Meeting 1 Oct 2002



TedM took hold of the gavel and conducted the meeting in its usual
orderly fashion. One person (SusanW) attended for her first time and
was given the opportunity to speak first and said briefly about her
recent puchase of a computer.

1. Printer saga, cookies, stuff - JohnS

a. Wanted to give CSS in Fyshwick a pat on the back. A friend brought
a new HP printer from them, but had an unfortunate misunderstanding
during unpacking which damaged the printer beyond reasonable repair.
After admitting liability, my friend was delighted to have CSS
organise a new printer - delivered to their home.

b. IECookiesView Vrs 1.20 is freeware from
http://nirsoft.multiservers.com/utils/iecookies2.html which tells you
everything you ever wanted to know about cookies stored on your system
by some web sites. A printout was passed around where it was shown
that each St. George bank cookie contains over 18 separate items.

c. Angus & Robertson (at least in the Woden Plaza near the Tandy
store) are having another book sale. A Que book "Using FrontPage 2000"
with CD ROM was brought for $19.95 The original price was £36.99 so
thought it was a rather good deal.

2. Shut down and XP - Jeff:
Jeff reports: I am impressed with many aspects of Windows XP and my
new computer, especially with a new shutdown facility. Somehow, thanks
to XP and a linking the new motherboard to the switch on the front of
my computer, I can shutdown simply by touching the switch, without
need for any mousing. Perhaps the switch should be called a control
switch rather than an on-off switch because with my old setup this
procedure would have produced a reprimand plus ScanDisk. 

MikeD reports:
Emboldened by the successful use of XP SP1 by Roger and others I
decided to implement it yesterday.  It downloaded 43meg and after
interminable file packing, unpacking, copying, clearing, etc it
finally installed.  At the end it came up with two "recovered from
serious driver" reports but no meaningful details.  I then found that
neither my Canon printer nor canon scanner worked.  Both are connected
to my computer via a Swan 4 port USB hub.  If I connected the printer
direct to the computer and not through the hub it worked (didn't try
the scanner).  After trying everyting I could think of I decided to
uninstall SP1 - readily instigated from the "add software" window.  

Again after an enormous amount of disc activity it said I was back
where I started.  Now the printer instantly worked as did the
scanner, and when I added a force-feedback steering wheel to a spare
USB port it instantly installed that.  So there's some incompatibility
on my machine at least with SP1 and a USB hub. 

I might say nothing in the device driver info flagged any problem, and
it correctly changed reported USB configuration when I connected and
disconnected the hub.  So take care with SP1.

3.a. XMAS cards. KenM showed a sample Xmas Card

3.b. Master boot record - MBR and Microsoft. Booting stopped with the
message "Missing or corrupt Windows xxxx file." could not reinstall
Windows XP or get it to correct the fault. Finished with two hard
drives faulty. Microsoft in Sydney spent almost a day trying to talk
me through and get XP installed. Very good service. Found another
drive with XP installed on it and on the Internet found that my Master
Boot Record on the two drives was corrupt. Have not yet tried to fix
them.

3.c. Jewel case covers. Showed a sample Jewel case cover with graphic
on it. Find now that I cannot put a graphic on the cover. Why?

3.d. HP Photosmart $20. Have my slide scanner working under XP but now
cannot get it to work. Get the message "Lost connection or scanner not
connected." Tried everything I could think of including contacting HP
who e-mailed me very precise instructions but no go. Driver is
ps804en.exe about 70Mb. Anybody got the S20 working under XP? If so,
could I please get a copy of the driver in case mine is corrupt.
Probably wishful thinking. -- KenM. kenm@pcug.org.au.

4. Mac Word problems - BillP

5. Broadband with pcug.org.au address? Nigel

6. JohnA.
 Business Products Review. A useful free magazine gives details of 
current business products including software/hardware.
see site :- http://www.bprmag.com.au/

7.a. Drive rescue
7.b PCUG AGM report - AllanM

8. CD ROM Liteon writer examples - MikeD.

9. Austar ISP (porno link) - Kevin.

10. Incredimail - Philip.
Philip asked about webmail suitable for community centres where local 
people have to share the computers and come in from outside.

Tony S. suggests using Win Proxy with Outlook Express.

Mike suggested asking Darrell about solutions he might suggest.

Regards, Trevor

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Pedicure: bicycle repair.

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