Network cabling I have had the computers in the house supplied with network cards and a crude sort of Windows Peer to Peer network setup for a couple of years. It was crude because if I wanted to connect any two computers I had to stretch out up to 75 feet of network patch cable through the living room, up the stairs and across the hall. That was for the upstairs computer and the main downstairs computer. To connect other computers I had to transverse other rooms. Then everyone including our bird had to be careful not to get their feet caught in the cable. I include the bird since the cable passed right by her cage, and when we let her out to sit on top of her cage, she sometimes would find the cable irresistible. Luckily she never did more than superficial damage to it.

Finally after getting a new Gateway, I decided something had to be done. After going to Home Depot and purchasing a 500 foot roll of Category 5 network cable, a collection of 8 wire modular jacks, outlet boxes, cover plates, 3/4 inch PVC conduit and necessary fittings, I was ready for the big job. And it was a big job, because any time I have to crawl around under my house and go into the attic in the same day, I have had about as much as I can take.

I ran the conduit from the outside wall of the room where my main computer is, under the house for about 30 feet, then up another outside wall inside the sheet metal channel containing the air conditioner’s refrigerant lines into the living room attic. Once in the attic I dispensed with the conduit. Of course, there were wall outlet boxes to be installed on each end of the run and the job of pulling the cable through the conduit from one outlet box to the other. To finish the job, I had to connect the eight wires of the cable to the modular jocks on each end.

I actually pulled three network cables through the conduit at the same time, since I wanted one cable for the Windows network, one for a direct connection to the cable modem which is downstairs, and an extra cable for the future. The total time for the job was six hours. And if you think I am a slow worker, I invite you to come and crawl around under my house and then fish wires from under the roof at the edge of the attic.

USB Network Adapter You might ask why I wanted a separate network cable to connect the upstairs computer to the cable modem when Windows 98 SE allows you to share an Internet connection. That is, if I were running Win 98 SE on the computer attached to the cable modem, I could then set up things so that any other computer on the Windows Peer-to-Peer network could also connect to the Internet using this same connection. Well, I had used proxy server software in the past (see http://www.tpcug.org/reviews/december97.html) and wasn’t particular enamored with it and thought that I would simply like to be able to switch the cable modem between different computers by switching the network cable that was plugged into the modem. We rarely have two computers on the Internet at the same time anyway. And in those rare cases, one of the computers can use the regular NetCom dial-up connection.

And this is where I got the idea of using a USB network adapter to provide a second network connection to whatever computer I wanted to connect to the cable modem. Actually I must thank Larry Anders for first bringing my attention to the fact that there were such things as USB network adapters.

Now, in the computer connected to the cable modem I have two network cards installed, one for the cable modem and one for the regular Windows network. In the past if I wanted to connect, say, my laptop to the cable modem, I had to reconfigure the properties of its one network card before connecting it to the cable modem. That worked fine and allowed me to do some large Windows updates to the laptop software, but it was a little trouble. With the installation of the USB modem on the laptop that has all changed. I set the properties of the USB network adapter to what the RoadRunner cable modem wants to see, and, when I desire to use RoadRunner on the laptop, I simply unplug the connection from the cable modem to the desktop computer and connect it to the USB network adapter attached to the laptop. I then only have to run WIPCFG.exe on the laptop to allow RoadRunner to assign an IP address to the USB network adapter, and I am off and running.

I also installed the same USB network adapter on the new Gateway upstairs. My first use of the RoadRunner connection on that computer was to download the newest version of Internet Explorer, IE 5.01. With all of its attendant programs, the full package came to 18,511 KB. To download that on a regular modem would have been several hours. On RoadRunner it took 3 minutes, 52 seconds, which is approximately 4.8 MB per minute.

For those not familiar with USB devices, note that you can simply disconnect them from one computer and move them to different computers. The device I purchased was made by 3COM and cost around $70. It comes with three CDs, so there is much more there than simply driver software. In fact, there is something called Microsoft Home Networking which is supposed to configure your Win 95 and above computers for networking in a hassle-free manner. I am sure some people would be happy to have that happen, since it has been my experience that setting up a network is not always trouble free. However, I already had a network that was working fine, so I didn’t take Microsoft up on their offer. The second CD is actually a Win 98 SE upgrade disk for those with Win 98. The software there will upgrade you to Win 98 SE and additionally lead you through the process of setting up the Internet connection sharing I mentioned earlier. I declined to take advantage of that also. The third CD is some Microsoft game sampler CD. The location at the 3COM site for this device is http://www.3com.com/client/pcd/homeconnect/homenetworking/products/p34_key.html. The size of this device is about that of a pack of cigarettes.

E-stamp After seeing the e-stamp demonstration at a recent meeting, I couldn’t resist the offer at the Microsoft Office web site and the e-stamp site of the e-stamp software and $50 of e-stamp postage for about $55. Unfortunately, the offer had to be acted on by March 31, so by the time you read this newsletter it will be too late. However, I did post it at our discussion forum, so if you follow that, you would have seen it in time.

You order via an Internet site and pay with a credit card. When you place your order it is recommended that you also at that time apply to the Post Office for a license to use the product, which e-stamp conveniently helps you do from their site. As might be expected, this product is highly regulated by the Postal Service. For example, if you move from your present Zip Code area, you must return the small piece of hardware called the vault that attaches between your printer and computer. It apparently is programmed to be used in one originating zip code, 33606 in my case.

The software package arrived in about three days via priority mail, and the program was easy to install. The next thing to be done was to install the electronic vault as close to the printer as is possible in the parallel connection between the printer and computer. (Note there may be other parallel devices like Zip drives in the parallel chain.) During the installation, the program went on the Internet to the e-stamp site to check on my account and, among other things, it credited my account with the $50 in postage that came with the special offer.

After setting everything up, you print out an address to e-stamp in California and a $.33 e-stamp and mail this to e-stamp so that they can be assured of the quality of your printer.

The first thing I noted was that the date of the stamp was that day’s date, but the postman had already picked up the mail, and one of the e-stamp requirements (from the Post Office, I am sure) is that the letter be mailed within 24 hours of the date of the stamp. That was fine, since the letter would get mailed the next afternoon and presumably be processed before 12 midnight. But I made a note that in the future if the mail had already gone out, I would set the date of mailing forward one day to avoid any possible problem. You are allowed to move forward up to three days—but you can’t go back any.

The program can print out postage in three ways. On certain sized labels, on several different sizes of envelopes, and from Microsoft Word or Outlook on these same sizes of envelopes. I have printed only on the regular business size envelopes using both printing directly from the program and from Word. The program seems to run more smoothly when it does its own printing than when trying to do things through Word. I have printed two stamps from Word and three without Word. One of the Word stamps went off into limbo land, and I lost my $.33. Furthermore my printer couldn’t be used by any program including e-stamp until I rebooted. So I would say that the e-stamp/Word connection may not be bug free.

You have to have selected a mailing address that is then run through the program’s address checking software to be matched against correct addresses on a separate CD before you can print out a stamp. There is no printing of postage without a valid address (more Post Office rules, I suppose).

Now we come to the main shortcoming of the program from my point of view. The program provides no database to store the addresses you want to use over and over. It expects you to be using certain Microsoft programs like Outlook or Windows Messaging that utilize certain address books, like the Microsoft Personal Address Book. Unfortunately my computer has nothing like this set up. Outlook Express uses the Windows Address Book, and that is not accepted, as are none of the common Personal Information Management programs, like ACT or Lotus Organizer.

So, what I have to do is to either type the mailing address into the e-stamp program each time I use it, or I can have the address stored, say, in Lotus Organizer, copy it from there to the clipboard and paste it into e-stamp, Not ideal but workable. Possibly in a new version of the program they will address this problem.

When you are ready to print the envelope or label, you may do a test print to see if everything is working correctly before committing to a final print at which time the postage used will be deducted from the amount stored in the "vault."

Features I haven’t tried yet include the postage calculator and printing postage on labels for express or priority mail. I like the idea of the program, and the price was right. I basically only paid a little over five dollars for shipping. However, future postage purchases will carry a convenience charge of around 10% based on the amounts that I would probably buy.

My general impression is that the software might be a bit buggy. It definitely does not respond very fast. Possibly that is because it has to communicate with the vault. That could be a problem for volume production right now. For home use it is fine, and I enjoyed using it.

A potential problem is that initially and every two weeks the program needs to connect and upload a usage log file to satisfy another one of those Postal Service requirements. Using my cable modem, the program connected fine to e-stamp, set up my account and even download a software upgrade, so how could uploading this log file be a problem. Well, it was. I could never get the process to finish. Customer support decided that the problem was due to my using a cable modem connection and that the cable provider, RoadRunner, was using some sort of proxy setup. I would need to contact RR and get all sorts of specific information to reconfigure my LAN settings to make the upload work.

That wasn’t for me, so while the lady was telling me this, I signed on to my NetCom dial-up account and tried to send the log file again—this time successfully. So the warning is that you may have a problem with a cable modem and this program until certain LAN settings are changed.