Cruzio Newsletter - Number 6, October 9 1996
Table of Contents
1. About this newsletter
2. Cruzio office now open 10am - 2pm Saturdays
3. New "live human" number for Cruzio: 459-6301
4. Election info on Cruzio
5. Community Internet Day: November 16
6. We sell modems
7. Win a free web page
8. "$$$MAKE MONEY FAST$$$" - please don't - a review of Cruzio's rules
9. The newest connection software
10. New news server
11. Mail problems
12. Users of Netscape 1.* and earlier
13. Strange and wonderful Web Pages found in a Cruzio search engine
14. Graphics consultants now listed on our consultants' page
15. System downtime -- Sunday mornings before 8am
16. Cruzio Online Support Center
17. How to reach Cruzio (dial-in or tech support)
1. About this Newsletter
Cruzio doesn't like to waste bandwidth with extra email, but
we sometimes have events and announcements that users need
to know about. This seems like the most efficient way to let
people know what's happening. Hope it's helpful. Please email
support@cruzio.com with any comments or questions. (And sorry
it's so long this time - we waited too long since the last
one!)
2. Cruzio office now open 10am - 2pm Saturdays
Don't faint from shock, but Cruzio's office is now open from
10am to 2pm on Saturdays due to popular demand. Sales and
tech support are available during those hours, and we will
be expanding our hours further as soon as possible.
3. New "live human" number for Cruzio: 459-6301
We've got a new support number, for voice calls. If you have
problems or questions and want to talk to a live Cruzio
person, please call 459-6301. We know that lines have
sometimes been busy lately, so we are pricing a new phone
system and expanding our hours (see above). Please remember
to try again if you can't get through at first, and you can
always leave a message on our voicemail number (423-1162).
We do return calls pretty promptly.
4. Election info on Cruzio
Cruzio always likes to help local citizens get the information
they need (isn't that what the "information age" is all about?)
With that in mind, we've put a link from out home page -
http://www.cruzio.com - to all kinds of Election '96 information.
Of special interest to Santa Cruzans is SCAN's very detailed
questionnaire of local City Council candidates. It's quite helpful
in deciding who to vote for, whether or not you support SCAN.
5. Community Internet Day: November 16th
On November 16, at Louden Nelson Center, join Cruzio, Pac Bell,
Seagate and Senior Net Affiliated Computer Center in celebrating
and learning about the Internet.
There will be classes and symposia on everything from Intro to the
Internet (taught by Bruce Van Allen) to presentations on how
to use the Internet to reach local city and county information, and on
school and library Internet resources. Panel discussions will include
children's use of the Internet (parent with teenagers take note!)
and a discussion including local artists who are using the Internet
to publish poetry, art and music.
The day will end with a talk by local author/intellectual/celebrity
Robert Anton Wilson. His talk is entitled "Alice in Infoland". We are
working hard to make this a wonderful event and we hope you will join
us there.
Our web site at http://www.cruzio.com will include a complete
schedule of the event as soon as it becomes finalized.
6. We sell modems
Since we have an extensive history with debugging modems, we've
decided to sell the brands that work best at low prices. We are
only selling what we consider to be top-of-the line modems, and
only fast modems. Here's what we are offering:
- For Windows users, US Robotics Sportster 33.6 ... $169.00
- For Macintosh users,
Global Village Teleport 33.6 .............. $185.00
Don't be taken in by ads for lower-priced modems: make sure that
they have their own on-off switch, for example. That alone can
save quite a bit of time.
7. Win a free web page
Cruzio has developed an easy, fun "make-your-own-web-page" service
which our customers can use to create simple business or personal
web pages. The charge will be $30 to create the initial page and $5
every time you replace the page with an update. The page will be
put into your existing free or commercial web space. This service will
be available to all Cruzio customers in November 1996, but since we
are in the beta test stage we are having a contest: if you are
one of the first five people to answer the contest question, you
can make an auto web page for free (all you need to do is tell
us what you liked/disliked about the service).
The contest question is:
What animal is in the Cruzio letterhead?
Please mail the answer to support@cruzio.com, and we will let
let you know if you've won. Our first beta tester has already
made a sale based on the web page she made.
8. "$$$MAKE MONEY FAST$$$" - please don't - a review of Cruzio's rules
On the Internet, sending "junk mail" or posting advertisements
on newsgroups is called "spamming". Some of our users have tried
get-rich-quick Internet marketing schemes lately. These schemes
involve emailing people you don't know or posting advertisements
to newsgroups. We'd like to briefly review the types of things which
Cruzio considers abuse of the Internet and for which your account
can be immediately terminated.
Any messages unrelated to the a newsgroup's charter should not
be sent to that newsgroup. In for rec.pets.beagles, for example,
don't post messages about your arthritis. Innocent mistakes
are tolerated, but doing this on purpose - for example, posting
advertisements to non-commercial groups - constitutes abuse.
Sending email to large groups of people you don't know, when they have
not requested the email and aren't particularly likely to want it, is
abuse of email. Sending email to a person when they've asked you to
stop, or sending someone a flood of messages, is considered harassment.
When you spam, Cruzio is bombarded with complaints and warnings
from other Internet sites. It's against our rules -- check our
support page (http://www.cruzio.com/support) and look at the link
called "Cruzio Rules and Usage Policy". If you break the rules, your
account can be terminated. We take this very seriously.
If you are the recipient of spam in your email box, and would like
to complain about it, the best response is to send email to the
"postmaster" at the spammer's site. Most Internet Service Providers
will take action against spammers, just as Cruzio does. Be sure to
include a copy of the abusive email(s) or news item(s).
9. The latest scoop on Connection Software
Note: If you have any questions about what software to use to connect,
and especially if you are planning an upgrade, Cruzio is ready to make
a recommendation for any Windows or Mac system. We have step-by-step
instructions for all recommended configurations. That said, read on to
find out details about your system...
Apple, Netscape, and Microsoft have all been releasing new versions
of connection software. In most cases, it's better than the old software
or the old software just won't work on newer machines. We used to
recommend the Internet Starter Kit, but we don't anymore. We think
there are better deals out there:
- For Windows 3.1 we recommend the Netscape Navigator 3.0
web browser and dialer. Note that you need at least 12 MB
of RAM to run this. Cruzio sells this for ..... $49.00
- For Windows 95 we recommend the dialer included in the Win95
operating system. We also recommend Netscape Navigator 3.0
as the web browser, although the Internet Explorer 3.0 is
also very good. Cruzio sells Netscape 3.0 for ..... $49.00
If you'd like a web page builder bundled in to this
package, Cruzio sells Netscape Gold for ............$79.00
- For Macintosh 7.5 systems and above, we recommend the
Apple Internet Connection Kit. It comes with Netscape 2.0
included in the package, and contains an easy-to-install
dialer as well. Cruzio sells this for ..............$49.00
- Macintosh ConfigPPP/FreePPP version weirdness
If you are not using the Apple Internet Connection Kit's
Apple Internet Dialer, you are probably using some variant of
the ConfigPPP control panel (part of the FreePPP package) to
connect. In short, there's:
ConfigPPP 2.0.1: This is what comes with the 3rd edition of
the Internet Starter Kit. It works well with System 7.1, but
does _not_ always work well with 7.5.
ConfigPPP 1.0.5: This is actually newer than version 2.0.1 (no
kidding!). It's rock solid, and works well with _all_ Mac system
versions. It's the only version we recommend for System 7.5 and
above.
FreePPP 2.5: With this update, the ConfigPPP control panel has
been replaced with a control panel called ~FreePPP Menu, which
places the dialer in the right side of the menu bar at the top of
your screen. While this works well on some Macs, it does _not_
work well on others. If you are using 2.5 and having problems,
"downgrade" to to the older but more stable ConfigPPP 1.0.5.
Yes, the Mac stuff is confusing. Call our office (459-6301)
for more information.
10. New news server
We have replaced our pokey, slow, ancient (6-month-old) news server
with a newer, faster server. This should improve the speed and
reliability of news on Cruzio (and is only first step in a number
of improvements we are planning...) but users with older newsreaders
are experiencing problems. Just to let you know, we are working on
the problems and hope to have them all solved soon.
11. Mail problems
After we added our new news server, mail slowed down. We are working
right now on improving the speed at which certain messages,
especially those from list servers, are delivered. Our apologies
to those of you who have experienced the slowdown and other mail
glitches -- we are watching it very carefully now and have everything
just about fixed. Thanks for your patience, and thanks especially
to those who have noticed and reported problems. Please do report
anomalies!
12. Users of Netscape 1.* and earlier
Users of ealier versions of Netscape might find that Netscape crashes
when they go to certain web sites. Many web sites use an html feature
called frames, which is not supported by versions of Netscape prior
to 2.0. For example, the "Net Search" button found on Netscape 1.1
goes to a page with frames, and many users who click on this button
get an error message about an "illegal operation". If you are having
this problem, try using the search engines listed on our homepage
instead: http://www.cruzio.com
13. Strange and wonderful Web Pages found in the Cruzio search engine
Our award winning website, the "Guide to Santa Cruz County", now
contains a search engine which points to local pages only. It's
near the top of our home page, http://www.cruzio.com. Try looking
for any subject there - a lot of interesting web pages on our
server turn up. Yours might be one of the beautiful and interesting
ones that our staff has been finding.
14. Graphics consultants now listed on our consultants' page
If you are looking for a consultant to help you with some
computer work, whether repair or tutoring or creating a Web page,
we have a popular local spot to check. The Cruzio consultants' page
is at
http://www.cruzio.com/consultants
The page is informative and points to samples of consultants'
work. There's a new category: Graphics Designers. If you do graphics
for the World Wide Web, or if you are looking for graphics to make
your page more spiffy, check out the address above. You can also
register your name as a consultant by filling out a form at that site.
15. System downtime -- Sunday mornings before 8am
Just a reminder that Cruzio is down early every Sunday morning
for system maintenance. Downtime is somewhere between 4 am to 6 am
most Sundays, but occasionally we have the system down until 8am.
16. Cruzio Online Support Center
Check out the ever improving Online Support Center by pointing
your web browser to http://www.cruzio.com/support
You'll find information about using your Cruzio account and
the Internet, publishing your web pages, easy to use web pages
for diagnosing problems, Cruzio modem pool usage reports, links
to popular Mac and Windows software archives and more.
17. How to reach Cruzio (dial-in or tech support)
To dial in to Cruzio, check your "network login" (written on your
password sheet) and your modem speed, and dial in as follows. Please
note that not all Cruzio users dial the same numbers.
28.8 kbps modems:
459-6230 ONLY if your network login DOES NOT begin with a "t"
459-6394 ONLY if your network login DOES begin with a "t" (e.g., tree53)
14.4 kbps modems:
459-6200 ONLY if your network login DOES NOT begin with a "t"
459-6384 ONLY if your network login DOES begin with a "t" (e.g., tree53)
9600 bps modems:
423-1987
2400 bps modems:
423-9995 ONLY accessible with a BBS (text-only) account
To call Cruzio, use one of these numbers:
423-1162.................Our main number, to leave a message
423-7529.................Our status line, to report or check on
system problems
459-6301.................Our "human line", from 12-6 Monday through
Friday. Talk to a human being.
To send email to Cruzio, use one of these addresses:
support@cruzio.com.......for technical support
office@cruzio.com........for billing and ordering information
webmaster@cruzio.com.....for questions about Cruzio's World Wide
Web service
To reach the Cruzio Information Center, for online technical and
sales information:
http://www.cruzio.com/support
Thanks very much from Cruzio:
Chris, Peggy, John, Deana, Judy, Julianne, PK, Gloria, and JJ
(the grownups); Jake and Annika (the kids)
