Another fine day, and made even finer by the sight of an
optic cable being fed into the PCUG Centre. It sure looks like
the additional lines and modems will be "on line" real soon.

        A few announcements, Jim Hume has had his operation, but
is a bit crook, and cannot see visitors, so we all signed a get
well card and wish him a speedy recovery. The next meeting, 12
September, will close early to allow us to go down to Telopea
Park, Gloria will no doubt post more details on this later.

        Ken Meadows gave a run down of the MagnaRam RAM doubler,
he was looking at upgrading from 8 to 16 megs, but thought that
for $109, he would try the software solution. he reports that it
installs easily. The documentation recommends that you retain the
original installed settings, on paper somewhere, before
customising, or optimising the settings. He has not come to any
real conclusion, but did several experiments.
Printed a 1.452 mb B/W PCX, 8min 28 secs without MagnaRam, and
3mins 50 secs with magnaRam, a 55% reduction, and
printed a 3.243 mb colour PCX, gaining a 43% reduction in
printtime.
        He also had a error in trying to reprint the files, and
will attempt to duplicate the error and try and work out a
solution to it.

        Anne Warrener has set herself up as a Interior Designer
and decorator. She was a little put out by the charges applied by
graphic designers, and decided to try her hand at graphic
designing with Corel Draw 3. Although only a beginner on a very
fast learning curve, she demonstrated Corel Draw's ease of use by
distributing samples of her efforts, which were first class.
        Considerable discussion followed, particularly in
relation to desktop publishing and illustration packages, it is
getting to the stage where the difference between the two is
getting less and less, and user friendliness is getting better.
Once in the domain of professionals, many of these packages can
be run by anyone now.

        Cathy Beckhouse threw a spanner in the works, she brought
along her Win95 package plus all the extra goodies that came with
it, still sealed up in its plastic. "I am thinking of returning
this" she said. What followed was nothing short of almost total
praise for Win95. Users who had got their packages on the 24 Aug,
had absolutely no problems installing it, everything worked fine,
no crashes or anything, a very enthusiastic acceptance of it. It
is really a million miles ahead of anything else.
        Algis Kabaila noted however Win95 would not accept a
Lithuanian keyboard. Guess you can't please everyone!

        Emil Joseph gave a run down on Internet radio, which has
him hooked. He described it as a "curiously interesting
development". It is not live, but prerecorded, and the quality
varies depending on the congestion of the international backbone
routes. In the wee hours of the morning, it is just like
listening to any other radio. You need a sound card and a Real
Audio Player which can be obtained from http://www.realaudio.com/
Emil pondered on the question of running a radio station without
the associated cost of spectrum fees!

        It was quite a large meeting today, about 25 people in
all, very lively and interesting with a lot of other side issues
which I haven't written about. It was nice to see Valerie
Sturesteps up and about and looking well. Also Derrick Boyd who
must be the oldest member of the PCUG, at age 82 or 83 he has a
very sharp mind.

        Watch for Gloria's notice re the next meeting.




 Cheers         Owen

 Fidonet        3:620/243
 e-mail         rcook@pcug.org.au

Return to the Index or the Coffee and Chat Page