

    The Cat's Out of The Bag!


                                         The twenty pound black and
                                         white furry Windows expert!
                                        Copyright 1995 by Bob Miller

      Bob Miller's
      Stanley Does
         Windows

                               Purrfectly Yours
                                  by Stanley


 Dear Stanley,

 I am a law abiding person.  I always stop at traffic
 lights, never run a STOP sign, etc.  I have heard that there are
 certain  computer laws and I want to obey them.  Can you tell me what
 they are?


 Dear Law Abiding:

 Certainly.

 Programs always expand to fill all available disk space.
 If you can buy it, it is obsolete.
 The computer you really want always costs $4,000 (this used to be
 $5,000). You can never be too rich, too thin or have too much RAM.
 Never buy version x.0 of anything. If the box says "minimum
 requirements are", always double them.

 If it says "a child can install" ask if child is sold separately.
 If John Dvorak says it will happen, bet against it.
 Never believe what you read in a magazine.  See my human's column for proof.
 If you find a good computer guru, always have a substantial
 supply of chocolate chip cookies, home made brownies and fresh
 tuna fish available for him. Real Coke and milk are also good.


 Dear Stanley,

 I know that my 386-25 4 meg machine is not powerful enough for
 Windows 95.  What should I upgrade?


 Dear Under-powered,

 Do not upgrade your system.  It is a waste of money.  Give it away to
 some local charity (Human Service Agencies are always in need of these)
 and buy a new machine.  You can get a 486DX2-66 with an 850MB hard
 drive, quad speed CD, 8 megs of RAM and a lot more for under $1500.
 True, you can buy a 486 motherboard and chip for only a couple of
 hundred dollars - but your 30 pin ram won't fit, your hard drive is too
 small and too slow, etc.  It is cheaper to get a new system and have
 everything working right out of the box.


 Dear Stanley,

 I downloaded some GIF's from my BBS and I want to make them into
 Wallpaper.  How do I do this?


 Dear Giffer,

 Assuming that those are GIFS of my relatives (no one would
 ever want anything else as wallpaper), you first have to convert them
 into bitmaps.  Two great shareware programs, Graphics Workshop and
 Paint Shop Pro, make this easy.  Size the bitmap to your screen
 resolution (probably 640x480x256) and use Control Panel, Desktop to
 tell Windows to use this as the new wallpaper.


 Dear Stanley,

 I did that but the pictures are all blocky and look terrible.  Why?

 Dear Giffer,

 You are using the default 16 color Windows video driver.  You need to
 run at 256 colors. In order to do this, your video card must have at
 least 512k of memory.  If it does, you can get the proper driver from
 your card manufacturer or try the Microsoft SVGA driver included with
 WFWG and available on their BBS.  Or, perhaps, the bitmaps are of dogs.
 Nothing you can do there - dogs always look terrible.


 Dear Stanley,

 My cat has ruined three Microsoft Mouses by chewing on them.
 What can I do?


 Dear Mouseless,

 Switch to Logitech.  Choosy cats -and there are no other kind, prefer
 Microsoft Mice ten to one.  Or get him a few live ones to play with.


 Dear Stanley,

 I'm terribly confused.  The salesman tells me one thing, the magazines
 say another and my friends say a third (and fourth). Where can I get
 real and accurate answers to my questions?


 Dear Confused,

 You can always write to me - my email address is published in this
 magazine.  The salesman was selling shoes last week and will be selling
 ladies underwear next.  He likely knows as much about computers as your
 average dog - and we know how stupid dogs are. (- Fleas in your inner
 ear! - love- Mandy and Pokey )  Magazines are a starting point but you
 cannot believe them.  Some reviews are colored by the advertising that
 the manufacturer buys.  Other magazines never publish a bad review of
 anything. And many reviewers are just incompetent. Friends may or may
 not, and usually not, know what they are talking about. The very best
 sources of accurate information are to be found in the ILink Windows
 and Windows 95 and RIME Windows conferences.  Local phone numbers can
 be furnished upon request.  To a lesser degree, the FIDO Windows
 conference can help. Avoid USENET like a bath!!! The average mental age
 of a Usenet poster is six. The ILink , RIME and FIDO conferences, at
 least, have moderators who know something about the subject and who
 also keep the idiots, flamers and morons in check.

 Purrfectly yours,
 Stanley

 Our super-star Stanley is a modest individual and wants his mail sent to
 his human bob.miller@msn.com

                                      ww


