Dennis Faas

... Continued . The following companies offer Internet Call Waiting Phone Alert Services. These services allow Dial-up / Cable / Broadband users to receive and manage phone calls while still connected to the Internet. Below is a cost and Feature ... comparison breakdown. BuzzMe / RingCentral 1 million subscribers world-wide Online Answering Machine with Caller ID Accept Call, Ignore, Reply (text-to-speech messaging), or Send to Voicemail Voicemail with Online/Offline option Toll-Free Access to Messages Accept Call, Call Forwarding, Callback Cell Phone & Pager Notifications Get messages by ... (view more)

Last week's article about tweaking spurred a few comments from our Readers. Wait a sec -- what is tweaking? In techy-terms, the word "tweak" means to optimize. With respect to PCs, tweaking may refer to one of three things: a hardware tweak (the PC ... itself), a software tweak (an application, or the operating system), or both. On the weekend, Bob T. from Wisconsin sent me an email: " Hi Dennis! Great article [last week] on tweaking. I really enjoyed reading it. I'm sure you've probably about this already, but your readers may also want to know about a program called WinGuides ... (view more)

Jay29 writes: " After a normal morning boot, the line at the bottom of Internet Explorer disappeared from my screen. This is the line that shows the URL status, the SSL lock, what's being retrieved, privacy icon, and other useful information. I've ... tried many approaches, including the Microsoft Support web site to reinstate the line, but with no luck. How can I reinstate this line? " My Response: The line at the very bottom of an Internet Explorer window is actually called the Status Bar. As Jay29 stated, the Status Bar is a very useful part of Internet Explorer: especially the lock ... (view more)

Recall: Yesterday's issue of the Gazette was about a Freeware MS Office Replacement. Infopackets Reader Jim P. made his suggestion with reference to a freeware Microsoft Word .DOC file converter: " Fast, compatible and free: 602Pro PC SUITE is the ... freeware alternative to Microsoft Office, and includes a word processor, spreadsheet, photo editor and photo organizer. " http://www.software602.com/download/ Since then, I have received more new suggestions for Freeware MS Office Replacements. In fact, Tammy F. told me that she uses a freeware program called Open Office: " I use Open ... (view more)

In the May 21st, 2003 issue of the Infopackets Gazette, I asked readers if they knew of a freeware document converter for MS Word .DOC files: Word Perfect 2000 won't read MS Word documents? Unfortunately, I did not receive many software suggestions. ... My guess is that most users have MS Word installed on their machines and have little need for such a conversion utility... thus the reason for low response. Nevertheless -- Infopackets Reader Jim P. recommended (what appears to be) an excellent freeware replacement for MS Office, called 602 Pro PC Suite: " You wanted to know if there is a ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Cleo writes: " I have tried putting Microsoft Word in my Send To Menu a dozen times: it shows up in the send to folder in the C drive, but won't show up in the Send To Menu. Any ideas? " My response: It is possible that the Send ... To shortcuts were placed in the wrong SendTo folder. For Windows 9x and NT, the SendTo folder location is C:\Windows\SendTo. For Windows 2000 and XP, the whereabouts of the [current] SendTo folder depends on which user logged in to the machine. The Send To feature allows users to launch a file using a program which has not been previously ... (view more)

Bob and Jenny P. write: " For some reason, when I click on an email address link on an email rather than getting the email box, it tries to go to internet explorer opening about 50 explorer boxes.... and the right of my bottom panel bar lights up ... (task scheduler icon, volume icon, avg, icon, etc.) Any idea how to fix this? " My response: This question has been answered before in a previous issue dated January 7, 2003: Web Links in Outlook Express won't work?, Part 2 Since this question comes up quite often *and* largely depends on repairing Internet Explorer, I've decided to provide ... (view more)

Today, David M. sent me an email asking me how to go about Repairing Internet Explorer: " Hello Dennis! The May 20, 2003 issue of the Gazette mentioned the very useful Internet Explorer Repair Tool, accessed from Add/Remove Programs in Control ... Panel. In the past, this method has worked for me when using Win98 and IE5. However, I now run Win2K and IE6 and the IE Repair Tool isn't listed in the Add/Remove Programs, so I can't repair it. Do you or any of your learned readers have any ideas, please? " My Response: I get asked this question a lot from readers, so I've decided to provide ... (view more)