Dear Windows-Help.NET Subscriber,
This week AMD announced a 650MHz version of the new Athlon processor, giving it the bragging rights as the fastest PC chip available.
Intel recently released a 600MHz Pentium III, but according to an Intel spokesman, no upgrades to the Pentium III are planned before November.
Compaq and IBM both announced high-end consumer PC's using the new AMD chip. IBM, in particular, is marketing machines with the Athlon chip in a bid to gain market share in the PC market, and is selling the new Aptiva systems directly. IBM's new models are expected to be available in 30-40 days.
You can read a review of the Athlon processor at The Upgrade Center
IBM announced the largest capacity hard drive available for portable computers; a 25GB model. To date the largest hard drive available for notebook PC's is around 14GB. IBM also announced it has started delivering an 18GB drive.
These drives operate at 5,400 rpm, faster than previous products.
Last week I reported on the latest security flaw in Microsoft Office 97. Microsoft is still busy developing a fix. Some people are complaining about the time it's taking Microsoft to come up with a fix (rumors are it could be ready by August 16. Check our Web site for details. We will post a note under the Feature Articles section when the fix is available), but I think it's better that Microsoft takes its time and gets it right the first time around. Nobody is looking forward to a repeat of the Office 97 Service Pack 1 & 2 saga.
As of this moment, there have been no reports of people falling victim to this security hole.
As reported, you can check if you are affected by searching your hard drive for a file named ODBCJT32.DLL. When you locate it, right-click on it and select properties, then click version. If the version number starts with 3.51.xx or lower, you are vulnerable.
Due to its inherent design, Excel 97 is particularly at risk. When you open an Excel worksheet it automatically updates all the cell formulas. If the cell formula includes a database call, then it will perform those updates automatically. So any malicious code can be run without warning. Other Office programs can only make similar database calls using VBA macros - macros have their own warnings and can be scanned by anti-virus programs.
Web pages can link to Office 97 documents, and these will be opened without any warning. To give you a warning that you are opening Office files through your Web browser, Microsoft has recently released the Office Document Open Confirmation Tool. When you install this tool, you will have to click OK when Internet Explorer tries to open a Word, Excel or PowerPoint document or Access database, giving you the option to choose what is safe to open.
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14 Aug. 1999, Vol 2 No. 33
