TidBITS#632/03-Jun-02
=====================
Have you ever wanted to pilot NASA's Mars Rover from the comfort
of your Mac? Matt Neuburg comes close with Plantraco's Desktop
Rover and Telecommander software. Back on Earth, Microsoft today
released Microsoft Office X Service Release 1 - Tonya Engst has
the details of what's new (and what's not included). We also note
the releases of Virtual PC 5.0.3, Eudora 5.1.1 (now running under
Mac OS X), ConceptDraw 1.8, and Spring Cleaning 5.0.
Topics:
MailBITS/03-Jun-02
Examining Microsoft Office X Service Release 1
Desktop Rover Scores a Hit
<http://www.tidbits.com/tb-issues/TidBITS-632.html>
<ftp://ftp.tidbits.com/issues/2002/TidBITS#632_03-Jun-02.etx>
Copyright 2002 TidBITS Electronic Publishing. All rights reserved.
Information: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Comments: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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MailBITS/03-Jun-02
------------------
**Virtual PC 5.0.3 Released** -- Connectix has updated Virtual PC
to version 5.0.3, adding new features and fixing bugs. The
program's new Password Protection feature prevents users from
modifying a virtual machine's settings, exiting full-screen mode,
or creating or deleting virtual machines. Virtual PC 5.0.3 also
adds Sockets-Based Shared Networking (SBSN) under Mac OS X,
improving access between computers on a network, and adds more
control over COM port usage in the virtual machine. Addressing
performance issues, Connectix also added CPU usage controls,
which enable you to dictate how much processor time is used
when Virtual PC is the foreground or background application.
And for users whose keyboards lack a forward-delete key (such
as PowerBooks and iBooks), a new Type CTRL-ALT-DEL menu item
is available when Windows locks up. The 5.0.3 update is a free
update for owners of Virtual PC 5.0 and later, and is a 10.1 MB
download. [JLC]
<http://www.connectix.com/products/vpc5m.html>
<http://www.connectix.com/support/vpcm_online.html>
**Eudora 5.1.1 Finally Ships for Mac OS X** -- Qualcomm has
released the long-awaited final version of Eudora 5.1.1 for
both Mac OS 9 and Mac OS X. Eudora users still running Mac OS 9
will appreciate a few small bug fixes, but the big news is the
availability of Eudora for Mac OS X. Don't expect major changes -
what you'll get under Mac OS X is almost all of Eudora's
capabilities in a carbonized application. One important
change with Mac OS X: Eudora is now a package containing all
the ancillary files and folders for plug-ins and user dictionaries
(Control-click the Eudora application, choose Show Package
Contents, and open the Contents/MacOS folder for access to the
Eudora Stuff folder). Eudora 5.1.1 is a free update for those who
paid for Eudora during or after April of 2001, while upgrades for
those who bought Eudora before then cost $30, and new versions
cost $40: details are on the Eudora Web site. Of course, you can
still use all of Eudora's features for free in Sponsored mode with
ads, or a reduced set of features without ads in Lite mode. Eudora
5.1.1 for Mac OS X is a 4.0 MB download; 4.3 MB for Mac OS 9. If
you're already using Eudora, you can get links to the installers
and documentation by clicking "Find the latest update to Eudora"
from the Payment & Registration command on the Help menu: if
you're using Paid mode, the page will also tell you whether
you need to pay for the 5.1.1 upgrade. [ACE]
<http://www.eudora.com/email/>
<http://www.eudora.com/download/eudora/mac/5.1.1/ReleaseNotes_Classic.txt>
<http://www.eudora.com/email/upgrade/>
**ConceptDraw 1.8 Adds XML Support** -- CS Odessa has released
version 1.8 of its charting and diagramming products ConceptDraw
and ConceptDraw Professional (see "Make the Connection with
ConceptDraw" in TidBITS-553_). The major new feature is round-trip
import and export of ConceptDraw documents in XML, enabling you
to render a graphical document in an easily transportable and
modifiable text format. Other improvements include enhanced
finding and replacing of text, an easy way to check for new
versions of the application, page-specific links between
ConceptDraw documents, new shortcuts for zooming documents,
improved Copy/Paste support, better support for Mac OS X
interface standards and file types, and more. The update is
free to registered users; ConceptDraw 1.8 is a 2.6 MB download,
whereas ConceptDraw Professional is a 3.0 MB download. [ACE]
<http://www.conceptdraw.com/en/products/cdr.shtml>
<http://www.conceptdraw.com/en/products/CDProfessional/>
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=06179>
<http://www.conceptdraw.com/en/resources/18xload.php>
**Aladdin Releases Spring Cleaning 5.0** -- Aladdin Systems has
released Spring Cleaning 5.0, adding a number of new features
to the company's system clean-up and uninstaller utility. New in
Spring Cleaning 5.0 is support for drag & drop to limit searches
(useful on today's Mac OS X volumes with hundreds of thousands
of files), a system menu for Mac OS X, support for actions that
require root access in Mac OS X, improved Web cookie management,
more customizable searches, and more. Aladdin claims improved
performance under Mac OS X, but many actions under Mac OS X are
still extremely lengthy. Spring Cleaning 5.0 costs $50, with
upgrades from previous versions available at $30 (the same price
is available to owners of many other Mac disk utilities). [ACE]
<http://www.aladdinsys.com/springcleaning/>
<http://www.aladdinsys.com/store/upgrades.html>
Examining Microsoft Office X Service Release 1
----------------------------------------------
by Tonya Engst <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Microsoft has released the first major update to Microsoft Office
X in the form of Office X Service Release 1 (SR1). The update, an
11.9 MB download, updates each primary Office program (Excel,
Entourage, PowerPoint, and Excel) from version 10.0 to 10.1. The
ReadMe files for SR1 enumerate many changes ranging from specific
fixes (you can now type accented and other special characters
reliably) to expanded features that did not survive the transition
from Office 2001 to X (pasting in custom toolbar buttons) to
improvements in speed and stability.
<http://www.microsoft.com/mac/DOWNLOAD/OFFICEX/OfficeX_SR1.asp>
Microsoft also released MSN Messenger 3.0, which adds the
capability to transfer files, import and export contact
information, and create groups of contacts. This version
also updates the interface to more closely resemble Mac OS X's
Aqua look and feel. MSN Messenger is a free update, and a
2.3 MB download.
<http://www.microsoft.com/mac/DOWNLOAD/MISC/msn_messenger3.asp>
**Bug Fixes** -- The Service Release ReadMe files list a number of
fixes. For instance, you will no longer experience "out of memory"
errors when trying to open an Excel X file in Excel 98. Plus, you
can now print from Excel X with a setting other than "High" chosen
in Excel's Page Setup. And in a fix especially welcome to anyone
doing PowerPoint presentations from a PowerBook or iBook,
Microsoft has squashed a crashing bug that could appear when
waking a laptop that went to sleep while connected to a second
monitor or projector.
**Improved Database Support** -- Microsoft has improved Office X's
FileMaker support - you need not have the entire FileMaker
database on a local machine to work with it; instead it can be
on a server. ODBC support has returned as well, though it is not
everything that ODBC users have wanted. The 10.1 version of Excel
includes the necessary hooks to talk to Microsoft Query, the
software necessary to create ODBC queries, but you need the
separate Microsoft Query for Excel X to make it work. Microsoft
plans to release Microsoft Query for Excel X at some point, but
it's not in Service Release 1.
However, you can refresh queries created in some other version of
Excel in Excel X, assuming you have a driver installed. The gotcha
there is that Microsoft no longer supplies ODBC drivers; they
suggest that people purchase drivers elsewhere, such as OpenLink
Software. It also might be worth checking out ODBC Router from
August Software, and other ODBC drivers may be available.
<http://www.openlinksw.com/>
<http://www.augsoft.com/>
In other database news, the database file that holds a user's
entire collection of Entourage X email, contacts, and calendar
events can now grow as large as 4 GB instead of the previous 2 GB
limit. (That file, in case you want to locate it to back it up,
lives in your user folder in /Documents/Microsoft User Data/Office
X Identities/Main Identity/Database. If you named your identity
something other than Main Identity (or have multiple identities),
navigate to the appropriate folder within the Office X Identities
folder.)
**Palm Synchronization and Transparent Fills** -- Palm
synchronization for Entourage did not make it into SR1; it will
be available on 15-Jul-02, according to Microsoft. Another fix
you won't find is the capability to print the slick, transparently
filled chart objects that the Office X press materials emphasize
as an example of how Office X takes advantage of Mac OS X's Quartz
display technology. Transparent objects with simple, single-shade
transparencies should print from Office programs, but as soon as
you apply a gradient (as you must in Excel X), the object prints
solid, not transparent. Though this is a minor problem overall,
as a press person who blindly jumped on the "wow-that's-a-great-
feature" bandwagon, I was chagrined to discover this limitation.
(The clumsy workaround is to take a screenshot and print it;
instead, I recommend making more chart elements visible by
rotating the chart or changing the series order.) Microsoft
claims a fix may come in a future update to Mac OS X.
**Stability and Performance** -- While using the Office X SR1 beta
versions of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint (but not Entourage) on
a 733 MHz Power Mac G4, I noticed fewer outright crashes. In
addition, under the 10.0.0 version of Office, I often found
myself unable to switch to an Office application (especially
Excel) by clicking an interface element, such as a toolbar or
window; instead, I had to click the application's icon in the
Dock. This problem has disappeared for the most part, though
not entirely.
I haven't noticed speed improvements in Excel or Word, though in
my small and medium-sized documents performance was already quite
good. The ReadMe files suggest that Excel's speed should remain
the same, whereas Word's speed should pick up in only a few
specific situations such as scrolling in long documents.
However, Microsoft specifically touts speed improvements for
PowerPoint 10.1, so I decided to compare a few real-life files
between PowerPoint 10.0 and 10.1. I solicited files from a few
family members, plus a few people who posted PowerPoint complaints
on the Internet. Testing files in this way can be incredibly
time-consuming, but it can also reveal information that I'd
never stumble upon otherwise.
My youngest sister sent a presentation created for a college
assignment. Slides with larger graphics loaded somewhat slowly
in 10.0, but 10.1 handled them smoothly. My father's slides had
scads of complex graphics illustrating data warehousing, and these
graphics did indeed load extremely slowly in PowerPoint 10.0.
Happily, Microsoft's improvements enabled PowerPoint 10.1 to
handle them efficiently; it moved from being annoyingly slow
to offering a smooth user experience.
However, other files suggest PowerPoint could stand another round
of improvements. My other sister shared a presentation about
chestnut tree growth, which contained many embedded Excel charts,
each based on four columns of data. She noted that PowerPoint 2001
couldn't even open the presentation, and that instead of
PowerPoint 98 on the Mac, she uses a Windows machine because
switching between Excel and PowerPoint to edit the charts takes
too long. PowerPoint 10.0 opened her file but ran into trouble
with the charts; I expect the actual problem relates to OLE
(Object Linking and Embedding, Microsoft's method of sharing
data between Office applications). Switching into Excel after
double-clicking a chart took about ten seconds, as did returning
to PowerPoint. Editing the chart in Excel was unacceptably slow,
with several-second pauses just to open a menu. Office X 10.1
performed slightly better - the time to switch between PowerPoint
and Excel was a few seconds faster, and editing in Excel was okay.
Someone using Office X 10.0 would welcome this improvement, but
I still can't recommend that my sister switch to Office X, given
this sluggish behavior and her need to switch fluidly between
Excel and PowerPoint.
Another source sent a 40-slide presentation that his company
exported to a QuickTime movie to play in a public kiosk. Most
of the slides contained a few graphics, which both PowerPoint
versions handled smoothly. Three of the slides contained QuickTime
movies, each about 30 seconds in length. Though performance in
PowerPoint was fine, exporting to a QuickTime movie (which
Microsoft terms "PowerPoint Movie" format) took about ten minutes
in both versions of PowerPoint X. Removing the QuickTime movies
didn't decrease the exporting time. Other presentations exported
much more quickly (about 30 seconds for one of my father's 33-
slide shows); presumably something about the original
presentation's graphics is causing the delay.
Further, though the necessary QuickTime movies were in the same
folder as the PowerPoint file, neither version of PowerPoint X
could find them or recognize them as QuickTime movies until I
reinserted them by hand. In limited testing, failing to recognize
movie files appears to be a general problem, perhaps related to
creating the presentation under a previous version of the Mac OS,
and perhaps similar to a problem in Office 2001 that Microsoft
fixed in Service Release 1 for Office 2001.
**All Together Now** -- Office X Service Release 1 also installs
fixes previously made available by the Office v.X Combined Updater
10.0.03, which in turn brought together the Entourage X Hotmail
Update, the Network Security Update (summarized in Microsoft
Security Bulletin MS02-002), and the URL Security Update
(explained in Microsoft Security Bulletin MS02-019).
<http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/MS02-002.asp>
<http://www.microsoft.com/security/security_bulletins/ms02019_mac.asp>
Service Release 1 doesn't fix every problem in Office, but it does
represent a decent effort on Microsoft's part to chisel away some
pesky problems. I do recommend installing the service release -
your Office experience is unlikely to change profoundly, but
you'll hopefully avoid future problems.
[Among many other projects, Tonya Engst just completed a big chunk
of the manuscript for Office X for Macintosh: The Missing Manual,
which should be available shortly.]
<http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/offxtmm/>
Desktop Rover Scores a Hit
--------------------------
by Matt Neuburg <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
The Desktop Rover, from Plantraco, is four inches long, charmingly
cute, and utterly without purpose. It does have some relevance to
Mac OS X - that's the excuse for describing it in TidBITS - but
just barely. The fact is, the Desktop Rover is a toy. And, if I
may admit this without damage to TidBITS's reputation for
sobriety, it's fun.
<http://www.plantraco.com/product_dtr.html>
**Let's Get Physical** -- The $60 Desktop Rover is a tiny tank,
about the size of your palm, an inch-and-a-half in height,
and slightly heavy. On each side of it are four wheels and a
horizontal guide, with rubber treads running round them. One of
the wheels on each side is a gear, to drive the tread; each gear
is driven by a small electric motor. Each motor is either going
forwards, going backwards, or stopped, and you steer by combining
these: if both motors are going forwards, the Rover goes forwards;
if one motor is going forwards and the other is stopped or going
backwards, the Rover turns; and so forth.
The Rover is quite peppy. It goes 10 feet in less than 30 seconds,
and is strong enough to climb a steep slope, such as your car
windshield. The main obstacles it can't negotiate are bad footing
such as grass, where it can't get traction, and sudden steep
elevation changes, not because it can't climb them, but because
when it does, its short length causes it to assume a near-vertical
position, sufficient to flip it over helpless on its back - a
one-inch-thick book lying flat on the floor is too much for it.
Rising from the Rover is a six-inch piece of insulated wire -
the antenna. Yes, the Rover is driven by remote control. The
transmitter is about the size and shape of a cigarette pack,
and has two levers which you press forwards or backwards to
control each motor. There's also a third lever for making the
Rover "shoot." I'll talk more about that later.
**The Computer Connection** -- The way this relates to Mac OS X,
providing me with an excuse to obtain one of these little goodies
for free so I can write about it in TidBITS, is as follows.
Separate from the Rover, you can also obtain for $70 a CD-ROM
and a small cord with a USB connector at one end. From the CD,
you install software, called Telecommander, onto your computer;
then you run the cord out the USB port and into the remote
transmitter, and start up Telecommander. Now, instead of the
levers, the transmitter is controlled by the software.
It's fairly simple software, but not trivial. Nine buttons
represent the nine possible combinations of motor behavior - both
motors forwards, one motor forwards and the other off, and so on.
In "manual mode" you simply click a button and the Rover responds
briefly, then you click another button, and so on. In "default
mode," clicking a button causes its action to appear as a tile
in a large composition area. A sequence of tiles in this area
represents a sequence of actions you want the Rover to perform.
The tiles can be rearranged, cut and pasted, deleted, and so
forth; each tile also has a time value, which you can edit.
Pressing the "play" button causes your sequence to be sent to
the Rover; you can also save a sequence as a "macro," where a
single tile represents the entire sequence.
Now, to call this programming, or even educational, would be
something of a stretch. There are no tiles for looping and
branching, so all you can do is play your sequence of tiles
straight through. Nevertheless, our scientific test subject, a
13-year-old boy abducted from a neighbor's house, was entranced.
He understood the program instantly, and promptly spent nearly an
hour writing and refining an assigned sequence to negotiate a
small course laid out on the floor with found objects. He also had
a great time just playing outside with the Rover, making it climb
around on dirt mounds and such. The result was a sizeable portion
of the afternoon not spent watching television or playing electric
guitar. After consultation with the boy's parents, I am officially
authorized to declare this toy a resounding success.
Telecommander, by the way, is a Java application, which is why
it requires Mac OS X. It comes with all the baggage that being
a Java application usually entails: it's sluggish even on a 600
MHz PowerPC G3-based Macintosh, so that simple actions like
selecting a tile or editing its time value take forever; and
of course it has a non-standard interface, with the menus inside
the window. On the other hand, it's cross-platform; I installed it
on my neighbor's Windows NT box and it ran identically to my Mac.
A nice feature is that the software is self-updating; if you're
connected to the Internet when the software starts up, it checks
to see if a new version of itself is available, and downloads it
if so. Unfortunately this feature isn't clearly documented and
is purely automatic; there is no Check For Updates menu item.
**Other Extras** -- Also available from Plantraco is a miniature
video camera module; you snap the upper half off the Rover and
snap the camera module in its place, adding perhaps an inch to the
Rover's height. The camera broadcasts a UHF signal (channel 16 or
19) that can be received by any nearby television. Thus, you could
watch the television and control the Rover remotely without being
able to see the Rover itself; in theory you could even feed the
television signal into your computer and control the Rover from
Telecommander, for an all-computer experience. Unfortunately, my
influence as a reviewer was insufficient to merit a free sample of
this module (my description of it is based on Plantraco's
pamphlets and QuickTime movies). That's probably just as well,
since I've no office mates to send the Rover round to spy on -
though I could easily envision strapping a flashlight to the
assembly and sending it down some gopher holes in my back yard.
Another feature I didn't get to try, because it requires a minimum
of two Rovers, is the built-in laser tag game. The idea here is
evidently that you shouldn't be the only person in the office
goofing off - everyone should get involved. The third lever on
the transmitter, you may recall, controls the Rover's "gun," which
makes a noise like some Star Trek weapon, but is actually an
infrared light. If this light strikes another Rover, that Rover
emits a "hit" sound. Transmitters and Rovers come in one of four
different frequencies, so a four-way battle is possible. The rules
of the game are dictated by the Rover's on-board electronics:
after six shots, you must pause to "reload" by pulling the gun
lever backwards; if you try to shoot faster than one shot per
second, all your ammunition is expended instantly, requiring a
reload; and if you receive 10 hits, your Rover is disabled until
you physically power it off and on again. As the documentation
notes, the penalty for losing the battle is thus that you must
get up out of your chair to reset the Rover.
Yet another extra feature, which I did get to try, is a kind
of doubly remote control. It turns out that the Telecommander
software consists of two threads: the user interface thread,
and an invisible background thread that communicates with the
USB port. This background thread is actually a tiny TCP server
running on port 1111; when the user asks to send a command to
the Rover, the user interface thread functions as a TCP client
to communicate with the server thread. The implication of this
factored architecture is that you can drive the Rover using
Telecommander software on a different computer, over the Internet!
(Unfortunately, Plantraco does not publish the protocol used, so
you can't write your own client software.)
I don't have two Internet connections in my house, so instead I
made a miniature network by assigning my computers fake IP numbers
and connecting them directly via Ethernet. On the machine with the
USB cable running to the transmitter, I started up Telecommander
and put it into "server mode," disabling the user interface. On
the second machine, I started up Telecommander and put it into
"remote mode," telling it the IP number of the other computer.
Sure enough, I was then able to drive the Rover from the second
machine - the commands were going across the network to the first
machine's copy of Telecommander and from there out the USB port.
You can test this feature yourself, right now, through one of
Plantraco's Web pages. When you click the "Care for a Test Drive?"
option, another page with a Java applet loads, and you are shown
a webcam view of a Rover at Plantraco's offices. If someone else
is playing, you're put in a queue; when your turn comes, eight
control buttons will appear. If you're lucky and no one else is
playing, the control buttons appear right away. Press a button and
wait a couple of seconds; the Rover will respond and you'll see
a new image showing its current position. It's fun and easy. This
Web-based Java applet is not the same as the home version - it
involves a webcam, and it's using HTTP through a Web server and
a browser, not two copies of Telecommander - but it gives you the
flavor of controlling a Rover across the Internet. To use the home
version to control a Rover you can't see, I suppose you could run
a webcam and Apache on the server machine, and the client machine
could run Telecommander and a web browser, as described by Adam
in "Driving FireWire Webcams in Mac OS X" in TidBITS-619_; but
I didn't have a webcam to try it with.
<http://www.plantraco.com/telecommander.html>
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=06742>
**Icing on the Cake** -- A toy is largely imagination, and the
Desktop Rover is no exception. It's not a Mars Rover, it doesn't
go very fast, the remote-control "communication" is almost
ridiculously simple, and you're (probably) neither a NASA
scientist nor an astronaut. Nevertheless, there's something
alluring about the Rover. I don't know what component of our
psychological makeup subconsciously causes us to want to animate
small scurrying things, but the Rover certainly brings it into
play; the darned thing is so cute as it huffs and puffs its way
towards you across the room and stops at your feet. Moreover,
the illusion that the Rover somehow represents something larger
and more technologically sophisticated is delightfully perpetuated
by Plantraco's marvelous sense of humor and of design.
For example, both the Rover's top half and the transmitter are
made out of translucent blue plastic, suggesting the original
iMac's computer iconography. The transmitter is covered with
pictures of the Mars surface, it's inscribed with a warning
"For Use on Planet Earth Only," and its on/off switch is labelled
"Groove" and "Snooze." The box, which describes the Rover as
"Yoga for the 21st Century Ubergeek," is covered with true but
somehow amazing exclamatory claims as to the Rover's powers
(such as "Explore the Alien Landscape around Your Home!"),
and contains photos of several mad scientists, along with the
obligatory gorgeous babe who is draped head to toe in an astronaut
suit so that only her eyes are visible. The Telecommander software
starts up with some appropriate interterrestrial launch noises,
and while you're using it, unnecessary technical-sounding status
messages scroll by, some real, some bogus:
Mouse clicked
nautical miles (34,584 km)
Lexan shield
High Gain Antenna (HGA) on
Starting client communications
Opening
Socket[addr=localhost/127.0.0.1,port=1111,localport=49352]
Length is 25
Data is 10
Finished writing data 10
Reading acknowledgment
Roger. Good morning.
In short, Plantraco gives you a feeling that they're having a
great time, and that they want you to have one too. While you're
having a great time you might want to look into some of their
other products; they also make a remote-controlled fan-driven
helium-filled mylar blimp that can float from room to room,
optionally carrying a miniature camera so you can spy on your
office-mates. I want one.
$$
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