Welcome to the January 01, 2001 issue of Hewie's Favorites Views & Reviews. Be sure to visit Hewie's Favorites at http://www.hewie.net/. Hewie's Quick Thoughts appear almost daily at http://www.hewie.net/weblog/.

Make it a daily routine to see what is added. It is a log of items as I find them. There are archive pages, so you can catch up on older items. Feel free to let your friends know about this page and the entire site.

+++ Retraction of my statement about WindowsXP & Office 97/2000
+++ License Agreements
+++ Visits to the website
+++ Web Attacks to increase in 2002
+++ News Service May go Away
+++ Hewie's Favorites has been updated


January 01, 2002

+++ Retraction of my statement about WindowsXP & Office 97/2000

In a previous newsletter and in some statements that I made at user group meetings, I said that there were compatibility problems between WindowsXP and Office 97 or Office 2000. I have researched this heavily and cannot verify it at all. I have seen isolated references to individuals with problems, but on the whole, reports are showing that upgrading the Office product is not necessary to upgrade to WindowsXP. This is not to say that you won't have problems, but you should be able to save the Office upgrade price, especially if you are purchasing a new machine with WinXP and want to use your current copy of Office.

+++ License Agreements

Remember, if you sell your old computer, read the software licenses. If you have Office97 or Office 2000 on it and are going to use it on the new computer or purchase an upgrade, you have to remove it from the old computer.

In fact, most software programs stipulate that you cannot use, sell, or give away older versions of software when you purchase an upgrade. If you want to amuse yourself (actually, get pissed off) carefully read the end-user license agreements (commonly referred to as the EULA) of a few of your favorite programs.

+++ Visits to the website

I was looking over the logs and reports which are provided by the host for the Hewie's Favorite website. If you have a site, make sure that you have the feature of logs and reports included and that you take the time to make some sense of them.

I have always used the counter on the main page as the barometer of the site usage. The two counters that I use show about 6 visitors a day. That is totally wrong. Many of you, and many of the other visitors come through a page of choice or one that is found by using a search engine. In actuality, the site is getting sixty plus (60+) visitors a day. The reports show the words or phrases that were used by the search engines. In a future newsletter I will show some of them.

Here are the 20 top pages visited at Hewie's Favorites in the month of December 2001:

01. Views & Reviews Menu Page
02. Shareware
03. Hewie's Quick Thoughts
04. Computer Hardware & Software Companies
05. Graphics, Fonts, and Sounds
06. Computer Info & Training
07. Orlando & Florida Info
08. Non-Computer Related Education and Info
09. Windows
10. Create Your Own Pages
11. Virus & Hoax Info
12. New Additions
13. Finance & Business
14. Palm Top Computers
15. Entertainment
16. Lists & Links
17. People & Maps
18. General Items
19. Search Engines
20. Main Page

+++ Web Attacks to increase in 2002

According to Reuter News Service web attacks will increase in 2002. http://www.reuters.com/news_article.jhtml?type=internetnews&StoryID=478221
(this is a long url and may wrap in some email programs)

Experts are predicting that viruses and worms, will find new and even more nasty ways to attack computer systems. The article added that as of early December, corporations had spent an estimated $12.3 billion to clean up virus damage for the year, according to Computer Economics, a Carlsbad, California, firm that analyzes the economic impact of viruses and other computer security threats.

I have fielded many emails from my readers and friends and viruses, worms, and hoaxes and many of you have even experienced a bout with one or more of them. If you have clicked on that attachment or somehow have been infected, you can understand how it could cost so much. It can take many hours to find and eliminate a virus and all of its files, find deleted or damaged files. Even then, a format and re-install may be necessary.

+++ News Service May go Away

The news service which feeds the headlines for the six panels on the main page of Hewie's Favorites is Moreover. I have received a message from Moreover that the news feed is going to be terminated and I will remove the panels when that happens. I have been looking into some other feeds, but most are very expensive. They may not be replaced.

+++ Hewie's Favorites has been updated