PERSONAL COMPUTERS; A Remarkable Disk Doctor
By PETER H. LEWIS
Published: November 8, 1988
HERE are a couple candidates for your software and bookshelves.
Peter Norton, who used to be known as ''Mr. PC'' before he changed his name to ''Mr. PC and PS/2'' last year, has been busy lately. There is a new version (4.5) of his Norton Utilities Advanced Edition ($150) that includes a remarkable feature called Disk Doctor. If you already own a copy of the Norton Utilities - and you should - upgrades from Advanced version 4.0 cost $39.
There is also a new version of the standard edition of Norton Utilities, $100 new or $25 for an upgrade, from Peter Norton Computing; telephone, 213-319-2000. It lacks the Disk Doctor and a few other features of the Advanced Edition, but it too will make your life easier.
The Disk Doctor is a software utility that automatically diagnoses and repairs a variety of problems that can occur on floppy and hard disks. Using the Disk Doctor is painless. Log onto the directory where your DOS files are kept, inject the Disk Doctor diskette, type NDD, and sit back as the program guides you through the healing process.
If Disk Doctor cannot fix it, turn to the ''Norton Trouble-Shooting Guide for Disks,'' a 150-page guide that comes with Advanced Edition. The guide gives succor and advice for problems ranging from a corrupt config dot sys file to a trashed root directory.
If you do not know what those are, that is all the more reason to get Norton Utilities. Disk problems are perhaps the most mysterious and frustrating of all computer problems, since they hold your data hostage. You know your important files are in there, but you cannot get at them. If you try to reclaim control of your disk, do you know enough to do so without inadvertently wiping out the data?
The documentation explains the mysteries of virtually every disk affliction. Also included in all versions of the Norton Utilities is the handy ''Norton Disk Companion,'' which tells everything you want to know and need to know about disks and disk drives.
Your disk problem may be mechanical, in which case you will have to go to the computer shop anyway, but at least you will be able to pinpoint the problem for the technician. That can save lots of time and labor. The Disk Doctor is also good preventive medicine, identifying trouble spots before they can make you sick.
Disk Doctor is one of about two dozen such utilities on the disk. Others include a new ''safe format'' feature that prepares a disk without destroying the data on it; a ''command center'' that allows the user to control cursor size, screen colors and other features with ease; an improved Unerase feature that rescues files from accidental death, and an improved Speed Disk utility that fine-tunes the drive to achieve maximum performance. The best keeps getting better. Mr. Norton also has a new book, ''The New Peter Norton Programmer's Guide to the I.B.M. PC and PS/ 2'' ($22.95, Microsoft Press).
The phone rings every day now with people asking, ''What's your fax number?'' Fax, short for facsimile, is a way of sending documents from one place to another. Unlike electronic mail, which sends a letter or document as text, fax sends it as a graphic image. That means the same image of the letter you send will arrive in seconds across town or halfway around the world, including letterheads and signatures.
Fax is faster and cheaper than the overnight mail services - once you buy the fax machine or the PC-fax board and scanner, of course, which can cost from $300 to $3,000.
Daniel Fishman and Elliott King have written ''The Book of Fax,'' subtitled ''An Impartial Guide to Buying and Using Facsimile Machines'' ($12.95 from Ventana Press, 919-942-0220).
If you are among the estimated one million people who are planning to buy a fax system in the next year, this is the first investment you should make.
This is the first readable, nontechnical guide to fax that we have seen. Although it does not offer brand-name product comparisons, it does give the reader enough understanding to make smart buying decisions.