Announcements

My House Sucks!

But not for long! At least that's what I'm going to try to make happen with the 3D Home Design Suite!

We have an awesome deal on this piece of software. It has a retail of $69.95, we have it for only $29.97 - and shipping is FREE if you live in the US!

Bonus - Order now and get a FREE Compton's Encyclopedia CD ROM! ($49.95 retail value).

Now, this is another one of those programs I really wasn't so sure about. In fact, I almost bypassed it without trying it out first. What a mistake that would have been!

This thing is so cool. It has three different components to help you with every aspect of home and landscape design. Here's a brief overview of each:

3D Home Architect - This part of the program lets you design your dream home. Create the perfect floor plan, add the perfect windows / doors, even take a tour of your newly designed (perfect) home!

Planning is easy, especially since you can view your design ideas in both 2D and 3D (and you can even do this side by side). Who knew creating your dream home could be this easy! (Personally, I like the 3D tour part)

3D Home Interiors - This part is also handy. Say you want to re-arrange a room or add new furniture. Problem is, you don't want to start moving stuff around or purchasing new items without having an idea of what it's going to look like. Well, that's what this is for! You pick a design (of course, you can specify the size / shape), and fill it with furniture! (It includes over 100,000 pieces of furniture you can choose from!)

You can also add windows, simulate lighting, and tons more!

Once you're done, take a 3D tour of the room. The graphics are so good, you'll feel like you're there! Look in front of you, behind you, move to any point in the room by clicking your mouse.

Imagine Your Landscape - Here's the last part. With this, you can scan or import a photo of your house into the program (or start with a blank page if you need to).

From there, just add bushes, trees, driveways, grass, sidewalk, even cats and dogs if you like. Stop guessing about how this or that is going to look. With this program you can test different landscape styles and come up with the perfect design before you ever set foot in a garden center!

There are over 1,500 items in the landscape database to choose from, and you just drag & drop them into place. In addition, this part of the program gives you step by step video help! It's absolutely awesome! Oh, I almost forgot to mention that it can warn you about plants that don't do so well in your region too.

Now's the perfect time for this. With the nice weather on it way (or already here for many of us), it's time to stop putting off all your home projects. With this software, you can try, experiment, and test before you buy anything. If it keeps you from making just one mistake, it will easily pay for itself.

Besides, who wants to go through all that work only to find out it doesn't look as good as you thought it would?

When you're at the site, be sure to check out the HUGE comparison table. It'll show you why this is the best product of its type on the market.

Head to the site ASAP - we only have limited quantity of this product at this price. If we can get more, it's almost a guarantee I won't be able to sell them for $29.97. Oh, and on this special, I have to ask that you limit your purchase to only one per customer. Here's the link:

http://www.worldstart.com/store/3DHomeDesignSuiteDlxe35.htm

PS - Remember, if you order now you'll get the FREE Compton's Encyclopedia CD ROM!!

Computers 101

Q:
What's the Windows Registry?

A:
Basically, the registry is used to store system and program settings. For example, let's say a program gives you the option of setting its font. You select a font on its font selection screen and hit OK. When you hit the OK button, *most* software will make an entry into the registry. Next time you run the program, it retrieves the information you set, in this case the font style.

Yeah, that's a bit of an over-simplification, but you get the gist of it.

Have a question for the newsletter? Submit it at the link below:
http://www.worldstart.com/submitquestion.htm

Tip of the Day

Windows Setup Trick

Web Link - http://www.worldstart.com/tips/winsettrick.htm

(Note - the screen shots for this tip are from a win 98 computer. It works with all versions, but the only CD we could put our hands on was our Win 98 CD. So, ya get win98 screen shots.)

Have you ever installed something on your computer only to have it ask you for your Windows CD? Isn't that annoying? Like you know where it is or something. You have to spend the rest of the afternoon hunting around your messy office for the stupid CD. Well, as you've probably guessed by now, there's a better way.

First, if you are setting up a new computer and installing Windows for the first time, you can copy the files on your Windows CD to the hard drive and run setup from there. Your setup will fly and your computer will always look to the hard disk (and not ask you for the CD) when it needs files from the Windows setup CD.

If you have a newer computer, the manufacturer may have done this for you. If you've ever installed something and Windows automatically copies the files it needs from its setup files, then you already have a copy on your machine. If you're not sure, you can check your registry to see where Windows looks for its setup files. More on that in the "Registry Trick" section of this tip.

If you already have Windows installed but don't have a copy of your CD on your hard drive here's how you can set it up (assuming you have the disk space):

1. Hold down the SHIFT key and insert your Windows CD (holding down the SHIFT key tells the computer not to "autorun" the CD)

2. Next, open Windows Explorer (right-click your Start button, Explore). Click your C: drive (or whatever drive you want to stick the CD copy on).

3. Now, right-click a blank area in the right-hand pane and select New, Folder from the resulting menu.

Name the folder "winsetup" (no quotes).

4. Now, open the CD ROM drive, select all the files and folders (hit CTRL-A), and drag them to the "winsetup" folder you just created.

That's it. Next time windows asks you for the CD ROM drive, point it to C:/winsetup/win98/

Note that if you are not using Win 98, you'll need to replace the win98 part of that location with the equalivant folder inside your new winsetup folder (i.e. win95 or maybe winme, or whatever).

Registry Trick

The above tip is handy, but you'll have to manually point Windows to your "winsetup" directory every time you need the Windows CD. Better than hunting around for it, but here's a registry trick you can use to let Windows know it can get this stuff of the hard drive.

Since this tip modifies the registry, it's automatically intended for more advanced users. I need to advise you to do this at your own risk. If you mess up your registry and break your computer, don't come cryin' to me.

1. Hit Start, Run, and type in "regedit" (no quotes). Hit OK.

2. Navigate to:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\setup\

3. Under that setup folder, locate the SourcePath key. Right-click it and select Modify from the resulting menu. Put in the path to your "winsetup" folder and the Windows setup folder. Since I'm using win98, here's what my line looks like:

C:\winsetup\win98\

Hit OK and you're all set. If you did everything correctly, Windows will no longer ask you for your CD and will automatically pull files as it needs them.

Have a tip for the newsletter? Submit it below:
http://www.worldstart.com/submitatip.htm

Cool Site of the Day

Wanna Race Your Mower?

How fast can you mow your yard with your lawnmower? 5mph? 10mph? How about modifying it so that you could mow at 35-40mph? You could get a lot of mowing done with those speeds for sure.

Another thing you could do is race with them. Tell your friends to beef up their lawnmowers and start holding lawnmower races. Check out today’s Cool Site to learn all about lawn mower racing.

http://www.letsmow.com/

Do you have a cool site that you want to share? Send it to us! Here's the address:

jonathon@worldstart.com

Oh, and we're looking for non-commercial sites. We generally don't run sites that are strictly for shopping.