Coffee and Chat Meeting on Tues Dec 14

40 members were present.

Ted  in the chair.

1) Condolences. The Chairman announced that Elizabeth's husband had
died. A card was circulated for members to sign.

2) Card from Ann.  A card was received from Ann thanking the members for
their care and concern regarding her recent loss.

3) No New Members.

4) Welcome return of Gloria who has been 'bush' at TiTree Station which
is 200 km north of Alice Springs. She had the opportunity to see at
first hand how freedom becomes licence and that responsible behaviour is
learned rather than inherent.

5) Welcome return of John also who had a less dramatic VISE trip to Parkes
NSW.
It was not without its moments as he gave 14 Internet courses in 2 weeks
and 'enjoyed' (or perhaps it was endured) a 17 hour bus trip. He noted
that Telstra charges of $12/hr was a heavy imposition on people who
already suffered from the tyranny of distance.

6) Wolf still at the door. In the absence of the treasurer Wolf stepped
into the breach and assured us that in spite of a loss on the Christmas
party we still had a healthy surplus.

Whiteboard Items

7) Esther
        a) TIP. There was some concern about the nexus between charges and
connections.
        After much discussion it was categorically conceded that No
connection = No charge.

        b) Inability to connect was given a run around the traps with no new
insights.

8) Greg and Charlie

        a) Experience with the Woomera Modem. The following points came up -
        1) Need to set the auto impedance matching setting mi%=1
        2) Need to clear the previous database.
        3) Manual is too extensive. Which in itself is a refreshing change.
But John
        has offered to make up a smaller check sheet for members.
        4) Password problems usually mean a need to de-install.

9) Merv and others

        Easycleaner. Users should have the current version which is V1.7f
        the site is www.saunalahti.fi/~tonihele/ecleane.htm

10)
        a) Shutdown problem with Windows 98 SE. There is a patch for this
problem.
        b) Newsgroups. Agent 1.7 is available on TIP. (~2 Meg.)

11) Trevor
        Internet Banking. Good experience with the CBA.

12) Neville
        a) A Virus came via e-mail called a 'Circle of Friends' -
attachments should
        not be opened without great care.

        b) Label software and use of standard printers. Merv suggested
        that the software freely available from Avery covered most
        requirements.

13) Jim
        Phone CD's problems. Does not autostart.

14) Mike For interest Mike reported a very satisfactory download rate of
        9kb/sec for a pdf file over a time period of 2-3 minutes. This
        led to a discussion of pdf files in general. The point was made
        that this was a very efficient mode of compressing files and an
        example was given of a 60 Meg file (a 16 Bits edition)
        containing text, graphics and sound bytes that could be held on a
        1.44 Meg floppy. It was also pointed out that pdf files carried
        certain constraints that were set by the author which prevented
        copying or printing etc. In general the message was that while
        your browser should be enabled with the pdf reader (Acrobat
        version 4) it is better to download the file and read it later.
        Clearly there is a heavy overhead penalty if you do it within
        the structure of your browser. Note also that you will need the
        latest browsers if you are going to use Acrobat 4.

15) Peter

        Modem Doctor. Useful software.
        Site is www.modemdoctor.com/win95inf.htm

16) Jenny
        Why use FAT32? There is a saving as the file sizes increase in 4k
steps rather than 32k steps.

17) Allan
        a) TIP the PCUG BBS will close on 31 Dec.

        b) Long calls. A policy to time-out after 30 minutes of
        inactivity. (The US usage where local calls are free means that
        the automatic logons incorporated with some software is not a
problem.)

        c) 12 digital modems are being added to our PCUG server

18) Merv
        A bothersome problem with an ASTON CD Unit. The main lesson would be
to avoid this make.

20) General Q and A
        a) Use History option in Browser to review pages offline.
        b) Use Shift/Enter to give wrap around to Excel cells.
        c) Compaq laptop. ?

Next meeting Jan 11th 2000

JA 2/12/99

******************************************************
Recent Coffee & Chat pages are  available on the internet news group
tip.coffee-chat.
Archives of past meetings are available at  the web site:
http://www.pcug.org.au/pcug/candc/c&c.htm
These Archives are  searchable, and also include some minutes of the
Internet SIG, run on alternate Mondays
*******************************************************


--
Ted  Macarthur
 ACT

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