Tonya was one for two last week. Her expose of space aliens calling technical support brought in reprint requests from three continents (and yes, please feel free to reprint that article as long as you credit Tonya and TidBITS fully, and please send us a copy of the publication - use the address at the end of the issue)

AV Corrections -- First, we accidently flipped the code names. The Centris 660AV was originally known as the Tempest, and the Quadra 840AV was known as the Cyclone

Book News -- I haven't completed my book about connecting to the Internet from a Mac, but the major creative work is done, and I'm finishing the back matter now

Where's my Newton? -- If your daily newspaper offers a comics page, you may have guessed that Doonesbury author Garry Trudeau already has his Newton MessagePad, and you may be jealous! Not to worry; even though virtually all dealers in the "regional roll-out areas" such as Boston, New York, and San Francisco have run out of MessagePads, and some early purchasers have managed to resell their units for huge profits, the nationwide roll-out appears to be on schedule for Labor Day

Technical Support Coordinator, BAKA Computers No, this doesn't mean Darth Vader has been paroled. DarkStar, released last month by Apple, and officially known as the "Monitor Energy Saver Control Panel," allows Macintosh users to conserve power using "Energy Star compliant" computers and monitors

Chris W. Johnson at the University of Texas recently released an update to his free Gatekeeper antiviral utility, version 1.2.8. The new version is a maintenance release, and doesn't address new viruses, but all Gatekeeper users should obtain this update. Some earlier versions of Gatekeeper may comment that they are out of date, and suggest that the user find an update

Continuing their quest to sweep away the barriers between the world's electronic mail systems, Information Electronics recently announced the approaching 01-Sep-93 release of PostalUnion/SMTP for QuickMail, a new PostalUnion/SMTP gateway for CE Software's QuickMail. PostalUnion is IE's modular gateway technology, allowing them to develop new gateway products efficiently by using common modules in similar gateways

Veteran readers of my contributions to TidBITS know that I am unabashedly obsessed with computer tools for the storage and retrieval of information. They also know that an almost unqualified rave review from me is a rare thing

AudioVision monitor connections -- In response to last week's discussion about connecting a Quadra 840AV to the AudioVision monitor, we learned that Apple has no plans to modify the 840AV's (or the Centris 660AV's) motherboard to add a different port for connecting to the AudioVision monitor

This article, a deliberate takeoff of urban legend article, "Your Co-worker Could be a Space Alien," goes out with a grin to people who do telephone technical support. Many callers are actually space aliens who sound human, but you can expose these visitors by looking for certain tip-offs, say experts. Odd or mismatched software and hardware

For the majority of Macintosh users, those without copy-protected software, this article will be a minor curiosity. Lucky you. For those left, you will want to read this to save yourself the hours of aggravation that I went through installing The Latest Upgrade

Apple's newest Macintoshes are fast machines with new video and sound capabilities. To review, the new Centris 660AV, formerly known as the Cyclone, uses a Centris 610 case; likewise, the new Quadra 840, once known as the Tempest, lives in a Quadra 800 case

The MessagePad, Apple's new Personal Digital Assistant, is a type of Newton. So, you may ask, what exactly is a Newton? Newton represents an architecture that combines hardware, software, and application technologies

Adam is in electronic hiding for a few weeks as he finishes writing The Internet Starter Kit for Macintosh. Although he claims he will read his email, please don't expect responses to anything but the most urgent messages

PageMaker's not alone -- Mark H. Anbinder writes to clarify his comments about PageMaker's capability of dragging objects between document windows in TidBITS #188