[thelist] Win ME A/V?

[Luther, Ron]

Hi Gang,


I need to lend a hand locking down a friend's Win "ME" machine this 
week.

Can you give me a clue on the current 'best and brightest' to load 
onto that box?

* Sygate Personal Firewall?
* ZoneAlarm?
* Ad-aware
* Spybot - Search and Destroy?


Yep. I know it's 'off topic' so I owe a tip ...


<tip author="RonL" type="chart graphics - spotlighting">

Saw a cute trick recently. (Makes more sense in the context of gui 
based report writer graphics than a 'hand rolled' system, but here 
it is anyway.)

You can 'spotlight' color a basic bar chart!  

Here's the trick: 
Create a 3D bar chart with, perhaps 3 computed variables; 

Sales Met - computed as 'if (actual > projected, actual, else 0)'
Color it green.

Sales Close - computed as 'if ((actual < projected) and (actual > 
.9 * projected), actual, else 0)'
Color it yellow.

Sales Not Met - computed as 'if (actual < (.9 * projected), actual, 
else 0)'
Color it red.

Now 'collapse' the chart into 2D (by changing the viewing angle if 
needed).  This will 'stack' the bars on top of each other.

All the user will see is a bar chart of actual sales by sales district, 
colored green, yellow, or red. [Those 'else zero's effectively "hide" 
the bars you don't want to see ... kind of like changing z-index in 
a tool that doesn't offer a control to let you change z-index.]

Pretty neat idea!

</tip>



Thanks!

Ron