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LOCKERGNOME
SPECIAL STUFF
HP SureStore 8100i
MS Sidewinder Pro
HP Deskjet 720C
Palm Pilot III
Pinky & The Brain
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01.18.1999 - GnomeREPORT I thought I had explored just about every bit of Windows 98. Rather, I thought I had seen everything I wanted to see from it. Then a friend phoned me up and told me that he had multiple monitors set up on his PC. He said it was a pretty cool "thing" to see; I was jealous. Well, "Joe" (my older knock-around PC) gave me the go-ahead to use his monitor on Mr. Bigglesworth (my newer desktop PC). I had to swap out Joe's video card as well (an ATI All-in-Wonder PRO PCI). I didn't think that would be a problem, even though the Matrox Millenium G200 in Mr. Bigglesworth is an AGP card. Besides, motherboards only come with one AGP slot at this time--you pretty much have to combine them, lest you want to use two PCI cards. But with the AGP option, why bother doing that? Anyway, within a matter of minutes, I had Joe's video card & monitor installed and hooked up to Mr. Bigglesworth. My friend was still on the phone, guiding me through the steps. I had problems getting Windows 98 to recognize that I wanted to have two monitors. We troubleshot with the help from a Microsoft KB page and the DISPLAY.TXT file which should be on everyone's Windows 98 PC. I had to uninstall the Matrox PowerDesk software before the second monitor would work... after a couple of reboots, I had two monitors on Mr. Bigglesworth!!! It was pretty darn cool to move your cursor (and other windows) off of one screen and onto another. Yes, it was kinda like a virtual desktop of sorts, but you didn't have to "do anything" to move between the screens. So, I started playing around with this new toy to see what it could do. Running a screen saver was pretty cool--it would often split it between the screens. For instance, the star field emanated out of the right of one monitor and the left of the other (with the space in between them being the center). Whereas, normally the stars would emanate from the center of just one screen. I tried playing a couple of games, but unless they're "built" for multiple monitors, you might get one-screen results. My friend (Shaun) said that the Microsoft Flight Simulator worked perfectly on two monitors. Well, after a few minutes of fussing around, I noticed that my video was rather "lagged". This slowdown could probably be attributed to putting an AGP & PCI card together--with the AGP's speed slowing down to match the PCI's. Not cool, but I wasn't ready to give up this dual monitor thing... yet. I got a bit more daring and tried to hook up my camcorder to the All-in-Wonder. See, I don't have a 'cam' for Mr. Bigglesworth yet--but I'm working on it. Nevertheless, I couldn't get the camcorder to work without installing the latest version of the ATI Video Player. After downloading and installing the new ATI drivers, I ran into serious problems. It wasn't recognizing my Matrox card anymore. No matter what I tried, I couldn't get it "back" to the way it was before. My only option was to remove the ATI card and go back to having a single monitor setup. Well, it was fun while it lasted, and definitely interesting (and somewhat simple) to do. I'll stick to virtual desktops for now, though. -- Chris Pirillo GnomePROGRAM
Mimar Sinan Compression Software File compression is the "poor man's" disk space saver. Well, hey--it works. It also makes downloading a heckuva lot faster. The smaller the file, the quicker you can transfer it (that's logical). Some people prefer to archive DOS/Windows files with ZIP compression. Others choose to use RAR. Well, here's a site FULL of compression software for ya. Check out the Cabinet (CAB) compression utils--you can get archives up to 50% smaller when you use them (compared to a ZIPper). I can't think of a situation where I wanted an archived file to be large. If you upload things to the Internet often, think about using better compression. GnomeSYSTEM F-PROT v3.04 [2.1M] W9x FREE
ftp://ftp.DataFellows.com/f-prot/free/fp-304.zip When you're stuck outside of Windows and need to scan your computer for viruses, this puppy will come in handy. It was one of the first virus scanners I ever used (and downloaded). And, by golly, F-Prot can still be found on all my computers. Feel free to run it when you're in Windows, too. GnomeCANDY
Jon [Lovitz] Island http://members.aol.com/leenite1/jonislnd.htm Atchie matchie! Late at night, when I'm doing most of my surfing, I usually have Comedy Central on in the background. The only time I stop working is when "The Critic" is on. Yes, I've seen every episode a thousand times, but I just love Jon Lovitz. He was the last FUNNY person on Saturday Night Live (IMHO). And his roles in movies have always been good (Trapped in Paradise, City Slickers II, Mom and Dad Save the World). This site has got TONS of Lovitz multimedia (even a lot of "Critic" sound bytes). They'll even give you a big screen TV when you visit... yeah, that's it! GnomeFAVORITE LiveCursors http://www.livecursors.com/gate.asp?origin=gnome A few months back, I featured the Comet Cursor browser plug-in. And, as a matter of fact, I still have that plug-in running with special Lockergnome cursors on our "cool stuff" page. Many of you asked how you could get special cursors on your site. Well, the wait is finally over--and it won't cost you a penny! Visit this page and choose (from a variety of themes) which type of cursors you'd like to use on your site. Once you've selected a theme, you'll see the "copy-and-paste" HTML code... ready to be inserted. I believe that more cursor themes will be up eventually, so when you're tired of using a certain one, you can switch to another. Good point. GnomeDESKTOP THEME: The Fifties [2.3M]
http://www.ezthemes.com/cgi-bin/redir.cgi/fifties.zip C'mon baby, let's do the twist! And when we're done, we can go down to the corner shop and grab another Chocolate Coke (remember those)? I haven't had one for several months... when I moved to Des Moines, my dietary habits did a 180. Besides, there so darn expensive down here (in Cedar Falls, be sure to grab one at Danny's Diner on 1st Street). If I were to have lived my early adult life in any decade, it would have to be... the '90s. Well, what did you expect? The Internet wasn't around before then. GnomeTIP Lockergnomie John Foote knows of an easier way to see what kind of files Microsoft has stored in its FTP software library. Fire up IE4, Netscape, or your FTP client and download: ftp://ftp.microsoft.com/Softlib/index.txt -- this isn't a listing for every single file Microsoft has, but there's a lot of classic patches and documentation to be found here. Once you are viewing the file (in any given application), you should be able to perform a search for certain keywords. Keep it stored on your computer for future reference, too (although a new version might become available over time). |