Q: I recently bought a new Vision Master Pro monitor and I am very happy with it. However, I have noticed two fine lines across the screen.

I contacted the supplier and they said this was normal. Is this right or do I have a faulty monitor?

A: The lines you are talking about are very fine wires near the top and bottom of the screen. Their presence, though a little annoying, is perfectly normal.

When the Trinitron tube was first introduced there were some focusing problems when using them with computers. The wires were added to help focus the electron beam (the thing that builds up the picture) on to the screen.

I must admit that at first I did find these lines irritating but these days I never notice them. It is a small price to pay for the pin-sharp quality of most Trinitron monitors.

Q: Why do I need to buy special laser printer labels for my printer. If I use ordinary labels, will it harm the printer?

A Unfortunately, you do need to buy special labels. The reason lies in the way the laser printer works. Basically, it deposits fine grains of carbon on to a page with areas that have a standing electrostatic charge.

The carbon "sticks" to the areas of the page that have this charge and then the page is fed through a fuser. This is effectively a very hot roller that fuses the carbon to the page, producing the printed page. This last stage of the process causes the problem. Because of the extreme heat, most standard labels use glue that would melt and be deposited on the inside of your printer.

Laser labels are designed to use heat-resistant glue and so are safe to use.

Q I want to produce some forms for my office (delivery notes, invoices, etc). What would be the best package to do this in?

A There are a number of packages you could use, ranging from full-blown desktop publishing packages, such as Adobe PageMaker and Microsoft Publisher, to a standard word processor. If you have Microsoft Word, this should allow you to produce some good results, although you will need to learn how to insert tables and text boxes.

The Help file in Word has extensive content on creating tables and using text boxes. There is also a good web page on form-creation in Word at: www. va.gov/forms/ dotcreation