Notes of C&C Meeting 18 May 1999 Coordinator John welcomed 40 attendees, including two newcomers: John, a member of the Visual Basic teaching team, and Michael, from the Woden Seniors' Help Group. Don asked any members who would like to help the President represent PCUG's position regarding proposed legislation on the Internet to MPs, to contact her at agreiner@pcug.org.au John thanked Gordon for his work on the C&C membership list, and raised the question of whether the list should be posted on the TIP pages. We decided to continue with the present system of making the list available to attendees. Wolf thanked those members who had assisted with establishing our bank account, and reported that the Group is well in funds. Today's collection is to go to The Cancer Council of the ACT for cancer research. We contributed $91.00. Chess said that the Biscuits information base will soon be available on the C&C webpage. Chess offered to install on our hard drive, the W98 software he kindly obtained for the Group. However, we need a caddy to wheel our hard drive out of the training room (where it is now). Gordon volunteered to look into this with David Schwabe. We also need a whiteboard to write up URLs mentioned during the meeting (just a plain old slate on the wall, not an electronic one!) HARDWARE MICRO 80 GROUP: Mike gave a plug for the Micro 80 Group that meets every third Monday at the Griffin Centre. Last meeting, this group saw a computer built from scratch. John commented that it's dead easy to put a computer together – the hard part is getting the software to work. 5/99 486 PC: Gordon pointed out that it might be better to get a quote from say Computer Quest, before going to the markets to buy parts to put a 486 computer together. The company's quote might be only slightly higher than the cost of the components and offer full warranty as well. 5/99 LIMITATIONS OF EMBEDDED AUDIO AND VIDEO: . John noted that some cheap PCs have sound and video built in. This is fine if you never want to upgrade your sound and video, but if you do, you need a PC that does not have these functions embedded in the motherboard. 5/99 DUST ON THE COOLING FAN: To clear dust from the PC's cooling fan, take off the case, reverse the vacuum cleaner and blow the dust off the fan. It is important to do this, otherwise the fan could seize up and the PC overheat. 5/99 USB TO PARALLEL CABLE: Chess showed us a USB to parallel cable that plugs into available USB ports and enables attachment of parallel devices to USB. It allows 127 devices by using powered hubs. The USB provides 5 volt power to the device. Chess will test-run his HP printer plus the zip drive using the USB. This cable is available for A$49.00 from http://www.adelong.com.au. 5/99 WARNING TO 486 USERS: Chess warned 486 users with W3.1 installed, to keep all manuals, floppies and so on that came with the equipment. This gear is now part of the antique market, and without the instructions you cannot hope to get it fixed if/when it breaks down. 5/99 OPERATING SYSTEMS PASSWORD OVERRIDE: Brendan asked how he can get his Windows 95 system to automatically give him access without keying in his password. Chess said he should go to control panel, networking, then change logon to Windows logon. Alternatively, John suggested, he can use the find function in start to identify all files ending in *.pwl. Delete all these files. Next time he enters, he will be asked for a password, and should press enter. This establishes a blank password. 5/99 INTERNET SPAM: If you get an email asking if you are the brother of the sender, it is probably a creative SPAMMER seeking confirmation of your email address. Outlook Express (under tools) allows you to block SPAM. 5/99 NEWSLETTER: Brendan wants to learn the ropes of publishing a modest newsletter in electronic/paper form. W97 can be used; also MS Publisher. If publishing in paper form, Brendan should ask the printer what special files the printer will need. Acrobat would be a fair investment to ensure all readers can access the electronic form. Mike recommended pdf files for attachments to emails. Pdf is very compact: a 350 page book with two illustrations compressed down to 1.1 MB. Sixteen Bits is prepared as a pdf file, so Brendan can look at the electronic form and compare it with the paper version. Neville said that based on his own long years of experience in producing newsletters, the only secure way is a bit of paper, mailed through the post. 5/99 SOFTWARE FREE WEBSPACE AND ISPS: John said that http://www.exoom.com offers you unlimited free webspace with minimum administration and only one line of advertising (for their own service). He posted sixty photos to his exoom page, then linked his home page to it. Mike noted that in the UK some ISPs are free when clients accept ads. The US is going one better, with free ISPs giving away computers. 5/99 INDEXING SERVICES: Charlie is looking for a comprehensive search program that can be used to index all his CDs and hard disks, by content as well as file name. The best he has found is Cathie (free) and Where is it? Version 1.26, a Slovenian program costing US$29.00. Alarmingly, a beta version of the latter program had a virus which he only discovered when he tried to execute it. Where is it? Indexes the file description, name, and content, but is not satisfactory for indexing CDs. Altavista Discovery is free but cumbersome at 26 megabytes, plus it has problems when updating indexes. Chess noted that Altavista Discovery issued a new patch every three days, but regular updates took only minutes. 5/99 John said that the reason good CD indexes are impossible to construct is that CD content does not follow the conventions for subsequent indexing. This is ironic when you consider that easy indexing was originally supposed to be one of the benefits of using computers. A tip: rename files before you download them, with a longer, more descriptive name. You can keep the original short name as part of the new descriptor, in case you ever need the original file name. 5/99 DOWNLOAD MANAGER: Keith recommended Go!Zilla (free) a program which downloads when convenient to you, eg overnight. Go!Zilla maintains a database of files and descriptors plus it checks for availability of updates: brilliant! 5/99 REMOVABLE HARD DRIVE: Wolf recommended the Orb 2.2GB drive for its cost per megabyte and speed. Costing $439.00 at Dick Smith, it is 50 per cent faster than Omega, and has a super-restore application. It uses magneto-resistive head technology to achieve a much higher areal density than conventional drives. Experts noted that 650 MB (offered by CDs) is no longer adequate storage. 5/99 TESTING FAX QUALITY: Ken recommended Telstra's fax quality test (TestFax Plus) available at the price of a local call on 1300 368 999. After a few minutes you receive a fax back of your original page, plus an analysis of your transmission including transmission speed, level, image and signal quality. Connecting to the service puts your number on Telstra's marketing list, but you can if you wish send another fax to 1800 639 437 to have your number removed. 5/99 RETURNING DEFECTIVE SOFTWARE: Mike P, who has a Compaq Pentium 4712 and uses Windows 95a, complained that Tonka Garage, bought from a Fyshwick retailer, could not be installed. The store would not refund the purchase price because the game worked well at the shop when Mike took it back. Our experts diagnosed the problem as being, that the software is looking for active-ex on the wrong drive. Mike needs to install all the W95 patches and unfortunately some of these may have problems too. Alternatively, Mike could ask his hard drive to rename the CD drive as drive d, thus allowing installation of the game. Of three games Mike bought at the shop, two had problems. One required him to copy hidden files onto his hard drive. We agreed that Mike should call the retailer's bluff: the goods are not fit for the purpose for which they have been sold, and a letter should be written to outline the facts and claim a refund. 5/99 ADOBE ACROBAT: Acrobat reader v 4 is out and the poor graphics have been improved. 5/99 FAST FIND: When Mike D downloaded TaskInfo he at last identified the cause of the burst of activity that takes place every 20 minutes on his hard drive: Fast Find (part of MS Office) is the culprit. Designed to index, Fast Find slows everything down. Winfax does the same. Such programs should be disabled. 5/99 EXTRA MEMORY: Kevin wants to upgrade his computer memory. Currently he uses two slots out of four, for two 8 MB disks. Chess and others advised him to take out one disk and ask at the market for two more like that, rather than try to match the EDO. Parity is not a worry. Mike D also suggested a "painless" alternative: Kevin could get a quote from a firm such as PC Connections for them to arrange the upgrade. 5/99 CRASH WARNING LIST: In answer to a request for a "black list" of crash-inducing software, experts agreed that people have different experiences with different software: what goes well for you may be a disaster for someone else. Mike D advised careful installation of any new software; recording the characteristics of your system before and after installation. If operation of the system gets worse, uninstall the new software. 5/99 JL 20/5/99 ****************************************************** Coffee & Chat Page, including archives of past meetings http://www.pcug.org.au/pcug/candc/c&c.htm These Archives are now searchable, and also include some minutes of the Internet SIG, run on alternate Mondays ******************************************************
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