Meeting 13 January 1998


 

	Ted M opened the meeting at 1000 with 33 in attendance,
including three new members - Colin, Bob and John.  Apologies from Alf
and Geoff who are both recovering well after hospitalisation.

	Treasurer Wolf circulated the balance sheet which showed that,
although the balance was reduced from 1997, it was still healthy.

	Wolf reminded members that the PCUG's "ACT Alive" stand will
require staffing on Canberra Day (16 March) - mark your diaries.  He
also said that the PCUG Committee has invited us to run a 20 min C & C
simulation at the next main meeting on Tuesday 27 January.  Gordon
volunteered to conduct this session, and added that the Sydney PCUG
published reports the Q & A sessions at their general meetings and
many problems were solved this way.  This procedure was also followed
by the Melbourne PCUG.  One third of the questions were answered on
the spot, one third by written answers by members, and the remainder
answered in "The Age" by a member who is on "The Age" staff.

	The new members found common ground with some mutual help;
Colin has an interest in high quality photo reproduction and needs
some advice on scanning techniques which Bob offered to provide.  Bob
is having a problem with internet login scripts,  and the subject was
discussed, although I cannot recall any firm resolution to the
problem.   Although being a long-time PCUG member, Bob was pleased to
meet Mike in person, having had similar interests and problems a long
time ago with a Tandy TRS-80.

	Paul has been trying to replace the almost indecipherable
place names on an ancient map (1625), showing the old churches in
York, with more readable fonts, but has only been able to do this by a
tedious method, and seeks advice on a more efficient method.  Corel
Draw v7 and Photoshop were suggested because of their good layering
facilities.

	Mike spoke of a problem he had with 'Agent' where the URL
underline caused a 'new page' call to the screen, but not to the
printer.  He also said that he had to go to the Windows configuration
to change from American to Australian date format, and found that the
English (American) settings allowed the use of the 12 hour time
system, but that English (Australian) only permitted the 24 hour
system. The use of a 12 hour clock in a 24 hour day was queried.  Mike
mentioned that the 'Ziff Davis" benchmark tests (claimed to be the
king of benchmark tests) were available from Ziff Davis on CD for a
cost of $10 mailed.

	Mike circulated a document giving information of the docking
of the US space shuttle with Mir at 2150 on Wed 14/1/98 which should
be visible from earth, and also available through a website that used
a Java display and could be viewed with Netscape 4.04 but not 4.01.
He said that Santa had given him a 'Diamond Monster 3D' card for
Christmas which has improved his graphics enormously, although he said
that the price range in Canberra was from $435 to $250.  He had also
bought 'Formula 1 Racing Simulator' and 'Flight Simulator FS98' (for
the grandchildren - not for Mike, of course!).  The new 3D card did
not seem very effective on FS98, but it was suggested that certain
keystrokes would be needed to activate it, and that it reduced the
scintillation that occurred on distant to horizon scenery plus some
other benefits favourably quoted in FltSim newsgroups.


Coffee & Chat Meeting on 13/1/98 - Part 2
-------------------------------------------------------------
John S spoke on an interesting exercise which involved downloading a
program from Microsoft which recommended the best method of
positioning keywords on a home page to attract high priority with
search engines; the main aim being to get into the top ten hits.  This
is important for commercial sites, eg. consultants, but John modified
his own home page to test the theory, then ran it past 'websubmit' and
'webposition'.  Result - if you enter "manned space flight" +
"australia" in the Alta Vista search engine, you will (for the time
being) be guided to John's home page within the top ten.

New member John W can send faxes OK, but is having trouble receiving
them.  Emil suggested that although some software defaults to the
'receive mode', some need to be set to the 'receive mode'.  Ken added
that the computer does not need to be on to receive faxes (if you are
nearby) as the incoming fax tries three times, giving the appropriate
phone noise, allowing time to get the computer booted-up, although
some members queried the average boot-up time required.

Ted told of a recent experience with his local friendly ATM when he
made a withdrawal of $200 which appeared from the slot OK, but while
he was writing-up the transaction in his cheque book, the money was
drawn back into the machine (who said the banks weren't hungry?).  Ted
repeated the withdrawal and grabbed the money quickly this time.  When
he checked the print-out he found that he had been debited with two
$200 withdrawals.  Expecting a confrontation, he spoke to a bank
staffer who admitted that it happened all the time.  It is a safety
precaution eg. in case a customer has a heart attack during the
transaction - the money is auto withdrawn after 1? minutes, but the
account is still debited.  There were some humourous comments about
this procedure as it was expected that the ATM should have made some
comment on its screen about what had just happened, and what to do
next.  At least, it wasn't the fault of Windows 95 this time!

Wolf said that recently his 'Agent' had stopped permitting character
insertion which made text correction a tedious operation.  Alan
suggested that Wolf had probably inadvertently toggled-off the
function by accidentally hitting the 'insert' key ... and 'Agent' will
remember this as 'normal' until it was toggled-on again.

Peter has a spare 16 bit CD Rom (non plug and play) plus drivers he
will give to anyone who has  the matching Sound Blaster card.  Gordon
accepted this for a friend who found that the asking price for this
Rom was $65 at the markets, which he said was overpriced.  There was
much discussion on sound cards, and Roger said that there were plenty
of new drivers available which would convert old cards to the duplex
mode.  Ken spoke of a former audio problem and there was general
discussion on the internal cabling of the CD Rom/Sound Card system.
Gordon said that he was baby-sitting a friend's printer over Xmas and
had printer problems which were solved with the aid of the updated
drivers which are readily accessible over the internet.

Jim spoke favourably about the program "Oil Change" which comes by
itself (approx. $70 + $30 / year for updates) or with Uninstaller 4.5
for a further $30 unlocking fee. It automatically checks your
installed programs when you go on the net, and advises you if there
are updates available, and where to get them.

Eddie spoke of problems he was having with 'Netscape Cool Talk', and
although it was suggested that it was not as good as 'MS NetMeeting',
that MS site was usually so congested that it was not very effective
either.  Most agreed that 'I phone' was the best option.

Ken has just installed Word 97 which required an 11 character key, but
the key supplied on the box was only 10 characters which the
installation would not accept.  He phoned Microsoft, and after the
usual delays, spoke with a staffer who supplied the missing character,
but was not concerned with the MiS information supplied!  It appeared
to install OK over Word 6, but when Ken shut down and tried to
restart, it froze while carrying out the Norton Utilities checks.
When NU was disabled, he was able to run Word OK, and further
investigations indicated that the fault may lie with 'Registry
Tracker', a part of NU.  When 'Registry Tracker' was disabled, it left
a blank square on the screen which was corrected with 'Crash Guard'.
Jim advised of a patch to correct this particular NU problem through
'Live Update'.

Paul and Lew pointed out problems with NU, although John had the same
(blank space) problem which was fixed with a patch for Word 97. Lew
said that last week he had downloaded the latest Norton's Antivirus
update, and within 24 hours his computer was giving a wide range of
weird problems with many error messages.  This continued for two days
before self-correcting.  Jim downloaded the same updates but has been
free of problems.  Someone suggested that Lew's biggest problem with
NU was having it!

After more sharing of NU experiences, Mike asked the question, "Was
Nortons Utilities worth buying?".  Trevor said never again because he
was always needing patches to fix problems.  Jim spoke highly of NU
and added that CNN gives it a top review.  Ken spoke well of 'Crash
Guard' because it recovers him from the NU problems.  Gordon likes it
because of the way its virus checker works, which is necessary for him
because he frequently receives infected disks from his Sydney office,
and they seem to be unaware of their virus problems on five different
machines!

There was much more discussion on NU and other "protection" type
programs such as 'Nuts & Bolts' which was a total disaster.  Because
of the diverse range of opinions expressed, this reporter is now
dubious of their overall value.

John said that 'BCM Utilities' was the second most popular internet
download (from shareware.com), and was excellent.  He also suggested
that you check the 'Details' module of W95 when troubles occur and
remove offending files, or periodically check for unnecessary files.

Colin had some problems with his laptop which came good after he reset
it to "optimum performance", and decided that it must have changed in
a crash.  Also having computer to printer problems, he reset it to
"factory settings" and it works better, but needs to have the
"continue" button pressed each time now.  He also has a printer
problem which fails to deliver the bottom line of his spreadsheets,
which sounds to be more like a political problem than a technical one!
Owen solved his similar problem by buying a new printer.

Ted spoke of a program for "web searching without a monitor" for
visually impaired people, and circulated an info sheet on the subject.
The program is called 'EMACSPEAK' and is a speech interface in the
form of a high speed reader which changes tone to suit various
headings, addresses, URLs etc.

Anne spoke on "registered e-mail" when the author gets confirmation of
the receipt of the mail, and sought opinions on the best type of mouse
mat.  Comments favoured soft, hard and none, as long as the mouse had
its ball  and other internal parts cleaned regularly.

Gloria advised that there will be a meeting of volunteers from the
PCUG, who are assisting Senior Citizens obtain access to the internet,
at her home at 1400 on Thursday, the main purpose being for some
interaction between the Monday, Wednesday and Friday volunteers at the
Woden Library to compare results and problems.  All volunteers have
been advised by e-mail.  [ At this meeting, Mike Dinn resigned as
co-ordinator in favour of Trish Downes.]

It was agreed that the new chairs in the PCUG Centre were rather good.

It has been suggested that as some members, particularly those who
return after lunch for the Flight Simulator SIG, who normally go to
the nearby clubs for lunch may consider the option of eating in the
Centre with food supplied by the adjacent "Cheese Board".  Wolf
obtained some catering info from them which can be posted on this
newsgroup.  Alternatively, members could eat in the dining area
outside the "Cheese Board" to evaluate the food and prices.

The next meeting will be on Tuesday 27 January at 1000, and will be
chaired by John Saxon.

Sorry for the late and bisected posting - Neville.
>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------<
Neville Anderson  -  nevander@pcug.org.au
* Keep your ambition within your reach, but beyond your grasp *
Coffee & Chat Homepage at: www.pcug.org.au/~rcook/c&c.htm
Archived reports for past meetings, with C&C Search Engine
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