CompuNotes Notes from The Cutting Edge of Personal Computing May 22, 1998 Issue 118 +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+= To subscribe, send an e-mail to listserv@peach.ease.lsoft.com SUBSCRIBE COMPUNOTES-L FirstName LastName To unsubscribe, send an e-mail to listserv@peach.ease.lsoft.com SIGNOFF COMPUNOTES-L For Contact and Other Information See Bottom of Publication! +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+= CONTENTS My Notes: 1=> CompuNotes Notes, mailto:pgrote@i1.net 2=> This Issue's Winner! News: 3=> News of the Week, mailto:pgrote@i1.net Reviews: 4=> Product: Secrets of Successful Web Sites By David Siegel, book Reviewed By: Robin Nobles, mailto:smslady@netdoor.com 5=> Product: Intense 3D Voodoo graphics card, hardware Reviewed By: Doug Reed, mailto:dr2web@sprynet.com 6=> Product: Fallout, game Reviewed By Doug Reed, mailto:dr2web@sprynet.com 7=> Product: Drive Image 1.0, utility Reviewed By: Bill Pomerantz, mailto:wpomer@bellatlantic.net 8=> Product: DARK REIGN: The Future of War, game Reviewed By: Don Hughes, mailto:dhughes@wwdc.com 9=> Product: WebFerretPRO 2.51, utility Reviewed By: Robin Nobles, mailto:smslady@netdoor.com --- BEGIN ISSUE 1=> CompuNotes Notes, mailto:pgrote@i1.net Thanks for taking the time to read us this week! I just have a couple of personal notes today to pass on. As usual, your participation is appreciated, but not required: 1) My wife of 11 wonderful years just graduated from the University of Missouri St. Louis with the highest honors! She received a degree in Elementary Education! Seeing as she worked so hard to attain this goal I think it would be a hoot if she got some congratulations messages from the Internet. If you feel so inclined you can send my wife Melissa a congratulations at mcgstl@yahoo.com. mailto:mcgstl@yahoo.com. I know she will appreciate it! 2) One of our most esteemed writers, Donald Hughes, is celebrating his 30th year of marriage to his wife, Mary! If you are so inclined, why not drop them a note to celebrate? Send it to dhughes@wwdc.com. mailto:dhughes@wwdc.com. 2=> Winner! This week's winner: hslade@ERINET.COM. 3=> News and Game Bits, mailto:pgrote@i1.net or mailto:dr2web@sprynet.com When You Think Technology Is Taking Too Much Of Your Life http://www.abcnews.com/sections/tech/FredMoody/moody53.html Larry Ellison Takes His Workers to See Godzilla ... I Took Mine to See Independence Day ... Does that Count? http://www.abcnews.com/sections/tech/Silicon/silicon24.html Godzilla ... Networks ... and UNIX http://www.zdnet.com/pcweek/reviews/0518/18zilla.html Ok, My Only Mention of the Anti-Trust Case http://winweb.winmag.com/bbs/columns/archives/051798/friday/column.htm?frames=yes 4=> Product: Secrets of Successful Web Sites By David Siegel, book Reviewed By: Robin Nobles, mailto:smslady@netdoor.com MSRP: $49.99 Anyone who goes to the time, trouble, and expense of building a website wants it to be successful. But since the whole concept of websites and the Internet is relatively new, we have no role models with which to guide us. And that's where Secrets of Successful Websites comes in. The book focuses on the process of web development, both from the client's and contractor's point of view. The book is divided into two parts. Part I outlines 15 case studies, where you'll dissect successful websites and learn what makes them winners. It also covers mistakes made in creating and setting up those sites, in an effort to help the reader not to make the same ones. Part II offers a guide toward getting your own website done right the first time. One thing I really enjoyed about the book is that it doesn't begin by spouting off rules and "how to's" for successful websites. Instead, it picks a website, explains the history of that site, and offers words of wisdom gained from developing that website. For example, Chapter 1 looks at the Land Rover site, developed by a design firm named Adjacency. Adjacency took a rugged and gutsy Land Rover and created a website to match, and it worked. Chapter 2 highlights the website of Pyramid Breweries and discusses the need to pay close attention to details while not overtaxing the client/contractor relationship with too many revisions. Chapters 3 through 15 deal with other case studies, explaining what worked and what didn't, and helping you learn from their mistakes. For me, the real heart of the book begins in Chapter 1 of Part II. This part documents the process and philosophy of web project management. The author encourages you to keep three caveats in mind: 1. Use common sense. Though the book is filled with tips, pointers, and lists of things to do, you can't use all of them on one project. 2. Everything is a work in progress. 3. Not everything goes wrong. Even though the book contains warnings, they won't happen in every project. Chapter 1 of Part II is titled, "Clients are from Mars, Contractors are from Venus." Through the chapter, you'll find boxes with different colored backgrounds that offer insight into the difficulties between a client/contractor relationship. For example, you'll learn that clients generally want two things: 1. Safety, meaning projects done professionally and on time. 2. Stability, meaning reliability and consistency. You're also given secret weapons throughout this chapter, to coincide with the book's title. Secret Weapon Number One deals with market segmentation, noting the importance of offering value to your clients, and knowing your clients and going after the ones you want. At the end of each chapter, you're presented with timely interviews with leaders of successful websites. Chapter 2 deals with the value of design. Four strategic values and four tactical values are discussed, with a notation that a winning site possesses all eight values in measured proportions. Readers will learn the four phases of design: strategy, design, production, and delivery. Learn the value of a good design, and that ease-of-use is part of that good design. Again, you're offered a secret weapon, as you are in all chapters of Part II. The chapters are subdivided into sections featuring mini titles, which make reading and understanding them very easy. Helpful hints appear in numbered lists, set up with a different background from the rest of the page. Chapter 3 deals with clients who are looking for someone to develop and design their website. You'll learn the client's "Bill of Rights," such as being entitled to good estimates and being entitled to own all appropriate rights to the site. Chapter 4 is from the contractor's point of view, where you're presented with the contractor's "Bill of Rights," such as knowing what the budget range is up front, or retaining all appropriate rights to assets created for the site. In Chapter 5, you'll learn the formalities of negotiating a contract, help in arriving at a fair deal for both parties, and team-building strategies. Again, helpful tips are offered throughout the chapter, such as, "Clients: Once you've chosen a design firm, immediately call the firms you haven't selected." With Chapter 6, the program itself begins, with a calendar, schedule, and chronology of updates to the project. Learn how to run a project site, and how to extend a site as needed. By using templates offered at a corresponding website, which is mentioned below, you can begin your own project site. Chapter 7 deals with the difficulties of putting brochures, or printed material, on a website. It explains how to develop web strategic planning, and then utilize tactical planning to put those strategies into place. Content development and design is covered in Chapter 8. Chapter 9 deals with the production of the site itself. Six types of errors that can cause difficulties in the production of a website are covered. Your website is now ready to be launched, and a regular maintenance schedule needs to be implemented, which is covered in Chapter 10. And finally, Chapter 11 summarizes the process, relationships, and the relatively new field of on-line design, highlighting the importance of good communication. At the book's official website (http://www.secretsites.com/), you'll find legal documents, templates, a bookstore, and other resources mentioned in the book. The site is a free resource available to web users and offers the latest in tips, tricks, and tools that wouldn't fit in the book, recent developments in software and the web, and new project management strategies. The book contains a lot of wonderful information for the development of a successful website. Someone who is considering a website for the first time will find it very helpful, as well as website developers who are striving for perfection in their website designs. Hayden Books http://www.hayden.com http://www.secretsites.com/ 5=> Product: Intense 3D Voodoo graphics card, hardware Reviewed By: Doug Reed, mailto:dr2web@sprynet.com Requirements: Windows 95, free PCI slot, Pentium, 8 MB RAM, CDROM drive MSRP: $229.95 U.S. 3D-enhanced games like GLQuake and GLHexen II, that will currently only run on computers with Voodoo cards, have helped give that chip an edge on the industry. The only knock on the Voodoo was that it was 3D only - users still required an additional 2D graphics card. To fix this "problem", 3dfx developed the Voodoo Rush, a new chipset that is comprised of a 128-bit 2D graphics processor and 2 64-bit 3D graphics processors. The first card out with the new chipset was the Hercules 128; now Intergraph has weighed in with their version, the Intense 3D Voodoo. The Intense 3D Voodoo is a plug and play card, which I am happy to say is more and more becoming what it was originally envisioned. You can truly plug it in, turn it on, and start playing almost immediately. Within five minutes of plugging the card into my computer, I was back up and playing Jedi Knight. Score one for installation. In addition to the drivers for the card, Intergraph includes the latest version of the Glide drivers for OpenGL-based games (like the GLQuake mentioned above) and the "Intergraph Video Center" which is added to the display properties dialog for the Windows 95 desktop. From there you can quickly and easily make adjustments to the color and resolution settings as well as the refresh rate for the monitor. You can easily switch from 16-bit to 32-bit color without having to reboot the computer (although it is an option). What kinds of features does the Intense 3D Voodoo offer? Beyond the 128-bit 2D processor and the 2 64-bit processors, Intergraph has included a TV-out plug, making it easy to play games on your television should you so desire. Why you would want to do so I don't know - the loss of resolution is hardly worth the increase in size! However, I could see where it would be very handy for video presentations. Resolutions supported go all the way up to 1,600 x 1,200 with 64,000 colors, or 1,280 x 1,024 with 16.7 million colors. The card is VESA 2.0-compliant, and comes with 6 MB of EDO RAM. Enhanced 3D features include point, line, and polygon anti-aliasing as well as 24-bit alpha blending and 8-bit transparency. Per-pixel effects, gouraud shading, texture modulation, and MIP mapping are also enabled. The Intense 3D Voodoo also comes with 3 full-length games (no demos!) - specially enhanced versions of Turok, Moto Racer, and Jane's Longbow FX. The latter is a special version that will only run on computers with either a Voodoo or Voodoo Rush graphics card. So, how does it play? Well, I've been having so much fun playing Jedi Knight that I really didn't need the games that Intergraph included. Jedi Knight also features built-in support for 3D graphics cards, although it makes use of Microsoft's Direct 3D drivers rather than the OpenGL set. So I tried the new card in both 2D and 3D mode, to test the abilities of the new card. As expected, there was an improvement in the look and speed of the 3D enhanced version. Typing "dispstats" from the console told me that in 2D mode, Jedi Knight ran at about 10 fps. Switching to 3D acceleration boosted Jedi Knight to 40 fps! I also installed the 3dfx-patch for Carmageddon, and am happy to report that I saw significant improvements in both the graphics and frame rate for that game. Now splattering pedestrians is ever so much more lifelike! There has been some controversy on the Internet about the Voodoo Rush and the speed at which it could run openGL games. When the Voodoo Rush was originally released, 3dfx claimed that the performance was identical to the Voodoo. Apparently this wasn't quite true; 3dfx has released a statement saying that the problem resided in the drivers, a problem they now say is fixed. I installed the GLQuake patch to Quake, and prepared to do battle. My test was very simple - I loaded Quake, started a game, and then went to the console and entered the command "timerefresh", which tells you the current frame rate being used. In 640x480 mode, under DOS Quake (2D mode), the frame rate for the Intense 3D Voodoo was an astonishing 33.79 frames per second. Simply put - WOW! Easily one of the smoothest, fastest games of Quake I've ever played. Then I ran GLQuake. And that was where I ran into a lot of problems. First, I didn't have the very latest Glide drivers (the 3dfx drivers for openGL-based games). I didn't have enough virtual memory (you have to set the minimum virtual memory to 80 MB - I had it set on automatic). Then I found I had it in the wrong video mode (you have to be in 32-bit mode). I'm telling you all of this because I hope you don't have to go through all of the pain that I did just to get your game to work, because it crashed the computer each time I didn't have it set "just right". In other words, expect to spend a lot of time trying to get openGL-based games to run properly. I finally gave up trying to run GLQuake - I had seen the capabilities of the 3D mode with Jedi Knight, and they are impressive. DOS Quake runs plenty fast, and looks just fine. Besides, Quake II should be out by the time this is published, and Intergraph & 3dfx continue to release new drivers for the Intense 3D -they should get it right eventually! To sum it all up, I think the Intense 3D Voodoo is a great solution for those looking to add a new kick to their gaming. Although the matter of the speed of the Voodoo Rush compared to the Voodoo is of some concern, 3dfx appears to be working to fix the problem. Most people, I think, would never even notice a difference unless they deliberately tested the system to determine the performance. The combined 2D/3D card is certainly much easier to use and helps free a valuable PCI slot. I like the Intense 3D Voodoo - it offers a 2D/ 3D solution that, while relatively "cheap", is faster than most of the other chips currently on the market. Check it out! Intergraph http://www.intergraph.com/ics/ 6=> Product: Fallout, game Reviewed By Doug Reed, mailto:dr2web@sprynet.com Requirements: Pentium-90, DOS or Win95, SVGA, 16 MB RAM, 2x CDROM, mouse, sound card Reviewed on: Pentium-166, Win95, 24 MB RAM, 16x CDROM MSRP: $49.95 Fallout is a game with an interesting history. If you're old enough and have been playing with computers (as I have) since the advent of the Commodore 64, you may remember a little game called Wasteland. Wasteland was a role-playing game set in a post-apocalyptic world, made by a little company called Interplay and marketed by Electronic Arts. Wasteland was a huge commercial success, part of what made Interplay into the computer game "giant" that it is today. After nearly a decade since Wasteland was released, Interplay has produced another role-playing game based on yet another post-apocalyptic world (Titanic Entertainment designed the game). Fallout is the first role-playing game in a long time that I can honestly say I've enjoyed playing. Titanic & Interplay have created a real gem here, harking back to the grand old days of Wasteland, Ultima III & IV, and Wizardry. Load up Fallout and you will quickly note that Fallout bears a remarkable resemblance to a popular hit from earlier in the year, Diablo. Fallout uses the same 3-D, isometric perspective of the world. But from there the similarities end - Fallout has turn-based combat, not real time like Diablo. There is no Internet play or anything like it - this is strictly a single player game. The game is also a lot more than just another hack-and-slash epic; while there is more than enough combat, there is considerable emphasis in the game on puzzle solving and interaction with NPCs. The game has an incredibly extensive character generation system, easily the most complex I've seen for a PC RPG (role playing game). Beyond your basic stats (Strength, Perception, Charisma, Endurance, Intelligence, Agility, and Luck) there are also your skills (lockpicking, bartering, etc...) and traits (fast metabolism, heavy handed, and so on). The result is a very customized character which you can enhance or handicap as you see fit. Some traits and skills are passive, others are active. None are required- for example, if you don't chose lockpicking, it doesn't mean you can't finish the game. Once you've created a character (or chosen one of the three canned ones included in the game), the game begins. The premise of the game is quite simple, and is standard post-apocalyptic fare. You and your family are part of Vault 13, a fallout shelter designed to protect you from the ravages of a nuclear war that occurred some years before (before you were born, in fact). The vault is entirely self-sustaining, as long as all the machinery continues to function. Unfortunately, a critical component that controls the water supply has failed, and without it the vault is doomed. You have been chosen to go the surface and try to find a replacement. You have sixty days... The world that you find on the surface is unlike anything you would expect. Some humans, mostly from other vaults, are on the surface in little rag-tag communities and bands of raiders. Strange mutated animals roam the desert that surrounds vault 13, like giant "Radscorpions" and two-headed cattle. This strange new world is an exceedingly dangerous place! Remember how I said the combat was turn based? Well, the rest of the game is in real-time; the game slips back and forth from combat and normal mode seamlessly. Almost too seamlessly; at times I would approach a spot where I could see a Radscorpion ahead, only to have combat initiate and the Radscorpion make a rush at me, closing the distance very quickly! You really have to be on your toes, or you'll be dead very quickly. The real-time normal mode combined with the time limit for repairing the vault makes for some real tension in the game. Repairing the water supply, however, is not the end of the game (or at least, that is what is hinted at in the manual; I haven't made it that far myself yet). The game is essentially the standard fare for role-playing games: go talk to the High Mucky-Muck of some town, who agrees to help you but only if you do something for him first (and so on, and on). According to Interplay, the Fallout world is constantly in action, and does not revolve around the player; stand still and the world will move on without you. Which is to say that the Fallout universe is not static - you won't always find the High Mucky-Muck in the same place, for example. On the other hand, Interplay does seemed to have realized the danger in a totally open universe - the High Mucky-Muck could die, which would put a real crimp in your quest. I can't say that I can verify that what Interplay says is true, but I can't say that it isn't either. Great care was taken to at least imagine what such a world would be like; the desert setting is because the game is supposed to take place in what is left of Southern California. If you want to acquire something from somebody, be prepared to barter - there is no money any more, you know! The quality of the game is top-notch; the introductory movie is extremely well done. The movie is done mostly in black and white, and resembles the old film news loops from World War II with tongue-in-cheek humor. This is followed by a very grim and dark introduction to the game, giving the history of what led to mankind's destruction. NPC interaction ranges from very basic (exchanging hellos), to more detailed (simple text choices), and finally very detailed (a view of the person, combined with the text choices). The Interface is easily the best I've seen for an RPG. Need to pull out your gun? Click on of the weapons button on the menu bar and then "load" the weapon you want (if you use a gun, you'll need to occasionally reload it as well). Need to see if you have a particular item? Click on the Inventory button and take a peek. I chose to review Fallout out of nostalgia; I fondly remember playing Wasteland on my old C-64. In all honesty, I thought I had put aside role-playing games and "moved on" to other genres like war games and action games. Fallout is a good enough game to have dragged me back and made me want to stay; I'd forgotten how much fun a good RPG could be. I doubt seriously you'll hear Fallout mentioned as a candidate for Game of the Year, what with games like Quake II, Jedi Knight, and Dark Reign. But if you like RPGs, or if you like games that require some thought and intelligence, not rapid mouse-clicking, check out Fallout. Thumbs up! Interplay Productions http://www.interplay.com 7=> Product: Drive Image 1.0, utility Reviewed By: Bill Pomerantz, mailto:wpomer@bellatlantic.net Reviewed On: AMD K5 P133 32MB RAM Windows 95 Requires: 386, 8MB RAM (486, 16MB recommended) MSRP: $64.95 When I first heard about this program I knew that I had to have it. I have been running Windows 95 on my two home machines for quite a while now and I have had to reinstall the operating system so many times that I am afraid that my installation disks are wearing out. When you install from the disks it takes 45 minutes before you can even start restoring your backup. It takes even more time if you have to reinstall your tape backup program. After you have finished restoring from your backup program you have no guarantee that everything will be the way it was when you did your backup. That's the way it is with Windows 95. In the old Windows 3.1 days we restored from DOS and we got perfect restores. Now because of Drive Image the good old days are back again. Drive Image works in DOS to create an Image of your hard drive or an image of a partition on your hard drive. Working in DOS it will restore that image perfectly every time. There is no worry about long file names, no worry about busy files. Every icon is restored to the same place on your desktop. You get exactly what you had when the Drive Image program created the backup image. Until Drive Image I had never been able to say that. This program makes Windows 95 more reliable and once you have it and use it you will be a lot more relaxed every time you turn on your computer. The program works best if you have some type of large capacity removable media like a Jazz Drive or a Syjet. It would also be workable with a Zip drive or something similar. I don't have one of those units but I get reasonable security by creating the image file on a separate hard drive permanently mounted in the machine. That doesn't allow for offsite storage of the backup but it will get you going after a Windows 95 crash. If you have faith in your hard drive and your main concern is restoring the operating system you might even get away with storing the image of the partition holding the operating system on another partition on the same hard drive. When you install the Drive Image program you also make a startup disk. That disk is used to get your system going in DOS so that the Drive Image program can restore your image. If you are not accustomed to DOS programs you might be a little disappointed. But the program is relatively easy to operate. The first screen that you see after Drive Image evaluates your system is a menu where you choose if you want to restore, create or copy a drive or partition. If you decide to create an image you are taken to a screen where you choose from a list box the drive you want to work on. Once you choose the drive another box lists all the partitions. You can choose to create an image of any of the partitions or all of them. Drive Image then guides you to create a destination path for the image. It must be on another partition from the ones that you are imaging. You also get to select the amount of compression if any that you would like the program to use. Using no compression gives you the fastest creation time. The lowest level of compression squeezes the image about in half. I found that on my machine no compression resulted in a backup speed of almost 40mb a minute. The lowest level of compression backed up about 20mb a minute. If you want to do a restore you go to a screen where you are asked to select the image file from which the restore will be created. You also select where you want the image to be restored. During the restore process you can also change the size of the partitions. If you choose to reduce the size of the partition you get to either save the leftover space as "free space" not a part of any partition or you can choose to have the left over space equally divided among the other partitions. I found that free primary partition space was saved separately from free logical partition space which means that you don't have complete freedom in allocating your free space. Don't get rid of your Fdisk just yet. PowerQuest recommends using Partition Magic, also one of their programs, for complex partition management jobs. But if you have some experience you will find Drive Image a very useful program to use with Fdisk. The disk copy function allows you to copy one partition directly to another without having to make an image. That is a useful means of moving all the data and the directory structure perfectly to the new drive. Xcopy in Windows 95 can do much of the same thing but it is more secure in my opinion to do the job in DOS without Windows 95 running. Drive Image also includes two other Utilities. One is called MagicMover. This utility is used to move programs on your drive from one partition to another. It moves the files, updates the links and makes changes to the .INI files and the Registry. I used Mover to move my tape backup program from my D: drive to my C: drive. When I installed the program I automatically directed it to the D: drive where I place all my programs. But then I realized that it would be better having the program on the C: drive so that it would be included with the image of the partition that holds the operating system. It also provided a good test for Magic Mover. The move worked perfectly, even changing the path used by the icon I had put on the desktop. Before making any changes Mover gives you the option of reviewing all the moves and path changes. That is useful but the program should have a provision for printing out the text. There is no way to do that. It can not even be copied and pasted into Notepad. And even moving one program can involve many lines of changes. The other utility is called DriveMapper. I did not test this part of the program. This utility is used to change references to drive letters when you add or delete partitions. The utility, called a wizard by PowerQuest, asks you what drive letter has to be changed and what it should be changed to. Then the program searches for all the references that have to be changed. After the references are found you can either tell the program to proceed or you can examine the changes before approving them. Drive Image is a very useful program for making very secure backups for a number of different operating systems including Windows NT, Windows 3.1, DOS and OS/2 in addition to Windows 95. There is also more limited support for Linux, UNIX and NetWare. The operation is very fast because the program copies only the used sectors. One price you pay for this security is that you cannot easily restore one or two files or even one directory the way you can with a backup program that backs up file by file. So if you decide to use Drive Image for backups you might still want to do conventional backups in some situations. Remember that this is a very versatile program because it is useful for various drive management procedures in addition to making very reliable backups. PowerQuest Corporation http://www.powerquest.com 8=> Product: DARK REIGN: The Future of War, game Reviewed By: Don Hughes, mailto:dhughes@wwdc.com System Requirements: Windows 95, Pentium 90, I6MB RAM, 90 MB Hard disk drive space, SVGA, mouse, sound card, 4x CDROM, 14.4k modem MSRP: $46.95 I first installed Dark Reign on our Pentium 100 MHz, with 16MB of RAM, and an ATI Winturbo video with 2 MB of RAM. The game installation time was just under fifteen minutes, and completed without any errors, glitches, or hang-ups. However, as the game started the opening movies where jerky and slower then I would have preferred them to be. As the game continued the display improved and graphics where excellent with no jerking as displayed in the opening movie. The following week our new Pentium 166 MMX, 32MB RAM, with an ATI 3D Xpression video card with 4 MB, of RAM arrived. After I had the system hard drive moved over to the new computer and the hardware/ software, re-set, I took Dark Reign for another spin. The opening movies, and the games graphics where vastly improved, as of course was the overall game speed. In addition, the first computer had a quad (4X) speed CD-ROM, and the second Pentium 166, has an 8X CD-ROM. The overall speed of the game play was still good on the Pentium 100 MHz, but not a good as on the new Pentium. However, any increase in processing power will affect the play of a game and not only does your side move faster, so do the enemy. The Dark Reign Objective: "As your planet and all you know is destroyed. you escape in a solitary scout vessel. Adrift in space you encounter a probe sent by Togra himself. The probe brings you a message from Togra and the ability to transport you back in time. Centuries earlier the planet on which Togra had crash landed was consumed by the Imperium's Dessicator weapon. Unable to save himself, Togra sent out the probe with the hope that one of his followers would happen upon it and unlock the key that could save him. The probe can open a dimensional port that will transport you to the moment just before Togra was killed and provide you with the technology to create an army to defeat both of the warring factions, but the mechanism can work only once. If you are unable to accomplish the task, then history will continue unaltered and Togra's fate, as well as your own. will be sealed. The probe contains a number of recorded battles of the Imperium-Freedom Guard war. These battles will be presented to you as a series of trials. If you are unable to conquer them. if you are unable to demonstrate that you are worthy to fight the final conflict to save Togra. the probe will not transport you back in time. Togra will not allow his one chance for survival to be wasted. To save your society. To save your lost messiah. To save yourself. You must open the dimension door and alter the destiny of a galaxy." When you install Dark Reign, the program has the option of either a small or a large installation to your hard drive. A full installation will take 260 MB (small is 100MB) of hard drive space for the game and all the movies. If you do select the large installation, you will be required to insert the CD-ROM, before you can start playing Dark Reign--I realize that the reason for the "Insert CD-ROM" is to prevent software piracy, but its still annoying. Dark Reign is a real-time strategy war game that uses a 3D line-of-sight and top-down view of the battleground--in style of Raptor or Warcraft II. As the game opens you can launch directly into one of the trials or enter the training mission. Be vigilant in the training mission to follow the instructions to the letter or you fail the test and the computerized voice will denounce your progress. Once you have succeeded in the training mission, you are ready to begin the series of trial battles. In each of the trials (including the training mission), you are required to build a base from which to launch search and destroy missions looking for the enemy. The Dark Reign player soon encounters the frustration and reality of this game. One does not have to look for the enemy; he is looking for you, and will charge out of nowhere to confront your forces. The very moment you start to build your base from which to launch your attack, the enemy attacks you. This is very exasperating, just as quickly as you earn credits from the sale of water, you spend them defending the base, creating new machines and repairing and replacing damaged or destroyed buildings, equipment etc. The "base" consists of a Headquarters building, Taelon Power generator, and Assembly plant for making weapons, Water Launch Tower, and a Training facility for your troops. Parallel to other wars, this one needs funding, and you must to collect fresh water, which you can ship off to other world for credits. Of prime importance is your positioning of the Water plant as close to the spring water source as possible, as this decrease the time needed for the tanker to move between the spring and the water plant. Nevertheless, be sure to protect this plant or the enemy will destroy it and your source of income necessary for building up your forces or repairing damaged units. It is also a good idea to find more then one source of water, then install a second plant to aid in securing more armaments. The faster water can be shipped off, the more credits you will have available to build a larger army both offensive and defensive rolls. You do not have to be a General to realize that in this game overwhelming force rules, and saves the day. The game can be played individually, or two players using a null modem connection, four players on the Internet, or eight players on a LAN. Playing the game is an exercise in multitasking, you must increase your resources to fund the war machine, and then increase production of war materials. In addition, you need to scout new territory and find the enemy, being ever alert for an attack. The main screen (play area) is divided into three windows: Top Status bar, largest left screen is the battle ground, and on the right the Menu's and Power/Mini-Map. 1. Status bar across the top gives you functions that: repair a building, Turn a buildings power on/off, Sell/Cancel a building, Amount of Credits, Attack, Attack Without Moving, and Stop. 2. The Large left Window displays the main play area, with areas hidden until you scout that part of the map--hidden area is called the "Fog of War." 3. The top right window permits access to the six function menus: Build Menu, Comms Menu, Orders Menu, Paths Menu, Options Menu, and the Special Functions Menu. The Build menu allows the user to build more buildings, war materials, and make repairs. Select the Comms menu and you can designate allies, send or receive messages, and select message recipients--used for two players or the LAN or Internet play. In the Paths menu a player can set-up paths and waypoints for the troops and machines, and select a one-way or looping patrol route. The Orders menu is for instructions to the troops and machines such as: hit and run tactics, set behavior, amount of damage a unit will take before returning for repairs etc. The Options menu selects game speed, sound effects volume, scroll speed, and missions objectives, Restart a game, Load, Save, and delete. The Special Function menu you can pick up and move a building, Make a raider, Mercenary, or Phase tank go under ground, Morph and UN-morph units, Sell water, move and reassemble units in formation. It is a good idea before playing Dark Reign read the manual thoroughly to familiarize yourself with the various game commands. Activision also includes a handy keyboard command card reference. The games graphics, sound, music, action are first class, and the end user will have many hours of fun and enjoyment playing Dark Reign--not to mention many hours of frustration. I highly recommend that the player save the game every so often in case your army is defeated, you can always pick up where you left off, instead of having to go back to the start of the level. Dark Reign is a very complex strategy game containing a command structure an end user must learn and master in order to defeat the enemy and win the game. The applied use of force is the key to wining the many trials and ultimately the game itself. The first levels of Dark reign are not difficult to play and the strategy is very basic, however, as one progress into more levels the game becomes harder to win. One of the finer points of Dark Reign is the use of artificial intelligence (AI) control menu--Orders Menu. The user can select and control the general parameters for troop response to various battle conditions. The convent user controlled settings allowing adjustments of Pursuit Range, Damage Tolerance, or Independence of each unit(s) intensifies the users active participation and enjoyment when playing Dark Reign. Another plus added by Activision is the construction kit that can be selected from Dark Reigns main menu. Using the construction kit, a player can make their extra missions tailored to their own tastes. Currently you can download a Dark Reign Demo and extra missions (for the full version) from Activation's web site. At first glance, I was not very thrilled with Dark Reign's top down view of the game area, but after playing the first two levels I became more impressed with the overall game operation. The graphics, sound and overall operation of the game is remarkable in scope, and well worth the money. The only thing I will warn future users about this game is, it's addictive, and the proof being this review should have been completed weeks ago. Activision http://www.activision.com 9=> Product: WebFerretPRO 2.51, utility Reviewed By: Robin Nobles, mailto:smslady@netdoor.com System Requirements: Win95 or NT; 4 MB hard disk space MSRP: $26.95 Being an avid user of the freeware program WebFerret for some time now, when I had the opportunity to review their pro version, WebFerretPRO 2.51, I jumped at it. I'll have to be honest here. I went in to this review wondering how on earth FerretSoft could create a program that could be any better than WebFerret. But they have. First, let's talk about WebFerretPRO and what the program really does. Then, we'll discuss the differences between the freeware and the pro versions. If you do much research on the Net, you know the headaches of using search engines. While they're the next best thing to M&M's, they're also a study in frustration. Each search engine operates a little differently, and what one engine finds with no problems, another won't find at all. The answer: WebFerretPRO. WebFerretPRO resides on your hard drive, ready to do your searching for you. You simply enter in your search criteria, click a button, and go back to whatever you were doing. This fantastic program zips through the Net at lightning speed and hunts up those websites for you. Installation is a breeze. The whole program itself is one of the easiest I've ever set up or operated. With the pro version, you're able to fine-tune your searches in several ways. You can conduct Boolean searches using AND, AND NOT, and OR. Or, you can tell the program to search for all keywords named, any keyword, or the exact phrase. You can go a little further with fine tuning your search by clicking on the advanced settings. There, you can tell the program to search through entire web pages, to search only through page titles, or to search through page titles and abstracts. Also in the advanced settings, you can instruct the program to remove all duplicate URL's, to remove duplicate titles, or to remove no duplications. WebFerretPRO searches through 18 search engines to retrieve results for you. You can indicate which of the 18 engines you want it to search, or choose them all, which is what I do. You can choose which browser you want to use when opening web pages for your viewing. The pro version allows you to choose the maximum number of results per search or per search engine. After running a search, you'll see the results begin to appear on the page. The beauty of the program is that you don't have to wait for the search to be completed before going to the web pages of your choice. You can glance through the results and go directly to the websites long before the program has finished searching all the engines. Let's say you run a search and the program spits out 500 results. That's a lot of websites. How do you know which ones are the best and most relevant? One way is by moving your cursor over the Page Title and reading the brief description of the website. By using this feature, you're able to narrow down the pages that you really want to visit. Another way is to click on the Relevance button. The percentage given will tell you the search engine rating of the item with respect to your keyword(s). Keep in mind that the relevancies reported by different search engines are not necessarily comparable, as each search engine uses its own rating system. Also, some search engines don't provide relevancy ratings at all. Still another way to fine-tune your search is to use the "Find" button after performing a search. You can easily go through the websites looking for that particular keyword. You can also utilize cut and copy capabilities, which allow you to cut out websites you aren't interested in, or copy the results in another application, such as a word processing document or an e-mail message. Another wonderful feature of the program is that you're able to save your searches to your hard drive to access at a later date. Or, if you're in the middle of a search and have to exit the Net, you can even choose to leave the program running. Your results will be right where you left them, which is a lot easier than going back to a search engine and searching again. If you want to compare information in separate browser windows, you can tell the program to open up a new window for viewing results. So what's the difference between the freeware version and WebFerretPRO? A lot! The majority of the customized settings that I've mentioned here are not available in the freeware version. The Pro version features a whopping 18 search engines and 3 Veronica engines, where the freeware version only has 9 engines and 1 Veronica. In fact, the newest release of the freeware version doesn't include many of the more popular search facilities. Whereas the pro version features numerous ways of fine tuning your search, the freeware version is much more limited. Searches can be narrowed by choosing to match any keyword, match all keywords, or by submitting the keywords as an exact phrase. With the freeware version, you have no way of eliminating duplicate URL's, narrowing the search down to titles or abstracts, or performing a Boolean search. Search results aren't rated according to relevancy. The bottom line is, with the freeware version, you can't tweak the program itself to suit your specific needs. Freeware WebFerret is a fantastic program, one I couldn't do without, and one that I didn't think could be beat. But I was wrong. The features of WebFerretPRO make the $26.95 cost inconsequential. I highly recommend it for anyone who does much searching or researching on the Internet. Test both programs out for yourself. A free demo version of WebFerretPRO 2.51 is available for download at FerretSoft's website (http://www.ferretsoft.com/netferret/download.htm). You can also download the freeware version, WebFerret 1.3001. The site also offers free 14-day trial versions of their other popular software: EmailFerret; FileFerret; IRCFerret; PhoneFerret; and, NewsFerret. FerretSoft LLC http://www.ferretsoft.com/netferret/ +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+= Managing Editor: Patrick Grote -- mailto:pgrote@i1.net Assistant Editor: Writer Liaison: Doug Reed-- mailto:dr2web@sprynet.com Assistant Editor: Robin Nobles, mailto:smslady@netdoor.com Archives: ftp://ftp.uu.net/published/compunotes/ Website: e-mail: mailto:notes@compunotes.com Want to Write for Us?: mailto:writers@compunotes.com fax: (314) 909-1662 voice: (314) 909-1662 +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+= CompuNotes is: Available weekly via e-mail and on-line. We cover the PC computing world with comprehensive reviews, news, hot web sites, great columns and interviews. We also give away one software package a week to a lucky winner for just reading our fine publication! Never dull, sometimes tardy, we are here to bring you the computing world the way it is! Please tell every on-line friend about us! CompuNotes B440 1315 Woodgate Drive St. Louis, MO 63122 notes@compunotes.com (C)1998 Patrick Grote