JorgeA

submix8c, Oh, so I might actually have some use for Silverlight! (Been thinking about joining Netflix.) I'm glad that you pointed this out, thanks. --JorgeA

Thanks, jaclaz, I appreciate it. Cute calculator, by the way! --JorgeA

Let me before express my opinion (this one founded) on the utter futility of your question. Unless you attribute me clairvoyancy related powers, WHAT actual reliability do you think can have the opinion of a Mr. Nobody on a board? jaclaz Well, that's why I prefaced my question with, "In your estimation." Of course nobody can predict the future with certainty. But since you seem to keep very much on top of developments in the computing world, I did not think it was such an unreasonable question, and hoped that you might be able to offer an informed assessment. Maybe Silverlight is starting to gain momentum, and perhaps you had heard about that or had direct experience, I don't know -- that's why I asked. Instead of laying on the sarcasm -- because, whether you intended it or not, that is how it came off -- you might have replied simply, "We just don't know." And I would have accepted that. Sorry I asked.

jaclaz, Great to hear from you! Wow, you do get around this forum! Let me ask you something about Silverlight. In your estimation, is the use of Silverlight going to become more widespread in the coming months (or years)? Is the growth (if any) going to be an extremely slow process? --JorgeA

What's your sense -- do you think that Silverlight will become more widespread over time, or will it stay such a rare and obscure thing that we can just ignore it? I guess the safest route is to update it and then delete the whole Silverlight package down the road if it looks like it's not going anywhere. --JorgeA

DigeratiPrime, So maybe I should keep it after all. Thanks for the scoop. --JorgeA

@iamtheky @5eraph Thanks for the info and the links, they helped me to understand it better. Maybe one reason Silverlight is "dying" (if it is, as suggested in one of the links) is that MS hasn't explained clearly what it's for, and why a regular end user should put it on their PC ? Much appreciated! --JorgeA

Hello, My laptop just got notification from Microsoft that an "important" update for Silverlight is available for download. This "Silverlight" thing has always been rather a mystery to me, with respect to what it is for, what it does, and what one would do with it. Wikipedia and other references I've found on the Web have not been particularly helpful, as they launch immediately into a sea of unfamiliar acronyms and highly technical language that leaves me even more confused than when I started. I am not a programmer, a webmaster, a developer, or an IT professional. I am simply an end user with a higher-than-normal (my wife might say, abnormal) interest in computers, but by no means an expert. (That's why I keep coming to this Forum for guidance. ) Thus I have no clue as to whether I would have any use for Silverlight, or whether it's simply taking up space on my hard drive. Tha main thing I want to know is: Is there any reason for me to download this Update, or can I cancel it and tell Microsoft not to nag me about it again? Can I search around my various PCs for Silverlight and eradicate it, or does it do something useful for ordinary PC users (and what is that)? Thanks sincerely for whatever enlightenment you might offer to the uninitiated. --JorgeA

That's correct, and the last time I checked they even had a version that works on MS-DOS and Windows for Workgroups 3.11 ! --JorgeA

O.K., that's one way to look at it! --JorgeA

iamtheky, Wow, thanks for digging up this information. If I decide to use these wipes, I'll make sure to wash my hands afterwards! --JorgeA

wsxedcrfv, Excellent questions all; I wish I knew enough to provide an answer, even a speculative one. Hopefully your questions won't be overlooked, and someone who knows (or can know) will address them. --JorgeA

cyberformer, Very eloquently stated, bravo!! For the time being (and until such time as one of the truly amazing wizards who walks this forum figures out how to make Win98 work with IPv6), I will be banking on dencorso's router approach. (See his post near the top.) Hopefully, we won't have to actually confront this issue for a while yet. But it will, sooner or later, and as the warnings seem to be getting more urgent, I guess it's time to start figuring out how to deal with the situation when it comes up. --JorgeA

dencorso, Whew, what a relief! Will a current (from the last 2-3 years) router work, or would I go out and get a new one? (Not that that's an obstacle, just that it'll be useful to know for when the time comes). Maybe a better way to frame the question is to ask how one can determine if the current router can handle IPv6. Umm, I did search and find that same thread. But it was several months old, and (more importantly) it didn't seem to end on a very hopeful-sounding note, so I wanted to see if things had changed since then. --JorgeA

Hello, I just read this article in PC World. What implications (if any) does the impending move to IPv6 have for those of us who are using Windows 98 and hardware from that era? The following paragraph from this article sounds especially ominous: "If you keep a piece of IPv4-only equipment, someday it won't be able to talk to the rest of the network because two different addressing schemes are at play--kind of like trying to use a telephone number to send a piece of paper mail." Here are some questions to ponder: Is this true, or just so much hype? Will the browsers on our Win98 boxes one day give us a "the page cannot be displayed" error that cannot be fixed? What (if anything) can we do to our machines to make them ready for IPv6? Finally, what might this mean for home networks -- will Win98 boxes networked behind a router still be able to talk to each other within the network, even if they can no longer access the Internet? (I think so, but am asking to make sure.) Tell me that I'm worrying too much. --JorgeA

Thanks, CoffeeFiend! This is a big help. Yup, they're made out of cloth. I'm glad to hear that it's pretty standard stuff. Normally I don't use anything like this, but it was a mail gift from a family member and I needed to know if it was any good so that I could respond the right way. A couple of weeks before I got these, I used a dry facial tissue to wipe the dust off the screen of an old CRT monitor. It's amazing what a minute's worth of cleaning will do -- it looks so bright now! --JorgeA

Yeah, I'd wondered about the urea too. I'll look up these ingredients on the Web, and see what turns up. --JorgeA

Hello, A well-meaning person gave me two packs of 50 "TV & Monitor Wipes" for my PC's LCD screen, but before using them I'd like to check on the forum with those who know about these things. The ingredients are listed as: Diazolidinyl urea (0.15%) Methylparaben (0.05%) Prepylparaben (0.05%), Dmdmh (0.1%) Propylene glycol (0,15%), Water (60.5%) Polypropylene (39%) Is this mix safe to use for cleaning LCD and/or CRT screens? I'm a little suspicious (of the product, not of the person who gave it to me) because I looked up the supposed manufacturer's website and the product is not listed, despite the package carrying a date of 2010. Moreover, the instructions warn to, "Before using ensure that this product is compatible with your TV or screen." (How would I know that, except by using it... or asking around?) I know that there are other alternatives for cleaning screens (a lint-free cloth has done well for me), but since this is a gift I'd like to know what I can say about these wipes in particular. Thanks for your help! --JorgeA

Thanks, jaclaz. It does help if one knows the original URL. In the Wayback Machine searches that I've done over the years, the URL (even an approximate one) was simply unknown, so typing one in did not even enter into my thinking. As you can imagine, then, the work has been slow and tedious. As Mijzelf put it, a needle in a very big haystack. --JorgeA

Mijzelf, Sorry I didn't get back to you sooner -- I didn't get notification that there was a new reply waiting, and the forum traffic seems to have decreased (vacation season, no doubt), so I've been checking in less often. Yup, I do like to try to get to understand things, if they're not too far beyond my technical ability. (And I'm willing to stretch my mind, but only so far at a time else it "breaks." ) I greatly appreciate the Wayback Machine link, and the info on the resource meter. I did have the resource meter installed; will repeat the scan of the WfW3.11 machine off the Win98 PC, and see what it has to say. Thanks for reminding me of it. About the Wayback Machine -- is there an efficient way to use it? IMX it's a slow, laborious process that turns up something useful maybe 30% of the time. There must be a better method that I'm not aware of. Can you enter a (dead) link and search for the corresponding page in the archive? Otherwise it's been like looking for a needle in a haystack. (Admittedly I don't use it often, so I'm not all that familiar with its ins and outs.) --JorgeA

That sounds like a resource leak. I suppose that somehow the combination virusscanner/NetBEUI somehow leaks resources. In that case the problem is on the W98 side. ... Mijzelf, I'm curious to find out what may have caused this weird behavior. Based on your hypothesis, I found this article which points to a utility that I might try. (See the second paragraph under "Tracking GDI resource leaks.") The link is dead and I haven't found any other working links to it, but -- in general, how does investigating along these lines sound to you? Also, the list in Start --> Programs ended up rearranged. Had never happened before the icons got wiped out. Could the two be related? Everybody else is also welcome to chime in with ideas on what may have been going on! --JorgeA

Thanks herbalist, I'll go over there and get it! --JorgeA

Mijzelf, Let's hope you're right -- that would change the issue from truly worrisome to merely annoying. Can I assume that that's a problem I can let go, rather than having to do something about it? I'm not concerned about any kind of malware in particular, it's just that the WfW served as my main PC into 2002 even as Internet threats continued to grow and I obliviously kept using it without any kind of protection. Now that I am bringing it back into action (and am a lot more savvy about these things), I'd like to make sure that it's clean and that it won't infect my other PCs through the network. Going forward, the PC will go on the 'Net only occasionally to specific safe sites for security testing, and more often to report its distributed computing results. But it's interesting to learn that, as a 16-bit system, it might actually be less vulnerable out in cyberspace than my Win98 or even the Vista. FWIW, it does use Internet Explorer 3.0a. Am looking into getting a more recent IE for it. I appreciate the insights, thank you! --JorgeA

Jake, That's interesting! I had looked into F-Prot, and run into this page. But if they are actually still keeping it up to date, that's great. Thanks! --JorgeA

wsxedcrfv, I'm doing this for two reasons -- 1) To contribute its (admittedly limited) processing power to a distributed computing project; and 2) For the technical challenge of it. Actually, I should have done this already twelve years ago when I got my first Win98 PC, but back then I was approaching computers as "black boxes" that performed magic. (Unlike the days of MS-DOS, when I was really into them. Took a while for me to warm up to Windows.) I hope to learn from the experience -- maybe even come to understand why and how newer OSs are better than older ones. Just to be clear on this point -- You're saying that it's not enough to scan these drives remotely from other PCs via the network, and I should still actually take them out and install them on the other PCs to scan them locally? I scanned each of the Win98's with three different scanners off the Vista machine, then scanned the WFWG3.11 tower with a different but overlapping set of three scanners off the Win98 tower. They all yield clean results now. --JorgeA