Once again our huge thanks to Anne L. for these notes...

COFFEE & CHAT

NOTES FOR 4 APRIL 2000

1. The meeting, which opened at 10.00am, was chaired by John Saxon.  No new
members were present

2. Phillip mentioned again the possibility of starting a separate Coffee and
Chat for beginners.  John said that while he would prefer beginners to feel
comfortable attending the present meetings, if a separate meeting is to be
established members might consider holding it on the south side.  Various
venues were suggested such as the top floor of the Woden library or the
Hughes Community Centre.  Ann suggested that if two meetings were to be held
perhaps they could just be two sessions of Coffee & Chat held on different
days so that members could attend the one which suited them best, or both,
rather than a main meeting and one for beginners.  John agreed and suggested
that the second meeting be held on the south side on the alternative Tuesday
to the present one.  It was decided that Phillip would seek input on the
proposals through the newsgroups.

3. Charlie briefed members on C & C's healthy financial position.  He also
spoke about a new program from Wild File called "Go Back" found on
http://www.goback.com/index.cfm which kept track of all the files made on a
computer, providing it had sufficient space to do so, without noticeably
slowing down the system.  With this one could go back and re-constitute any
particular file or retrieve any data required.
The program cost $75US but a trial version was available and this could be
re-loaded again when the 10 day period expired.

4. John described an article he was going to write an article for "16 Bits"
on the competition for customers between the various telephone companies.
He also mentioned the problem of establishing which company had his
preselection for long distance and overseas calls when more than one company
had been used over a period of time (this was important to the companies
concerned because if they had the preselection they could also charge for
all the mobile phone calls which were a money spinner).  Members discussed
various ways of tracing who had the preselection.

5. Bob sought to use TIP's 10 minutes system but every time he tried he got
an "unable to connect" message.  After discussion it emerged that when
setting up a dial-up network connection he had not filled in all the
necessary boxes.  He was advised to set-up a totally new dial-up network
connection for 10 minute calls.

6. Bob also mentioned that when he left his computer on but inactive for
long periods his Osbourne monitor went blank with horizontal lines.  He was
told that he probably had a hardware problem and Allan offered him a free
15" Osbourne monitor to replace his faulty one.

7. Ken informed members that the important part of a CD disk was the top
(printed side) not the bottom as the latter could be repaired.  If members
wrote on the top they should use a special water-soluble pen as other ink
could affect it.  Also if a label was put on the disk it should not be
removed as this could damage the data, and glue should not be used as this
could cause problems.  It was okay to put labels on the top of the disks as
the readers read from the bottom to the data at the top.  CDs can be cleaned
at Video Easy which has a video cleaning machine.

8. Ken referred to
http://computingcentral.msn.com/topics/bandwidth/speedtest50.asp which could
be used to determine a computer's connect speed.  A general discussion then
took place on methods to determine connect and download speeds with Mike
reminding members of the service provided by TIP.

9. Ken also circulated an example of a watermark and mentioned that Word 97
help (which he has printed out through Word to RTF) gives instructions on
how to create one.  Charlie queried how long the printed version of the Help
files was, and was told they took up 500 plus pages.

10. Terry noted that a new version of "EasyCleaner" was now available from
www.vtoy.fi/jv16/ which checks that the registry is not pointing to programs
that have been removed. This version was fail-safe as it had a recovery
feature which took entries out and put them in a back-up folder so that they
could be re-installed if required.

11. Neville queried whether it mattered if there was a lot of junk in
registry and whether it took up a lot of space.  Terry replied that if you
don't mind the registry being cluttered it probably didn't matter as it
didn't slow down the machine too much but the cleaner the registry was kept
the better it worked.  John noted that the registry tended to expand to
4-6mgs and that a typical registry had 70,000 entries which all had to be
checked by the computer when windows is started up.

12. Al enquired whether anyone knew where to get a RSI prevention program.
John suggested that Al trace one using the search engines, and suggested
that if anyone found one they should put in the newsgroups.

13. Lin described the problems faced by left brain people who do not
understand the complex explanations given by right brain people of how to
fix computer problems.  She also mentioned the misleading suggestions
produced by "Help" files and the problems posed by some of the questions
asked by the computer and urged that all instructions be kept very simple.

14. John mentioned that it is worth doing a general clean-up including a
format C: every 6 months.  Mike confirmed that as people will have to do a
format C at some stage it would be better for members to do it when it
suited them rather than when it became inescapable.

15. Alistair, who had a 15 months old computer, was having an intermittent
fault on 6-8 programs where a message concerning an invalid page fault kept
coming up but which did not cause problems when he hit ignore and carried
on.  He was informed that he possibly had a kernel 32 problem and that a
general clean-up and defrag might help.  Terry advised him to run "set-up"
over the top of Windows and Merv further advised that when the computer
queried whether to save the system files he should not save the old file.

16. Jeff queried where he could find a Vbrun file, was it in the Windows
system folder?  Merv suggested that he do search for all VB files using a
wildcard as the one in his system may be a different version number to the
one he had been looking for.  Jeff then mentioned that his computer won't
display dll's and was advised to go to Windows Explorer View/Folder
options/View/Show all files, so that he could see the dll files.

17. Elizabeth mentioned that when she leaves her computer on for a while
without using it, it does not power down and the fans etc keep going at full
force and the message she got was that a program was still working and so
was stopping the power dropping.  John told her that non-ATX motherboards
couldn't reduce the power to the fans etc.  Merv advised that members should
not use the power reduction facility as it frequently proved difficult to
get full power again when it was needed.  John mentioned that any new
motherboard he obtained would have to power down to a few watt (no fans,
disks, PSU, CPU etc.) and have an "instant on (save to RAM)" feature after a
power down.

18. Mike circulated a copy of "Microsoft Windows keyboard guide for Windows
95 and NT", which was mainly produced for the visually impaired and the
physically handicapped.  It was obtained from
www.commandcorp.com/cci/keystroke.html.

19. Gloria sought help in assisting someone whose clock has gone wrong, who
has tried new batteries and using the desktop to reset the clock without
success.  Ann mentioned that Dummies guide to computers lists some programs
for re-setting the clock.  Merv mentioned that some computers have a clock
chip which can cause problems.  He stated that changing the clock on the
desktop isn't always effective and that CMOS may have to be amended to
change the time and date.  John noted that computer clocks are not always
efficient and that the average watch is far more accurate and suggested that
when on the Internet an atomic clock be checked.

20. Phillip mentioned that Windows 2000 is reducing the number of desktop
tools available.  Charlie warned members against using Nuts and Bolts, which
was on a cover disk recently, as it had caused him a lot of problems.  It
was mentioned that Microsoft has been buying up a lot of the utility
companies lately and incorporating their wares in its own tools and that
members should stick to these.

21. Merv advised that all CDs should be subjected to a virus scan before
use.

22. Phillip sought comments on a paper he was writing on how to improve the
quality of life in Canberra in relation to urban mobility and distributed
copies of the paper to those interested.

23. Merv gave details of a high spec whiz-bang computer he has been building
lately, for about $3000.

24. Esther briefed the meeting of a problem arising with mobiles or fixed
phones and urged members not to obey calls from a "technician" asking them
to dial #90 or #99. Apparently this can be used to enable people to forward
their own long distance/overseas calls through your account.

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