by Arie Slob

Dear Windows-Help.NET Subscriber, After all the excitement about Rambus memory, ther'’s talk about a new type of memory, called Double Data Rate Dynamic Random Access Memory (DDR DRAM), a potential competitor to Rambus DRAM. Rambus DRAM is still very hard to come by, and very expensive. Some dealers are currently selling 64MB of Rambus memory for $496 or more. By contrast, 64MB of 133-MHz SDRAM can be purchased for $69. DDR DRAM is essentially a version of SDRAM. Its advantage is that it processes data twice as fast. SDRAM chips today provide data to the processor at 100MHz or 133MHz. DDR runs at the same speed, but because it can cycle through twice the amount of data in the same period of time, it effectively functions at 200MHz or 266MHz. AMD will match its Athlon processor with DDR DRAM toward the middle of the year. An Intel representative said that servers containing Intel chips and DDR will hit by 2001. Desktop computers using this new type of memory are expected to be available a few months after the initial server & workstations begin shipping with DDR DRAM. DDR DRAM will be a bit more expensive to produce and test, but not nearly as expensive as Rambus memory. Rambus is not only expensive, but also fairly difficult to produce, and the industry is still searching for a solution, which seems to be available in DDR DRAM. Web site updates You might have noticed that the Windows 95 & 98 Web sites haven't been updated lately. The reason is that I'm (once again) busy with configuring a new Web server, and I'm also on a 2 week holiday right now. So don't be alarmed. Hopefully we'll have the new server in operation by the end of this month, and after that, I'll once again be able to update the Windows pages. "I thought I'd tip you off to a piece of software that turns your RealAudio player into a real sound system. I'm sitting here clicking the on/off button to hear the difference between the signal and the iQ enhanced version and the difference is not like night and day -- it's like night and several days." -- R. Curtis, USA

Motherboards - New System Troubleshooting

Tips and help tracking down motherboard-related problems in newly built systems.

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AOL 5.0 users sue AOL

According to a CNN article, AOL users have brought a class-action lawsuit against the online giant, alleging deceptive trade practices and violation of computer-tampering laws. The suit also seeks damages of up to $1,000 for each of the approximately 8 million people who have downloaded the version 5.0 software.

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Create and Compare Snapshots of Any Directory with FileImg.exe

FileImg.exe is an unsupported utility, available from Microsoft, that takes snapshots of the entire contents of any directory on your machine. It displays important information about all files and subdirectories such as version, size, date, and attributes. It also lets you compare two images to determine how the files in a target directory have changed.

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