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Thursday, February 14, 2002

A few years ago there was uproar about cell phone radiation and how it might cause cancer. The furor has subsided tremendously as phones have become less costly and more convenient.

It's almost as if a bit of disease is OK as long as your life is easier -- 800 million people now use cell phones, and we hardly ever hear of emissions concerns.

Part of the reason is that it is not easy to get the data on the SAR ratings (specific absorbtion rate) of various phones. The SAR is a measurement of radiation level that can be safely absorbed by your body. Each phone is rated in Watts/kilogram, with lower numbers being safer than higher numbers.

When you ask your wireless service for the SAR of the phone you're thinking of buying, they'll tell you that they don't keep that data. So you can't compare phone models before you choose one.

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In some cases, they don't even tell you the specific model of the phone you're buying, even though different models within the same product line have vastly differing SARs. Motorola's Startac 130 has one of the safest ratings at 0.02 W/kg while the Startac 7767D has a whopping 1.38 W/kg SAR. The phones look alike and are both referred to simply as Motorola Startac phones. So unless you ask the extra questions, you won't know whether you're buying a low-SAR or high-SAR phone.

I've placed links to SAR data at www.MegabyteMinute.com.

Q: My computer doesn't shut down properly. Instead, it shows me a screen for hours that says "Windows is shutting down." How can I fix it?

A:There are a number of things that can interfere with shutdown, including a corrupt sound file, bad device drivers, or having your system set to fast shutdown. If the system hangs up while trying to run any of these things, it will not allow your system to shut down.

The sound file that you hear when you turn off your computer might be the culprit.

To find out, simply remove the sound from your shutdown settings. Then try to shut the computer down. If it still doesn't shut down, the sound file is not the culprit. If it shuts down properly, then you can either continue to operate the system without the "exit Windows" sound -- or you can substitute another sound in its place (which is more fun anyway).

Any number of drivers can interfere with proper shutdown. A driver is the software that operates various devices on your system, such as your video card, your modem, your network or your CD drive.

The easiest way to find out whether a driver is causing the problem is to go to the Web site of the company that put together your computer and type in a search for "system won't shut down" or some similar phrase -- until you find an article that talks about known problems. I just found a known problem on a Hewlett-Packard system that was solved by simply updating its video driver -- which HP provided to me with complete download and installation instructions.

If you've had the problem for a while, it's likely that someone else has too -- and that the vendor has a fix ready.

But the problem is not always listed, in which case you can press F8 continuously while you start up the system to invoke the Windows start-up menu, then select "Safe Mode." Safe mode starts your system without any drivers loaded. Then you can enable your drivers one by one to test each shutdown -- and identify the culprit.