Minutes of the Meeting held 4 September 2001
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FINAL notes of Coffee and Chat of topics that were discussed at the North
side meeting at the PCUG rooms on 4/9/2001 .
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Ken M was chairman and 31 people turned up. The meeting began at 10 am
It was good to Jennie L at the meeting.
A new member Wayne was welcomed who has a computer but no problems at
this stage.
The treasurer Charlie said that the club modem needed repair but had a 5
year warranty so it has been fixed. A new one costs $299 and has a ten year
warranty. Also the latest book purchase "Upgrading and Repairing PCs" 12th
edition by Scott Mueller was available on loan at the club rooms at
Belconnen. The 'kitty' was healthy. A dollar contribution was collected.
The meeting discussed the following topics :
1. a Fax-modem services? - Anne
Answer - No free ware is available and the free web sites (eg J Fax)
appear to be unavailable or now charge for their service.
b. Working off line.
Answers - save the page to disk and look at it off-line, use the
history feature of Outlook Express or save the web site with a program
called "Web Reaper " which allows saving of whatever amount of the site
that you can afford. JS & Charlie suggested.
Comment by Trevor.
After the discussion at C and C north today I thought that I might
throw the following in for people's attention. It came from Lockergnome
Windows Digest.
> <> HTTrack Website Copier v3.05 [1.7M] W9x/2k FREE
> http://www.httrack.com/cserv.php3?File=httrack.exe
> http://www.httrack.com/
> http://screenshot.lockergnome.com/httrack.png
>
>{Browse sites offline} Those of you on a 56k dial-up account know
>how annoying it is when you're in the middle of browsing a Web
>site and your connection gets cut off. Well, why not browse a site
>offline? With this program, you can save an entire Web site and
>view it no matter where you are. All the links, images, and files
>are saved to a directory, allowing you to click through them as if
>you were doing it online. You can even select specific items to
>download, as opposed to downloading everything from the source. Of
>course, HTTrack can be used for other reasons, too. "[It] can also
>update an existing mirrored site, and resume interrupted
>downloads." > Trevor
2. Older persons web site launch - Alan M
3. Take over of his computer while using Internet Explorer on line -
Charlie reported that while surfing a slightly dubious site, Explorer
displayed a full screen pop up screen which contained no toolbars, hence no
way of going back or forward or entering a new URL. Much worse, it also
contained no title bar (the very top line on the screen) hence no way of
minimizing or closing the window.
Right clicking on the screen did not provide any close option.
The only solution was to ctrl/alt/del and then close Internet Explorer.
Just another example of how devious web developers try to prevent you from
ignoring their site. Charlie
4. Network access to files - Peter said that he had networked his PC
with his laptop both having Windows ME installed. The default setting only
gave him access to the 'My
Documents' folder on the C: drive on each computer. He asked how he could
access all files on each computer using the network. He was advised to open
'My Computer' and right click on each drive. Select "Sharing" then click on
"Share As". The importance of using a password was mentioned to prevent
intrusions to the network while on the internet. The excellent article on
Networking by Glen Pure in the July 2001 issue of "16 Bits" was mentioned.
Peter also mentioned a very useful website for people wanting to take
advantage of last-minute hotel accommodation discounts in state capitals
and provincial centres. The site is http://wotif.com Advertised standby
rates are often half to a third of regular room rates. Bookings can be made
on the website.Peter H
5. 'Transact' service now working well, costs unknown yet. - Ken M
6. a. Colour prints - Jeff
b. Cheap colour printer
Again I have been impressed with the high quality of colour prints that I
have been producing using my Canon 6200 colour printer with images obtained
by scanning with my Canon N122OU scanner or by a digital camera, and Arcsoft
Photostudio 2000 photo editor. I showed as an example a copy of the cover of
an Australian Geographic magazine that to me is better than the original.
I would like others to be able to do likewise. I have submitted an article
to 16 Bits describing an optimisation procedure but there is probably much
in the procedure that would be better understood with a demonstration.
Accordingly I am happy to provide a demonstration at my O'Connor home at a
mutually convenient time and invite anyone interested to give me their name
and e-mail address so that I can arrange something. Jeff
7. The Visual basic course to be run again by Ric if needed (a two
day course) - Ric Geary's email address is genairco@optusnet.com.au
People who are interested in joing a VB SIG or who would like to attend
another VB course should contact him. John A
8 Word and Excel panels open at the same time problem - Bob S
9. Laptop battery replacement made by 'Molicel'. A web search for the
battery- Rod. S
10. Cheap 256mb sized sdram memory is available for $57 recently at the
markets. -
JS
11. A Technical centre to begin in Canberra helping marginalised people
with CASE and the Canberra Labour club help. There are 500 such centres in
Australia, none in Canberra. Help wanted to run the centre- Darryl B.
He also mentioned that a broadband service in the ACT would be good but out
of Canberra 'a modem would be seen as a useful control of costs of
downloads'.
Broadband will encourage large downloads and excess costs per megabyte could
be prohibitive. See his letter to the Canberra Times today Tuesday.
JS mentioned that he still had tickets for the annual VISE concert.
Please contact him for tickets. It is really a superb show at a great
price for a good charity. There are no efforts to extract more money from
you during the show (except for food & drinks :-).Here is an update from
Mike Stock - CEO of VISE.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Just a reminder that the show is at the Southern Cross Club on Saturday
October 20th.
Click here for a quick download poster: www.vise.org.au/stars
By supporting this show you are helping VISE send retired teachers to
outback families that need assistance with their distance education. The
mothers are the educators of these children and VISE sends volunteer
assistance when they run into problems.
An update on the artists.
You all know Ted Egan and Greg Champion.
Michael Fix has just received the Sunny award for Best Instrumental Album
(Transfixed) and also Best Instrumentalist in the S.E.Queensland Music
Awards.
Chantelle Delaney was presented with the Order of Australia Medal for
Services to the Music Industry at Government House Brisbane on September
3rd. We believe she is the youngest to have received this award.
So you can see the high quality of this show for just $15 a ticket. No other
show at the Southern Cross Club is being offered at this price.
I look forward to seeing you at the Club. Please come and say Hi!
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From JS Last meeting I promised I would give the URL for "Application
Mover" it is
www.fundruc.com To quote the help file....
"Application Mover is a tool that relocates installed programs from one
path
to another on your hard disk. Application Mover takes files found in the
path specified in the 'Current Path' field and moves them to the 'New Path'
field. Application Mover scans the windows registry for references to files
located in the 'Current' field and changes those references to the New path.
Application Mover also scans all windows shortcuts in the Start Menu and
adjusts path references to the new program location. Finally, *.ini and
Install.log files present in the original program path are checked for
strings matching the old path location. If found, these strings are changed
to the new location. Confirmation dialogs are available if you enable the
'Confirm changes' checkbox"
In practice the program moved all of MS Office 2000 from one disk to another
(a process which also involved between 300-400 registry changes) with no
problems - Word worked immediately, Excel needed a quick reference to the
installation CD. I think that is a very tough test which it passed with
flying colours.... JohnS
The meeting ended at 11.30 am.
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"If you can find something that everyone agrees on, it's wrong"
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ebm
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