Address Book

How small can your computer get and still give you what you need?I've been playing with several small systems lately, looking for the atomic unit of computing: the smallest system that is still practical.Why do I want it so small? For two reasons. First, I travel a lot, and want to take my office with me. Second, I've succumbed to the lure of putting everything on my computer. No longer is it just a word processing-spreadsheeting-drawing machine. Now it carries my schedule, calls to make, to do list, address book, and so on.Palm-tops offer the wonderful advantage of running for a week on regular AA batteries.

Dr. John H. Shaw, a retired Catonsville family practice physician who did not take insurance payments, just a modest flat fee for his services, died of an apparent heart attack March 26 at the Fairhaven Retirement Community in Sykesville, where he moved last year. He was 82. Born in South Hill, Va., he earned his pre-medical degree from Hampden-Sydney College and moved to Baltimore in 1943 to attend the University of Maryland School of Medicine. After receiving his medical degree, he did his internship at what was then St. Agnes Hospital.

2 charged in drug raid at Edgewood apartmentAn Edgewood woman and a Joppa man are being held on drug charges after the Covert Operations Unit of the Sheriff's Office raided the woman's apartment in the 800 block of Windstream Way Thursday night.Deputies seized 57 vials of cocaine, worth $2,250 if sold on the street, and $240.Arrested at the scene were Katrina Darnell Tapp, 20, on a charge of possession with intent to distribute cocaine, and Roy Lee Cox, 25, of the 2500 block of Greenspring Avenue.

A man who was seen tampering with cash registers at the J. C. Penney store in Marley Station mall was arrested on drug charges after police found crack cocaine in his car.County police said Michael Gabriel Pantelis, 33, of the first block of Greenmeadow Drive in Timonium was charged Thursday with possession of crack cocaine.J. C. Penney security guard Randy Easter said he saw a man tampering with a cash register about 8: 30 p.m. Thursday and followed him outside as he walked toward a red Mitsubishi Eclipse.

My Hewlett Packard DeskJet 2000C stopped printing, giving this error message: "Your black ink cartridge has expired." I installed a spare ink cartridge, but got the same message and could not print. HP software apparently reads a date code on cartridges and blocks their use after a set length of time. HP support said I could not bypass this. The best way to defeat such a software scheme that uses a computer's internal clock to enforce software copy protection or check expiration dates is to set the computer to a past year when the days of the week for every month fall on the same dates as this year.

In most organizations, when the boss "recommends" something, smart players take it to heart. But one of those recommendations raised a troublesome question for a reader: "My boss is telling everyone that we need to get a PDA," my reader confided. "He recently bought a Palm Tungsten. He is always getting the latest and greatest and money is not an issue [for him]." Before he invests $400 in a Palm Tungsten, my reader asked, is there a chance he can get a good PDA for less money? The answer is definitely yes. PDAs, the short term for personal digital assistants, are tiny handheld computers that can help organize your life.

Washington -- A Saudi suspected of being a major player in the Sept. 11 attacks, Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi, has denied accusations that he played a key supporting role, saying he never wired money to the hijackers and didn't know specifics of the plot, according to a transcript of his military commission hearing released yesterday. U.S. authorities, as well as the Sept. 11 commission that investigated the attacks, have long alleged that al-Hawsawi was a top lieutenant of the plot's mastermind, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

ON THE MORNING that my last column - dealing with Internet privacy invaders - appeared in print, I was already having second thoughts about spreading Internet paranoia when I logged onto our network and opened my e-mail. The first item on the list was a message from a software company flak inviting me to open an attached photo of the slinky Russian tennis star, Anna Kournikova. Being a normal, red-blooded male, I thought for a second about taking the bait. But common sense took hold, and I noticed that the file had all the trappings of a virus - which indeed it was. I dashed off an e-mail to the sender, warning her that she was playing Typhoid Mary.

I have created in my e-mail account (on Yahoo) a group list for the purpose of sending out summary information at various times. I would prefer that each recipient not receive the names and e-mail addresses of the entire group to which the message is sent. How do I do this? - Maggie Bath, yahoo.com This problem of privacy among pals pops up quickly as ever more families, churches, book clubs, political campaigns and other so-called affinity groups discover the power of broadcasting form messages to every member using e-mail.

Battered by hard times, yuppies may be vanishing, but personal information managers -- the software equivalents of the young professional's appointment calendars -- are proliferating.These programs keep lists, set priorities for projects, automatically dial phone calls, serve as address books and offer reminders of appointments.One of the first examples of this kind of software was Borland's Sidekick, which included a calendar, address book and phone ** dialer.Another early example was Tornado Notes, a text data base for the IBM PC that worked like an electronic shoe box, storing and retrieving thousands of jotted notes.