01:00 AM EDT on Sunday, May 2, 2004

BY JAMES COATES
Chicago Tribune

Q. My son is in basic training and doesn't have time to read newspapers or magazines. Is there an online news summary that I can subscribe to and print out for him?

Anne Gellman hotmail.com

A. I have a suggestion that may or may not meet your needs, since you want to make a physical printout of news summaries rather than just send an e-mail. Let me suggest that you check out the relatively new, real-time digest of the day's news compiled by the Google online service. It's at www.news.google.com.

The Google search engine polls the Web sites of numerous publications around the world and then posts a long page with headlines and summaries of each story. Because the searching is essentially done by robots instead of ink-stained wretches in the newspaper business, you might question the order in which stories are listed, but it's all there, and more than enough barracks reading for your son, Ms. G.

All you need to do is go to the Google News site and look for the icon in the upper-left corner to display the news summary as text. When this comes up, just send it to your printer. It will produce three or four pages of the latest news. Each item is very short, but the headlines and a sentence or two cover the basics.

It's kind of like printing out one's radio news.

Q. I have read your articles about stopping the annoying pop-ups from Microsoft, but I have a question about how it applies to America Online. I use AOL exclusively but always have the Microsoft Internet pop-ups appear, even when I am not on AOL.

Where are settings to disable this?

Arletta Donato aol.com

A. First of all, you need to shut down the Windows Messenger service, which may stop all of those annoying intrusions. It certainly will stop some of them.

If you still get pop-ups after the shutdown, it means your computer has been contaminated with some form of adware, which amounts to programs hidden on your hard drive that occasionally use your Internet connection to call up advertising.

This gets a tad more complex than plugging the Messenger service hole, which far too many Web advertisers use because it amounts to a pop-up generator provided unwittingly by Microsoft's programmers. Messenger was designed to let administrators on a local network send notes to various workstations.

It turns out that it also can be used by a computer anywhere on the Internet to send pop-up notes. Ruthless advertisers jumped at the chance to send ads via the Messenger service.

The easiest way to search and destroy the Messenger service is to click on Start, then Control Panel and the Administrative Tools icon, and then the Services icon you will find there. Scroll down the list of services in the menu that appears until you find Messenger.

On the left side of the display you will find a Stop/Start command. Stop it. Then give the Messenger line in the menu a right-click and choose Properties. Now change the box you find there from Automatic to Manual and click OK.

This fixes things so the computer won't just reopen the Messenger Service the next time you reboot.

Now on to adware, Ms. D.

Many companies offer software to seek out this kind of intruder and typically let users download an evaluation sample before one needs to decide if adding such software is worth it. Check out Lavasoft (www.lavasoft.de) for one of the most popular of these programs called, appropriately enough, Ad-aware.

Another respected maker of this software is Intermute Inc., whose Spy-Subtract and Ad-Subtract programs are bundled with many new computers. A large list of other security software can be found at Spybot.com.

Because you use AOL for the bulk of your Internet activity, but keep the Microsoft Internet Explorer running in the background, you may consider getting a pop-up-stopper browser plug-in. This attacks pop-ups that are triggered by Web pages one visits.

Check out the Google Toolbar, which includes a pop-up stopper, or the competing Microsoft Network Toolbar. The addresses are www.toolbar.google.com and http://toolbar.msn.com.

These nifty browser add-ons include a several other features, like simplifying searching and highlighting the key words when Web pages come up.

Q. I am running a Gateway 2000 with Windows 98 and am using a 700 series Hewlett-Packard printer. I am having trouble with printing full lines of text.

The full-line text appears on the display monitor, but the printed pages drop the last three or four letters of each line on the right. In my genealogy listings, for example, the last three characters are dropping off a long list of names.

Is there a way to fix this? Or do I just relegate these dinosaurs to the compost pile?

Peter D. Gold, Rainbow City, Ala.

A. This problem is all too common, and the age of the equipment has nothing to do with it, Mr. G.

You probably can fix the problem by calling up either the Page Setup tool under the File tool in your genealogy software, or by tinkering with the software that HP supplies with its printers.

These printers generally have a default setting of 1 inch for the right-hand-side margin, where your system is losing characters. Reducing the margin will allow more characters on each line and fix your problem. Click on Page Setup and look for the tab for Margins. Change your setting to .5 inches and fire it up again. That should do it.

Another way to finesse this kind of problem is to change the font size for your text to a slightly smaller setting, say from 14 points to 13 points or 12 points.

I think it's a particularly good idea with genealogy records like pedigree charts to use the wider landscape setting on the printer rather than the default portrait. The portrait mode prints on an 8 1/2-by-11-inch sheet, with the shorter side at the bottom. Landscape uses the 11-inch side for the bottom and permits much longer lines.

So, start with cutting down those margins, then consider dropping a point or two from the fonts, and leave the shift to landscape mode as an ace in the hole.

You will find the landscape setting under Page Setup and under the drivers for your own printer, which can be accessed by picking Properties after ordering the computer to print a test sheet.

Contact Jim Coates via e-mail at jcoates [at] tribune.com or via snail mail at the Chicago Tribune, Room 400, 435 N. Michigan Ave., Chicago IL 60611. Questions can be answered only through this column. Add your point of view at www.chicagotribune.com/askjim.