Minutes of C&C Meeting 12 January 1999


Coordinator John welcomed the first group for the year, and possibly
the largest ever with total attendance peaking at 52, including 15
ladies (= 29%).  New faces were Marjo, Brendan, SmithSpinners X 2,
Joan and Enzo.

John acknowledged a letter from Imelda thanking the C&C group for
helping her with a computer she bought from "Hardly Normal".  He will
publish it in this Newsgroup.  She invited interested members to
contact her re the new Republican Convention and the Association of
Independent Retirees.

Jim said that one of the members with a Pentium 166 computer spoke to
two retailers who both said that he would have to buy a new
motherboard to handle the Year 2000 problem, which is clearly
dishonest.  He said that a Norton 2000 Bios Test Fix is available on
ZDNet as Freeware, and it works well.  His own computer (PII) tested
OK, but a 486 needed the flash upgrade which caused no problems.  Jim
also said that the ZDNet web site had some very good information on
the Y2K problems which certain programs may encounter, and recommended
that it be checked out.  ( www.zdnet.com )

There was some useful discussion of the function of the BIOS and the
dangers of flash upgrading it.  Chess warned that you are in dangerous
territory if something goes wrong when changing the BIOS .... you
could be left with an unusable computer.  A good suggestion was that
if a BIOS upgrade was necessary, pay a bit and get it done by an
experienced professional technician unless you are very competent.

Jim took the opportunity to advise on the under-publicised
Commonwealth Seniors Health Card which is available to anyone who is
eligible for the Pension by age if not by income or assets.  This
would apply to many self-funded retirees who can obtain more
information from the notes and application form available from
Centrelink.  The card will greatly reduce the cost of medications.

Emil raised the topic of the Y2K problem and suggested that, although
a great deal of money was going to be made "correcting" the problem,
it did not pose such a great threat to the average person's computer
use unless it was date-specific.  This was the general feeling at the
meeting and as so many programs (eg. Money, Excel 5 etc.) are already
Y2K compliant most of us will not be affected to any great extent.
However, due to the growing complexity of newer programs, some
glitches are bound to slip through, an example being W98 which Bill
assured us was OK, has already had its first Y2K fix.

Anne has discovered an orphan file "agcplx.exe" on her W3.1 machine
and would like to identify it before its deletion.  Its relocation to
a spare directory does not seem to have affected the operation of any
programs so far.  The suggestion was to do an Alta Vista search, but
otherwise to leave it be in case it was an occasionally needed file in
some program.

Lynn was seeking some help to write her e-mails offline, and then to
set up an address list.  She uses Netscape, so it was decided that
this could be best done afterwards on one of the machines here.

Allan advised of the rearrangement of some of the Centre's equipment
following  the Committee meeting because of the nasty virus which
contaminated the computer with CD ROM burning capability.  The CD ROM
burner and the scanner are now connected to different computers,
neither being connected to the internet.

Allan also said that Telstra has finally installed the extra lines for
TIP, but they do not work yet because there is a problem, possibly at
our end, which will hopefully be corrected during the routine
maintenance period at lunchtime next Friday.  This will take our line
capacity to 72.  Allan reminded members that during the scheduled
maintenance on Fridays, connections could be lost.


Allan said that there are still problems with Kryten, the main one
being that approx. once per day half of the lines (ie. 30) are lost on
a random basis.  It is hoped that this may be solved during next
Friday's scheduled maintenance shut-down.  Regarding the Telstra
cabling problem, it seems as though Telstra provide a fibre-optic
cable to the basement of the building, and feel that their
responsibility ends there.  We own the cabling within our premises,
but the cabling between the basement J-box and our J-box seems to be
controlled by the Building Management.

Mike suggested that members may care to bring along computer magazines
which are no older than six months for perusal by other members after
they have been read.  They could be left on the give-away table, but
if still there after a couple of weeks, should be taken away by the
donor.

Elizabeth has noticed that searches have been slower on W98 than they
were on W95 under the same conditions - same search engines, same
browser (IE4), same modem, same time of day etc.  The matter was
discussed, but no conclusion was reached.

Brendan is seeking information on using his Zip drive for system
back-ups.  John feels that this is a better solution for data rather
than programs, unless they are upgraded programs.  Chess and Jim F.
are currently working on this, and will be able to supply him with
further information.  Regarding system back-ups, one member said to
reserve C: for the operating system only, get it working well, and
then get it "imaged".  It seems that an operating system is no longer
installed now, instead it is "imaged"!  Tony uses a removable hard
disk for C:, and Chess added that his C: is 1 GB, but it is filling up
quickly, and a larger size is desirable.

Another member bought a used 486 computer which came with Nortons
Commander on the HD, and she would like to know how to make a back-up
copy of Nortons.  It was proposed that it would be difficult to make a
successful back-up just by copying the files, because some of the
needed files may be located in other places.  It was suggested that
she could buy a second-hand program, or buy an upgrade.

Gordon commented on Norton's ability to restore the system after a
crash, and the subject developed into a good discussion on various
crash-recovery techniques.  The virtue of data back-ups was stressed,
although it was said that it is often possible, even if difficult, for
very important data to be recovered from a crashed disk by experts.

Chess advised that he had received calls from three people who had
their W98 trashed recently, all caused by AOL, one having to do a
Format C:, and with only a W98 Upgrade CD ROM, it was a long and slow
process to get running again.  Gordon said that the W95 CD ROM is
sufficient to prove to the W98 Upgrade that the installation is valid.
However, Emil proposed that the best use for the AOL 100 free hour CDs
is to hang them on the fruit trees to scare the birds away.  (The best
suggestion yet  ....  any other ideas?  -  Ed.)

Paul described how his wife's HP scanner had given trouble, and after
a lot of argument with HP, it was sent to their Adelaide workshop for
repair at a cost of $200 with the assurance that it had been
recalibrated and was working.  On return, the top glass was scratched
and it still would still not work properly.  This problem was
mentioned to a friend in Los Angeles who had the same scanner and
SCUSI card, and he found the Adaptec web site from which a patch for
the card was downloaded.  This fixed the problem, and although HP must
have known about the patch, they did not inform their client.

Enzo has an internal Zip drive which has been re-allocating his hard
drives and CD drive, despite his attempts to define the drive
allocation.  Chess said that Jim has had a similar problem, and
corrected this by a change to the registry.  He will help with this.

Adele decided to upgrade her W95 to W98 and went to the Computer
Market to make the purchase.  When faced with the option of buying a
full W98 program or the upgrade, she chose the full version, and found
that it would not do the job.  She now has  the new version of W98
installed, but issued that warning for the benefit of other newbies.
Some ways to have got around the problem were suggested, but these
were for the more experienced comp-users.

Colin is thinking of buying a new laptop or notepad and sought
comments on brand, where to buy or other advice.  A couple of local
dealers/assemblers were discussed, generally favourably, but Allan
said that a friend looked at the Harris Technology (Sydney) web site
where he found a great deal of good information plus competitive
prices.  This impressed him so much that he bought his laptop from
them.  It was claimed that Toshiba was amongst the best, but not NEC.

Owen is now $A150 poorer due to an illegal Visa card deduction to a US
company called "Real Audio - Online Video" who billed him for $US88.88
for a non-existent purchase.  Visa Card have been asked to investigate
this, but members should be alert to the possibility of this type of
fraud.  It was generally agreed that credit card transactions over the
internet were at least as secure as those done over the phone or by
mail, and possibly better than by cheque because it is easier to get a
refund for bad products.

Chess bought a copy of "Microsoft Windows Resource Kit" for $160, the
MS Bible which contains so much information that he didn't know he
didn't know, and he suggested that either the PCUG or C&C should
purchase a copy as a reference book to remain in the Centre.  Anne
gave an example which illustrated that better control would be needed
for this to work.

John said that our "Christmas in February" was still on, and called
for volunteers to run it.

Announcements:

Next Meeting:  Even though the next meeting coincides with Australia
Day on Tuesday 26 January, the meeting will still be held as normal.

The next Lunch & Chat will be held at the Southern Cross Club on
Tuesday 19 January.  Emil will post re this in the Newsgroup.

The DayNet SIG will resume next Monday 18 January at 1000 hrs.

Definition:

"Coffee and Chat - where all the eligible guys go on a Tuesday".

				quote by a lady from the U3A.

>-------------------------------------------------------<
Neville Anderson                     nevander@pcug.org.au
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See Coffee and Chat at www.pcug.org.au/pcug/candc/c&c.htm
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