European Stars and Stripes (Newspaper) - August 23, 1994, Darmstadt, Hesse                                Page 10 the stars and stripes computers tuesday August 23,1994 a sampling of a May Chat with Conan of Brien on America online q what a it like having All this stardom is the overwhelming Ness of it All finally settling yet. Conan until in Mon Hollywood squares it wont feel like its real. But seriously i done to mind being recognized on the Street because people Are always Friendly and i enjoy talking with them about the show. Q Conan do you Wear boxers or briefs a Conan i Wear briefs Over boxers. It can get uncomfortable during the summer but its a statement i like to make. Q you have the Best coif on network to. Any hair tips for us regular Folk Conan my hair is a High density polymer developed by the Good people at Dupont. Check them out they do Good work. Washington Post a a a a. A. A v a a a a few years ago a design team called papyrus set a new Standard for computer Auto racing with a simulation of the Indianapolis 500. Now they be upped that Standard with a new simulation called indy car racing. The increases in realism Are generally fairly Small in every area but amount to a considerable total. Graphics Are the Best yet in a racing simulation with the Lack of True three dimensional visual keys. The Only Way to learn to Tell How close you Are to something is to practice practice practice. Once you have that Down then you can set indy car to full realism including full race length and get a pretty decent idea of what its like to drive at up to 175 Mph for a couple of hours. A split second lapse in concentration will More often than not Lead to disaster. Indy car about $35 at discount is distributed by Virgin games. For the casual racer Micro prose a world circuit is also quite  Warner Cox news service a a a a a a a a. A a a a a a a a when thoughtfully integrated into a curriculum multimedia technology can be a powerful educational tool. The elite Dalton school in Manhattan received a $3 million three year Grant from the Tishman real estate family for computer education. Dalton a sixth graders use advanced Apple macintoshes to a a excavated objects from a simulated archaeological site. Dubbed a Varcha Ecotype a the computer simulation grew out of a thira Grade game in which students dig in a Sandbox for objects and Analyse them. On the computer they drag a mouse to do the digging find a full color picture of the object and then weigh and measure it using special software tools. A this is More fun a says Daniel Ruch a precocious 12 year old. A you done to just listen to the teacher you find it for  Dalton has shared the program with a school in Chula Vista Calif. Even at Dalton a big Gap exists in. Evaluating the effectiveness of computers. Bill Waldman director of the schools technology program says a you can just Tell by looking at the kids faces that they re getting a lot a out of Archaeol Type. Los Angeles times True colors shining in Black and White portables becoming a thing of the past by Evan Ramstad the associated press new York color came to the movies in the 1930s, to in the 1960s and desktop computers in the mid-�?T80s. Now just two years after portable computers first used color ast research inc. Is becoming the first major company to sell models that use Only color. The Irvine  company monday unveiled its first subnotebook machine and update models that Are aimed at Consumers and budget minded  computer makers notably Dell computer corp. And ism have reduced their Laptop lineups to just one monochrome Model. A a Mono is gone a said Bret Berg astr a Good that you can get 1 and analyst Jennifer Munson of work group technologies inc. In Hampton n.h., said a by next year it will be unheard of for vendors to offer a  the Rise of an inexpensive color technology known As dual scan san is wiping out the Price difference Between monochrome and color screens. Screen makers like Hitachi corp. And a joint venture of Toshiba and ism have expanded their manufacturing capacity this year furthering expectations of lower screen prices. Ast will Start Selling its new dual scan machines the Ascentia 500n subnotebook and 800n notebook for $2,300. That a about $900 More than Dell is charging for a monochrome screen Model it brought out last week. Astr a Berg acknowledged the company May initially miss customers who would buy monochrome now because it is less expensive. But he said the company worried about being stuck with too Many monochrome models at the end of the year when prices for color machines will have fallen sharply. A we Felt we could have been in trouble in inventory a he said. A we decided to be bold and make the statement How that color is what users ought to be  a a a l a a Quot Quot v a i r \ l a Iff a a v its amps Peter Jaeger it was just two years ago that color began appearing in portable computers with pricey a Active matrix technology in which every Point on the screen has its own Light source and thus More Resolution. Prices for such machines still typically exceed $4,000. Demand a remains High. Ism introduced its first thin pad with an Active matrix screen in the fall of 1992 and got 100,000 orders in 50 Days. The company has been unable to catch up with demand since. But it is the less expensive dual scan screen that is pushing color to the masses. A the Price difference has gotten to the Point where its a no brainer a said Andy Seybold publisher of the Outlook on Mobile computing. A a it a happening a in 1r t about a year sooner than i  in addition to the color screens astr a new models incorporate the same Standard package of software As their desktop machines including special help guides the company has developed. The pack age dumped ast works includes several productivity and reference programs and one that accesses on line services automatically to search for electronic mail. The machines use Intel 486 microprocessors and hard drives ranging from 250 to 340 megabytes. The notebook Model has a removable floppy Diskette drive so an extra Battery can be added. Like other pc makers ast saved space and weight by giving the subnotebook an external Diskette drive. The company said it will not charge extra for that drive however unlike some rivals. Its a hard life for a hard disk by Bill ii usted Cox news service the hard disk on your computer is falling apart. I guarantee it. That a the Law Here and in the rest of the universe. There a a Law of physics called entropy that says things begin to come apart the instant they re put together. It describes your computers hard disk. Your hard disk is like the Kitchen of a Busy restaurant a things Are constantly going wrong. Unlike a Chip its a mechanical device. Inside several platters spin wildly. These platters have a delicate magnetic coating similar to the coating on recording tape. Information is recorded by an electromagnet floating less than a hairs breadth above each Platter. The magnetic coating can be damaged by the electromagnet crashing into it by losing its magnetic charge by electrical surges or even by Static electricity. The hard disk usually takes care of problems by a mapping out damaged sections. That tells your computer not to store data in the damaged sections. But there a plenty More that can go wrong. Sometimes hunks of data literally get lost and float around in limbo. All these problems a and others too complicated for me to understand much less explain mount like so Many unpaid Bills. You can see a Little of what i mean by using a program included with All versions of Dos called Chi ask or a new program called scan disk that comes with the latest version. Either Way you la get a Reading of your hard disks condition. If you have Dos 6.2 or later you can and should use both programs. Chi ask will Tell you How much disk space is free and the amount occupied by a bad  those Are sections of the disk that have been mapped out. Every hard disk has bad sectors. So done to get paranoid. But there a a lot you can do to slow Down the inevitable destruction of your hard disk. The two Dos programs just mentioned Are Good places to Start. You should Check your hard disk at least once a week using one or both of these programs i Hope you have Dos 6.2 or later because scan disk finds and fixes problems Chi ask will miss and automates the repair process. To run it shut Down windows and Type scan disk. Then follow the directions on the screen. Its that easy. But Chi ask is pretty Good too. Type Chi ask from Dos a not windows a and it la give you a report on disk space and any problems. If it does find problems Type Chi ask of. The a a of a tells Chi ask to fix any problems it can. There a still another free Dos program that la safeguard your hard disk if you have Dos 6.2 or later. Its called defray. To explain what defray can do you need to understand that files Arentt stored in one continuous hunk on a hard disk. To make the Best use of space files Are broken apart and placed where there a free space. Since you free up space every time a file is erased your letter to aunt Emily is probably stored in dozens of places on the disk. Your computer keeps track of where everything is stored. But that creates a lot of disk spinning and searching to Call up a file. It slows Down your hard disk. And fragmented files get lost easier going to hard disk limbo. Defray which also should be run from Dos attempts to reunite fragmented files. If you be never used it running this program a just Type defray a can make a real difference. Follow my advice and your hard disk will live longer. But done to expect miracles. Nobody can repeal the Law of entropy