Meeting 18 December 2001



		Minutes of the Meeting held 18 December 2001


This, the final meeting for 2001, was chaired by TerryB at the Irish Club
and notes were taken by RodB. The next meeting will be on Jan 8 at the PCUG
Centre, Belconnen. If you can add to the notes that follow, please send me
your comments.

The meeting was particularly well attended, because it was followed by a
very enjoyable Christmas Lunch where a number of spouses and friends joined
the members.

Items discussed at the meeting were:

1.a)   RodB noted that even though Norton AV had detected and processed a
virus on incoming mail and stated that the file was now safe to work with,
it still claimed a virus was present when the deleted file was selected in
the Deleted Items folder of Outlook Express for permanent deletion.

b)  Rod also reported that his relatively new system occasionally locks up
and requires to be reset or switched off at the mains. On the most recent
occurrence the lock up was accompanied by a blank screen. On rebooting, the
CMOS utility was called automatically with an incomprehensible (to Rod)
comment about machine settings related to bus speeds. No particular comment
was offered by the members, except that reference to the motherboard manual
might help. Information to be found there might not be very illuminating.

c) Rod now has access to his son's early serial connected digital camera.
The software does not detect the camera. The meeting suggested that the use
of COM1 while an internal modem was using COM3 might be causing a conflict.
As an alternative Rod had acquired a Compact Flash card reader. This
presents the CF card as an additional removable IDE drive and is very easy
to use.

2. GraemeMcC offered a Photoshop manual to any Photoshop using member
present. RodB gratefully accepted it.

3. TrevorF thanked members who had offered him help in using TweakUI to
remove the "logoff Trevor..." message from the shutdown menu.

4. AlanV, who has many LPs and now a CD burner, asked for information about
capturing the LPs to CD. He also recognised that this question as been asked
before and suggested that some form of FAQ for C&C was needed. A volunteer
is also needed. January PC User magazine has an article on this very matter.
Suitable programs mentioned were "Spin doctor" and "Goldwave". The crucial
issue is getting a signal of suitable strength from the LP player to the CD
card line input. The Aux or cassette deck output of an amplifier, or a
headphone jack were suggested.

5. The need to upgrade IE 5.5 and 6 with a security patch was discussed.
Emil reported that Microsoft had known about the problem for a long time,
but had not taken action because of the potential impact on the anti-trust
case. The publicising of the problem by a third party compelled the action.
A couple of people reported intermittent difficulty communicating with the
Windows Update site via the start menu command. In passing it was mentioned
that Windows 95 is no longer supported by Microsoft.

6. Kryn expressed concern about Ads. and spyware arriving on his computer.
He had used "Adaware" and received a detailed report on such items found on
his machine and requested what to do next. TerryB said that following
directions in Adaware would remove the offending items automatically, but
that they would return. "Webwasher" can be used to block their arrival, but
needed caution as it had some possibly unacceptable consequences, such as
the inability to reach certain sites.

7. TerryB expanded on earlier comments about "POPcorn" (a tool for
previewing mail at the server). It does read small amounts of text into
local memory if requested, but does not ever read attachments or execute
HTML, two common vectors of dangerous code.

8. BobS reported that an apparently failing hard disk had been temporarily
resuscitated by installing a replacement motherboard, but that now the
machine, with two disks installed, would not boot. Various diagnostic
measures, such as swapping hard disks across IDE chains or changing jumpers
(although in this hot weather Bob might not be wearing one), were suggested
as other ways to see if the machine could be made to boot and thus read the
disk.

9. JohnS passed round a dismantled CD drive for members to marvel at its
intricacy. There was some discussion about the fact that the eject button on
a CD drive does not directly control ejection, but merely notifies the
controlling software of a request to eject.

10.a) MikeD reiterated earlier comments about the Omni DVD drive he had
acquired, saying that it was competent and could do every thing that was
asked of it including copying DVD material to tape and reading
multi-regional DVDs. There was discussion about the fact that Chinese made
devices were flouting data protection laws. Members were advised that
inflexibility was to be retained an early purchase of such a device would be
a good idea.

b) Mike also gave verbally a report on his Transact experience he had
earlier sent to this mailing list, here repeated:

"Thanks to Ken Meadows I learned that Netspeed was having an Open Day a
couple of weeks ago.  They are one of the two Transact ISPs.  I went along,
met a Transact lady there and asked when I would be connected as it was 3
months since I'd signed up.  She said she'd fix.  Two working days later I
was offered an appointment in a few days. So great progress.

"Two installers showed up on time.  It took them over 3 hours but there
seemed to be no physical problems.  It cost 90 dollars for a wired
connection to my computer (20 ft from TV top box) - the free delivery is
only for a loose 3m lead from the back of the box.  I asked for the CDROM
for Internet installation but was told I should have been given that when I
signed up.  Of course I hadn't.  Incidentally the installer does NOTHING re
setting up the Internet connection.  I think you are meant to fix this with
or through the ISP.  When I called Transact they said they could send out a
package the following day or I could go to Dickson to pick one up - no
offer to deliver that afternoon.  So I drove to Dickson and got a package.

"I had a network card in the computer, having used it to interface with my
old machine.  I replaced that connection with my new Transact lead, loaded
the Transact software, typed in my personal info where requested and much
to my amazement everything fired up and I was broadband connected!

"Speeds are about ten times what I was getting i.e. 50kBytes/sec.  A 3meg
pdf report from UK took one minute. Same report 10 min via dialup.
However, as Darrell and others have pointed out, the download limits and
charges are laughable.  I have opted for Netspeed's 300Mbytes per month at
$27 p.m. plus 22c per Mbyte.  But as you can see I use my (notional) daily
allowance of 10 Mbytes in 3 minutes!  And where does 22c come from?  I
understand charges to ISPs is less than 10c per Megabyte.  It seems ISPs
might be behaving like  printer vendors - making their money from
consumables.

"One unresolved problem I have is FTP.  I cannot access my pcug or
u3acanberra pages via Transact/Netspeed.  Won't connect.  Can FTP to
Netspeed and anonymous FTP to most sites.  But no connection to the ones I
really need.  To test my config I went back to dialup connection to both
pcug and zip and all worked as well as it has for the last few years, using
the same computer and software (WS_FTP, CuteFTP and Windows FTP).

"One other minor problem is Calling Number Display.  This comes for free
with Transact phone - saves $5 pm cf Telstra.  Trouble is it only displays
MY number, not the calling number!

"The remote control for the Set Top box is pretty Mickey Mouse.  To get the
menu you push Exit.  And to get back to TV press an unlabelled button!  And
reaction to the remote seems slow."

12. Derek spoke about a program, "CleanReg", he had been using alongside
EasyCleaner. It had apparently found more items of doubtful use than had
EasyCleaner, but Derek was concerned whether they were truly dispensable.
Caution was advised.

13. An advertised comment from TedMac about Windows XP was postponed until
next year because time was running short.

14. AlK reported fireworks from the power supply of one of his machines.
After discussion it was thought that the power switch may be at fault.



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