Jewish World Review July 20, 2004 /2 Menachem-Av, 5764


Windows XP startup items to deactivate; sent file always comes through as a .dat file; software saves task of retyping old work data

By James Coates

http://www.NewsAndOpinion.com | (KRT) Q. Much of our office work was saved on discs compatible with the Ami Pro word processor on our old Hewlett-Packard computer and now need to be transferred into our new Windows XP/Office XP system. Is it possible to program my new Dell computer to accept my old AMI Pro discs?

Please don't tell me that they all have to be retyped. And if this programming can be done, where do I find how to do it?

Virginia Zavasnik, Tamarac, Fla.

A. It costs most folks $149, but an upgrade to Corel's new WordPerfect Office 12 is exactly the tool you need, Ms. Z.

A second but far less effective option is to acquire software called Quick View, which will read those AMI Pro relics and let you copy the words for pasting into Office, but you'll lose all of the formatting controls. The documents will be far less useful in the future.

By contrast, as privately held Corel Corp. struggles to get by with about 5 percent of the office software market that Microsoft dominates, WordPerfect has been tweaked to handle the formats used by just about all of the past victims of Bill Gates' giant. WordPerfect therefore will not only open stuff written in Lotus Ami Pro, it also will save it in the Microsoft Word 2003 format or any other format of Word. This includes the versions from Word 1 to Word 5 that no longer are useable in Microsoft Word.

WordPerfect Office 12 will handle a couple dozen formats from the bad old days, including such one-time stars as XyWrite, Professional Write, Office Writer, Volkswriter and WordStar.

That $149 figure is the upgrade price for WordPerfect Office 12, but you certainly qualify because you definitely own Microsoft Word. If you decide to go the Quick View route, you can find Quick View 8 Plus for $35 as a download and $39 in a box.

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Q. You always seem to know what those Windows XP startup items are for, like SynTPLpr, etc. Where can I get at least an idea of which ones to try to deactivate?

Richard Brautigan@hotmail.com

A. In the computer world, that real estate in the lower right corner of the Microsoft Windows operating system is akin to a spot on prime-time television.

There are more than 60 million Windows-driven PCs in American households and many more at businesses. Putting a link to your product in that space is such a plum that nearly all softwaremakers try to get their icon in the hallowed space known as the System Tray.

From Real Audio to America Online, from Apple's Quicktime to Microsoft's own Instant Messenger, software installation tries to get a bug on the bar. Getting there usually means that the associated program is running at least partly in the background and, thus, always in the customer's view.

As you know, Mr. B., it is possible to use a tool called msconfig to find the names of all of the stuff that runs on startup and stop them from doing that by way of a handy check box.

To run msconfig, click on Start and then Run, type in msconfig and click the OK button. This brings up the tool that lists all of the startup items that have found a way into the system tray. You'll likely find nearly a dozen, and sometimes more programs that are set to run at startup. The names are gobbledygook to all but engineers in many cases, and a lot of folks are leery of removing any of them by removing the check in the box alongside each item.

In reality, you can remove all of these startup items if you want, and the computer will work just fine. It will be faster in many cases because the memory these take will be freed for other use. If you look below the list, you will find a Disable All button. Click it and all of the items in this list will be removed. You are told to reboot to make it happen. Do that, and you'll hardly have any startup icons.

Q. Whenever my brother sends me (or anyone else) an attachment, regardless of the MS program format (Excel, Word), it comes through as a .dat file.

The only way we have found around this is for him to zip the file before sending it so I can unzip it and then open it. Any idea what is converting .xls, .doc and other files to .dat?

Kay Gray @hotmail.com

A. Look out for Outlook, K.G.! Those kinds of .dat files get created when somebody uses Microsoft's business strength e-mail and activities management software Outlook to somebody not running Outlook. Specifically, you get files converted as .dat items when the sender's Outlook is set to make all outgoing mail in the rich text or .rtf format.

If your brother will change his Outlook to send in ordinary text instead of rich text, the files will come with attachments as intended. In essence, Outlook uses a special code called transport neutral encapsulation format to hold data about the exact look and feel of a file along with the attachment. The file is designated a .dat file en route and then translated back into usable stuff by Outlook at the other end.

With no Outlook, there is no conversion, and you get stuck with a .dat file.

Sometimes it is possible to rename the .dat file with the extension intended, like .doc or .xls, and the save it.

Clicking on the renamed file will open it in whatever program it was created in, and often you can find the contents along with the garbage that was added by transport neutral encapsulation format.

But files get corrupted pretty easily, and so stuff like formulas and fancy text arrangements can be lost. So tell the world you don't want .rtf — starting with your sibling.

Outlook users can easily set their e-mail to sent ordinary text to specific people and .rtf to others who have the same software.

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James Coates is a columnist for the Chicago Tribune. Let us know what you think of this column by clicking here.

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