Opening: Opening Announcements: Chairman Alf opened the meeting with 29 in attendance, including two new members. Welcome to Jeff and Marion. Wolf had left the financial report at home, but assured us that there were adequate funds to subsidise the proposed Melbourne Cup Luncheon. He is able to arrange a very tasty catered meal for about $12, and it was agreed that C & C'ers would pay $8 per person, and the group funds will make up the balance. Partners are invited on the same cost basis. A preliminary attendance list was circulated which showed considerable interest in this function. It is surprising how quickly our fortnightly $2 contributions to the Coffee and Chatter-box accumulate. Well done, Wolf. The group's "Partition Magic" program had arrived, and Regular Scribe Owen went behind the partition to do some magic, and test drive it, hence this belated report by the stand-by scribe. Partition Magic allows the user to re-partition a hard drive 'on the fly', which is its main benefit, but also permits a variation of cluster sizes and other goodies. It comes highly commended, and will be tested at full speed by Alan, who will report next meeting. Discussions: Our Guest Speaker was to be Lou Rando, but he was not able to attend. It was later learned that he had gone for his usual morning bike ride at Mt. Ainslie and was knocked over by a large kangaroo. In the scuffle, Lou was scratched and although not hurt badly, was sufficiently kangarooted that he was unable to get to our meeting. We look forward to the next opportunity for his talk (before the bike ride!). * Emil advised of the Computer Mart at EPIC on Sunday 26 October. * John has received an e-mail from the present Training Officer David Schwabe seeking expressions of interest for an Intermediate Win95 course. Please e-mail reply to: pcug.training@pcug.org.au/ * Ken noted that he was glad to see that there was a return to the former procedure of having a short address by a guest speaker, in addition to, rather than only Questions and Answers. He referred to his previously reported printing problems, and said that they had been overcome by "prntky.zip", a freeware PrintKey program that solves most printing problems. Ken also commented on the frequent mouse-cleaning needed with the soft fabric covered mouse pads which seem to attract more dust than the harder surfaced rubber/plastic ones. John added that he has an optical mouse, but has worn the pad out (as it seems to need a grid print on the pad to operate), and has recently acquired a PS2 mouse which frees up a COM port, and is the way to go! * Emil raised the problem encountered in W95 (but not in W3.1x) when trying to replicate the contents of a hard drive onto another drive, either whole or partitioned, for possible future use in the event of a crash of the original drive. W95 will allow files/directories to be copied across, but not sufficiently for boot-up requirements. This problem can be overcome using "Drive Copy" ($45) or "Ghost" (Shareware), although Nortons Utilities probably does the same. Emil said that he was glad to see that Big W was now selling CD Roms at very competitive prices. # Emil reminded the group that the Virtual C & C met on the alternate Tuesdays at the Woden Tradesmens Club, upstairs from 1200 to 1400 hours, when silicon chips can be discussed while the potato chips are being consumed (at $7.50 per meal). * Kevin enquired about saving onto VCR tape, and it was suggested to try the web site. (I am sorry I can't be more specific about this item because I tried to write long hand with my short hand because I needed to scratch myself with my long hand at that moment, and missed a bit - Ed.). * Fred made an enquiry about the frequently encountered need to "associate" a file with another file to proceed further, eg. to produce a graphic, read text etc. Emil, Alan and others offered some suggestions and explanations about how the system did not always recognise that file, and that it sometimes needed the user to suggest what may be the appropriate files to form an association. A Shareware program - Drag' n'view could help out. As there were quite a few puzzled faces around the table, this subject could be worth further discussion at a future meeting; and as is obvious by the above deficient resume of the matter, your scribe also had a puzzled face! * Jenny noted that those who upgraded frequently tended to be experimenters who, although they developed their skills more rapidly, tended to have more frequent crashes (and therefore became more accomplished in crash-recovery techniques). She asked the need to constantly upgrade - the answer being Yes and No! In many cases the existing software/hardware is adequate for the designated purpose, and could remain so for quite some time. However, as fewer programs and upgrades are being written for W3.1x, W95, or its successor OS, will be needed to run an increasing number of new programs, plug-ins, add-ons etc. Of course, the newer software generally requires a costly (is there any other type?) hardware upgrade. John added that as W98 is really only an upgrade of W95, W3.1x members should strongly consider upgrading to W95 now so that they will find it easier to handle W98 when it becomes alive (at the moment, some power users are trying to beta it to death!). Announcements: A humourous doc was circulated describing Microsoft's bid to acquire the Vatican, and it can be found at: http://africa.geomic.uni-oldenburg.de/~joey/others/vatican.html Even though next Monday (6 October) is a public holiday, there will still be a Daytime Internet SIG meeting at the PCUG Centre from 1000 to 1200 hours. The next C & C meeting will be on Tuesday 14 October at 1030 hrs. Coffee & Chat reports for most meetings over the last couple of years can be found at: http://pcug.org.au/~rcook/c&c.htm Alf closed the meeting with the reminder of the PCUG motto: "Users helping Users" - but it must be fun. So about a dozen users went to the Belconnen Soccer Club for lunch (only $3.50 for members!) to help digest Alf's parting thought. ----------------------------------------------------- nevander@pcug.org.au (in the Chad-free zone!) Neville Anderson, PCUG (ACT) Canberra, ACT Australia. Tel: +61 2 6258 2332
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