FAQS! FACTS! FAX! 158 (22/04/99)

INKREDIBLY EXPENSIVE

I have a Canon BJC-210 colour Bubblejet printer, which does a very good job. However I can't afford to use it much for colour as the cartridges run out very quickly. I prepare lots of geological exhibitions for the Geological Societies I belong to and a bit of clip art looks really good and catches the audience's eye. Last week I printed three pieces of clip art, filling an A4 sheet, plus two A4 Power point presentations. Admittedly the clip arts images were fairly solid but the Powerpoint graphics were very softly blended. This emptied a new BC-05 cartridge. I have a splendid array of all sorts of things I could do but I certainly can't afford nearly £10.00 a page. Am I doing something really silly or what?
Doreen Smith

A

Canon quotes a 'service life' of around 100 pages at 7.5% coverage for the BC-05 colour cartridge. Even if you were printing solid colour over the whole A4 page you should still be getting significantly more than three pages per cartridge! Either the cartridge was faulty or it was only partially filled, either way you should return it from whence it came. The ink in printer cartridges is incredibly expensive, even when you take into account manufacturing costs and the fact that you're throwing away the print head each time. Millilitre for millilitre it's actually dearer than top French perfume! Refill kits are well worth trying if you need to do a lot of colour printing, they cost a fraction of the price of a new cartridge and a lot of cartridges can be filled two or three times before performance starts to suffer. The quality of the kits varies a little but if you stick to the ones sold by large or well-known computer suppliers and stationers you can't go far wrong. Some printer manufacturers suggest that using refilled cartridges invalidates the printer's guarantee, however, since the cartridge is a disposable item it is difficult to see how such a condition could be applied.

CORRECT FORM
I read with interest the letter in F!F!F! April 8th. I too have a tendency to type form when I mean from. Unfortunately I felt that the suggestion provided would mean you would still have to know when you meant to type from and form. To fix this problem I used the same AutoText feature to change the word form to fram. This would then show up when I spell checked and allow me to consider what I actually wanted to type.
Guy Allen

With reference to your answer to the "form" as "from" not picked up by the spell-checker in Word 97, there is a proper answer to this: an exclusion dictionary. Look under: Help > Dictionaries (spelling) > Specify a preferred spelling for a word
Alistair Saywell

A

Thanks for those suggestions. We quite like the deliberate mis-spelling method; the Exclusion Dictionary procedure is technically elegant but it seems rather complicated.

TYPE APPROVAL

Is it possible for a chronic two-finger PC user to learn to touch-type at home? Every time I see an accomplished secretary inputting data quickly, while looking only at the screen, it is apparent how much faster and more enjoyable writing would be, if only I could touch-type. What do you suggest?

Christopher Wigdor, via fax

A

We suspect there is no quick or easy way of upgrading your typing skills since you will first have to unlearn a lot of bad habits but as usual we will be happy to pass on any readers tips or recommendations. 

JUST THE TICKET

The Daily Telegraph carried a feature on mathematics and the National Lottery. Do you have any suggestions on a method of checking what numbers have won to date. I assume it is possible to set up a spread sheet/data base to enable the winning numbers of the day to be entered and the results obtained.
Eric Rogers

A

It has already been done. You'll find a wealth of statistical data about the National Lottery, dating back to day one, at the following web-sites:

http://www.marketplace.co.uk/lottery/

http://lottery.merseyworld.com/Winning_index.html

NAME GAME

This may seem a small problem but I would be grateful for your guidance. Because I had a little difficulty in installing the "Freeserve" Internet CD-ROM, I arranged for an acquaintance to handle the matter for me. He did a terrific job but, because he did not know me too well, he registered my name as "Neil" not, as it should be, "Norman". The consequence is that all of my E-mail is shown as originating from this fictitious "Neil". How do I change this to show my correct Christian name?
Norman Reekie

Assuming that you are using Outlook Express as your e-mail program, go to the Tools menu, select Accounts and click the Mail tab. Highlight the e-mail account entry with a single click and select the Properties button. This should open a multi-tabbed window, select General and your name, as it appears on e-mails, will appear under User Information in the 'Name' field, change the name and click OK.

DRIVE  INSANE

How do I switch off the auto-start feature of my CD-ROM drive (using Windows 98)? It's driving me mad, every time I use a program, which asks for a disc, the damn thing runs the Set-up program!

P. B. Cook

A

Go to Control Panel (Start > Settings) and click on the System icon, select the Device Manager tab, highlight your CD-ROM drive and click Properties. Choose the Settings tab and uncheck the box marked 'Auto Insert Notification'.  

CALL TO ACCOUNT

I use an IBM laptop at work, but I am about to buy a desktop at home so that I can install 'non-business related' software for personal use. How can I arrange for my home e-mail address and my work e-mail address to be linked so that I can access all my messages from either workstation?
Simon Foster

A

Most popular E-mail client programs can be set up to access more than one mailbox during a dial-up session. You should find details of how to do it in the program's Help section. If you use Outlook Express refer back to the March 11th edition of Boot Camp, you'll find it archived on the Electronic Telegraph web site: www.telegraph.co.uk/connected  

DISK BRAKE

When my computer is displaying a screen saver, every so often the hard disc will thrash around for some considerable time. This happens when, so far as I am aware, I haven't any tasks running in the background. In addition, if I am in Word '97, the floppy drive is accessed quite frequently as well. Whether something is being saved or loaded is not
clear. All that I have ticked under Tools, Options, is "allow fast saves". Neither of these events have an affect on the screen saver. I would have thought that the computer should remain quiet. Can you please tell me what is going on here?
Keith Griffiths

A

A constantly chattering disc drive is a sign that your PC needs more memory. The drive is making up for a shortage of RAM by shuffling files around. A safe minimum for Windows 95 and 98 is 32Mb, 64Mb is the optimum, unless you using a lot of graphics intensive applications, in which case the sky's the limit.