NOVEMBER 1996

MEETINGS

AGM QUESTIONS

The Committee and in particular the Treasurer were asked several questions at the AGM, these questions were taken on board and an undertaking given to answer them. Please note these answers refer only to the 1995/96 accounts.

Question 1: Is the apparent deficit in modem sales due to prepayments?
Answer: No. After going through the accounts it was discovered that the purchase of TIP Modems to the value of $10,507 had been put into modem cost of sales instead of minor equipment purchases. This will be moved over and now gives a profit of $8,286.00 on modem sales.

Question 2: What was the actual money actually PAID in advance and unused as at the 30th June 1996?
Answer: The amount of $147,695 as presented in the 1995/95 financial statements is the amount paid in advance is based on the unused hours as at the 30th June 1996 at current replacement cost.

Question 3: Are the AUUG hours included in the unused hours?
Answer: Yes.

Question 4: What are the adjusted asset and depreciation accounts, operating profit and loss and retained profits?
Answer: The bottom line for the accounts remain the same. Modems are not a depreciable asset as purchases under $1000 are expensed in our books. The following question was asked at a later date, and the committee felt is deserving of an a explanation.

Question 5: The total cost for ISP access over two years seems to be $4496, this seems very unrealistic. What was the cost?
Answer: In 1994/95 an amount of $30,750 was paid to AARNET. The 1994/95 accounts (financial statements) has a prepayment of $15,375 which represents the 1995/96 share of the $30,750.

It should be noted that none of the above alters in any way the amounts received or disclosed by the Group.

Due to concerns raised we also forwarded the questions raised to our auditors and they have clarified that the accounts have been presented to give a true reflection of the PC Users Group financial situation.

October Main Meeting

by Owen Cook

The meeting took the form of a presentation of three products. The speaker was Stuart Hills, who is employed by Multimedia Asia Pacific.

Digital Video Producer

This product will take your Camcorder video,(after it's been through a video capture card) and allow you to edit it, phase in other shots, add captions and music and whatever. A demo of these capabilities was presented, you really would have to know what you are doing, but if you have psyched your way around Paint Shop Pro, then you should be able to use this program. You really do need a modern machine, a 133 pentium with 40 meg of RAM would be nice.

Asymetrix 3D F/X

This is a pretty clever bit of software. It can make animated 3D pictures. An example was taken of a biplane. It was made to fly from one point to another, the propeller was made to spin, the colour of the fuselage was changed, and somehow he made it do a few loops and rolls with a mouse. The whole thing could be tidied up and made "real smooth", captions added and all sorts of wizbangery. Again, it helps to have a powerful machine.

Web Publisher

Yet another home page maker. Clickety here and there and before you know it you have a page which is Java enabled, has animated Gifs, beautiful graphics, and all the URLs under the sun. Real cool until I saw that the file size was 177k.