Minutes of C&C Meeting 26 January 1999 Co-ordinator John welcomed 39 attendees, including newcomers Mike Purcell, who has found the C&C Newsgroup useful, and Yvonne Adamson, who is interested in genealogy. Wolf reported that the Group is well in funds. 1. February Christmas Lunch John called for first-time volunteers to organise the February Christmas Lunch, eventually accepting an offer from Gloria (by no means a first time volunteer). Perhaps there are Group members who prefer helping the organiser to being the organiser themselves: if so, please contact Gloria at grobbins@pcug.org.au. Anne said the Jamieson Inn had provided a very good deal for a Christmas lunch she had attended. 2. Computer courses John has come to the conclusion that the Tech College is undercharging for the computer courses he gives: The Internet Training Institute for example, (a franchise, reckoned to be good) charges $30 an hour, $125 for 4 hours training. Esther passed on the news that the Burns Club is starting a seniors' interest group on computers which may be covered in the club membership fee. 3. Voice communications John recommended the new ICQ Alpha version which together with the QTalk program, enables users to talk via microphone to friends and relations in Australia and overseas who also have the program running. 4. Installing extra devices on ports Ken is upgrading his computer, the first step being to separate out the bits from the old computer which he did not need. He did not swap over the disk drives nor the CDROM drive. He installed W95 but the mouse, previously on Com1, is now on Com4. Coms 2and 4 share the same interrupt. Once connected to the Net, he was told he had a conflict on the modem on Com2. He could not change the IRQs. He then swapped Coms 1 and 2 on the motherboard, and could access the modem, but the mouse froze when he was getting onto TIP. He tried a second mouse with the same result. Chess said the problem is that the additional serial card is now incompatible with the motherboard: Ken should change the jumpers on the card. Mike D warned us to think well before deciding to put extra devices onto ports, as this always causes a drama. He himself pays a private firm to do it (it takes them an hour). John said that we could avoid this problem by connecting the mouse to the PS2 port: a USB mouse would be still better. 5. Complaints against computer retailers Emil noted the dramatic increase in complaints against retailers of PCs last year (265 per cent in NSW). PC User magazine of February 1999 quotes the Fair Trading Council of NSW's analysis of problems: a very high mortality rate amongst PC retailers; low margins; no after-sales service function; many suppliers installing incorrect or second-hand components; and failure of warranty claims. The Council lists 13 recommendations for consumers, the most urgent of which is: if you buy on deferred delivery, pay by credit card, not by cash or cheque. If the PC is never delivered, only credit card payers will get their money back. The Consumer Voice column in the Canberra Times of 25 January has more on this issue. We all had a lovely whinge about PC retailers and agreed our motto should be "user beware". 6. Lucky Linux users Chess described how thousands of Linux users are going to receive $150 for unused MS software from Toshiba on February 15, 1999 – the deadline for claims. As Neville put it: on that day, Toshiba will draw a linux in the sand. 7. TIP is best Allan said that following the recent TIP upgrade, the system was disconnecting 5 per cent of users, but hopefully this has been fixed. Anyone who may still be experiencing the problem should contact him urgently. Members commented that problems like this were common with other services, compared with which, TIP gives better value. 8. Cleansweep Kevin tried the Cleansweep program, and when asked to fire up Quickview, he could not find this in the W95B disk. Chess suggested that Cleansweep stops some programs from working, John agreed that Cleansweep can delete too much. Some members queried why, given the amount of space most users have, we need Cleansweep at all. Wolf suggested the cleanest sweep was through using Format C! 9 Better fax/modems on the way; different dial tones Chess told us that new modem technology will allow a fax/modem to receive faxes when the computer is turned off (a long overdue development). The cost is $289. Gordon added that $US89 will buy a box to affect fax or printer, but it uses US dial tones. Will tones be the same worldwide in a year or two? Not while monopolies exist. Currently the Global Access package provides 132 programs just to interpret different telephone dial tones. 10. Re-downloading Mike D noted that Netscape will re-download a page before printing it from the Net. Mike P said that you can use the "copy to clipboard" command (Control + C) and then print the text, which will not be re-downloaded. John said that Hewlett Packard offered a program specifically for printing Net pages to HP printers. This was reckoned to be cumbersome. 11. Britannica Jim's crash on firing up IE3.02 with Britannica was diagnosed as "invalid page" by the computer. Darrell said that Britannica was tightly integrated with IE4, raising an issue of consumer policy; there are other problems with Britannica, too -- a pity, as this is a good program. Jim tried Scandisk, then reinstallation of Windows and IE but did not fix the problem. Chess said that Regclean and Regfile Checker could also be useful: however, by the time Jim tried all these, he would almost be back at Format C! John mentioned that Britannica's problems (with suggestions on solutiions) are discussed at the Britannica website. 12 Profits (theirs) and shopping around Gordon bought two CDROMs containing W98, IE and other programs for $5 the pair at the market. Chess said Britannica is on sale at the market for $25. Emil reported that during the last quarter of 1998, Microsoft made a net profit of US$1.98 billion, that is, A$3.5 billion. We agreed that high-priced retailers were a good place to shop around before buying – perhaps at the market. 13. Search results Elizabeth asked why, since she has changed from using Inference plus Netscape to Altavista (requiring Boolean language) plus IE, search results are not the same. John said that all search engines are different, so the changes noted must be coincidental with changing the browser; Boolean language is optional with Altavista. He noted that search engines change their indexing methods from day to day to cope with users' strategies for getting themselves placed at the top of search lists. 14. Multiple connections to TIP In answer to Keith's question, Allan confirmed that if you connect two computers to one TIP account, each session is treated separately; hours are simply added together, and the only problem may be that the account holder runs into monopoly hours much sooner. He confirmed that PCUG's "acceptable use" policy has been changed to permit multiple connections. 15. NAB internet banking test Keith reported that the National Bank is testing internet banking, and that customers can get a CD with a demonstration, NS4.06, easy sign-up to Ozemail, plus other features. He noted that the NAB does not prescribe NS, but the browser has to be a 128-bit version. 16. What do error messages really mean? Under Altavista's advanced Usenet, there are messages (questions and answers) on the meaning of various error messages (which to some of us, seem almost to be written in code). John confirmed that there is no one place where the real meaning of error messages is listed. 17. Noisy CDROM drives What's the use of very fast CDROM drives when they are noisy? Darrell pointed out that they have little use except for copying CDs, and for multimedia. JL 27/1/99 1 323 ********************************************************** Coffee & Chat searchable archives are at: http://www.pcug.org.au/pcug/candc/c&c.htm... ***********************************************************
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