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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