FAQS! FACTS! FAX!  213 (25/05/00)

DEGRADING BEHAVIOUR

I possess a number of CDs written by a former colleague and I have recently found out that CDs made on home PCs using CD writers are not permanent! Indeed, the information I have been given is that they are good for about 4 to 5 years at best!

Frank Blundell

What have you been doing with them? It’s true data recorded on a CD-R disc is not permanent, however most manufacturers quote a life expectancy of between 75 to 100 years, when the disc is stored correctly, which basically means in its jewel cases in ‘normal’ living room conditions. For discs to degrade in such a very short time they must have either been faulty, exposed to strong sunlight or very high humidity.

SYMBOLIC SEARCH

How do I produce a schwa - the symbol used in phonetics to indicate an unvoiced vowel sound; it looks like an upside-down lower case "e".

Tim Healey

A True Type font called IPAPhon containing the inverted e (\) and a complete set of phonetic symbols can be downloaded from: http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~rogers/fonts.html

THE RIGHT FORMULA

Does anyone know where I can find a font or Alt + number key combination for the small numbers in chemical formulas such as H₂0 ?

Debby Ceruti

Try using your word processor’s subscript (or superscript) facility. In MS word you’ll find the check boxes on Fonts, on the Format menu, or you can toggle the modes by pressing the Ctrl and equals keys (Ctrl + shift + = for superscript).

POWER TIP

Received wisdom from our IT guru is to leave the PC permanently switched on and only to turn off the printer and screen each night at close of play. Apparently power surges from the repeated on/off routine can upset the innards of the computer. Is all this true or is it another cyber-myth?
Roger Thornington

I only use my PC for short periods several times a day, I wonder if it would be better to leave it on rather than keep closing down and starting up
again?

Eric Pitches

Unless you actually need your PC to be running all of the time – to carry out scheduled tasks or to receive incoming faxes, etc. -- there really is no point in leaving it on overnight, it just wastes electricity and may reduce the working life of some mechanical and electronic components. Whilst it is true that statistically the chances of a fault developing are greater at switch on it is a fairly small risk, though obviously the odds of it happening increase with repeated switching on and off. If your normal routine is to use the PC throughout the day it makes sense to switch it on in the morning, and leave it on until you’ve finished work at the end of the day.

CRUMBS OF COMFORT

With reference to the recent query about cookies (F!F!F! May 11^th) your correspondent might like to try the freeware program "Cookie Muncher",which can be downloaded from www.webattack.com.  This useful little program allows you to set your browser security to allow cookies, so that all web pages will work - but it deletes all cookies immediately they have been
loaded. It also counts how many cookies it has "munched" per session.
John Watson

Thanks for that handy tip

SPELL BOUND

Can you can help.  I use Outlook Express 5 and have often wished I could use a spell check, change fonts, use italics, bold, justify, etc. as with a word processor. I can cut and paste from my WP to OE5, but it does not seem an elegant solution. Now I find a friend has all the facilities I crave on his OE5. We are totally unable to discover any difference in the settings between his version and mine.
Roy Partington  

There won’t be any differences, Outlook Express (all recent versions) doesn’t have its own built spellchecker, instead it uses the ones in MS Office applications like Word, Excel or PowerPoint and one of these programs has to be installed on your PC for it to work.

PAST THE POST

When my PC is switched on it runs through various informative screens until Windows is set up which is normally satisfactory but sometimes I would like to enter DOS straight away and even go into the BIOS. At no point do I seem to be able to do this directly on start-up as I used to be able on an older PC with Windows 3.11. I have tried pressing various control keys and even the "F" keys to no avail: what else can I do without wrecking the system?

Stephen King

You know that you shouldn’t be messing around with the BIOS (basic input output system) set-up program, don’t you? On the understanding that you promise not to fiddle around – unless you know what you are doing -- try the following key combinations. For PCs with Ami BIOS (the name usually flashes up on the screen immediately after switch on) . The usual procedure is to wait until it has finished the POST (power on self test) and memory check and press the ‘Del’ key. Award BIOS is normally Ctrl + Alt + Esc, for Phoenix it’s Crtl + Alt + Esc or Ctrl + Alt S. On some makes you have to press the Esc key, or hold down the space bar, failing that get in touch with the PC vendor or manufacturer’s help line. To start the PC in DOS mode press the F8 key after the first configuration screens and immediately before the ‘Starting Windows’ message appears, the machine will display the Start-up menu, select option 5 ‘Command prompt only’.  Incidentally, look out for a forthcoming Boot Camp on BIOS programs.

SHORT STORY

Thank you for the advice on how to create desktop shortcuts (F!F!F May 11) we now have all our frequently used programs on the Desktop, something which we have wanted for some time. Unfortunately, however, we have two problems remaining, both concerning deleting Desktop icons.

Owing to my clumsiness and inexperience, when I right-clicked on the programs' names in the Start menu I was actually clicking on the name of the program and thus put the program on the desktop in the form of a folder instead of its icon. I eventually managed to get the icon on but am left with several "folder" style icons on as well, giving me three shortcuts to Word, one to Windows itself and two to Excel. Right-clicking on the desktop shortcut and scrolling to and clicking on "Delete" on the shortcut menu brought up the alarming dialogue box which asked me whether I wanted to delete the Word file!

As your correspondent has already pointed out, many programs seem automatically to put a shortcut on the desktop and our Desktop has a few, mostly from children's games, we feel it unnecessary to have. The programs can be quite easily accessed from the Start menu and we should prefer that. We want the Desktop to be work-oriented. 

How do I delete these unwanted/duplicate desktop shortcut icons without deleting the program files themselves?

A.R.Barnett

Desktop shortcuts are normally just ‘signposts’ that tell Windows where to look for a program or file and you can safely delete them, without damaging the original program. However, in some circumstances it is possible to put a program file on the desktop, in which case deleting it could cause problems, the simple way to tell is to right-click on the icon and select properties and select the General tab, the file type should be shown as ‘Shortcut’ and be just a few hundred bytes in size. Fortunately Windows has a safety net in the shape of the Recycle Bin and if you find that you have inadvertently deleted an important file or program simply open the Bin, right-click on the item and select Restore. For that reason it’s a good idea to wait a day or two before emptying Recycle Bin after deleting a file.