upgrade fee;"
I questioned, I queried, I pleaded,
But all my complaints went quite unheeded;
"Client-server? Exchange? Windows? PCs?
Just fashionable trends - they'll pass, you'll see;
I'm really not bothered with the questions you're posing,
By the way our sales department is closing;
Down-sizing, changing, right-sizing, you see,
I'm leaving next week, you won't even see me;"
So laying a finger aside of his nose,
And giving a nod up the chimney he rose;
He sprang to his car, and crunching first gear,
Roared off with a wave and a smirk and a leer;
But I heard him exclaim ere he drove out of sight,
"Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good night!"
But wait, more clatter comes from the roof.
Good grief! It's his Billness, out on the hoof;
More soot and ash and from the chimney descends,
St. Gates the Third exclaiming, "Let's be friends";
"I've got icons and fonts and a brand new screen saver,
Take all these presents, you'll do me a favour;
No need to pay now, its bundled in free,
Internet, Intranet and Workstation NT;"
With that he was gone, the same way he came,
Left lots of software, some business, some games;
"Away with this Unix", I cried out loud,
"I'm going with Microsnot - I'll run with the crowd!";
I formatted Unix, full of good cheer
I loaded software, Christmas to New Year;
At first it was fine, at first it was great
But then, in a while, I began to deflate;
"Wait, why is it running so terribly slow?
I had 16 users on here, a short while ago.
I need more memory, hard disk and a patch,
Bill said it was free. Bah, there's always a catch;
I'm buying more hardware then ever before,
And users keep asking for "More! More!";
They all want the upgrades, new features you see,
and "Please will you load my multi-media PC?"
The upgrades are cheap, a tenner a seat,
But wait, I need hundreds, to stay complete;
My body is weary as I trudge round the desks,
Installing the updates for MS Access;
I wish it were Xmas and Unix once more,
I wish I'd shown client-server the way to the door;
Away to the window I draw up the sash,
Behind me I hear Windoze, crash.
I think of the ease of my old Wyse Fifty
Why can't I replace it with something more nifty?
And then once more I hear feet on the eaves,
More soot, more ash and a pile of tea-leaves
Then standing before me is sooty St. Larry
Oracle in hands, crystal balls to carry;
He sings and he dances and shouts out with glee,
"The answer my friend is a network PC!"
In a flash he is gone to the wide blue yonder,
Leaving me stunned and beginning to ponder;
Why all of these cures to my woes and my ills
Require me to swallow such ugly big pills;
At last I retire up the stairs to my bed,
My visitors have left me just feeling misled;
I realise at last that the answer is mine,
If only I called my old pals, Centreline.
Its all meant in fun, no ill wish is meant
So please don't approach with malicious intent;
All trademarks and so on we duly recognise
And a very Merry Christmas and lots of mince pies.
Hot-Tip: Pre-loaded Windows-what a pane!
We've recently installed a large number of PC's with Windows '95 and MS-Office pre-loaded by the manufacturer. Sounds easy, well not quite.
We have found on several machines, from several manufacturers, that the file associations and DDE settings for MS-Word are not setup correctly.
If you click on a ".doc" file, instead of loading Word it loads WordPad, not the same at all. Now you can correct this by hand using the File Associations tab, but Microsoft obviously reckon this is a standard problem and include a utility called winword7.reg, it can be found in C:MSOfficeWinword. Simply double click it and all the registry entries are updated properly - a major time saver.
Thesaurus and Speller Problems
One of our support clients recently pointed out that synonyms in the Uniplex thesaurus for "black" include "evil", not very racially friendly. Meanwhile another client wondered if there was a way to remove 2 letter words from the dictionaries (there are over 150!).
You may be aware that there are no tools for modifying the thesaurus and similarly there is no way to remove the 2 letter entries. So we contacted Uniplex.
It transpires that the company Soft Art Inc, which developed the speller and thesaurus, have disappeared without trace, whether bought out or gone bust nobody knows. Uniplex can now no longer provide updates to the dictionaries or thesaurus.
They also went on to say that with reference to the year 2000 problem, "millennium" was spelt wrongly as well! (It only has one "n" in Uniplex).
Still, Uniplex are not the only ones with problems, Microsoft has had to withdraw their Chinese version of Windows '95 that contains references to the Chinese leadership as "Communist bandits". This follows news that the Mexican thesaurus in Word included a number of "inappropriate" (and unprintable) suggestions.
Centreline 2000 given 5 stars for web site
PC Dealer recently reviewed our web site in an extensive 3 page report. They awarded us 5 out of 5 for content, ease of use and overall impression.
The report noted that the white papers pull no punches and "won't endear Centreline 2000 to Uniplex, but these are things disgruntled Uniplex customers will want to hear."
PC Dealer covers Web Manage - our in-house developed large site web management facility. They particularly noted the facility to handle existing Uniplex documents and convert them into HTML format. "That's a key thing for our local government users which have to publish minutes for example", they quoted Stuart Hillston.
They also reviewed the sites we design and manage for our clients, including Hart District Council. They noted that these clients do not need a full Internet Service Provider account, just a low-cost Internet connection for picking up mail.
Our thanks to PC Dealer for the review, we will be making reprints available shortly. If you wish to discuss Centreline 2000 designing or hosting your web site, please call sales on 07000 88 2000.
New Web Customers
We have just launched a web site for Reason International, IT recruitment consultants based in Milton Keynes. See www.c2000.com/reason/.
We are currently developing web sites for Schumacher Racing, makers of the competition radio control scale racing cars. This site will be opening just before Christmas. More news on this next month.
In the Press
Greenvale Ltd, (potato seed stock specialists), have appeared in several trade magazines and Personal Computer World after we launched their web site. Part of the WebManage package is PR work to help you advertise your site.
We have also appeared in Infomatics Digest and in Computer Weekly's report on Local Government web activities.
Zetafax for Windows NT
It has come as a surprise to many people that NT 4.0 still does not include a fax solution. Microsoft are releasing a personal fax module for NT, but if you are using NT as a server solution then this is no use to you.
When PC Magazine reviewed fax server solutions their Editors' Choice was Zetafax 5. This came as no surprise to us as we've been selling it for some time.
Zetafax is available for NT, Windows 3.1 and '95 and OS/2. For an NT set-up the server is installed on your NT machine and client software is installed on each PC.
The server can handle many fax lines for both inbound and outbound faxing. Once installed and running there is very little administration required.
The client server, like a number of other fax solutions, looks like another Windows printer to all software. This means that any software package can send a fax, simply by selecting the Zetafax printer.
Once your "print" has begun, a simple dialogue box is displayed where you can enter fax details directly or you can choose standard addresses from personal or system wide address books.
Usefully, Zetafax shows you a list of the last 100 recipients you have faxed, it most likely your fax number is a single mouse click away.
You can add a cover sheet on the way if you wish. You can add as many cover sheets to the system as you like. You may for example have a correspondence cover sheet and a purchase order cover sheet.
One of the special features, not available in other packages, is the ability to drive the fax system from NT command lines or from your own custom built programs. For example, you could have a Microsoft Access or Visual Basic program build "faxshots" from your database. How about faxing statements for overdue payments direct from your accounts database?
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PC Magazine says: "Zetafax 5 provides friendly client interface and trouble-free, day-to-day management. Full archiving and error reports are also well implemented for audit trails. The best of the bunch."
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Tech Tip: Double the speed of your modem
Have you found that your Internet file downloads are very slow, in the range of 1,000 to 1,600 characters per second? It may be the usual Internet overload, or it might be your Windows '95 configuration.
There is a problem in '95 where it does not acknowledge a packet transfer fast enough and so the sending machine re-sends the same packet. Effectively you end up receiving twice as much data as you should - which in turn means you are only downloading at half speed.
To find out if you have the problem compare the display for "Bytes received/sec" in System Monitor to the characters per second reported by your FTP client or Web browser. The two values should be within 10% of each other. If not it is probably due to the '95 MTU problem.
You need to set the "MaxMTU" parameter in your registry to a value of 576. (Full details can be found of the registry can be found in the Windows '95 Resource Kit). You can use regedit to set this up. This is for the brave and/or experienced...
More simply, you can download the file TPCIPCFG.EXE from our web site (see Downloads). This is a Control Panel applet that makes it easy to adjust MaxMTU. It was written by the Navas Group in California and is free for non-commercial use.
N.B. Please check warnings associated with this file regarding which versions of Windows '95 it will run on. The current applet will only run under Build 950 of '95 - not OEM Service Release 2 or later versions (which are common).
To check this:
- Click on Start
- Click on Settings
- Click on Control Panel
- Double click on the System Icon
- Look on the General Tab, you should see:
- Microsoft Windows 95
- 4.00.950
After patching the registry with this utility we have found a stunning increase in file transfer times, very possibly the most useful thing we've ever done by way of tuning our Internet access.
What's Happening at www.c2000.com?
There are new additions to the white papers and newsletter sections - all of NewsLine back issues are available on-line at the web site.
We have also updated the Links pages, in particular the Local Authority web sites now numbers over 200 web sites - that's compared to a mere 45 when we reviewed the sites in April. (More news soon on a new major web development for another local authority)
For Quake lovers there are some Quake tips too! You can download the modem speed-up utility discussed in the Tech-Tip earlier.
New Hot-Line Support Customers
On the Uniplex hot-line we would like to welcome South Beds District Council, Tunbridge Wells Equitable Life and RPC Containers.
Meanwhile, taking advantage of our new Windows NT support line are GKN and Chartered Institute of Taxation.
The support hot-line provides direct access to our consultants and covers all versions of Uniplex. But we are increasing the range of products covered and can now include Windows '95, NT and Microsoft Office products.
Unlike other support services, we speak to you directly, or we call you, so there is no waiting on the 'phone listening to hold musak.
Looking for new staff
As part of our expansion, Centreline 2000 are searching for new technical staff to work in the Milton Keynes area. We need people with experience in Unix and Uniplex or NT and BackOffice.
Successful candidates will understand that the customer is always right and will know that it takes hard work to find answers to clients problems.
If you know of anyone then please contact Simon Walden on 07000 88 2000.
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