TidBITS#519/28-Feb-00 ===================== Many folks dream of ditching work and traveling the world, but Gideon Greenspan not only set off on a trek throughout Asia, he brought along his PowerBook and shareware business. Gideon relates the details of his trip and offers invaluable advice to Mac travelers. We also pass on some changes to our polls, mourn the passing of Don Crabb, and note updates to Eudora 4.3.1, IBM ViaVoice 1.0.2, and the release of a color Palm handheld. Topics: MailBITS/28-Feb-00 TidBITS Poll Changes Working Off the Beaten Track, Part 2 Copyright 2000 TidBITS Electronic Publishing. All rights reserved. Information: Comments: --------------------------------------------------------------- This issue of TidBITS sponsored in part by: * READERS LIKE YOU! You can help support TidBITS via our voluntary <- NEW! contribution program. Special thanks this week to Jon Gotow, Conrad Halling, and Christian Heurich for their support! * An APS Tech tape drive is only as good as its software, which is why every APS Tech tape drive comes with both Mac AND Windows versions of Dantz's Retrospect! * WinStar Northwest Nexus. Visit us at . Internet business solutions throughout the Pacific Northwest. * Small Dog Electronics --Apple Studio Display 17 (graphite): $289!<- NEW! LaCie USB CD-RW 4x/2x/8x with Toast (refurbished): $229! Sony Digital Mavica MVC-FD73 10x zoom on 3.5" floppy: $489! For Details: -- 802/496-7171 * OUTPOST.COM delivers the power to your hands - OVERNIGHT. Outpost.com has Connectix Virtual Game Station and hundreds of gaming titles available today. You'll have them TOMORROW with FREE SHIPPING. OVERNIGHT. * SOFTWARE TRAINING MADE EASY with MacAcademy's Quick Start CD-ROM <- NEW! training products! Many titles available for purchase. Sample our products online and download a catalog at: or call 800/527-1914 * Aladdin Systems: NEW STUFFIT DELUXE 5.5 NOW SHIPPING!! Faster compression & expansion, more file formats! Send self- extracting archives and Zip archives to PCs! SPECIAL DISCOUNT OFFER AT: --------------------------------------------------------------- MailBITS/28-Feb-00 ------------------ **Macintosh Columnist Don Crabb Dies** -- Prolific Macintosh columnist Don Crabb has died at age 44 after having been hospitalized since December with a disease of the pancreas. Movie critic Roger Ebert chose the best words when he described Don as "a big man with boundless energy" in a Chicago Sun-Times obituary. Don's energy enabled him to accomplish a great deal - at the University of Chicago, he served as associate director of graduate and undergraduate computer science, director of instructional laboratories, and a senior lecturer. In his non-academic life, Don wrote for numerous Macintosh publications and Web sites, hosted a Chicago radio show, and appeared regularly on other radio and television shows. We'll all miss him. [ACE] **Eudora 4.3.1 Updater Available** -- Qualcomm has finally released the free updater that upgrades existing copies of Eudora Pro 4.x to Eudora 4.3 in Paid mode, which offers all of Eudora's features without displaying ads. The updater is a 5.9 MB download, and remember that Eudora 4.3 requires a PowerPC-based Mac, so there's no point in downloading it if you're using a 68K-based Mac. See "InterviewBITS with Steve Dorner" in TidBITS-517_ and "Eudora 4.3 Public Beta Adds Free Usage Modes" in TidBITS-509_ for more details on the release. Alan Forkosh reported on TidBITS Talk that when he ran the updater, it first asked for his name and then provided a new registration number, warning that he needed to save that information. On the next launch, Eudora still came up in Sponsored mode, and Alan had to choose Payment & Registration from the Help menu, then enter the name and new registration number to switch to Paid mode. [ACE] **Palm Adds Color, Boosts Memory to Handhelds** -- Palm, Inc. has released the Palm IIIc, a new handheld device sporting a color screen, 8 MB of memory, and a built-in rechargeable lithium ion battery. Although color handhelds have been available for several months for the Windows CE (now renamed Pocket PC) platform, they have been hampered by poor battery performance. Palm's entry into the color spectrum indicates that the company thinks it's done color right. The TFT active-matrix screen is the same size as existing grayscale displays, and supports up to 256 colors. Battery life does take a hit, as expected, with Palm estimating two weeks' worth of power between charges. However, under normal use the battery can be fully recharged after only a few minutes in the device's HotSync cradle/charger. The Palm IIIc is available immediately and retails for $450. Although the IIIc has grabbed the spotlight, Palm also released another handheld, the Palm IIIxe, which features 8 MB of memory and a dark slate-colored case for $250, as well as the $100 Palm Pocket Keyboard, a folding keyboard that collapses to roughly the size of a Palm III. And finally, Palm has added an Unlimited Use Service option to its Palm.net wireless service for Palm VII owners, eliminating the costly per-kilobyte charges for a flat fee of $45 per month. [JLC] **IBM Updates ViaVoice, Dragon Reneges** -- IBM has posted a free 1.0.2 update to its ViaVoice continuous speech recognition software, correcting some annoying minor bugs such as problems with extra spaces, backtracking over errors, and training words with special characters. However, selection glitches remain, plus the program's understanding of how spacing, punctuation, and capitalization relate is also still decidedly primitive. For more comments on ViaVoice, see the TidBITS Talk discussion on the topic. ViaVoice has a street price of $80 from companies like TidBITS sponsors Outpost.com and Aladdin Systems, which includes a noise-cancelling microphone headset. Meanwhile, Dragon Systems has informed its beta testers that it will renege on its May 1999 joint pledge with Apple to bring NaturallySpeaking to the Mac, pending the release of Mac OS X. We and others in TidBITS Talk were skeptical of Dragon's ability to produce a continuous speech recognition product for the current Mac OS; it seems our skepticism was well-founded. (Their Voice Power Pro - an update to Power Secretary - is apparently still available, primarily in the UK market.) And MacSpeech has promised its new iListen and iDictate products, based on the Philips speech recognition engine, for "late spring" (read: aim for July's Macworld Expo and pray). [MAN] **Poll Results: Color Me Pretty** -- In last week's poll we asked what colors you'd like to see Apple use in future Macs. Brushed metal came in as the most popular choice, scoring 27 percent of the vote. Midnight blue took second, with 18 percent, and forest green and ebony slid in ahead of the pack with 11 percent each. The next step is to wait for the next color change and see what Apple has up its sleeve. Note that you can see the final poll results at the GetBITS URL below. [ACE] **Poll Preview: Travelling the Old Road** -- With the release of the iMac, Apple started down a path of eliminating ports and other capabilities that had been standard on Macs since 1987's Macintosh SE. Although this move may have been the best one for the industry as a whole, it has caused consternation for individuals who must deal with existing peripherals. So, if you own or plan to buy a recent Mac, which (if any) old-style capabilities have you added or do you plan to add through an adapter, networked older Mac, or other hardware device? Register your vote on our home page, and tune in next week for our coverage of GeeThree.com's Stealth Serial Port. This poll uses our new capability of being able to accept multiple answers via checkboxes, so you can choose among ADB, Floppy, LocalTalk, SCSI, and Serial. There's actually a sixth answer too: None, which means that the poll is actually asking two questions: if you plan to add any old-style capabilities, and if so, which ones. Obviously, it makes no sense to answer "None and Floppy" so we're relying on your common sense to not do that. We chose to include None among the answers because the results will then provide more interesting information and more people will be able to participate in the poll. [ACE] TidBITS Poll Changes -------------------- by Adam C. Engst Those of you who participate in our weekly polls and quizzes will notice some new functionality this week that should make our polls easier to take and easier to reference. We've also written a FAQ that covers the standard questions we receive about our polls, plus some of the basics of poll design. **Inclusive Answers** -- With some of our previous polls, you had to vote multiple times if you needed to provide multiple answers. We can now generate polls that use checkboxes rather than radio buttons for collecting more than one answer at a time, so you shouldn't need to vote multiple times in such polls. In polls that use checkboxes, you'll also see two different numbers in the results, one for responses and another for respondents, since the number of votes will differ from the number of people who respond. **Past & Popular Polls** -- We've been working on providing access to the results of previous polls and quizzes for some time, and although it turned out to be a complex design question, we eventually gave up on the most problematic ideas and settled on a basic chronological list of past polls, with each one represented by the poll title, question, and the number of respondents. We've also created a page for our most popular polls, so you can see which polls generated the most interest among our readers. **GetBITS Poll URLs** -- Finally, we've created permanent URLs for polls, so if you want to link to a poll, you can do so with no worry that the URL will break at some point in the future. For instance, to see the results of the Macintosh Ownership poll we ran a few weeks ago, use the GetBITS URL below: None of these are huge changes, but we hope the collection will make our polls more enjoyable and interesting. Working Off the Beaten Track, Part 2 ------------------------------------ by Gideon Greenspan As I write this, I'm sitting on a flight from Bangkok to Frankfurt, making my way back to London after spending two months travelling through Asia with my company, Sig Software, operating out of my PowerBook G3. (See "Working Off the Beaten Track" in TidBITS-508_ for the tale of my preparations). I had a wonderful trip - for anyone unsure of their next destination, I heartily recommend the route from Singapore through Malaysia to Thailand. Futuristic cities, tropical islands, tons of culture, lush jungles, world-class diving, great food, rock-bottom prices, and more temples than you can wave a stick of incense at. And if you're not yet tied to spouse or family, I also suggest setting off on your own - you are guaranteed to meet tons of interesting people (both travellers and locals) without even trying. **Surviving & Thriving** -- For those of you in suspense, you'll also be glad to hear that both Sig Software and my PowerBook G3 made it through two months and 3,000 miles overland largely unscathed. Save for a few scratches, the computer worked flawlessly and is as good as new. And every single day, without exception, I was able to answer customers' questions, download and analyze my Web logs, send off license codes and visit my usual smattering of Mac and other news sites. Apart from the day-to-day running of Sig Software, I also managed to create four minor software updates (Email Merge 1.8, Analog Helper 1.1.1, NameCleaner 2.0.1, Cross Platform 1.1.1) and one major upgrade of Drop Drawers, which alone took a month's worth of spare time to complete. Thanks to the efforts of Cletus Waldman, ResExcellence even held a contest and published an interview with yours truly to coincide with the release of Drop Drawers 1.1. **Internet Cafes Abound** -- In the first article, I mentioned that my preference was to connect to the Internet via the Ethernet network in an Internet cafe rather than dialing up myself. My assumption was that an Internet cafe would have a faster link to the Internet than could be achieved using an analog telephone line. In Singapore, the facts bore this out - most Internet cafes had an ISDN connection and for about $3.50 per hour I was able to surf the Internet at that speed. The situation in Malaysia and Thailand was rather different. Without exception, Internet cafes in these countries used a _single_ analog dialup connection (usually 56 Kbps, sometimes 33.6 Kbps) for an entire network of 10 or 20 PCs. So they weren't any faster than dialing up myself and had the potential to be an order of magnitude slower. Fortunately, most Internet cafes doubled as network gaming centres and were filled with kids more interested in shooting each other than surfing the Web. The few locals or travellers using the Internet were usually glued to an IRC session or accessing email from Hotmail accounts. All this meant that I was often able to steal around 80 percent of the dialup bandwidth for myself. Nonetheless, there were occasions when I had to work with an intolerably slow connection - the record was set by one cafe in Lopburi, Thailand, where I could sustain no more than 20 bytes/second to the U.S. - it took 45 minutes just to check my email! Prices varied in direct proportion to the number of travellers around. In non-tourist areas, access in both Malaysia and Thailand was charged at around $0.50 per hour. But anywhere near traveller guesthouses, you could expect to pay at least $1.25 per hour. In central Bangkok, some places were charging as much as $7.50 per hour, but more reasonable places were often just around the corner. In isolated tourist areas such as the tropical island of Pulau Tioman off the east coast of Malaysia, costs also rose to about $5 per hour. Finding Internet cafes was far easier than I had imagined. The Internet Cafe Guide I downloaded and turned into a database proved to be a complete waste of time - to find an Internet cafe, all I ever had to do was walk into a shopping area and search around. Perhaps one in twenty Internet cafes had registered with the Guide - the one time I used it to find a Bangkok Internet cafe listed as providing free access for laptops, I was disappointed to learn that they'd cancelled the offer and didn't even allow laptops to use their connection. One skill I learnt was persuasion. Most Internet cafes were staffed by people who knew little about networking protocols - when I showed them my laptop, they usually gave me a look of ignorance mixed with fear, shaking their heads and muttering "Cannot do." The way to get around this was to walk in with the laptop inside my bag and begin by asking: "Can I plug in my laptop?" Invariably they would not understand my Queen's English and so simply nod their heads, thinking I was asking whether I could use the Internet. Then I would take a look at the network settings on a PC (right-click on Network Neighborhood, choose Properties) to check whether I could plug in, and only then take out the PowerBook. By the time they realised what I was doing, I was already connected to their Ethernet network and configuring TCP/IP. Generally feeling uncertain about it, they would watch curiously as I completed the setup, while I pointed out what I was doing and said, "Is OK - I do many places - same same," indicating that it makes no difference to the network whether it's my computer or theirs at a particular IP address. Most of the time, these places were running TCP/IP using fixed addresses, so I simply had to copy the IP address of the computer I was borrowing the connection from, along with the subnet mask, router address and DNS addresses. Some cafes were running DHCP, which made things even easier, since Apple's TCP/IP software has solid DHCP support. But about one in five cafes were running curious configurations, where the IP address and subnet mask were specified, but the router and DNS servers were not. I still don't know how they worked, but I suspect they used some mixture of TCP/IP and Windows networking protocols. In any event, as soon as I saw those settings, I knew the cafe was a lost cause and it was time to search out the next one, leaving them with a brief explanation. "Sorry - no can use." The simple design and multi-configuration support of the TCP/IP control panel was a great help throughout - I collected around 30 configurations and was able to switch back and forth between them easily. Although its functions have now been rolled into Anarchie, Stairways Software's Mac TCP Watcher also proved to be indispensable, allowing me to watch the bytes going in and out and check what level of packet loss I was experiencing. Although it often locked up my system when the network was disconnected, Command-Option Escape was always enough to get it to let go. I also experimented with Sustainable Softworks' OT Advanced Tuner but found it difficult to tell whether it was making a difference. **Dial Up Access** -- Compared to access in Internet cafes, my experiences in using the Gric global roaming dialup service were generally less positive. I'm guessing that this was usually due to technical problems at the host ISP in the countries I was travelling, although it was often hard to tell. All the access numbers provided in the Gric dialer existed; however, I often found that I was unable to log in at the specified number using my roaming login and password. For Singapore, there were only two access numbers listed, but since Singapore is a city-state, that still meant I had local telephone access anywhere in the country. Although one of the numbers failed to recognise my login, the other worked fine. In Malaysia, there were a few numbers listed, but the one I often used belonged to Telekom Malaysia, the national telecommunications carrier. They provide a special number (1515) for Internet access, charged at local (or near-local) telephone rates no matter where in the country the call is coming from. This worked correctly with my login almost all the time, although there were a couple of days when it failed. So, Malaysia gets good marks for dial-up access. My experience in Thailand, however, was very disappointing. You may remember in my first article that one of the main reasons I chose the Gric global roaming network over iPass was that it offered local POPs in over 50 Thai towns. Unfortunately, almost all of these belonged to CS Internet (Thailand's biggest ISP) and none actually allowed me to dial in. CS technical support cited "temporary technical problems" which prevented non-CS users from dialing in. I forwarded their reply to Gric, who said they would check it out and remove CS Internet from their phonebook. So I ended up sticking purely to Internet cafes while in Thailand. CS Internet goes to the bottom of the Internet-roaming class. The Gric software itself was OK, although its 25-second launching delay was a little frustrating. Furthermore, if I wanted to interrupt the dialing process or try a different number, there was no way to do so without force-quitting the program (which would then leave the modem port connection open, causing subsequent problems). Instead, I had to wait a minute or two until the Gric dialer had been told by the Remote Access control panel that the connection had failed. Despite these annoyances, it proved stable and dealt very well with all necessary dialing prefixes and codes. **Accessing the Internet: Best & Worst** -- The best Internet access I had was down the road from the Wat Umong monastery, near Chiang Mai in northern Thailand. I wanted to spend a week in meditation retreat at a Buddhist monastery, but couldn't do one of the usual courses since they expect you to go totally incommunicado for at least 10 days. Although I can understand that seeking liberation from the eternal cycle of suffering through "vipanassa" insight meditation practice doesn't mix too well with running a shareware business, I doubt my customers would take too kindly to my gaining enlightenment at the expense of their technical support. But then I found Wat Umong - a quiet monastery with beautiful forested grounds, an English language library, a small open zoo, a beautiful lake, and some English-speaking monks whom I got to know. I'm not mentioning Wat Umong to revel in their hospitality, but because there were four Internet cafes within 10 minutes' walk, each of which offered access at under $0.40 per hour. As you can imagine, at that price, even the monks could afford to use them! The worst experience I had was in the Kuala Tahan village inside the Taman Negara jungle in central Malaysia. There was one Internet-enabled computer, but the unfriendly owner completely refused to let me dial up myself and refused to answer my request for explanation. So then I persuaded a shopkeeper to let me pay him to use his phone line for around $0.10 per minute, which was expensive but not obscenely so. However, about a minute into my call the next day, he decided to hike the rate up by a factor of five and my protests were met by him unceremoniously unplugging the phone line. It seems he saw an opportunity to screw a tourist for a lot of money and was upset when he didn't succeed. In the end, I had to go across the river to the hotel-style resort and pay a rather hefty $0.30 per minute to dial up. For those few days, I restricted my Internet access just to checking and sending email, so I was usually done within three or four minutes. I guess I was wrong to think I'd find reasonably priced Internet access inside the oldest rainforest in the world. **The International State of the Mac** -- While I was traveling, it was interesting to take a look at how Apple and the Macintosh were faring in three reasonably economically important South East Asian countries. I am glad to say that Apple has a fairly visible presence in computer shopping centres and areas. Many desktop publishing shops seemed to have Mac hardware and I even saw one iMac set up in an Internet cafe in Bangkok! However, in more out-of-the-way places, there seemed to be less of a Mac presence. One restaurant owner in Chiang Mai told me how he'd found it impossible to get reasonably priced technical support for his PowerBook 540 so he had to go out and buy a PC. I offered to help, but by then it was too late. One thing is for sure - the release of the iMac and the iBook have revived the Macintosh as a desirable platform. Whenever I got talking to Internet cafe owners, they were asking me about new models which they had obviously heard about. Furthermore, they all seemed to know what a "G3" was and were impressed when I told them that my PowerBook had one inside - and they often remarked at the speed at which Web pages downloaded and displayed. **Affecting My Travels** -- Amidst all the above, you might forget that the purpose of my trip was to see some of the world, not connect to the Internet every day. So how was my trip affected? If you've ever been backpacking, you'll know the usual variables: fatigue, hunger, time since last shower, drinking water remaining, cash remaining, how badly you need the toilet, general health status, distance from hostel, and, most importantly, days of clean underwear remaining. To this I added: charge remaining in PowerBook batteries, time since email last checked, and number of email messages awaiting reply. This might sound as if I had no time for enjoying myself, but nothing could be further from the truth. The normal running of Sig Software only takes about half an hour per day since I have the standard processes automated (thanks to AppleScript - certainly one of Apple's secret weapons). But if I had extra time, I could do some programming - in fact, it was a boon having something productive to do on long bus journeys where there were no other travellers for company. As I had feared, the PowerBook's weight was sometimes a burden. After checking into a new hostel, I usually felt comfortable hiding the computer under my mattress, tying it to the bed with a security cable. But some places just didn't feel secure enough, so I carried the PowerBook with me all day in my smaller backpack, resulting in some rather sore shoulders. The sooner Apple reintroduces a subnotebook, the better - in the meantime, living with a PowerBook G3 can be done at the expense of some physical comfort. The best decision I made in preparation turned out to be using a padded FedEx box instead of a normal notebook carrying case. Apart from the size savings, the main advantage was that I was able to pull out and drop the PowerBook into the box inside my bag with the minimum of hassle. When the bus came to my stop, I was able to jump off even though I'd be working just a moment before. All the other bits and pieces proved useful too, with the exception of the Ethernet crossover cable. Although I doubt the security cable was actually tested by a thief (I probably wouldn't know if it had), it gave me peace of mind when out and about. Battery life was sufficient for every single journey I made except the 12-hour outbound flight from Frankfurt to Singapore. With a lithium-ion battery installed in both slots, life averaged around eight hours - not bad, considering I'd never enabled the Reduced Processor Speed setting. (I was frustrated using a 333 MHz computer at around one-quarter speed). The Processor Cycling setting (which I did leave enabled) meant that the processor speed was automatically reduced when the PowerBook was waiting for a user event such as typing. One side benefit of travelling with my PowerBook was that I could listen to my favourite music, which I'd encoded on the hard disk in MP3 format before I left. Many a long journey was eased by soothing tones through earphones. Even better, by using the auto wakeup feature in conjunction with MP3 playback, my PowerBook could serve as a musical alarm clock, which proved essential for catching early morning connections. If you want to do the same, remember to leave your PowerBook hatch open and switch off Password Security, or it will refuse to wake up at the specified time (I learnt that lesson the hard way!). And did you know it makes a great bedside light too? Being part of the backpacker community, yet also travelling with $3,000 worth of computing equipment, made for an unusual mix. Other travellers were often surprised when I pulled out a laptop on a bus journey, but once I explained what I was doing, they seemed to take it in stride. Since I spent about half the time hooked up with one or another traveller, I was able to set Outlook Express 5 up to let them access their Hotmail email accounts offline. However, Outlook Express's support of Hotmail worked intermittently at best, so I sometimes had to send their messages from my own account. One of the most amusing incidents of my trip had to be waking up in the grotty dorm of the Eastern Heritage Hostel in Melaka, southern Malaysia, and spotting a guy in the room wearing a Macintosh t-shirt. His name was Chris Langford, and he manages the Macintosh network at the Oregon Health Sciences University. After engaging him in conversation, it turned out he had heard of some of my programs and had even purchased one a few years back! I searched through my email archives and even found some correspondence we had had way back in December 1996. If that doesn't prove that it's a small world, I don't know what does. **Full Circle** -- Would I do it again? Without hesitation. Although travelling with Sig Software wasn't quite as good as travelling with no cares in the world, it was a darn sight better than sitting at home working full time. If your business is run primarily over the Internet, there's little to stop you going where I went and taking it with you. I think my next destination will be China, but it will have to wait until Internet access in the country improves. I'll report on that trip when and if it happens, but in the meantime, if you're interested in seeing some of the sights I took in while away, check out the page below. $$ Non-profit, non-commercial publications may reprint articles if full credit is given. Others please contact us. We don't guarantee accuracy of articles. Caveat lector. 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