The meeting was held at the Irish Club with JimH in the chair and RodB
taking the notes. There was one new attendee, AlanR.

The meeting decided it would like some savoury biscuits as well as the usual
sweet kind. Membership lists were distributed for checking. The treasurer
said we were okay.

JohnS commenced the regular business with an excellent demonstration of the
conversion of a vinyl disk recording into a .wav file on the computer. He
used a combined turntable and amplifier he had purchased very economically
at Tandy to play the vinyl. A simple adapter to connect two RCA plugs to a
standard 3.5mm stereo sound board socket also came from Tandy. John
demonstrated the standard software available in all versions of Windows to
record and play back sound, but said it was limited to about 50 secs.
duration. More comprehensive software such as Roxio Spindoctor is available.
See the currrent issue of PC User for samples of others.

1. RodB reported some more than usually bizarre behaviour of his system
related to BIOS failure to detect disk drives when the system is very cold
and when a flash card is present in its USB reader. In neither of these
conditions will the system boot. Fixes: when cold, start again; remove the
flash card. The general feeling of the meeting was that Rod should keep his
house warmer and pay attention to what he is doing.

2a. GrahamMcC  noted that space must be allocated for the restore feature of
both WinME and WinXP. he also said that his system did not adhere to the
upper limit he set and was not apparently automatically discarding old
system images. JimH said that disabling and re-enabling the Restore function
was the only way to clear the space.

2b. Graham also asked why a Default Monitor appears in Device Manager as
well as his regular monitor. Noone could answer this, but others reported
the same symptom and a similar one related to modems. No problems are caused
and the recommendation was not to worry about it. Oddly, when Graham opens
DevMgr a Dialup screen appears. No explanation was offered.

3. JeffC reported another aspect of his holiday, this time in Scotland. He
had found a castle for sale at £4m and showed us the advertisement in
enhanced form (a good way of preserving newspaper information). He also
mentioned the program 2xExplorer which was recommended by Andrew
Clayton in Sixteen Bits, July, p.24. He considered it much superior to
Windows
Explorer (find it at netez.com/2xExplorer). There was some support for this.
Powerdesk 4 was mentioned as an another alternative.

4. TonyS has some .prc files. How does he read them? One suggestion was to
use a Palm emulator.

5a. CharlieK said he had determined that his previously reported problems
with accessing some disks were related to IDE cables. If the correct cables
were used and disks were attached in the correct sequence all problems went
away.

5b. Charlie also described the Indexing feature of WinXP and said how
powerful and useful he had found it. It is in Control Panel>Computer
Management.

6. Derek said that his WinXP system does not always come out of hibernation.
When he reboots it, it does not run Scandisk as he expects.  The running of
Scandisk at boot time can be controlled. In WinXP Scandisk can be found
under Control Panel>Device Manager>Disks(Properties). JohnS remarked that
hibernate saves RAM storage content to disk and that therefore a fair bit of
free space on disk was necessary. Research after the meeting by the note
writer reveals that hibernation is not available to Win98SE if disks are
using FAT32. Standby is probably superior, but may not work depending, as it
does, on hardware characteristics.

7. John K advised that the Cartridge Factory, in Woden, were not prepared to
refill black cartridges for his Canon BJC7100 printer.  They had a history
of difficulties in filling these cartridges and had stopped refilling some
time ago.  In desperation to save the expense of buying new Cartridges all
the time ($70+ a pop) John had decided to try New Reality
(www.newreality.com.au) from their advert in PC User Magazine, they
advertised
the appropriate refill kit.  He had refilled both the Black ink and the
Optimiser solution very easily following simple instructions without even
spilling one drop of ink.  Reinstalled and the cartridge worked perfectly.
He found their service very good, ordered over internet late evening, kit
arrived in post two days later.  Then ordered a colour kit, had a problem as
only sent two colours but double quantity, phoned and by return the other
colour arrived, again double quantity at no extra charge to match kit
already provided as their original mistake.  Excellent service much cheaper
than professional refills and so easy to do.  Means he can fill about eight
times for cost of one cartridge, even if only works once before clogs still
cheaper.

Somebody suggested the person at Mitchell had kits slightly cheaper, for
John though the cost in petrol and hour taken to travel to and from Mitchell
was more than the difference in price.

John also circulated an amusing story (appended).

8. Rob said he had a problem with NAV 2002 Live Update which had worked and
now no longer worked. RodB remarked that he had noted that Symantec had a
support site that may address the issue.

 9. Eric has a problem with EZ Trust. No comments were offered (or did the
note writer go to sleep).

10. AlanV described how he had built a Satellite Navigation system out of a
cheap second hand laptop and a GPS box. Very cheap, but as it relies on
visual inspection of a screen it may not be a good solution for a lone
driver.

11. Chess showed some useful components: a slot facing to provide external
USB connections from the motherboard and  a 5¼" bay facing to provide front
panel access to various connections normally only available at the back of a
computer. The latter item was configurable. Check out frontx.com.

12. TedT reported success with Windows Media Player after the difficulties
he reported last week.

13. AllanM said, on being questioned, that PCUG's relationship with TransACT
was proceeding slowly. The contract was expected to be signed next week and
function expected in September some time.

In closing discussion, Chess mentioned that the Tivo box described in
earlier meetings was available in PAL form in the UK for £399. JohnS said
that the similar SonicBlue device could be set to automatically skip
commercials.

Appendix: JohnK's circulated joke.

This guy should have been promoted, not fired. This is a true story  from
Suncorp Metway Limited. This conversation was transcribed  from a recording
monitoring the Internet Banking Helpdesk.  Needless to say the Help Desk
employee was fired; however he is  currently suing Suncorp Metway
organisation for "Termination without Cause."

 Actual dialogue of a former Suncorp Metway Customer and a Customer Support
employee:

 "Troy Dixon computer assistance; may I help you?"
 "Yes, well, I'm having trouble with your internet site."
 "What sort of trouble?"
 "Well. I was just typing along, and all of a sudden the words went away."
 "Went away?"
 "They disappeared."
 "Hmm. So what does your screen look like now?"
"Nothing."
 "Nothing?"
 "It's blank; it won't accept anything when I type."
 "Are you still in our web-site, or did you get out?"
 "How do I tell?"
 "Can you see the C: prompt on the screen?"
 "What's a sea-prompt?"
 "Never mind, can you move your cursor around the screen?"
 "There isn't any cursor: I told you, it won't accept anything I type."
 "Does your monitor have a power indicator?"
"What's a monitor?
 "It's the thing with the screen on it that looks like a TV.
 "Does it have a little light that tells you when it's on?"
 "I don't know."
 "Well, then look on the back of the monitor and find where the power cord
goes into it. Can you see that?"
 "Yes. I think so."
 "Great. Follow the cord to the plug, and tell me if it's plugged into the
wall."
 "Yes, it is."
 "When you were behind the monitor, did you notice that there were two
cables plugged into the back of it, not just one?"
 "No."
 "Well, there are. I need you to look back there again and find the other
cable."
 "Okay, here it is."
 "Follow it for me, and tell me if it's plugged securely into the back of
your computer
 "I can't reach."
 "Uh huh. Well, can you see if it is?"
 "No."
 "Even if you maybe put your knee on something and lean way over?"
 "Oh, it's not because I don't have the right angle - it's because  it's
dark."
 "Dark?"
 "Yes -the room light is off, and the only light I have is coming in from
the window."
 "Well, turn on the room light then."
"No? Why not?"
 "Because there's a power failure."
 "A power.. A power failure? Aha, Okay, we've got it licked now. Do you
still have the boxes and manuals and packing stuff your computer came in?"
 "Well, yes. I keep them in the wardrobe."
 "Good. Go get them, and unplug your system and pack it up just like it was
when you got it. Then take it back to the store you bought it from."
 "Really? Is it that bad?"
 "Yes, I'm afraid it is."
 "Well, all right then, I suppose. What do I tell them?"
"Tell them you're too f*cking stupid to own a computer."





******************************************************
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