Issue 165 (February) of Acorn User

Regular columns

• News - The Oracle deal breaks, Beebug does good business and how to connect your mobile phone to your pocket book.
• Graphics/DTP - where next for Acorn printers?
• Comms - CyberHouse BBS and FidoNet explained.
• PD pages - SwiftJPEG, Echelon Software, Figlet and Realcount.
• Education - should schools teach programming?
• Portables - Sales Assistant and SoundMaster.
• Game Show - an interview with Mattijs van Delden, who's writing a Pinball game and with Godhead on the subject of Stryker's Run III. Also a look at the (healthy) state of text adventures on the Archimedes.
• Letters - is the Internet just a fad?
• The Regan Files - Chris Cox talks about an exploding oil rig (and other things).

Cover disc

• Demo of Acorn's Resource Editor for creating Desktop applications.
• All the regular items.

Hands on

Our regular technical columns:

• Questions and answers - hints and tips.
• C tutorial - a minimalist multi-tasking application.
• Run the RISC - Mike Cook makes a digital voltmeter.
• *INFO - everything you always wanted to have on your machine, but were afraid to run.

The Education section

• Active IT for all the family - SuperChoice holidays.
• How to make your own CD-ROM (part one of three).
• Mission Control - Crystal rain Forest 2, Snap Happy and Pop-Up Cards reviewed.
• How to keep your printer working for longer.

Reviews

We review:

• Killer, SmartKill and VZap, three virus killers.
• Merlin the ray-tracer and Top Model the 3D modelling package, with a quick preview of the forthcoming 3D modeller Da Vinci.
• A round up of DTP and word-processing packages, covering Impression EasiWriter and TechWriter, TextEase and Wordz.
• CDTracker and SmartCD+ compared.

Features

• To your own Clan be true - a look at the philosophy behind the Clan.
• Coughs and sneezes - protecting your machine from viruses.
• A fairy tale success - Paul Patterson, professor of music at the Royal Academy.
• You can have SCSI too - groan at the pun, and win a SCSI II card.
• Squaring the circle - getting stated with your PC card.
• Internet innocents - a guide for newbies on the Internet.
• CD-ROM deal - a cheap, portable CD-ROM drive from Eesox.
• Get Zynetted - an Internet deal aimed at schools and teachers.
• IDG Books offer - no RISC OS for Dummies, sadly, but plenty of other reading matter here.