Prashant's Internet Bill Meter v2.5 Readme
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1. What's this thing?
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This is a program to automatically calculate your phone bill for the time you are online, which is extremely useful for dial-up users. It's free so you can use it for as long as you like, without any obligation to pay anything. You can freely share it with your friends, but only in the form of the original distribution package you downloaded. You may not charge any money for it's distribution.

2. What are it's features?
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New in 2.5: IBMeter is now fully Windows NT, 2000 and XP compatible!

It's small and doesn't take much memory and CPU power - it sits in the system tray and runs in the background. It can detect automatically when you are online, maintain a log of internet activity, calculate monthly total bills, and even recover from system crashes while online! It has extensive support for worldwide phone rates, you can set the currency symbol, per-pulse rate, currency unit increase, seconds/minutes per unit etc. Tons of other features include the ability to reset log files automatically, system tray minimize, auto-show when online and hide when offline, beep on every unit increase, showing current bill in title-bar and many more! The program is self explanatory so doesn't include any help file (you can move your mouse on almost any item to see a tooltip describing it).
      
3. How do I use it?
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As already mentioned, the program is so easy to use, I didn't even make a helpfile for it (a detailed HTML documentation is coming up in the next release). Just pop up the program from Start > Programs > Internet Bill Meter > Start and away you go! The first time you run the program, it will create a few files on your computer. That's a good time to check out the "settings" button. The program comes pre-set for the phone bill rates in India, but you can change them.

So, after starting the program, just minimize it and keep it running. If you dont like a cluttered taskbar, click the button with a small horizontal line on it. This will minimize the program to the system tray (lower-right of the screen, next to the clock). Whenever you go online, bill calculation will start and it will stop when you disconnect.

4. Is that all it does?
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Certainly not! Move your mouse over various buttons etc. to see what it does. Especially, see the "Settings" button. Go figure out yourself!

5. Ok, what does "Settings" do?
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You can use the settings box to adjust various settings, like the phone bill's rates for your country. You can also reset the logfile or view the logfile. Everything explains itself man, go check it out!! Settings are always saved for the next time.

6. Where can I find the correct phone bill rates etc. for my country?
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Just look up the local telephone directory, it should list the tariff rates. If not, you can ring up your phone company to obtain the required details, or look up their website.

7. How do I contact you if my computer blows up?
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It wouldn't 'blow up' your computer, but in case you get any error messages or anything, or would like to contact me for anything, feel free to email me at pvaibhav@zeenext.com or pvaibhav@msn.com and NO spam or forwards, please.

8. I love it. What next?
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Send me $omething! Contact me to know how.

9. I hate it. What's up?
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You can un-install it from Control Panel > Add/Remove Programs.

10. But where's the answer to MY question???
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Here: pvaibhav@zeenext.com  :-)

Known issues:
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1. Crash-recovery *might* not work. (This isn't my problem, it's Micro$oft Windoze's problem)**

Fixed from v2.1:
1. The beep-on-unit-increase doesn't work right now (will work in the final release)*
2. Hide-when-offline, show-when-online doesn't work (will work in the final release, promise)*
3. If you turn on auto-reset of logfiles, a warning will be displayed everytime the program starts up.*

* = These have been fixed in the latest version (version 2.5)
** = An alternate remedy for any startup problems after a system crash has been added as a separate program in this release

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Bye bye and hope you enjoy it!

Prashant Vaibhav
Patna, India.

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