Minutes of C&C Meeting 21 April 1998 Co-ordinator Alf welcomed all 35 attendees, including Maeva and Chess, as well as new member Geoff. Gordon reported that Derrick Boyd is in Calvary Hospital. Zipdisks are available to Group members at $21. See Wolf. 1 Winter lunch The menu and cost of the Winter Lunch (Yacht Club, 26 May) will be advised. Members of the C&C Group plus their spouses/partners are invited, and payment should be made to Wolf, cash in advance. 2. Windows 98 Emil reminded the Group that PCUG members have Microsoft's permission to copy the early release of W98 and Outlook 98, provided they are registered users of previous editions. Petra has the originals; bring your own disk and copy the software on the PCUG Centre's recorder. W98 is good, includes a registry checker, can be quickly installed, and if installed over W95, very effectively compresses W95. On the downside, the 650 MGB CD ROM holds 648 MGB so your hard disk will work overtime transferring information. Emil recalled the Group's 24 March 1998 discussion of the PCUG's current Starter's Kit for connection to TIP, concerning enabling DNS at the icon, not the protocol level. He noted that W98 advises not to change default settings at the protocol level. 3. Outlook 98 Emil was not impressed with this software, recommending Agent instead, which costs US$29.95 (US$25 through PCUG). Outlook is free. The design of Outlook 98 goes counter to Internet culture, for example, the default format for sending mail is HTML, though some servers reject HTML-formatted mail. 4. Free software The April 1998 edition of Australian PC includes a double CD ROM containing a wide range of software – perhaps all you ever wanted. 5. Removing traces of a previous ISP John said that in the US, a customer's ISP will write hard-to-remove instructions into the customer's registry, so that it is almost impossible for that customer to change ISP. This marketing approach is coming to Australia. Keith said a recent article tells you how to completely remove traces of a previous ISP. He will post details of the article to the Group. 6. Eight megabyte dynamic RAM chip Gordon reported that Brian has a DCA2 motherboard with a dynamic cache which at 15 nanoseconds, is very fast. Brian needs one 8 megabyte dynamic RAM chip. Perhaps someone with a broken motherboard can provide one? 7. Space needed to print paintings If you print paintings from the Net (typically these may take 56 or so megabytes) you can manage the space needed (i) in printer properties, check the swap space; (ii) program the cache to store only a limited amount. 8. Saving text from the Internet If the files you save from the Net, seem to be written in some strange language, you may have inadvertently saved them in HTML rather than plain text. You can read the HTML file using your browser, or save as plain text. Word 7 reads HTML automatically. 9. Contacting TIP Help when you can't get in Catch-22: TIP Help is inaccessible when you can't get online. Suggestions: ask a friend to contact TIP Help for you; subscribe twice; blame the weather; try again later. 10. Use of funds The Group now has $957.52 in funds. Attendees canvasses how best to use excess funds: new Group-use hardware, software, Ghost software; a converter for 5¼ inch drives. 11. Nicknames in e-mail Jim has been helping a PCUG member whose Eudora software cannot read addresses (typed in), defaulting instead to a PCUG member with the same first name as the addressee. Allan suggested the member could have the nickname address book back to front, so that the computer takes the name to be the address and vice versa. To resolve this problem, every option needs to be checked. 12. Notebooks and laptops PC Magazine February 1998 contains a useful comparison of notebooks. The removable hard drive from a laptop or notebook cannot be put into a desktop: instead, connect the laptop to the desktop (one cable needed). NEC Versa is not recommended. 13. C&C Minutes The Group agreed the minutes as posted to the newsgroup should be edited before inclusion in Sixteen Bits. Emil offered to edit the highlights for the month for this purpose. JL 21/4/98 708 ********************************************************** Coffee & Chat Page, including archives of past meetings http://www.pcug.org.au/~rcook/c&c.htm These Archives are now searchable. ***********************************************************
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