Super Prize For Computer Buffs
Illawarra Mercury
Monday December 4, 2000
Here at news.net we can't seem to stop giving stuff away.
Last week it was a copy of Quicken Personal financial software, this week you'll find a coupon on the page, which you can send in to have a chance of winning a Cannon pack, including a scanner, printer and specialty paper.
Who says Christmas doesn't come early?
Last week's competition was the first competition The Mercury has run where you could enter via email.
In fact, with just under 95 per cent of entries received via email rather than by post, it looks to be something there will be more of in the future.
The five winners of the news.net Quicken Personal competition, who each will receive a copy of Quicken Personal, which can be picked up from the front counter of The Mercury from 9am toady, are:
Marilyn Egan of Thirroul.
Mark Watson of Corrimal.
Greg Nicholls of Mt Ousley.
Thomas Hughes of Dapto.
Les & Claudette Herbert of Thirroul.
The winners have all been contacted by email.
The Canon pack on offer in this week's competition consists of the N340P Scanner, the BJC-2100SP Bubble Jet printer, a swag of glossy paper and a mouse pad kit to print on.
The N340P scanner connects via the parallel port on your PC and has a ``pass-thru" function so that you can connect a printer to the back of the scanner and print as though the printer were directly connected to the PC.
The BJ-2100SP printer features a ``super economy" mode that you can use to save up to 75 per cent of the ink that would normally be used to print a page.
Another nifty feature of the BJ-2100SP is its ability to perform double sided printing using a manual duplexing function.
That is if you tell the printer that you want to print double sided it will print the first side of the page and then pause for you to take the page and put it back in the paper hopper to print on the reverse side.
Double sided printing, apart from the obvious advantage of using less paper, gives your projects and brochures a ``professionally printed" polished look.
As a bonus, the prize pack also includes a mouse mat kit, which you can use to create a customised mouse mat.
You can use the scanner to capture your mum's favourite family photo, use the included imaging software to manipulate and size the picture, even adding a Christmas greeting text message if you like, then use the printer and the mouse mat kit to print out a unique gift that will be cherished for years.
While the kids are making Christmas gifts on the PC it's the perfect opportunity for mum and dad to sit down in front of the TV and get stuck into some serious Nintendo 64 gaming.
The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask will keep parents and kids alike intrigued, enthralled and entertained for hours as they try to save a world from certain destruction.
In this latest incarnation of the Zelda titles on the N64, Link, the protagonist, is waylaid in the forest by a masked bandit and two fairies who steal his horse and magical ocarina (a musical instrument similar to a cross between a flute and recorder).
Link gives chase and finds himself in Termina, a parallel world to his home of Hyrule, in the middle of Clock Town.
Through his adventures Link finds that there are only three days until the moon is set to fall from the heavens onto Termina - unless he can find a way to stop it.
The fate of Link, his pony Epona and the mask kid all seem bound up together and with only 72 hours to save the world it looks like being an impossible task.
But through the magic of his ocarina Link is able to travel back in time to the beginning of the three days as often as he likes. This gives you the advantage of an almost infinite amount of time to solve the puzzles and save the world.
One point to note is that you will need to have the N64 expansion pack in your machine to play this version of Zelda. The game is just too large and complex for the unexpanded N64 to cope with.
© 2000 Illawarra Mercury