Minutes of the Meeting held 19 June 2001


Herewith are items discussed:

1. Laser and bubble jet printers - GrahamMc
Laser and Bubble Jet printing.  I produce a magazine using a fairly
simple process whereby a copy ready A4 sized page is passed to a
printer who photo reduces each page to A5 and binds the result.  I
print the copy ready pages on my HP laser printer.  To include photos
I either scan and then print them for a cut and paste addition to a
pre-printed page or add them as computer images to the relevant text
and print the result.  Recently I needed to produce a photographic
image rather larger than usual (a full A4 page rather than about 6" X
4") and decided to print it on my bubble jet printer as it could
utilise a higher resolution.

I always use my own photo copier to do a trial photo reduction from A4
to A5 (71%) to check that it gives suitable clarity. However, when I 
photo-reduced the print from the bubble jet it showed no toning
variations, indeed was a very harsh jet black and white.  Even the
most washed out image form the bubble jet was useless for photo
copying. Since this was no good I processed it through the laser with
no problems.

My question is why this should be so and wondered whether the use of
carbon in the toner on the laser was important to a photocopier?  A
bubble jet almost certainly uses  little or no carbon.

Discussion followed which was halted after a short time by the
chairman before a satisfactory answer could be produced.

3.a. Travels without a computer
Following a positive response at the meeting {:-))
I've posted our trip report at
http://www.pcug.org.au/~jsaxon/trip2001.htm
for those who might be interested.
All the best and thanks for the nice welcomes! JohnS
P.S. Text only - will try to bung on a few pictures later.....

3.b Progenitor2 - JohnS
John mentioned this program for producing a genealogy report for html
viewing. I've since spent a little time trying the 30 day version out
and it works well.

4. Autostarting computer - Leigh

5. Ezyvirus - Greg

6. Crash Update - RodS

7. Clone CD - Trevor. He briefly outlined about a shareware program
that will clone a CD ROM together with the label. Others mentioned
that such was often available when purchasing a CD ROM kit. Easy CD
Creator v.4 and Nero v.5 were mentioned.

8. Prog.... "Happy Stories" - MikeD

9. Buying a scanner - tips for beginners incl OCR - Phillip
Specific questions were:
1.  Is it important to get usb connection?  Answer: greatly improved
speed of scanning
2.  Is 42 bit colour important, cf lower rates.  Apparently not
critical for most amateur uses.
3.  What about the software bundled with it?  Answer:  For OCR the
cutdown version of Omnipage appears to be the industry standard.  But
other programs have been found to be quite adequate.
Canon bundles good software. The main thing is to have a good copy to
scan from, even if you have to go to the trouble to make a darker
photocopy to begin with, so as to present a better image of the print,
especially for punctuation. And it is better to scan with high
resolution and more slowly than to scan a low resolution more quickly
and have to clean up the errors afterwards.  Once basic OCR file has
been prepared, it is better then to transfer to Word for spell
checking, rather than use the spell checker in the OCR software.  This
means than only one dictionary needs to be maintained.

After the meeting, I was advised that Acer may be much cheaper than
Canon or HP and still provide a very good quality product.  Other
advice is that choosing by brand name can be tricky. There can be
major variations in quality between models of a particular brand.
Suggest I look at the website: www.scantips.com and find there links
to other sites for further info. on what various brands offer value
for money at time of purchase.

PeterH said that, following Jim's recommendation, he had recently 
bought an Acer 1240UT scanner that was capable of scanning 35mm 
transparencies and even half-frame 35mm slides as well as the normal 
scanner functions including OCR and copying. The high definition
output was the result of genuine 1200 by 1200 resolution. The Acer
1240UT has a separate illuminator in the lid that moves in sync with
the scan head to shine through positive or negative transparencies. A
review appears at www.dansdata.com/1240UT.htm
Indicative price is $360.

10. Network via the Internet - RickG

11. Email addresses; ISPs - PeterH
Peter asked about the significance of quotation marks around people's
names in the recipient list of email messages. He was advised that
these quotation marks have no function.
Peter had also signed up for Bigpond's "Essential" service recently as
he was travelling interstate with a laptop. He found that there were
times when he made a chargeable modem connection with Bigpond but the
web server and mail server were not accessible. He was advised to try
TPG's $9.99 per month unlimited hours internet service.

12. It was mentioned during discussion on item 8 that people could
talk about items on how they did xxx , what was good about it and
present such as a mini-course during C&C.

=======
Regards, Trevor


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