Coffee & Chat  notes from the South side of Canberra ACT. For Wednesday
24/5/2000

The notes were received at 10.36 am 25/5/2000 from Rod B. Due to unavoidable
delays they were uploaded today Monday 29/5/2000  at 8.14 am by Fred M (Ted
M)

The meeting was chaired by JohnS. Twenty three members were present.

As this was only the second meeting of a group in a Southside location a
number of administrative issues in relation to this group were raised.

1. Is this group part of the pre-existing group or should it be considered a
new group?
2. Should the contribution be reduced to $1?
3. Could this group take decisions for the whole of Coffee & Chat?
These issues were not resolved.

Initially there is a problem with obtaining the room for Tuesdays, but the
group agreed that it would prefer to meet on Tuesdays when that becomes
possible.
JohnS raised a proposal from absent member Philip that the Southside group
should make use of U3A facilities at Hughes, given the synergy between C&C
objectives and U3A objectives. A number of members were not in favour of
this: poor parking and overcrowding were cited. The meeting agreed not to
take the proposal further.
JohnS asked for a volunteer to manage coffee and biscuits. Annie agreed to
do this as long as other members were available to help with heavy carrying.
This concluded administrative business.

JohnS reported that the mailing list was off to a good start. He commented
that the computer markets held in Woden the previous weekend had been good
with more traders than expected. He asked if someone could confirm that
dialling 12711 reported which long distance supplier provided the dialler's
service.

JimH spoke about Eudora 4.3.1 upgrade now available on cover disks. This
free software is for the Pro product, but come with advertisements. If you
already use the Pro product he suggested not upgrading if you don't want
advertisements. He warned against installing the apparently attractive
Thumbs+ as it installs many back level DLL files. It seems that System File
Checker did not successfully recover the originals. JohnS said he still
found IrfanView was a great tool for thumbnail management. Jim went on to
say that he had found Protech RW CDs obtainable very cheaply from the
markets were good.

Fred M spoke about the 'Beeline' search tool available on the April 2000 PC
Authority cover disk. It uses  as many as twenty six search engines
simultaneously. Using this tool and Google, he had found his name in earlier
minutes of C&C even though they he thought that they were somewhat isolated
by the PCUG firewall. One item (not concerning CnC) he did not know existed.
The information was in part incorrect.  Other commentators expressed
different views. All users of Internet facilities should be aware that all
public data (newsgroups mainly) is stored.. In the USA any data (telephone
conversations included) can be monitored by the security base near
Washington DC. Behave accordingly. Another  worthwhile search engine
mentioned in the discussion was Web Ferret.

Kryn asked if there was a dictionary of acronyms available. Webopedia was
suggested. There was also a comment that using the search argument
"acronyms" on the Web would undoubtedly throw up many options.

Lynn asked about the best medium for storing large images. What about Zip
disks? The meeting concluded that the present price of hard disks made them
by far the cheapest medium. Zip disks are most useful for transferring data
via SneakerNet or walknet ( physically carry the data on a disk). Lynn also
asked how best to scan transparencies. There are scanners available with
attachments to do the job, but they are relatively expensive. Some methods
of constructing devices that could reflect the light of flatbed scanners
back through transparencies were discussed. There was also some discussion
on the low prices of scanners now, which are expected to be lower still
under GST. A minimum capability of 2400 dpi was recommended for transparency
scanning.

Paul asked if Global Freeway really was suitable access to the Internet for
remote users. This question had been asked at a previous meeting when it was
thought that at least an STD call was required. It now appears that there
may be a 1900 number available Australia wide that provides the service for
a fixed charge. Confirmatory feedback would be welcome.

Esther reported that she had lost some screen. An image had wandered off the
screen and the scroll bar had vanished. It wasn't completely clear what the
symptoms were. The meeting generally agreed that computers could be
mysterious things and funny things could happen. There was some useful
discussion of how displays could be adjusted. Bettowynd, who advertise in
Sixteen Bits, were recommended as offering an excellent service in relation
to displays, both for repairs and advice.

BobS told us that Office Works in Fyshwick offered a copying service at 6c a
copy even for single sheets. JohnS said that QuickCopy in Phillip would
print Publisher or Word files for 8c a sheet. There was discussion of home
copying using scanners and the relative pricing. Gloria said that the
programs Photocopy and Photosend from an earlier cover CD (PC User?) were
good value for this tasks like this.

Annie asked if the fact that her Cannon 4310SP had stopped printing after
about 200 sheets was unusual. This led to a discussion of cartridge
refilling. There were mixed reports, although most people reported good
results from professionally refilled cartridges. Merv commented that the
cost of repair of an ink jet printer was very likely indeed to exceed the
cost of a new printer.

Graham reported a problem with access to TIP, which unfortunately was not
clear to this note writer. There was mention that access to TIP was now a
bit behind the times in requiring a login script, but that was unlikely to
change because it would mean rewriting accounting software. In related
discussion JohnS said that a program called TaskInfo was good for seeing
what was running in the computer at anytime.

Eric asked about NiteRider and how to sign up for it. This could be done via
the Web or by contacting TPG directly.

The meeting then closed and many members continued to lunch at Woden
Tradesmen's Club.

These perfect notes were due to the kind endeavours of  Rod Blackburn

******************************************************
 ##South side notes may not be available yet at the site below##

 Recent Coffee & Chat (Northside)pages are  available on the Internet news
group  tip.coffee-chat. Archives of past meetings are available at  the
web site:

http://www.pcug.org.au/pcug/candc/c&c.htm

 These Archives are  searchable, and also include some minutes of the
 Internet SIG, run on alternate Mondays
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