Minutes of the Meeting held 12 March 2002
1.Admin. Jim H reminded PCUG members regularly attending Southside
meetings that they should at least become associate members of the
Irish Club. All current associate members are reminded that their
current Irish Club membership expires on 31 March and they are not
sent renewal reminders.
2. Print Magic Photo Card Inkjet kits. At the last Computer Fair Jim H
purchased and then tested this kit, At the meeting he circulated his
test results together with the comparative results on Kodak Premium
Ultra Gloss 220gsm Fotopaper and A4 Reflex SCT paper.
The cost per print of Paper Magic (248 gsm for HP or 300 gsm for
Canon) is 22% less than the Kodak paper but involves 3 step
production: Print, Apply solution and then wipe/polish. Kit comes
complete with solution (non-toxic), application sponge and polishing
cloth & 50 sheets of paper.
There are comprehensive and simple instructions and the promotional
blurb claims near photo quality. This was supported by testing, the
results falling closer to those on Kodak paper (photo quality result)
than on A4 paper, the colours being slightly duller than on Kodak
paper, but against this the results felt and look laminated, For a
laminated product the results were excellent, for the best quality Jim
recommended sticking with premium photographic papers. Print Magic
Email address is printmagic@pocketmail.com.au
3. Mobile phone batteries - Rick
4. Java warning - Greg
5. TIP and TransACT - Allan - Allan reported that the PCUG Committee
had agreed to a recommendation from the IPMC that TIP become an ISP
partner of TransACT. More details will be published in Sixteen Bits
and in tip.announce as progress is made.
6. Uninstall - Wayne
7. The disappearance of my e-Trust EZ antivirus and refusal of the
printer to print... Elizabeth.
The virus turned out to be a very nasty hoax; for, if you take out the
part the hoaxer advises you to take out, you ruin your Microsoft
CDROM. The same lady who had sent me the warning, sent the apology
for having sent a hoax,
Our wizard John S. recognized the fault and fixed everything,
inclusive the printer which goes again like a charm. I am extremely
grateful to him. He even had to stay extra time because of a mix-up
between nurses to treat my cataract.
Life is full of surprises, I expected to see colours better, but
according to today's test, my sight as such has improved enormously
thanks to the eye clinic in Curtin and the dedication of the nurses of
DVA (Department of Veterans' Affairs.)
8. "Rabbit proof fence" limits - Jeff
Jeff reported that he was particularly impressed with the result of
Google search for "Rabbit proof fence" and hence his lasting high
opinion of Google as search engine. Other search engines such as
www.askjeeves.com may be better though for some searches, particularly
for encyclopaedic type information.
9. IT meet Sydney - TedM
Three people from CnC went to the IT conference at Darling Harbour
Sydney. There were 300 exhibits (1/100 th the size of the Las Vegas
event and 1/100+x th at Cebit in Germany where golf buggies are needed
to get around)
a. A common theme was business, wireless. internet links, backup
etc.
b. Cheap ink was on sale from ET PC computers at Merrylands in NSW. I
got a $30+ reduction for a 'MMC' brand Chinese made pack (three
colours) for Canon 7000 series printer compared with Canon ink. Canon
ink however is waterproof. The ink buys, covered most of the cost of
the day.
c. 'Electroboard' showed an excellent display screen and projector
which alowed 4 colour drawing on the screen. The screen image was
excellent, even when viewed from the side. The screen was
position/touch sensitive and worked at high resolution as well. The
point of a ball point pen was sufficient on the approx. 6feet by 4feet
screen to select part of a Windows icon. Cost $4k for the screen and
$6k for the projector.
d. A visit to the PCUG (Sydney) booth, revealed a good group which
had unfortunately lost money through unpaid ads from a large USA
company that went bankrupt. To join costs only $57 and their newsleter
is electronic only.
I was only able to visit about 15 booths in the afternoon. A hi-res
scanner image of an x-ray of a skull was impressive.(about 2400x1200)
Star Office 5.1 Follow up
Trevor F supplied me with a magazine CDROM containg Star Ofice 5.1. It
was free and looks good. It is easy to use and is a fully featured
word,spreadsheet and presentation suite. It is integrated with the
windows screen in a way that Microsoft has not yet achieved. It runs
well under XP. Goodbye Microsoft Office.TedM
10. (i) Corrupt Outlook Express
(ii) RAM loss
(iii) XP/Win98SE networking - Simon
(I) Corrupt Outlook Express - Each time I went to send a newly created
email from OE6 I had a window pop up saying the computer was trying to
install "MS Visio Professional 2002 (Eng)". This lead to a window
saying it was looking for visio.msi either in the register or win.ini.
I purged all references to visio in these locations, reloaded and
repaired IE6 but still it kept coming up. Then I realised I had
installed Visio Professional some months ago but not used it, so I
uninstalled it - problem fixed!
(ii) RAM memory loss - after my daughter had tried printing a large
document using our software driven Canon LBP-460 Laser printer I found
that RAM was disappearing (according to my Freemem monitor) at about 1
MB every 10 seconds. I went on the net to try and find a reason and
while trying to print out some diagnostics cancelled a print job which
fixed the problem. Talking later with John S he commented it was
probably a printer spooler error.
(iii) XP - 98SE networking - Requested tips on networking a new laptop
with XP to a Pentium II PC running 98SE - still trying & will
summarise experiences in later reports.
Simon.
11. "Old tmers disease" - AllanV
I'd forgotten who lent me a magazine and CDs 6-8 weeks ago.
[Then as I got up to ask, I noticed the name written on the
magazine...] Alan V.
12. Script/exploit virus - BobS
On 8/3/02 I was advised by AVG freeware of a virus alert . A
"script/exploit" virus was automatically detected and moved to the
"Virus Vault", from which it was quickly deleted using the AVG Delete
button. No further problems but the source is unknown!
13. Pdf writer (pdf995) - PaulH
14. Scanner recommendations - PaulH
15. Modem and electric fence - PaulH
The URL for the Kate Lundy site mentioned by Charlie is:
http://www.katelundy.com.au/pairgainvictims.htm
Cheers, RichardS.
From Paul: 13. Pdf writer (pdf995) - PaulH
Following on from Rod's comments at the last Northside meeting, Paul
indicated that he had obtained and used the shareware PDF writer
"PDF995" and enthusiastically recommends the program. PDF995 had
produced PDF files that were less than half the size of the same files
created by Acrobat 4 when used on a number of 6-page newsletters
created in MS Word. Several members suggested that Acrobat 5 could be
used to similarly reduce PDF file size and offered to run a
comparative test on the newsletter files.
14. Scanner recommendations - PaulH
Paul requested recommendations on scanners at the lower end of the
market. Several brands were recommended and advice given that the
quality of software accompanying the scanner was probably the most
important differentiator.
15. Modem and electric fence - PaulH
Modem speed problems experienced by many rural Internet users are
apparently contributed to by electric fences in the vicinity of copper
phone lines Paul gave as an example the case of farmers, only 4km
from a village telephone exchange, whose daytime Maestro Woomera modem
speed settles consistently on 4800. A Google search revealed that the
problem has been identified quite widely in New Zealand as well as
Australia and that no solution has been found. No remedy was
identified, apart from approaching Maestro for comment.
From Phillip and Maureen:
Paul mentioned that electric fences damage not only modems but also
threatened wildlife, namely, the echidna. They cannot respond to the
danger and try to charge through the fence - and so get their little
brains fried. These harmless little animals which have lived on
Australia's landscape since the age of the dinosaurs are now listed on
the first level of endangerment by the IUCN, the scientific body which
draws up the international endangered species listings. They are very
slow breeding, and their populations are extremely small on any part
of our landscape. They ingest a lot of soil in digging for worms etc
and also swallow a lot of agricultural chemicals. They are being
slaughtered on our roads. So there is virtually no part of the
Australian landscape in which their future is now secure.
16. *#06# - JohnS
JohnS mentioned that he'd received an Email as follows:
"To check your Mobile phone's serial number, key in the following on
your Phone star - hash - zero - six - hash as (*#06#) A 15 digit code
will appear on the screen. This number is unique to your handset.
Write it down and keep it somewhere safe. Should your phone get
stolen, you can phone your service provider and give them this code.
They will then be able to block your handset so even if the thief
changes the Sim card your phone will be totally useless. You probably
won't get your phone back, but at least you know that whoever stole
it, can't use/sell it either. If everybody did this, there would be no
point in stealing mobile phones."
Now if I could just slow down the scroll rate on my phone enough so
that I can read the number......
P.S. I've just found (on JimH's suggestion) that what looks very like
the displayed number is printed under the Sin card as an "IMEI" number
- but I need a good magnifi\ying glass to read it!
================
Cheers, Trevor
-*"*-.,,.-*"*-.,,.-*"*-.,,.-*"*-.,,.-*"*-
"Whenever I hear about a 'peacekeeping force'," I wonder:
If they're so interested in peace, why do they use force?"
-- George Carlin.
******************************************************
Coffee & Chat Page, inluding archives of past meetings
http://www.pcug.org.au/pcug/candc/
******************************************************
Return to the Index or the Coffee and Chat Page