John S chaired the meeting, which was attended by 30 members.
Charlie reported that the Group's finances were in the black.

1. a) Old Excel documents folder : Bill P
When I loaded excel97 on my new computer (windows xp) it
created a folder "old excel documents" in my documents with a
no. of excel & other files. I wondered where they came from.
No one had a similar experience. Consensus was that they are
probably examples etc which xp places within my documents rather than
in office folders. As they are doing no harm & I have plenty of spare
hard disk capacity I will leave well alone for the time being.

1. b
I wanted to know if there was a switch available to enable 2
computers to share a monitor & keyboard
Alan V. provided me with address in Fyswick where such
switches & associated cables are available.

2. DVD storage capacity news: Charlie
Charlie told us about an article in "New Scientist" reporting that current
DVD technology would be superseded in 2 or 3 years by 3cm disks.

3. Proposal for a magazine CD library; file sharing community for WebOne
customers: John S and Owen
Owen writes:
My view is that the maintenance of such a system [a magazine CD library] is
beyond even the most retired of retired. Now that the leap to TransACT
broadband has been made, the concept of file sharing becomes a practical
proposition. Webone has allowed their broadband customers to share files
amongst themselves without download charges. Perhaps TIP might want to
consider a similar charging scheme and thus allow some of the younger guns
to set up a filesharing system. See http://webone.homelinux.net.

And John S writes:

We discussed the proposal for a magazine CD library at the last Coffee &
Chat meeting. The general feeling was that it is a good idea, but probably
unworkable in practice. There would probably be long loan times, lots of
book keeping, and that most people would opt to buy for $10 or so if they
really needed something. Then potential users would need to be notified of
non-availability etc. Many of our members were happy to donate their older
CDs to the centre, in fact several did put them on the give-away table.
BUT, a suggestion was made that the PCUG join with other TransACT ISPs and
provide a free (of download charges) file sharing system. It can be free
because no payments to outside agencies are involved. This would perhaps be
similar to the old FTP server system. The Linux group have already set one
up for WebOne customers. The following news posting extract was kindly
provided by Owen Cook.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
On Fri, 25 Oct 2002 23:57:30 +1000, in canb.general "Rasman"
 wrote:

Has anyone got cable internet?
If so you might be interested in this.
Its a file sharing community for WebOne customers. The system used allows
for free file transfers for people sharing files between each other.
Please note this is a non profit group of people who just enjoy sharing
files.
If you have cable internet but your internet service provider isnt webone
NEVER FEAR, you will eigther have to wait until TransACT gets its act
together and fix's its peer to peer transfers, at which stage WebOneFS will
be converted to TransACT-FS -OR- if your desperate you can change to WebOne,
If you decide to change please contact me (not essential ).
Until that time what we have now is the best we can offer.
We is simply a group of guys with a server, we are in no way connected with
webone, This is important because i hate being accused of advertising.
Ok, if you have gotten this far you will be waiting for the following..
http://webone.homelinux.net
Make sure to register on the website then wonder along in the DC Hub
(Connection setup and details can be found on the website)

HOPE TO SEE YOU THERE

If you have any more questions PLEASE dont hesitate to email me.

And remember, It takes 24 muscles to frown and only 4 to stick up your
middle finger and say "BITE ME!"

Regards
Vince
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~`
John continues: With Broadband, it might not be too onerous a task to upload
a couple of
magazine CDs per month and assuming no copyright issues, they would be
available to everyone.
A similar idea to the old internet proxy server sharing between PCUG and
some Canberra ISPs.

4. Win XP Upgrade problem: Ken M

5. Lotus Organiser - Help: Jeff

6. Calculator: Rod S

7.  a) switches for Internet Explorer : Rod B
How do you find out how to control Internet Explorer if you run it from
the Run item in Start? Really, I was wanting to know how to bring a web page
when starting a CD. Members suggested cribbing the necessary information
from a magazine disk.

b) ZoneAlarm not autoloading: Rod B
Zone Alarm suddenly stopped starting at boot time even though the item
was ticked in its properties. No suggestions to fix that problem, but it was
suggested to use Tick to start Zone Alarm only when connecting to the 'net.
Installing the latest version of ZA fixed the problem, but I've also
implemented the Tick suggestion, because the latest version of ZA appears to
want to connect to the 'net when it is started at boot time.


8. Photoediting using PhotoStudio - huge file - Peter Helm
Peter wanted to know how to reduce the size of a TIF file.
Owen writes:
With my image manipulation program, "desaturation" and conversion to
"greyscale" will reduce TIF file sizes by about a third
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Many thanks to all contributors. jenny




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