Minutes of the Meeting held 3 Apr 2001


1.New Netscape - Esther
Esther was experiencing difficulties receiving from a particular site.
Discussion suggested that Netscape cannot handle 128-bit security (IE5 has
no problem) and that Netscape may need upgrading.

2.Problems with Acrobat reader - KenF
It appears that Lotus Smartsuite may include Acrobat 2 and that if it is
installed after Acrobat 4 then file associations are wrong. Reinstalling
Acrobat 4 may help.

3.Rare - TrevorF
Trevor repeats his joke. I'm not sure that's necessary for the notes.
Feedback welcome.
Joke: A couple attended a birthday party at someone's home where the fillet
steak they had was cooked very rare. So rare it seemed as though it had only
just been waved over a flame and with a bit of care it might have recovered.
Therefore they were a little bit concerned when they went to a restaurant
the following week and asked the waiter if they could speak to the chef. He
was duly ushered to the table and was asked: "tell me - how do you prepare
your chicken?"
The chef said "Nothing special sir - we just tell it that it's going to
die!"

4.Installing Windows ME - KenF
JeffC comments: Windows ME is simply the latest release of the Windows
series, suitable for home users. It may not provide very obvious improvements
over the preceding version, Windows98 2nd edition, but Microsoft claim that
it offers additional worthwhile features and that it is a more stable system.
There have been reports of problems it has with running older versions of 
applications (games?) and some old hardware because it does not provide the
appropriate driver, and an announcement of yet another version that may be
released later this year or next. But many users including myself have had
absolutely no problem with Windows Me. I do not collect games but I can
still use many old programs and a printer that I have had for 10 or more
years. Accordingly my reply to the question, is simply, "If you have it then
use it. You are unlikely to have any problems or at worst, problems that
cannot be easily corrected as for example by reinstalling on old driver. I
react to the seemingly inevitable and unsubstantiated Microsoft bashing and
denigration that this type of question produces. I would much prefer
descriptions of actual problems or bugs. I can give none about Me and would
have to go back to Windows 3.0 to give an example of any problem that was
not easily corrected.

5.CD Travel - RodS
The UK travel CD did not report that a sea crossing was needed when giving
the shortest time from a UK location to an Irish location.

6.Search and find - JohnA
www.genius2000.com/ag.html is a great source of anagrams,
www.copernic.com is a useful manager of multiple search engines.

7.Telstra: online bill examination - MikeD
This Telstra tool looks useful, but requires a fair effort and some time to
get going.

8.Uninstall Norton A/V fron Control Panel - TedT
Ted T has reported that although he had uninstalled Norton Anti Virus using
Norton Uninstall Deluxe, the program's name still appeared in Control Panel's
"Add/Remove Programs". Suggestions made were (1) to use Tweakui or (2) 
to highlight the program name in Start Up and right click and delete.

9.Email deletion & filtering - Esther
Rather than deletion, filtering of incoming mail may be a better way of
managing increasing volume of retained mail messages. Filtering enables,
among other things, direction of incoming mail to specific folders.

10.Waterproof Ink - AnneG
From Anne: In the PC User, July 2000 issue Easy-Refills in Q. quite
prominently advertised "NEW WATERPROOF INK Technolgy"  and "*I SAID
WATERPROOF INKS".
In very small letters elsewhere was "*Conditions apply on some products"
which could have applied to one of two * or both.    Since a couple of us
were quite interested in waterproof black for our bubble jets I looked in my
last issue and found the advertiser again but nothing about waterproof inks.
I emailed the company and the reply was "We actually sell special paper
which makes ALL ink waterproof."  Then came the prices of $16.50/100 sheets
(translates to $82.50 per ream), $27.40/20 sheets photo glossy paper
(translates to $685.00 per ream).  I decided it is better to stick with my
BC03 cartridge and Reflex or similar copier/printer paper at less than $6.00
per ream.

11.Gator form completer - JohnA


12.Any Transact experiences? - TonyS (Darrell)
Darrell gave a valuable review of his contacts with Transact officials too
long to repeat here (even if I had recorded it!). He is not sanguine about
Transact capabilties either now or in the future.




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