Q. I had a problem with my settings and in the process I removed the icons on the Windows 98 task bar. I cannot add icons to the task bar by dragging and dropping. Any suggestions on what I need to do to add icons to the task bar?
Tom Onan, Lake Forest
A. Your problem involves rhythm, Mr. O. And I am hardly one to preach. Try as I will, I cannot dance. I love to watch others get caught up in the rhythm, but my two lead feet just don’t get it.
May I suggest that you are among a great many people who have a similar rhythm problem executing the mouse commands that some lead-footed bozo at Microsoft wrote into Windows 98 and ME?
One can only wonder how many people gave up when trying to place miniature icons for frequently used programs in the task bar where they are supposed to be standing by for quick recall.
The problem is that when one wants to drag an icon from the desktop into the task bar at the lower left corner of the screen, it is necessary to move the icon into a precise spot in the thin band at the screen’s bottom.
If you move it too far down, the cursor becomes a circle with a line through it–and nothing happens. If you don’t move it far enough, nothing happens.
The best solution is to use another tricky mouse movement to stretch the task bar twice as wide as usual. That gives a nice fat target for dropping icons.
To expand the task bar into a better drop target, slowly move the arrow along the top of the existing task bar until the cursor changes to an affair with arrows pointing up and down. Now press the right mouse button and drag upwards. The task bar will expand. You will find dragging icons into the enlarged target area much easier.
Now if somebody would just teach me that business about the box step once more.
Q. We are moving into a new condo and are interested in installing a network capable of connecting two PCs in different locations and sharing a printer and cable modem. Phone and cable is installed in every room, but I failed to specify Ethernet networking wiring.
Craig Dickinson @aol.com.
A recent trip to the computer store confused both my wife and me to no end with all the talk about wireless networking. Is there an easy, and relatively inexpensive, way to do this?
A. I guess I can understand why people like yourself who have more class and style than I happen to possess are reluctant to poke holes in their walls, ceilings and floors to build home networks, Mr. D.
But the fact remains that despite today’s excitement about wireless networking, nothing beats physical wires for speed and reliability. I definitely belong to the Black & Decker school of home computer networking.
Pick the PC (or Mac) you want to be the server and get yourself a $100 cable/digital subscriber line router from a vendor like LinkSys Group or 3Com’s US Robotics subsidiary. Your cable modem or DSL box connects to the router, and each computer in your house connects by Ethernet wire to the router box.
My experience with doing the same thing wirelessly has been much less satisfactory, but a wide variety of wireless products from the likes of Lucent Technologies, 3Com, LinkSys and others are gaining in popularity among many consumers. Why am I negative about them?
My beef lies in the fact that installing a wireless networking scheme’s software on a Windows PC can slow down all of the machines connected together. The server computer bogs down handling the extra chores required to feed the wireless network, and the clients crawl slower still.
This speed problem is particularly severe using wireless gear that use radio frequency to transmit data, such as the AnyPoint wireless gadgets from Intel Corp. Since the RF type of wireless connectors move data at 1.5 million bits per second, they are only about 1/10th the speed of a hard-wired Ethernet network of the Black & Decker school.
The newest batch of wireless network devices use a far faster standard called Wi-Fi or 802.11b. These move data at 11 million bits per second, which is the low end of a hard-wired Ethernet network.
These 802.11b systems get pretty expensive. Figure $250 for the base station and $100 for cards to broadcast to laptops. Add $50 more for the adapters needed to use these laptop ready cards in desktops.
With those high prices for reduced performance, I find myself aligned with dentists, oil field hustlers and high school Latin teachers. I just love to drill. James Coates
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Binary beat readers can participate in the column at chicagotribune.com/go/askjim or e-mail jcoates@rcnchicago.com. Snail mail him in Room 400, 435 N. Michigan Ave., Chicago, IL 60611.
