The northside meeting was chaired by TedM and I volunteered to collate the notes. Charlie told the meeting that there were sufficient funds for coffee and biscuits, a donation would be made to the Cancer Society on behalf of the Coffee and Chat group. Items discussed were: 1. Word97 - BillP My problem was how to circulate information (expected to be in Word 97 format) by email to 22 Charitable Organisations and get comments quickly. Only half of the assocs. have email now. ?????Others are getting it. Computer knowledge is widely disparate varying from almost none to average office worker. Some have word 97. (I am presently seeking advice from all assocs on what they have). Funds are strictly limited. My question was what options should I consider. The meeting was very helpful. Suggestions made included(not in any order): Free word 97 reader from microsoft Star Office 5.1 (freebee) An office suite (free) available from http://webmasterfree.com/software/320.html Latest version of works (relatively cheap) and with a version of word. Use PDF format Place info on web site, in password protected area if necessary. Approach Microsoft seeking free software for these charities. Use straight text, either within email or as attachment. I am looking at all of these options at present. -- (BillP) 2. Good free stuff - JohnS JohnS particularly likes the net because it appeals to his skinflint nature - lots of stuff is still free (but lookout after they find a way to charge several cent to view a web page or download a "free" program). A great site for Freeware is www.freewarehome.com which currently has 4230 free programs catalogued with reviews, download sixes and links to the author's web sites. 3 good items recently downloaded. a: 2XExplorer which is a great free 2 pane Windows Explorer replacement - a bit like the old Norton Commander on steroids. Get it from http://netez.com/2xExplorer it's only 357 KB! b. WinKey - to use the Windows key more effectively - 200 plus items can be assigned. Get it from www.copernic.com/winkey it's 1.2 MB! c. Versverter2 from www.pawprint.net/vv/download.php a converter program on steroids. It will convert zettagrays to rads, or even petapoise to slugs per foot seconds easily - according to the blurb. 3. XPeriences - XPallidocious - RodB 4. PCUG and TransACT? - KenM 5. a. smspup.com? sms - computer mobile phone, any other: SMS: Short message system messages from your computer to any mobile phone. I have now successfully sent a message from my computer to my daughter in Sydney. The advantages: 1. Cheap messaging (about 22cents) to any mobile phone. 2 Direct messages to any person wherever they are during the day. Email has to wait till they return home or have access to their computer. i.e. it is quicker. 3. It is much easier to type on a full keyboard and not have to spell out each character with up to three key presses to access each letter of the alphabet on most mobile phones. Disadvantages: 1 You must have a mobile phone yourself, so that you can be charged the 22 cents per message and initially receive the activation key by SMS on your phone. You also need to accept a 'bot written' password by email. Your password can be changed as can your 'profile' . So you need both a password and and an activation key. 2 Join the free service available at http://smspup.com/firstlogin.php. The web page is called 'SMS PUP'. 3 Accept one advertisement per week by email, on subjects that you choose. -- TedM (renumbered from here) 6. Wide printing solution (?) 7. PDF995 - PaulH PDF995 - PaulH expressed his delight at the effectiveness of the shareware program PDF995 in producing PDF files from MS Word documents. Apart from being free for personal use, PDF995 produces PDF files that are less than half the size of the files made by Acrobat 4. RodF offered to test Acrobat 5's capabilities on a representative newsletter. (Following the meeting, RodF advised that Acrobat 5 produced PDF files of the newsletter that were significantly larger than even Acrobat 4. Rod suggested "you should stick to PDF995".) The comparison of PDF files produced from the sample newsletter is: Acrobat 5 -- 441KB, Acrobat 4 -- 364KB, and PDF995 --165KB. 8. Windows sizing ============ Regards, Trevor -*"*-.,,.-*"*-.,,.-*"*-.,,.-*"*-.,,.-*"*- When two egotists meet, it's an I for an I. ****************************************************** Coffee & Chat Page, inluding archives of past meetings http://www.pcug.org.au/pcug/candc/ ******************************************************
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