Buggy “pre beta” versions of what Microsoft Corp. calls Consumer Windows (code named Millennium) will be reaching testers over the next several days. It will give a preview of at least one feature in the follow-on to Windows 98 about which one can only say IT’S ABOUT TIME!
The feature is named “It Just Works” and allows computers to heal themselves when Windows, as it is wont to do, loses needed drivers, libraries and other key files.
JAMC Would you believe a full-blown digital still camera for $89? It may be black and yellow, but JamCam debuts as one bodacious binary Brownie for Mac and PCs alike, letting users to snap 8 (relatively) high resolution 640 x 480 still photos or 26 paltry 320 x 240 ones and then copy them onto the hard drive using the new USB ports on recent Macs and all Windows 98 boxes.
This isn’t anywhere near the snooty standards of serious photographers, but if ever there were a computer camera for the rest of us, this is it. Click www.kbgear.com and you’ll want one in a snap.
WHAT GOES BOOM
ALSO GOES BUST
If reading the business pages turns you off because the tech frenzy is churning out success stories at a rate that even Horatio Alger might find too Goody Two Shoes, you’ll find the downer you crave in a jigabyte jeremiad titled “Defying the Market: Profiting in the Turbulent Post-Technology Market Boom.”
Over 258 chilling pages Stephen Leeb and Donna Leeb document how companies like Microsoft Corp. and Intel Corp. are running out of steam as each generation of new computer/software makes a lesser improvement over the one it replaces. If you want to save the $25 list price just sell your Wintel and move the funds into real estate, gold, energy services and food.
SON OF A SON OF A SON…
OF A SON OF A SON OF A SAILOR
Rootless may be how they describe people who show no mercy on Chicago’s Sout’west Side, but to growing millions of genealogy buffs, being rootless is out of the question thanks to the huge Internet resources.
But confusion is rampant with a staggering 40,000 Web sites now devoted to helping you find the cat burglars in the family tree.
A popular solution comes in ink and paper form as Cyndi’s List ($50 for 880 very boring pages), a printed guide to the huge resources on-line including all 40,000 sites up at press time (www.genealogybookshop.com)
Y2KORNER
The prestigious computer consultants at the Gartner Group are reeling from raspberries after a super scare report warning that “the law of very large numbers” guarantees that at least somebody hired to fix the Millennium bug wrote computer code that will let criminal hackers rob the companies that hired them after the clock/calendar turns.
