TECH TIPS
Testing CDs for copy protection

Advertiser News Services

Copy-protected CDs are those that prevent you from copying them for personal use or or allow you to use them on only specific devices (computers, DVD players, game consoles such as the PlayStation, MP3 players, consumer CD duplicators, high-end stereo equipment and car CD players).

In the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom, many of these copy-protected CDs are unmarked. Once you buy one, you can only exchange it and see whether the replacement is protected, too.

The most reliable way to test a CD is to put it in a Windows PC and try to extract one or more tracks from it onto your hard drive. (Macs are immune to some of these CD problems.) To do this, you'll need software known as a CD ripper or a CD audio extractor.

If you find that you can't extract the audio from the CD, try other things:

• Try playing it normally in the computer.
• Try playing it on a PlayStation 2 or a DVD player.
• If you have a MiniDisc recorder and a digital lead, try recording the CD audio digitally.
  
  
  

3M offers Post-it Notes for PCs

Looking for a utility for Windows 98 that puts Post-it type notes on the desktop equivalent to those that come with Macs?

If you want Post-it Notes on your PC, go to the source, 3M, the company that invented and copyrighted Post-it Notes in the 1970s.

3M now posts a free PC version of these distinctive canary yellow nags that has a great many bells and whistles.

The notes can be tacked anywhere one wants on the computer screen and they hold enough text, pictures and other data to serve as powerful reminders and productivity tools.

In fact, there may be more bells and whistles in 3M's free product for PCs than one gets in the sticky notes program Apple built into recent Mac OS products at the expense of the superb Notepad program that once shipped with Macs.

Stickies are a very poor substitute for Notepad but the PC world has nothing to match either one as a built in operating system feature.

Go to the 3M Web site for the free Post-it Notes download.