Minutes of the Meeting held 29 May 2001 Herewith the topics discussed and responses among attendees received on Saturday: 1. Laser nights and TransAct meeting - AlanV 2. Large disk FDISK - RodS A friend told me he had bought a large hard disk to put in to an existing PC but could not even get the machine to recognise the presence of the disk. The following suggestions were made: a. It is most unlikely the disk is "dead". b. Probably the BIOS in the old motherboard cannot recognise disks bigger than 8Gb. c. The new disks need a different cable. The existing machine may not be able to accept it; or an old type cable can only handle data as if the disk is of 8 Gb size. d. Put the old disk back and try to get the machine running with the new disk as a second one. e. Try the new disk in another, newer machine. f. Replace the motherboard and try again. g. If all else fails, Merv C agreed to test the disk. 3. Genealogy Software for Windows - (no name) 4. TransAct - Video cards - KenM I have signed up for TransACT. The computer I use has to be approved and while the gentleman was checking it the video card gave up the ghost. Must have been the thought of Kate! My query was 'What video card should I get?' No definite answer but I bought a cheap card with 8megs as I do not play games. Very satisfied with it and the computer has passed. Transact have given a connection date "of by the 30th of June". 5. Sixteen Bits - Stuffing/Pasting - AllanV 6. Office 2000 versus Office 1997 - RobS After discussion on the large increase in time to Open and Save files in Office 2000 compared with Office 1997, it was agreed that the problem was caused by RAM. My 64MB should be increased to 128MB or more. Alas my Pentium 133 uses EDO RAM , which is out of production and both scarce and expensive if available second hand. Looks like I will have to live with Office 2000 or reinstall Office 1997. 7. www.actskywatch.one.net.au/alert.html#see - Jeff Jeff is impressed by the astronomic site www.actskywatch.one.net.au/alert.html#see produced by some enthusiasts for the ACT, showing for example times to see the International Space Station from individual suburbs of Canberra. 8. AdAware/goback - CharlieK Charlie advised that while the producers of AdAware mention that some software may not work if you allow AdAware to remove all spyware, he recently experienced a situation where unrelated software failed to operate viz. all online software - Internet explorer, Outlook and Agent all failed to download any data from the web. That happened during connections to both TPG and TIP. He was able to recover the situation as he was using Go Back, a product which allows you to revert your system to any given previous point in time (within the limits of its storage capacity which is at least a few days). Go Back was originally developed by Adaptec but is now available from www.roxio.com It is downloadable as a trial and will expire after 30 days, but can be reloaded at that time. It is believed that Go Back is incorporated in some from within Windows ME. Someone pointed out that a lot of spyware can be avoided by using WebWasher and some degree of system restoration can be achieved by using Scan Reg to reload earlier versions of the Registry. 9. TransAct - Myths - 10. Firewalls - AllanM 11. RAM Limits - Moby Jim There is not much I can contribute to this item on RAM limits that I raised except to say that I noted in a recent pc magazine and in the current 16 Bits in the review of the book on how the darn things work, the observation that for some earlier Intel/Pentium processors, increasing the RAM from 64 MB to 128 may actually result in slower speed, not faster. I do not know up to what Pentium and Intel processor models this could apply to. As I am currently looking at my sister's Pentium 200mmx (which takes SDRAM) with a view to installing extra memory, and it could be of interest to other members given the current 'give-away' prices - well compared to nine months ago - for SDRAM, I raised the question. Perhaps readers of this may know the answer Jim. 12. Digital Cameras - David Discussion re TransAct was postoponed until the end of the meeting. Regards, Trevor ****************************************************** Coffee & Chat Page, inluding archives of past meetings http://www.pcug.org.au/pcug/candc/ ******************************************************
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