In this chapter:
It looks like something that should hold Pavarotti or Pearl Jam. It holds as much data as a regular hard disk. What is it?...
I'm talking about a CD-ROM, of course. It's practically impossible these days to buy a PC that doesn't include a special drive designed to read these shiny discs. If your PC doesn't have one, you'll find it next to impossible to install most new software programs, including Windows NT. You're also missing out on a world of useful information and great entertainment, including ability to play music CDs on your multimedia PC.
As far as Windows is concerned, a CD-ROM is just another way to store and retrieve data. As far as we're concerned, though, a CD-ROM is a special kind of compact disc--it looks exactly like the musical variety, but works exclusively with PCs. So what makes these discs different from the ones with music on them?
Plain English, please!Is it disc or disk? That depends. Virtually all the storage devices that you normally associate with a computer end in K--hard disk, floppy disk, optical disk, and so on. But because CD-ROMs evolved from the audio industry, they follow a different standard spelling--compact disc.
CD-ROMs are perfect for passing around big programs--like Windows 95 and Windows NT-- and big data files, like encyclopedias, phone directories, games, and collections of video clips. Two or three years ago, you had to have the sleuthing abilities of Sherlock Holmes to hunt down a CD-ROM. Today, you can find them practically anywhere.
Here are a few of the things you can do with CD-ROMs.
These days, buying a new program on floppy disks is like buying the stripped-down model of a new car. Yes, it'll get you where you want to go, but you won't get any of the optional features, like power windows and cup holders.
The same is true of software, and one excellent example is Microsoft Office, a collection of three or four big application programs, including Word and Excel. A recent version of Office uses more than 40 floppy disks! If you've ever installed one of these monster programs you know how tiring it can get: Please insert disk 37 into drive A: and click OK... Even worse, the version on floppy disks leaves out some of the useful features and bonuses you'll find on the CD-ROM version.
CAUTION: Just because it comes on a shiny disc instead of a pile of floppies, there's no reason to treat software any differently. Software on CD-ROMs is licensed just like the kind you get on floppies, and making unauthorized copies is equally illegal. Before you install a new program, you must have the rights to do so. If Windows won't let you, you'll have to ask your network administrator for help.
Like me, you probably have better things to do with your time, which is why I recommend buying software that comes on CD-ROMs whenever you have the option. If you have a new CD, open the Windows Control Panel (click the Start button, then choose Settings, Control Panel) and let the Add/Remove Programs Wizard automatically search your CD for a setup file. If it finds one, it offers to install the software for you, as you can see in Figure 18.1.
Fig. 18.1
What could be easier? Well, actually, there is an easier way, called Autoplay--but we'll get to that in a minute.
You can actually run some programs directly from a CD-ROM. Most of the time, you won't want to. Why? Because running a program this way makes a turtle race look like a flying finish at the Indy 500. Even the fastest CD-ROM reader crawls compared to your hard disk.
Some programs will give you the option of setting up to run directly from the CD-ROM. Most of the time, you should just say no. There are three exceptions:
Why would you want to use a CD-ROM for fun and games? Because video files are huge--a three-minute music video, for example, can take up nearly 30 megabytes of hard disk space. (See Fig. 18.2 for a graphic example.) At that rate, one or two half-hour videos would take over your hard drive faster than a swarm of termites chomping through a log cabin.
Fig. 18.2
This video clip from Rob Roy runs only two-and-a-half minutes, but it gobbles up nearly 30MB of disk space. That's fine for the Windows 95 CD-ROM, where we found this clip, but you wouldn't want to use your hard disk this way.
Yes, there's a big difference between music CDs and CD-ROMs. Put a CD-ROM in a typical music CD player and nothing will happen. But I'll bet you didn't know you can put a music CD in a CD-ROM player and get results!
If your sound card and CD-ROM reader are properly connected, you can slip in a music CD and have it play through your computer's speakers. It's an easy and convenient way to have some relaxing (or energetic) background music while you work.
How do you coax tunes from your computer? On most multimedia PCs, it happens automatically. When you insert a music CD, Windows senses the new disc and automatically launches the CD Player program. If that doesn't work, you can start the CD Player yourself by clicking the Start button and following the menus from Programs to Accessories to Multimedia. When you start the CD Player mini-program, you'll see a screen like the one in Figure 18.3.
Fig. 18.3
Use the Windows CD Player to temporarily turn your PC into a giant Walkman.
Like most Windows programs, the CD Player has its own toolbar, which gives you one-click access to the functions you'll want to use most often. It also has a status bar at the bottom of the window and an elapsed-time indicator smack in the middle. If you can't see the toolbar or any of the other pieces, look under the View menu for the choices that turn them on.
Here's what the CD Player toolbar lets you do:
TIP: Can't remember what any of the CD Player controls do? Look for the ToolTips. Let the mouse pointer rest over any button, including the play controls to the right of the elapsed-time display, and a helpful label will pop up to tell you what the button does.
One of the coolest features in the Windows NT CD Player is its ability to keep track of the details of every music CD in your collection, including the artist's name, the title of the CD, and the names of each song on the disc. Unfortunately, it's not automatic--you have to enter the information yourself. But you only have to do it once. Each time you insert a music CD, Windows scans the disc for a special identification code, then looks in the list of titles you've entered. When it finds a match, it puts up a list like the one in Figure 18.4.
Fig. 18.4
You can drag titles from the right window to the left to create a custom Play List of just the songs you want to hear, in just the order you want to hear them.
Building your own playlist is a snap. Choose Disc, Edit Play List from the pull-down menus, then follow these steps:
Where does Windows keep all the information about music CDs that you type in? You'll find it, usually in your WinNt folder, in a little file called CDPLAYER.INI. (Click Find, Files or Folders and search for that name if you can't find it in that location on your computer.) If you've painstakingly entered lots of information about the CDs you play regularly, it's a good idea to make a backup copy of this file. That way, if anything ever happens to it you can simply restore your backup instead of retyping all those entries.
Q&A: The CD Player program says it's playing just fine, but I don't hear any music. What's wrong?
You need to make a special connection between your CD player and your sound card before you can hear the sound from a music CD. If you have an external CD-ROM reader--one that sits on your desktop outside your PC--there will be a cable that runs from the back of the CD reader to a jack on the sound card. Internal CD-ROM players--those that are installed directly in your computer's case--use a special wire that is connected inside the PC. Talk to your company's hardware expert for details on how your drive works.
As I noted in Chapter 5, every drive in your system uses a letter of the alphabet, followed by a colon, for its name. Your first floppy drive is always A:, your main hard drive is always C:, and so on. Which letter gets assigned to your CD-ROM? That depends. Windows usually takes the next available letter when you start up, but that isn't always D:. If you have two hard drives, for example, or if you're on a network and you've assigned drive letters to various folders on different file servers, your next available drive letter could be anything between E: and Z:. And it could change from one day to the next, depending on your network setup.
That can play havoc with programs that expect to see the same drive letter every time you start them up. So Windows lets you permanently assign a drive letter to your CD. On my system, for example, I've set the CD-ROM reader up so it always appears as drive E:. This option requires the Disk Administrator program, which is only available to system administrators. So if you want to permanently reassign your CD-ROM drive letter you'll have to ask your administrator to do it for you.
If you slip a CD-ROM in your CD-ROM reader and your computer instantly starts up a program, don't get spooked--that's just a feature called AutoPlay.
The idea is that some CD-ROMs--especially games and educational software--should act just like a video cassette or a music CD instead of a disk filled with files and folders. AutoPlay discs contain a couple of extra files that Windows looks for every time it notices you've inserted a new CD. If it finds those files, it launches its main program automatically.
The CD-ROM version of Windows NT demonstrates AutoPlay in action. Just slip the disc into your drive, and (assuming you've already installed Windows), you'll see a screen like the one in Figure 18.5.
Fig. 18.5
Whenever you insert this disc into the CD-ROM reader, Windows automatically starts up this program.
Wondering what you can do with a CD-ROM? Well, besides Windows NT, there are literally thousands of titles you can put in a CD-ROM drive to jazz up your computer. Picking a few at random means leaving out some excellent CD-ROMs, so don't take these as recommendations but rather as starting points.
I read Stephen Hawking's book, A Brief History of Time, and was thoroughly lost in the dense discussions of relativity and space-time con- tinuums. Then I saw this CD-ROM, and now I know why the universe is expanding.
Microsoft's Cinemania '96 is an amazing collection of movie reviews, film clips, biographies, etc., that no movie buff should be without. And you can keep it up to date with monthly downloads from the World Wide Web.
Bookshelf '96 is an encyclopedia, thesaurus, dictionary, atlas, and more, all in one. Extremely useful in business and at home, it's included free with CD-ROM versions of Microsoft Office.
And then there's Myst, which is the strangest, most mysterious game you'll
ever see. Even if you don't like games, you might like this spooky, eerie adventure.
TIP: What if you don't want your AutoPlay CD to start automatically? Hold down the Shift key as you insert the CD-ROM, and Windows will ignore the AutoPlay instructions. Now you can open the My Computer window, right-click the CD-ROM icon, and use other options like Open to see the files on the CD-ROM.
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