Minutes of C&C Meeting 27 January 1998

Co-ordinator John Saxon opened the meeting by welcoming 31 members, and
congratulated Alf and Joan on their return to the Group.  Allan sent his
apologies; Darrell, who is developing a training program for APEC
scientists, sent his regards through Jim.  Owen said that Derek is somewhat
recovered after a period of being unwell.

Wolf reported that the Group has $640.74 in funds.

Jim reported that Intel will be marketing a 450MHz Pentium II chip before
the end of 1998; and that a Website devoted to the El Niño Effect,
www.pbs.org/noba/elnino – enables users to keep a weather watch on local
and world conditions.

Ken questioned whether high quality paper was really needed for colour
prints.  He uses Australian Reflex paper at $6 a ream from Woolworths, and
produced samples to make his point:  photos that had been scanned on an
HP3C scanner and printed on his HP820 printer at 100 dpi.  The photos – of
Ken's grandchildren – were greatly admired.  Wolf added that photos can be
stored in acid-free plastic protectors, attached with tiny spots of
peelable adhesive to acid-free paper ($60 a ream).  The National Library
has advised that Marbig plastic protectors are the best.  Care should be
taken when removing photos from the paper, to remove all adhesive before
scanning.  John suggested that double sided photographic tape could replace
adhesive. 

Peter said that a former moderator of Microsoft newsgroups based in Texas
has produced a web page giving tips for Windows 95 at
>http://lonestar.texas.net/~rwbadour/index.html/.  The tips give clear,
concise instructions on performing previously difficult operations such as
changing file associations.  

Peter has loaded Norton Utilities 3.0 Gold and has been amazed at its
effectiveness.  The program identified over 100 faults in the registry plus
files and fixed 95 of them, giving instructions for dealing with the
remainder.  He said NU 3.0 Gold allows the user to prepare a rescue disk
set (one floppy and one zip disk) to boot up to W95 in an emergency.  At
$79 (upgrade version) with PCUG discount from the Software Shop, the
program is good value.  Peter is running Vet Antivirus as well as NU 3.0. 
Wolf warned that running parallel programs can cause one program to vanish.
 John queried the need for two antivirus programs, but Gordon said both
Norton Antivirus and NU3 were useful.  Ken uses Thunderbyte (which coexists
with Norton Utilities).  Jim also recommended Norton Uninstall Deluxe which
sits comfortably with Norton Utilities and provides the safest way to
remove unwanted programs and files.

Peter asked about sometimes being unable to insert text into Eudora
messages as the program goes into overwrite mode on occasions.  Wolf noted
delightedly that the insert key works on the toggle principle (as he was
told in his turn at the last meeting) and that it is easy to activate the
toggle by mistake, given the location of the insert button.

Paul, using Full Acrobat, downloaded 4.5 megabytes graphics plus 1.2
megabytes text (uncompressed files) from the Net and printed to a PDF file.
 Instead of being compressed, the 5.7 megabytes expanded to 16.5.  John
recalled that Sixteen Bits had described how, with Acrobat, 88 megabytes
compressed onto a 1.4 megabyte floppy disk.  Mike said there was an art in
optimising Acrobat compression, a topic discussed by the Canberra Micro 80
Users.  
[NOTE:  This group, originally started for people with Tandy TRS80 and Dick
Smith System 80 computers based on the Z80 CPU, meets on third Mondays at
19.30h at the Griffin Centre.  It is a little more technical than C&C.  The
monthly newsletter is at http://www.pcug.org.au/~wcorbin/].

Anne reported that a subdirectory called 34ea94 has mysteriously appeared
in her Windows directory.  She has searched *.* but cannot find a file with
that name.  She recently installed Winzip613 plus a game from BBS.  Mike
thought the file might be a volume title.  Roger warned Anne to do a full
scandisk.  Only after the scan operation and restoration of secondary
drives should she delete the strange file, in case it has anything to do
with the registry.

Tony asked how to list the contents of a zip file.  Emil said that if
Winzip version 6.3 is installed correctly, then (using the W95 Windows
browser) you can highlight the zip file and R click to select "Extract to"
from the menu to display the contents.  Trevor noted that Norton File
Manager will also perform this operation.

Alf has installed Windows Advanced Access Kit with Netscape2 in place.  He
replaced NS2 with NS3 which will not work.  He has checked Cserve.ini and
no proxies have been set.  Mike suggested that Alf might have downloaded a
wrongly configured version of NS3.  John said that NS, up to version 4, is
now free from its homesite.  Another possibility was PC User Magazine:  for
$6 you get every browser program ever invented.

Colin asked how to get highlighted URLs to print out.  Peter said he
printed in economy mode on a black and white printer and the links came up
in bold.  Wolf suggested setting Netscape's links colour to black; John
suggested checking the printer set-up.  Colin has a ten-year-old Brother
with a complex set-up.  It was agreed Colin should focus on printer set-up.

After studying an article in Sixteen Bits, John Killips tried to find Net
history files without success.  John Saxon said that Netscape needs a third
party program to read the cache off-line.  With both Internet Explorer and
NS the size of cache can be varied.  Mike added that you can specify the
size of cache to be saved.  Emil said off-line browsers allow the user to
specify how many levels of depth to deposit in the cache; and that the
operation is volume-intensive, depositing much unwanted information.  

Ken raised the efficiency of Hotmail.  Gavin said HM could work from
anywhere, and was fast.  Gloria, who with Mike, teaches Canberra seniors to
use HM, found HM to be slow.  John thought the ACT Government network,
through which the seniors' service is provided, may be overloaded.  Emil
noted that you can tell TIP to send all your mail to a specified address. 
Colin recommended paying a small sum, when overseas, at a good hotel or a
Cybercafe.  John said IBM had a low cost service.

The meeting ended with Mike's practical demonstration of a 3D card.


JL 28/1/98 1,051
jennylar@pcug.org.au

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