European Stars And Stripes (Newspaper) - May 20, 1988, Darmstadt, Hesse                                Finding old files in computer trash bins by Peter h. Lewis new York Almasy of think you re saving dial important life bul you accidentally erase in instead. Ii you Haven l Dona this yet you will. Woe despair and anguish follow Lite loses its meaning Birds cease losing Flowers Wilt and children and Pels seek hiding places ii happened to Peter Norton in 1982, but he know enough about computers to know that an erased Lite is not gone Pic vat rather in goes into the electronic equivalent of the Wasl Hasket so to invented a program Hal dig sin a compute s trash bin and finds old files. An Rad we used to have a command at my old newspaper called Dit Fot. Which was invoked Wilh exclamation Points by panicking editors on deadline when the compel or ale a Story ii stood Lor dig in trash Lirl old  Norton s program is much More Ciofani and by fictive to bundled it Wilh a Bunch of other Handy programs Nanct cuffed it the Morion utilities and if you look amid the duller surrounding most hard Core pc users desks you la probably find a copy of in. A i company. Peter Norton computing inc. Of Santa Monica Calif. Has sold 350,000 units. Norton s utilities have helped thousands of people Over inn years. Still there Are some people like me who occasionally foul up so profoundly Hal even the Norton utilities cannot help. So n Lew months ago Norton came Oul with a new super set of the trusted Uli lilies called the Norton utilities advanced edition. It contains All the goodies of previous versions but it has been jazzed up with new help screens and streamlined commands. There Aro also some new features Speed disk and formal recover thai Well discuss in a min ulc the advanced edition lists for 1150, although it is possible to get in for Hall thai Price through mail order _ _. In erased file is not gone Torvor of toe into the electronic equivalent Rotthe Wasl Basket. And discount houses. Version 4.0 of the utilities which is the same minus the formal recover and Speed disk utilities lists Lor 1100. Either version is a bargain How much at a bargain Well How much is your Dala Worth in any event in a wore  in recovering important Dala Iron a computer disk to would reach Lor Norton utilities. Ii does t always work because sometimes people write Over their old data before realizing their error bul in has a High probability of Success in most cases. Conversely in we were interested in deeping outsiders Iron prying into the secrets on our disks we would use the wipe disk Utility that Morion provides anole or aside Many companies and individuals for gel when they Send their computers out Tor servicing Ihal atol of corporate or personal secrets maybe left on the hard disks even re the disks have been erased erasing the disk does not prevent people Tram Reading confidential information Dos in disk operating system keeps a copy of the file Nam and the Dala even though to you it appears thai the file and data Aregoni ii is gone bul not  Way to make sure thai the information is gone forever is to Over write it. Wipe disk replaces ovary Bil of info Malion with zeros ones or some other value that the user specifics Lor example the number 75, which in binary code is 01010101. The government requires that sensitive file be wiped Force times with three Dilie enl values. An option on wipe disk that is particularly Handy is Wip erase. Which wipes Oul Only those sectors thai have already been erased preserving those that Are still current. Thai Way you can make sure Utai he files you erase Are really gone White those you want of keep Are no wiped accidentally. Enough about Tho old stuff. The new Soufl on advanced edition includes Speed disk and Loimata recover. Speed disk reorganizes your disk for greater Elii Cliency putting related fragments of tiles next to one another so that the read write head does t Hava logo so far to get to them. The computer often scatters fragments of one file All Over creation and Speed disk herds them All together. Formal recover works on hard disks. You be seen Trio warnings the Dis Masler general cautions that formatting this disk will Obi Lorado any data on 11 Are you sure you want to do 11?" some boneheads like me Thinh. Gosh no and then accidentally Type  the Boom in facsimile machines Badavi Skalish United press International advertising executive Howard Nass remembers ii As the Day an obscure piece of office equipment became a Bottom line necessity. With Lime at a Premium the senior vice prescient of Media at Iho now York Agency new aver needed Loiola to 50 individual television stations the Bairn into scheduling requests of a score of advertisers. A tidy in is on of technology however turned the tables on his stewing frustration mass used a facsimile machine equipped with automatic redi Aling to relay the material in 90 minutes Flat. Rather than making 50 phone Calls we faxed ii Oul before you knew it. Ii was a godsend mass said. Nass is far from alone in his enthusiasm Tor the Long distance copying machine which relays documents about As quickly As making a phone Call. Fuelled by declining prices savvy advertising ladies and explosive demand by Small businesses sales of facsimile machines usually called fax machines have grown geometrically in recent years. In 1986. Roughly 192,000 fax machines were sold in the United Stales according to Cap International a Marshfield. Mass., research company. Last year sales almost tripled to nearly Hall a million this year sales ars expected to double. And the Boom in t Over. Within two years annual unit sales Are projected o reach roughly 1 3 million. It s an explosion of Geometric Progress Ion said Joe Congreve facsimile product manager at Sharp electronics ,.  ago if you asked people what a facsimile machine was they would t  How times have changed. Today most office workers know hut of Stamile machines Tor the Price of a phone Call can twi his transmit it nil pages of documents Hal otherwise would have Loba mailed or phoned in. Advertisers most notably Sharp now Tho largest distributor of fax machines in the United slates Pat themselves on the Back for driving Home Hal Point two years ago Sharp launched a $3 million advertising Campaign aimed at educating a technology shy Public running ads in National magazines newspapers and Trade publications that hawked the benefits of faxes bul barely mentioned the advertiser s name. The unorthodox strategy apparently worked Sharp Hen the third largest distr Bulor of fax machines began experiencing dramatic growth. From sales of 12,000units in 1985. Business More than doubled in 1963, according id company figures. Last year those figures quadrupled to More than 100,000. Helping Sharp leapfrog into position As the Indus by Leader. A flurry of other advertisers also purchased and space. The word was out basically fax went irom products sold by direct sales forces to or duels Hotd by dealers and mass merchandisers said Donald Ryan Cap s director they re More people out on the  but the real Carrot As is olten the Case was Money. Thanks to economies of scale and Competition in a Field bursting Wilh new players lax prices have spiralled downward in recent years. Today a no Lri a Model can be had Lor less uian$1,000, substantially less than the lowest prices just one year ago. At the High end Aro models that Cost roughly $10.000 and have the ability to automatically dial slowed Telephone numbers allowing users such As Nass to Send document to dozens of places with minimum Elfort. It was not always so. As recently As the mid-70s fax machines wore relatively Gumti Brenma creatures consuming upwards c six minutes to transmit one Page. Bul within several years technology had whittled that time in half. Nowadays up to tour pages can a transmitted in 60 seconds and the end product is More legible than Hal reproduced by its predecessors. Although some argue that a last moving business world has transformed the lax Industry others both that Iho Quick relay devices Are in lad changing tha Way the world conducts business fax allows for immediate decision making around the world. Belore that you used to have two lawyers sitting on the phone wailing to have a document read to them said Michael Norris. Executive vice president Murala business systems in Dallas a major . Distributor of fax machines. The ability to be Ablo to see what someone wants to change instead of having to talk ii Over the phone that s changed business a  Page 16 the stars and stripes Friday. May 20,1988