Intuit backups
MPEG on a 486
Disparate DLLs
We're still here
Silent sound files
Analog to digital and back
Q Jan, I am so sorry to hear that the September Help screen will be your last. Like many readers I consider your column without peer and the main reason I subscribe to PC World. Your last issue is my last paid-up issue. I shall not be renewing.
Ironically your last issue also raises my first question to you. (I do not know if you are still "in office" but will put my question - just in case.) Regarding Quicken backups, I amended my quicken.ini file as suggested by Bob Purdam (September 1995) and deleted the contents of the hard disk Backup folder as suggested by you in the July 1995 issue. However, on launching Quicken it went into its first-time user mode. Attempting Restore proved a mystery as there are so many backup files to choose from (qdt, qdi, qmt, etc). I resorted to my hard drive floppy backup set, luckily only remade a few days before, and ended up where I began. However, I would still like to deal with the excess of backups. The floppy backup is also crowded and confusing.
- Len Newman
A Len, sorry about the subscription. Ironically, I guess you won't be reading this somewhat belated response to your question in PC World. Bob Purdam suggested modifying the QUICKEN.INI file by adding as the last two lines in the [Quicken] section:
Autobackup=0
Autocopy=0
This is the full story, according to Intuit. The file autoba.txt in the Intuit CompuServe forum has the following information:
Two of the features in Quicken 3 for Windows not included in prior versions are AutoCopy and AutoBackup.
AutoCopy creates a subdirectory of the main Quicken directory called backup. Upon exiting from Quicken, AutoCopy makes a copy of the current Quicken file into the Backup directory. The resulting file has the same filename as the original, with a consecutive number added to the end.
AutoBackup is the feature that prompts you to Backup your Quicken
file, as you exit the program.
The frequency of each of these features can be controlled by editing the QUICKEN.INI file using Notepad.
To do this, go to your Program Manager. Select the File menu, and Run. At the Command line, type NOTEPAD QUICKEN.INI. This will display the QUICKEN.INI file. Add the following under the section called [QUICKEN]:
AutoCopy=X
"X" controls how many copies are kept on your hard disk. The copy always occurs on a weekly basis. Therefore, AutoCopy=2 would keep the last two copies of your data file in the backup directory. "X" can be a number from 0 to 5. Zero (or off) turns the feature OFF. Therefore, to turn the backup feature off the new command line would read:
AutoCopy=0
To disable AutoBackup, you will want to add the following:
AutoBackup=0
This will turn the Backup Reminder OFF, and 1 to 5 would indicate the number of
days between reminders.
The default number built into the program for each of these features is 5.
Teresa from Intuit on-line support has some more information and suggestions. The backup files are numbered, with the smallest being the most recent. Qdata1 for example is the most recent backup, while Qdata5 is the oldest. Teresa suggests that if you remove the backup folder, ensure that you are using at least 4 backup diskettes and rotate them.
The files that you see on the diskette and your hard drive are all used by Quicken's file structure. Each extension holds a valuable part of your data. For example:
QDT - Account Information
QMT - All List information, (i.e. Categories, Classes, Memorized Transactions, Securities, etc)
QDI - Addresses, Security Goals, etc.
QST - Button Bar settings, Iconbar, Loan information, Security price histories, etc.
QNX - Location of transactions
If you have used the Backup and Restore features in Quicken all associated files are included when performing these functions. If your data is on diskette, simply go to File, and Restore, then Open the file from the hard drive, C:\Quickenw directory.
Another suggestion on the Intuit forum was to ensure that you had the latest version of Quicken, because backups were more reliable in the most recent releases.
No information is available on why Intuit may have gone into its first-time user mode for you after you modified the .ini file. Perhaps other readers have had the same experience?
Q I am a 14-year-old computer user, who over the past two years has been amazed with the advances in MPEG video compression and playback. My question is: which playback card would be best suited to my current configuration? Or whether or not my computer requires some hardware tweaking to enable the card to operate effectively. What I would like from the card is to be able to play full-screen 15 frames/sec to 30 frames/sec video clips in Windows, and to watch CD-I movies (eg, The Firm). Could you also list the price of the card and where I may purchase it? If possible, your help would be greatly appreciated.
My hardware configuration is i486 SX-33, 8Mb RAM, 425Mb hard disk, 1Mb 16-bit SVGA Trident video card, Sony CDU-33a double-speed CD-ROM (is this CD-I compatible?) and Sound Blaster 16.
- Matthew Cuming
A Matthew, I think you might find that, with your current hardware, MPEG is a rather expensive option. MPEG (Motion Picture Experts Group) compression can provide full-screen, 30 frames/sec video playback. It requires an MPEG decoder chip or add-in board, which tend to be rather expensive. On powerful systems, from Pentiums upward, you can get more or less satisfactory results from MPEG playback software. Much as MPEG has made progress, it has still not become sufficiently inexpensive for general use.
MPEG-1 is essentially an interim standard designed to work with the technical limitations of CD-ROM. It may look worse on the up-close perfect pixels of a computer than on a more distant, more blurred TV screen. The MPEG-2 standard is reportedly much better, using DVD, the digital video disc, which offers both better performance and more storage. According to an InfoWorld report there were impressive demonstrations of MPEG-2 and DVD at the January 1996 Las Vegas Winter Consumer Electronics Show. MPEG-2 can achieve 20- to 50-times compression. A DVD can hold up to five hours of MPEG 2.0 video, featuring multiple language tracks. The entertainment industry may accept MPEG-2 as a standard for HDTV (high-definition television). See page 56 of our April 1995 issue for a discussion of full-speed video playback standards, including MPEG, Indeo and Cine-Pak, and page 210 of our February 1995 issue for Andy Rathbone's article on multimedia standards and issues.
We can't tell you which card to buy unless we've had an MPEG shootout in our Test Centre, and have scientific, objective measurements to help us determine the best. MPEG hasn't suffered this treatment yet, so I'll just try to give you an idea of what's around.
Michael of Multimedia Technology, distributor of RealMagic, recommends the RealMagic NFC MPEG accelerator card for your configuration. It's a 16-bit ISA card. According to Michael, the card allows you to play interactive MPEG games and video CDs. It takes away all the MPEG compression from the CPU, so you don't need a Pentium. It connects to your graphics card via an analog connection to the video output. It's designed to be compatible with all video cards. Its minimum requirements are a 486 25MHz SX or higher with 4Mb of RAM, 2Mb free hard disk space and VGA.
According to Michael it allows you to get resolutions of 1,280 by 1,024. The video image is resizable from 16 by 16 to 1,280 to 1,024. It offers 16-bit stereo audio playback, up to a 48kHz sampling rate. It has an RRP (inc tax) of $470 bundled with five CDs. Call Multimedia Technology on (02) 417 5411.
According to Trixie of Multimedia Technology, your Sony double-speed CD-ROM drive will be CD-I (greenbook standard) compatible. However, Trixie says CD-I compatibility is not vital - very few titles are now done under the CD-I standard, and the new Video CD (whitebook standard) is much more commonly used. On page 82 of our July 1995 issue we review some CD-ROM drives indicating CD-I compatibility.
Bradley Watt, the Victorian dealer account manager for Focal Point Computing in Melbourne, distributors of Number 9 graphics cards, says a number of cards have partial MPEG hardware on the graphics chip. They provide some of the MPEG algorithms in hardware, and the rest are supplied by bundled playback software.
According to Bradley, on a Pentium 90 or 100 you get quite reasonable playback using this less expensive approach. He says a Pentium 100MHz system can display an 800 by 600 pixel image at 30 frames/sec with this kind of card. Typical TV resolution is around VGA resolution (640 by 480). Every so often there's a dropped frame which may be noticeable.
The Number 9 Motion 531 1Mb card costs about $420 RRP including tax. A 2Mb card offers more colours and resolutions; RRP is $580 inc tax.
Another card, the Number 9 Motion 771 (2Mb), is a bit faster generally because it uses VRAM instead of DRAM. The RRP is $795 inc tax. Call Focal Point Computing on (03) 9525 1144.
These solutions are more suitable for higher-performance machines such as Pentium 90s, and probably won't give you good results on a 486 SX 33MHz.
According to Bradley there can be a difference in quality between 5¼in video MPEG CD-ROMs. For example, a version he saw of Naked Gun 331/3 is good quality while A Fish Called Wanda is poorer quality. MPEG is a lossy compression scheme, and if movies aren't encoded well there may be a loss in colour and clarity.
A number of PCs are appearing with optional or built-in MPEG video support, such as the Compaq TrueQ Sound and Motion machine, the Mitac DV5890, some Packard Bell machines, Olivetti's Envision multimedia PCs, the Compucon P5/100XE and some IBM machines.
The Stingray/Video line includes software-based MPEG for playback of MPEG- based CD-ROM titles. Each card is also bundled with the Hercules Touch, an integrated set of Windows-based control programs. Hercules Touch includes Picture Windows for changing resolution and colour depth; Adjust for changing display size and position; Zoom In for magnifying views up to eight times normal size; and Power Down to control VESA standard DPMS settings and reduce power consumption on DPMS monitors.
According to Steve Wynan of Sprinter Products, distributor of Hercules video cards, the Hercules Stingray/Video line will play MPEG titles but playback may be jerky because the CPU is doing the decompression. The new cards, appearing around the time of this issue, will have optional daughterboards containing a decompression chip to offer hardware MPEG support. The price is expected to be about $500 for the card, with an additional $200 or so for the MPEG daughterboard.
However, these cards are available only for a PCI bus, and even on a 100MHz Pentium MPEG playback may be jerky without the MPEG daughterboard. Call Sprinter Products on (02) 9938 3388.
Shareware MPEG players
There's supposed to be software-based MPEG support in the next version of Windows 95, but avoid asphyxiation (don't hold your breath). Meanwhile there are some software-only shareware and demo MPEG players available. These may provide decent performance on a 90MHz Pentium or above.
In the Garbo archive demo directory is mpegview.zip, a demo version MPEG player for Windows. A file with the same name is available in the SimTel msdos/graphics directory, listed as a real-time MPEG video player for Windows and DOS.
In the SimTel pub/pc/win95/desktop/ there's a file called ladybug2.zip, billed as an MPEG-1 decoder/viewer for Win95.
In SimTel's pub/pc/win3/desktop directory are mpegv11d.zip, containing Xingit!, an MPEG player for DOS and Windows; mpegwin.zip, an MPEG player for Windows; and mpeg12a.zip, VMPEG V1.2a, a Windows MPEG player.
I haven't tested any of these. I'll put pointers to them on our PC World Web page at http://www.idg.com.au/pc.world. If anyone downloads one of these players and has some comments, or knows of a good MPEG player, please let us know.
Q I have a DTK 486DX2-66 with 8Mb of RAM, 402Mb hard drive, Grafika VGA colour monitor, Sony CDR-H94A CD-ROM, Sound Leader Pro 16E sound card and a Trident TVGA 9440AGI video card, running MS-DOS 6.22 and Windows 3.1. Everything was running fine until I recently reformatted the hard drive, partitioned it into three sections (C:, D: and E:, C: being active) and reinstalled everything that I previously had on it.
I now have four problems I didn't have before. I hope that you can shed some light on why they occur and how I can fix them.
Finally, have you in your travels seen a level editor for Dark Forces? Something along the lines of the Doom et al WAD editors? If so, could you provide details of where I could get one (preferably not a bulletin board as I don't have modem).
- Chris Moore
A Chris, I suspect your problems may be caused by problems with your backup and restore, if that's how you reinstalled your applications after your reformat. They may also be caused by installation problems with your programs, particularly by installing applications while others are running, or by simple errors in your AUTOEXEC.BAT file.
In Windows, incorrect or outdated dynamic link library (.DLL) files can cause the "Call to Undefined Dynalink" message. It is a generic Windows error message that means that the application tried to register a .DLL that either does not exist or is incorrect. DLLs contain the functions called by an application to perform its tasks, so when they can't find these functions where they expect to they fail. Ideally they send an error message and exit cleanly, and in some cases they just cause a system crash or GPF (General Protection Fault).
Either the application can't find the particular DLL file, or it can find it but it's the wrong version. A DLL file may be the wrong version because another application, which uses a DLL file of the same name, has overwritten an earlier installation of the DLL file during setup. This is possible because many DLLs are installed by applications in the \windows\system directory rather than in the applications private directory.
The DLL file may be corrupt, perhaps due to an unsuccessful backup and restore.
To correct the problem gets somewhat technical, because you have to somehow identify which DLL file the application wants, determine whether it's looking in the right place, determine whether it's the right version, and look for any other versions of the DLL file which might be being loaded instead of the right one.
One obvious approach is to reinstall from scratch the application that is failing. With any luck it will set up the right DLLs, PATH statements and environment variables. However, it may break other applications if there's a DLL conflict.
To ensure the DLL is being found, check the PATH statement in your AUTOEXEC.BAT file. It should include the directory where the .DLL is to be found. Ensure that it's not superseded by another PATH statement. There may be an environment variable which indicates the location of the application's libraries DLL, so look for a SET statement such as SET LIB=C:\QTW\LIB in your AUTOEXEC.BAT file. Ensure that it's not superseded by another SET LIB statement.
One way to check which DLLs are likely to be used by your application is to list the files in the installation disks of your application. They may be compressed, with the extension DL_ instead of DLL, but you can still check the file name and date. Compare this list with the DLL files in your \windows\system directory and check for date disagreements between files with the same name.
In some setup disks the files are all compressed together in a single monolithic file. Look for a utility provided on the disks that extracts files, such as EXTRACT.EXE or DECOMP.EXE.
Some DLLs have a history of causing this problem, and it's well to know which ones they are. According to a response from the CompuServe Windows Forum Multimedia section, the Undefined Dynalink error is usually caused by an old .DLL file located in the \windows directory. The most common one is TOOLHELP.DLL.
To fix the error, the suggestion is:
Locate the file, rename it and restart Windows. The correct version of this file is located in the windows\system directory and has a date of 3/10/92 and a size of 14,128. This problem can also occur with an earlier version of SHELL.DLL, OLECLI.DLL, OLESVR.DLL and COMMDLG.DLL. All of these files should be located in the windows\system directory and have a date of 3/10/92. (Don't take these dates too seriously for Windows 3.11.)
I've had the "Call to Undefined Dynalink" error occur when I ran Microsoft Word 6 while another application was loaded. If I closed that particular application, the problem went away. My guess is that Word 6 and the application both used DLLs of the same name, probably different versions of STORAGE.DLL. The application was loading its DLL from its directory, which had a 16/11/93 version, and when I ran Word it was apparently looking for the 10/10/94 version in the \windows\system directory.
The files OLE2CONV.DLL, OLE2DISP.DLL, OLE2NLS.DLL, COMPOBJ.DLL and STORAGE.DLL are used by many applications for OLE support. Some applications may install older versions of these files.
If when you're installing an application the Setup program attempts to install one of the DLL files currently in use by a running application, the DLL file cannot be copied, but you may not receive an error message telling you so. You can end up with some but not all of the correct versions of your DLLs installed, so the versions for a particular application are out of sync.
With Video for Windows version 1.0, the Undefined Dynalink problem is often associated with WINCOM.DLL. To check for duplicate DLL files, run a search of the \windows directory and all subdirectories from File Manager. The DLL files that ship with Microsoft Video for Windows 1.0 are MCIOLE.DLL, DISPDIB.DLL, MSVIDEO.DLL, MEDIAMAN.DLL, WINCOM.DLL, WRKBENCH.DLL and PCVIDEO.DLL.
A problem similar to the Undefined Dynalink can happen when you install Visual Basic-based applications. There are a number of VBX files, specialised Visual Basic DLLs, that are used by many VB applications. Different versions of these VBXs exist, and are routinely copied into the \windows\system directory when you install the VB applications. They cheerfully overwrite existing versions of the VBX files without telling you. Different versions of .VBX files are notoriously incompatible with other versions. Notable culprits are CSFORM.VBX and the insidious THREED.VBX, and other suspects are INSTSCRL.VBX, SS3D2.VBX and CMDIALOG.VBX.
Perhaps most importantly, there is a Dark Forces level editor in Library 14 of the CompuServe Action Games forum, with the file name DFUSE100.EXE. If you're still modemless, or don't have access to CompuServe, send me a stamped, self-addressed disk and I'll send you a copy. This offer may lapse without notice if I get drowned in floppy requests.
Q Firstly, is there still a question and answer page in the magazine? I have missed it in the last two issues. I feel this is such an important part of a computer magazine.
I've run out of disk space (hard drive), constantly having to delete something to install another. I don't wish to use disk compression. I've been saving up for a second hard drive; hopefully a 1Gb. What I'm concerned about is that my motherboard has an IDE controller. I've read that this won't recognise HDDs larger than around 500Mb, so, not having extra funds to upgrade to an EIDE controller/interface and hence an EIDE drive, what do I have to do to use such a large drive? Is the only answer to partition the drive into two smaller drives? Will I be able to still use my existing drive if I do this? My existing drive is a Conner 340Mb; do I need to buy a HDD of the same brand or are the more common brands compatible with each other? I'm now running Windows 95 and have had no conflicts at all.
I plan to do the upgrade myself, so I would appreciate all the help and advice you can give. Is there anything else I should have thought about?
- Anne Kenman
A Anne, I'm happy to say that Help Screen lives, but I'm sorry you've been missing it. It usually starts somewhere from around page 150 to page 180, and the pages are colour-coded yellow for easy identification. We agree it's an important part of the magazine, and you can rest assured that if at first you don't find it, it's worth continuing the search.
The 504Mb restriction can occur because of a combination of factors. The BIOS on older machines may impose a constraint on hard disk size, supporting only 63 sectors and 1,024 cylinders. The Western Digital (WD1003) de facto standard, to which many hard disks conform, imposes a limit of 16 heads, so when you have the standard 512 bytes per sector you find that the maximum size of drive supported is:
16 heads x 1,024 cylinders x 63 sectors x 512 bytes = 528,482,304 bytes, or 504Mb.
To overcome this problem, you can use software or hardware to fool the PC BIOS into thinking it's getting no more than its maximum cylinders and sectors.
Some drive systems support sector translation, which pull tricks like doubling their heads and halving their cylinders to remain within the limits. For example, if a drive with 1,600 cylinders and four heads tells the BIOS it has 800 cylinders and eight heads, the BIOS is happy and the drive's capacity is not reduced.
Another kind of sector translation is called Logical Block Addressing (LBA). LBA is provided by some disk controllers and drives, and performs a similar task of presenting a logical view of the disk, rather than a physical view of the disk, to the PC. In our February 1996 issue on page 204 there's a letter from D Phill offering more detail on LBA.
There's a big variety in BIOS, disk controllers and drives. If you have an older BIOS and you can't support the drive you want without partitioning, don't worry. Partitioning is not such a bad alternative. It can be a convenient way to separate such groupings of files as data and applications, work and pleasure, friend and foe, and so on. ^^ pic: ontack1.tif: The Ontrack Web page, http://www.ontrack.com, has information about the Ontrack Disk Manager. ^^
Partitioning software, such as Ontrack Disk Manager, can help. You need version 7.0 or later for Windows 95 compatibility. There's also MicroHouse EZ driver.
There's no obvious reason why you can't add a secondary drive and retain your original primary drive on the same IDE controller.
If all this sounds a bit technical, it's probably a good idea to place yourself in the hands of your local computer store. They'll probably upgrade you at little or no cost beyond that of the drive, determine the drive and partitioning you might need, and, with any luck, back up and restore your files so you don't have any reinstallation to do. I don't know if you can easily find a friendly computer store in Burnett Heads. Beware however - some are horse thieves. Try out some of the technical terms in this article on them, and see if their eyes glaze over.
Q I have recently downloaded some sound files off the Internet and
saved them to hard drive, but the sound files are in .au format. The
problem is that I have a disk with the format player but I do not know where
to install the files. Could you please tell me where the files should be
installed.
- Bruce Chapman
A Bruce, files with an .au extension are in the Sun/NeXT format commonly used for sound files on the World Wide Web. I don't know exactly which .au player you have, but the general story with browser helper applications is this: some helper applications let you play files stored on your hard drive, others let you play files the instant they're downloaded, acting as an extension to your Internet browser. Some do both.
First you install the helper application, using its setup or install program. If it hasn't got one, look for installation instructions in a readme file. Failing that, just place the application's files in a separate directory.
To play files stored on your disk, you do the same thing as you'd do in a word processor or graphics program. You open the application, then open the file you want to play. In sophisticated programs you may be able to drag the file you want to play onto the application window.
You can also associate the files with the application: use File Manager File-Associate in Win3.1 or Explorer View-Options-File Types in Windows 95. In Windows 95 you can also double-click on a file to see the Open With dialogue box; you can then select your application from the list. After you've associated a file type (determined by its extension, .au in this case) with an application, you can double-click on the file in the Win3.1 File Manager or Win95 Explorer/Browser to play it.^^ pic: netsc1.tif: In Netscape you associate helper apps with file types in the Options-Preferences dialogue box, Helper Apps tab. ^^
To play files direct from your Web browser, you have to specify in your browser preferences the association between the helper app and the extension. The easiest way to do this is to attempt to download the file from the Web. Your browser may display a dialogue saying there is no associated helper application for that file type, and invite you to nominate one. There's usually a Browse button that lets you browse through your directories to find the helper application you've installed.^^ pic: netsc2.tif: Netscape comes with an au player called NAPLAYER.EXE. ^^
Netscape 1.22 comes with an .au player called NAPLAYER.EXE, which lives in the same directory as the browser application, something like \netscape\programs. NAPLAYER.EXE can run files stored on your hard disk. Just start it up, then select File-Open to play a file. To see the file associations in Netscape, choose Options-Preferences-Helper Apps and browse through the list.
If you want more assistance, please send me details of where you downloaded the .au files and the .au player, and I'll try to get them going on my system and then tell you the details.
Q Dear Neale, it's good to see that the Help Screen continues to run under your care as capably as under its previous author - with the added bonus that we no longer have to spend hours working out how to put the inflection in his name when writing to him.
There seems to be a great deal written lately about multimedia, and for those lower-level users such as myself that still have to print results, there appears a detail that should be able to be cleared up, especially if it turns out so simple as me not knowing what I'm doing. Perhaps you or one of your readers can offer some suggestions.
I recently bought a Hewlett-Packard 4MP 600dpi laser printer to enable me to print graphics. I also bought a Logitech 256-400dpi b/w scanner to go with it, which comes with TWAIN software and a program called Fototouch Colour that allows manipulation of images to 400dpi. The problem I have is that it doesn't seem to matter whether I scan at 100dpi or 400dpi - the printed results are the same.
This applies no matter whether I print from Fototouch, PageMaker or WordPerfect (which only seems to handle up to 100dpi with its built-in Draw program anyway). The printed image never looks better than around 72dpi - which the old dot matrix printers could have done.
I thought the higher dpi values may help when resizing the image, especially when enlarging, but this is barely noticeable. There is some difference when using line art, but no apparent difference when using greyscale.
I have had people suggest different image types - tif, gif, pcx, eps, jpeg, etc. I normally use tif as it seems to work well with the programs I use. I have tried using image converters with no greater success, and often come up against images that don't work (ie, a gif picture that doesn't import as a recognisable type). This could be the software, but I don't want to spend any more on software to find, as often happens, that the new is no better than the old, and doesn't meet the advertised description anyway.
On another issue, I recently saw a Mac computer (not a PowerPC) alongside a Pentium IBM-compatible, running video/TV on their screens. The Mac looked like TV, even though it was running a closed circuit TV at the same time (on the same screen). The IBM looked like something else and it was a disappointment for a few IBM users, myself included. Why can't the IBM process this as well as a Mac? It is the same if you compare games such as Prince of Persia on the two platforms.
Another disappointment was that the equipment for closed circuit TV on the Mac was $250, and it enabled photos to be taken of people walking past (better than a scanner to put images into a computer). For the IBM to do the same cost around $1,500, and it would still not look as good as the Mac. Does anyone understand why this is the case?
- Peter Harries
A Peter, the suggestion that Help Screen is being capably run is most welcome, and I've scanned your letter, enlarged it to 10 times its original size and use it to paper my office. I admit I don't have fancy Swedish diacritical marks in my name, but I've accomplished the next best thing, with both a first name and a second name just shy of the usual spellings, and I thank you for your accuracy.
Regarding scanners, there are a great many steps in the process of digitising an image from the real world, manipulating it in the digital world, and restoring it to existence in the real world. Perhaps somewhere along this path something is going wrong.
The first step is the actual scanning. You're using a handheld scanner, which is a budget solution. These can give good results for small images, but flatbed scanners are easier to use and typically give a more reliable result, at a higher price.
When you scan in the image you use TWAIN software, which our Test Centre guru Spiro Hionis assures me stands for Toolkit Without An Interesting Name. Despite the geek-humour acronym, this is an established standard interface between scanners and image manipulation software. When you perform the scan, the TWAIN software offers you various options. In complex TWAIN software there may be sufficient options to cause confusion.
According to Joe Bizinger, Logitech's technical manager in Sydney, the Logitech ScanMan 256 you're probably using has a switch on the side to select scanning resolution. The TWAIN software supplied with the scanner is pretty simple, and the resolution also appears in the TWAIN scanning window, so it would be difficult to make an error at this point.
Now you have the image in your graphics program, in your case FotoTouch. If you just save the image without manipulating it it's unlikely you'd alter the resolution.
Now you print it. Here's an opportunity to get things wrong. Your HP printer driver probably offers a choice of resolutions. For the best results you probably want to select the finest, a 600dpi resolution. Printer drivers typically offer different printing qualities as well, for both text and graphics, ranging from draft or coarse to fine or high quality. You may have one of these settings set to a lower resolution or quality.
These options appear in the Printer dialogue box. In Windows 95 you go to the Printer folder (Start Menu-Settings-Printers, then right-click on your printer icon). Alternatively choose Print to bring up the printer dialogue box and click the Options or Properties button. In Windows 3.1 open the Control Panel and select Printers. Select your printer in the list and choose Setup to move to the Setup dialogue box. Click the Options button to move to the Options dialogue and adjust resolution. Alternatively choose Printer Setup from your application menu, or bring up the Printer dialogue box and select Options.
There's a big difference between a 400dpi and a 100dpi, and you should get a much crisper output from 400dpi. However, the printed sample image you sent is quite small. You may find it difficult to get much better quality than this in such a small image, even on a 600dpi printer. ^^ pic: psp311.tif: PaintShop Pro version 3.11 is a very handy shareware graphics manipulation package. ^^
If you're worried about buying new graphics manipulation and scanner software, consider the shareware package PaintShop Pro. It's now out in version 3.11, and it provides an interface for TWAIN-compliant scanners, conversion from and to a huge range of graphics formats, and sophisticated manipulation features. You can download it from our Web page (http://www.idg.com.au/pc.world). If you don't have access to the Internet, send two HD floppies in a stamped, self-addressed mailer and we'll send you a copy (this offer lapses if I'm totally inundated with requests).
You can certainly use PaintShop Pro to determine whether your scanned image is indeed 400dpi. PaintShop Pro will display a 400dpi image as four times larger, in both horizontal and vertical axes, than a 100dpi image. After all, when you scan at 400dpi you get 16 times as many pixels as at 100dpi.
You remarks on the Mac/PC video gap are interesting. Without more
detail it's hard to comment. You may have seen it at a Mac show,
where the whole point was to display the superiority of the Mac.
Macs have traditionally been better at graphics, and QuickTime
for Macs came out before the PC video standards. If there's a
difference in the cost of the hardware to upgrade a PC to a similar
performance level, don't forget to factor in the original cost
of the Mac and PC systems. Let's hear from other readers on this.
See the answer in this section to Matthew Cuming, which indicates
that if you have a Pentium machine you may be able to achieve
TV-like video for well under $1,000.