Inbox

By DON McALLISTER

Welcome to InBox, where we attempt to answer your internet questions.

Q. David's budget doesn't stretch to the costly Microsoft Office. Is a free alternative suite available for download?

A. Yes, David, you can try the PC Suite. I installed the 17MB download on my test machine, expecting a basic program, but found a tidy offering that definitely had an "Office" feel. The "nag screen" (a registration prompt at start-up) is a pain. But a free online registration fixes that. Another free suite is Open Office.

Q. John is annoyed that many links mentioned by Inbox don't work, or sit there forever.

A. That's a side-effect of telling people about them, John. When interesting links are listed, everyone takes a look, often overloading the web-servers that hold them. Try a few days later or in the small hours when fewer people are online.

Q. Shirley is confused about how you view email once it's stored in the archive file.

A. You can import the file back into Outlook using File/Import Export. You can find its location by using the Windows search tool and searching for archive.pst. Or you can open "archive.pst" using Notepad. It will have a bit of garbled text, but the e-mail contents can be viewed in a long single document.

Q. Mike was frustrated by watching his connection come to a halt minutes after starting it. He changed from Xtra to ihug and the problem was cured.

A. There is a cause that's seldom blamed, Mike, and it is not Xtra's fault. A few telephone exchanges contain very noisy elderly switching gear. If one resides in the path to your provider, you'll get problems of that nature. Changing providers may mean the signal takes a different route that eliminates the faulty exchange. Another way to reduce this symptom is to use a "rural" modem. Dynalink has the "Rural II" model for this purpose.


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