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Where can I purchase a blinking brake light?
  technofile
Al Fasoldt's reviews and commentaries, continuously available online since 1983

D r .   G i z m o
AltaVista Personal software won't run on modern Windows PCs


March 5, 2003


By Al Fasoldt
Copyright © 2003, Al Fasoldt
Copyright © 2003, The Post-Standard

   I have a new Windows XP computer and have trouble loading the AltaVista Personal Search engine. Would you know any way to get past this error? I really like AltaVista for searching my personal computer's files. -- F.D., via attbi.com
   The doctor adored the way AltaVista Personal indexed his documents and mail. But, alas, AV Personal relied on the way Windows 95 and 98 worked and was not updated for Windows 2000 or Windows XP. It does not install properly and will not run on Windows 2000, XP or NT.
   
   Where can I purchase a blinking brake light? -- D.S., via Charter.net
   The doctor suggests a Google search for "blinking brake lights" (without quotes) followed by the word "price" (also without quotes). The good electrophysician suspects that D.S. is looking for a bicycle light, since he specified a singular light, so adding the word "bicycle" (also without quotes) to the search might be helpful.
   (The doc repeatedly stresses that Google searches should be done without quoted search terms because Google examines the search words and puts them together in a semi-intelligent way.)
   
   Our church secretary received an e-mail with an attachment that has a .pub extension. She tried to open it, got the dialogue box asking which program she wanted to use, and selected MS Word. What she got was unreadable, and unfortunately every time we try to reopen the attachment it defaults to MS Word. Two questions. (1) How do we stop the MS Word default for this attachment? (2) What program should we use to open it? -- E.K.
   The doctor wrestled with a few PUB files himself not long ago. They are Microsoft Publisher documents. The doc wishes that no one would ever send such desktop-publishing files to others blindly -- without knowing for sure that their recipients actually have Microsoft Publisher. Such assumptions are Microsoft-centric in the extreme.
   Far better is to send your recipients a standard message. In an era of e-mail dangers, sending a desktop-publishing document that requires an unsafe operating system just to view its contents seems to make no sense. Paste the contents into a message and send that instead.
   But E.K.'s question about the file association needs answering. To restore a file association, find a sample document that is associated with the wrong program, hold down Shift and right-click on the document. Choose the program that should open the document from the pop-up list.
   
   Dr. Gizmo fixes Al Fasoldt's file associations every week or so. You can send a Dremel electric file attachment (1/4-inch drill bit size only, please) or just a letter to the doctor or his pal at Technology, Box 4915, Syracuse, NY 13221. Or send e-mail to afasoldt@twcny.rr.com.