Ted Macarthur welcomed 38 members to the meeting, including some new members including Glenys who was in need of help with her Osborne. She needed faster speed and Chess generously offered extra RAM. . All helpers were formally thanked for helping in meetings and around PCUG. . The Treasurer reported a still healthy balance. Discussion followed on how best to clean printer rollers. Alcohol of any variety was a popular method. There is also a special "cleaning paper" available from Corporate Express, Phillip which you can run through your machine to clean it. . Ola spoke about her search for scanners. She had looked at a Hewlett Packard. It was suggested that she try Vuego, as it can do a 3D scan(!?) Chess offered an Acer, at a significantly cheaper price, although a bit slower. The Acer was recommended by other users as better value, unless you had a particular reason to want 3D. An Optic Pro was mentioned, described as fast but not of such high quality. . Ted has a Canon Bubble Jet and had a question about how best to keep colour jet ink cartridges. He was advised to keep them upright in an airtight container. Custom made containers are available, and until you find one wrap your cartridge in glad-wrap. The Canon Cartridge Factory has moved to Dundas Crt, Phillip, so go there if you want refills. They flush out your old cartridge with solvent and can refill to about 80% if you haven't let it dry out. As they always suddenly run out without warning, it is wise to have a spare on hand! .Adrian a problem with print smudging. Owen suggested going into the alt.print news group, as there is info on most printers available here. .John suggested trying MS news server groups as well as TIP. Try Outlook Express and Agent. . Chess advised that the C&C cD and magazine library is being cataloged. Feel free to borrow. Just sign your goods out and in, in the manila folder provided. Margot donated an IE5 CD to the C&C group. A query about the stability of IE5 was negated by those present. . Peter spoke about Download Accelerator, which accelerates your downloading by up to 300%. Its available on www.lidan.com and once loaded, opens automatically when you download any file. The meeting was then opened for general discussion. Roger stated that if you have Win 95 and all updates and IE5 you almost have Win 98. Ken has a mouse which stops operating when rolling. John expects that its the computer rather than the mouse which is at fault, and suggested he get rid of "fast find" if its turned on. There was some discussion about a CDRom not being recognized on second entry. Chess suggested trying "View/refresh". Another option offered was to press the Shift key while putting CD in until light goes off (this disables Auto Load). The ever practical Allen also suggested removing dust from the CD slot. Peter mentioned the useful mail2web site which allows access to your emails from anywhere.John had used it from Magnetic Island and Peter from Alexandra. "www.mail2web.com" Jim told us about EasyCleaner, a freeware program, which clears up your Registry ie gets rif of unnecessary entries in your registry which may have accumulated when downloading from the Internet. There was a query as to whether it was worth clinging on to Netscape. The general opinion was that in future everything will be browsed in HTML. Some banks already use IE5 only and cannot use Netscape. Next question: which is the best wat to back-up? Peter suggested ORB (for $375)internal or external. Discussion resolved that CD Rom is cheapest for archival purposes, but there were personal preferences for tapes, Zip drives and floppies. At 11.20 we were treated to a demonstration of downloading EasyClean, and saving it in say Accessories in Programs. Inoculator was recommended as a free and updatable protector. Lynn had bought APC disks which sulked and refused to activate on her computer but went like a breeze for Chess. Chess thinks the 1996 Rom holder can't keep up with the new speeds and a newer box could be bought for about $80. The meeting finished at High Noon. Notes by LM 2nd July 1999 PCUG Canberra ACT
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