Hi All
Its easy to remember what happened in 1956; less easy to remember what
one undertook to do last Tuesday ===> sorry for lateness of notes.
Notes in squiggly {} are by me. Rest are by originator of question.
Apologies if I've omitted your emailed notes.
*No* apologies if my {} notes are not accurate!!!
Alan V
PS
Because I forgot to send in notes from my item at 7/11 meeting, item
was a bit misleadingly reported - so here 3 weeks late is my version
of item from 7/11/2000.
7/11 Item 3 - Network cards
Following John S's item of two weeks previously:
- If you've got two+ machines you *should* network them to share
printers, disks
- its easy and cheap. (~$25 a card, plus ~$10 for cable)
- if got two PCI bus machines, do as John did, at 100mbps
- John's old 10mbps cards actually worked for me- big mystery
- I have them, plus others, if anyone wants them.
- I also have several 10Base2 cards, plus cables, for anyone who wants
them to play with (or use, if got older machines) Cost $0, of course.
[no one has actually asked for any cards...]
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Minutes of Coffee & Chat, Southside, 21 November 2000
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0.2 {New Gavell made by Mr Pollard gratefully introduced.}
0.4 {We were given an account of Gloria's adventures in Kakadu.}
1. IE5.5 Service Pack
{Its ~13MB.will be on magazine CDs soon}
2a. TransACT
2b. www.PlannetProject.com
JohnS mentioned that he had contacted Transact for one or more of
their "Community Information Seminars" - it turns out these are for
groups of 10-15 at Transact's premises. However they have a demo/info
van almost ready to visit community groups and will contact us when
they are ready (They have our meeting dates and venues). The van will
only hold 10 or so people. John suggested the car park of the Irish
Club would be good - at Belconnen (nearby) parking might be more
difficult to arrange.
JohnS also mentioned http://www.planetproject.com.au/en/index.html
Take part in the largest on-line survey yet. Interesting to get near
real-time feedback comparing your answers to the averages, etc. Don't
be put off by the end date - its been extended.
John Saxon in fine Springtime Canberra
3. DIVX ;-)
Emil mentioned a significant development in the compression of high
quality video, called DivX ;-). It is a variant of MPEG4. The smiley
is part of the name. It was a subject of an article by Darren Yates
in a new multimedia magazine called "3 Play" included free with the
current issue of Australian PC User Magazine (Dec 2000).
It is claimed there that 90 minutes of high quality video at 640 x
480 pixels can be compressed in a standard CDROM (complimented with
MP3 sound). You can check out software and movie trailers at
www.divx-digest.com/ the article says.
DivX ;-) compressed files can be played with Microsoft Multimedia
Player.
Similar compression techniques are in the works with names like
angelpotion, 3ivx and Project Mayo.
John said that Australian PC @uthority magazine, Dec 2000 issue,
explored the same subject. See Tim Dean's article at pages 24-5.
4 AOL
Emil asked whether anyone had recent experience with AOL. None did.
Those who did speak on this topic mentioned negative experiences in
the past.
5. TIP Connections
Internet Connections. I have had problems in very recent times
whereby I get the Line Out of order single tone when dialing in to
TIP. This tone turns into an engaged signal after a very short time.
A re-dial may be successful but I have often needed several attempts
or gone away for half an hour before trying again.
This might be a wet weather problem but the telephone works perfectly
for voice calls and the problem on the Internet is intermittent.
No one else seemed to be having similar problems.
Graham McCann
6. Partition Magic
{Some/most of us recommended running it off the rescue diskette,
particularly if doing anything to Drive C (or drive PM installed on) }
7. Mouse Pointer moves,but...
The advice for this problem was to hit Ctrl+Alt+Del. This proved
effective but now I repeatedly get a blue screen with the message;
"WINDOWS
An exception OE has occurred at 0028:C1518246 in VxD ESDI 506(01) +
00001026. This was called from 0028:1835CA8 in VxD Voltrack(04) +
00000A18. It may be possible to continue normally.
.Press on any key to continue.
.Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart your computer. You will lose any
unsaved information in all applications."
In all cases the only solution is the restart option. Any suggestions
would be appreciated. I'm using Win98 on a Pentium 133, with 6.4GB HDD
only 20% full.
Bob Stewart
8. DAP
Opinions were sought about Download Accelerator Plus that was on a CD
in the Internet.au Magazine. It was claimed in the FAQ that it could
speed up downloads by up to 300%. John S opined that it was unlikely
to be able to do this and ther were problems associated with these
freeware packages such as downloading advertisements. The concensus
view was to pass on this one.
Jim Johnson
9. Invisible Writing
{People put them on web pages to get page found by search engines.
Old style white-on-white type stuff now detected by search engines and
dropped, so people now use colour-on-(almost-but-not-identical)colour
or colour-on-graphic. Can display web pages with your own colours via
Ctrl-TOEC and thus see "hidden" stuff easily.}
10. Macros - what are they?
Answer: A time saving device. In Word 97 you can use a macro to
save you repeatedly printing your own address on the top of your
letters.
{And an enormous range of other things - AV}
Elizabeth Ward
11. Alternative Laptop Battery
{A cheaper ($23, with charger, vs $100s) alternative to replacing a
clapped notebook battery demonstrated. A luggable item, but not much
more than usual transformer, and much more capacity than inbuilt
battery (even when not clapped :-) ) . Also pointed out by others:
- is lead-acid, so need to treat a bit more carefully
- lead-acid should be kept well charged, *not* run down before
recharging, as is recommended for NiCad
- Cheap inverters can also be got - very useful also [eg. I have a $99
one which can output 160watt sustained, so: 12V DC car
battery->invertor->240V AC->notebook transformer->19V DC ->notebook.
- cheap invertors output is AC but not good sinusoidal approximation
so not good for some uses- but OK for above purpose.}
12. Desktop Icons
{from memory - I noted nothing!
various attachments from emails ending up on desktop when saved
===> Outhouse Express (or Eric F's copy) defaults saving of
attachments to Desktop. Change default, or tell it each time where to
save them.
[better yet use Agent or Eudora or... and help reduce spread of email
viruses as these are virtually all spread by Outlook Express (was this
said this time or in earlier meetings?] }
13. Scanning Newsprint
{Bigger files at 300dpi in greyscale than in colour - JPG better at
colour.
If go to GIF in B&W 2.1MB file->365K
B&W often better for newsprint
good idea to cover scanner (eg. with towel) to reduce ambient light,
esp if scanning thick item such as magazine or book.
For OCR need 300-360dpi or "as high as can". Mike prefers say 600dpi.}
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