Notes on Coffee and Chat Meeting

Tuesday 5 October 1999

Co-ordinator Ted welcomed 40 members present and particularly new
member Robin. Robin had a problem with a CD-ROM disk that she could
not open. Someone offered to look at it on one of the PCUG computers
following the meeting and Merv offered to be a link person to help
Robin with future problems

Wolf reported that finances were adequate. He mentioned Partition
Magic version 4.

Software 

John drew attention to examples of fantastic free software available
on the internet. Firstly a program called TweakAll version 1.2,
available at http://www.abtons-shed.com	
TweakAll It could be regarded as an advance on the Microsoft powertoys
program, TweakUI.  The second program he mentioned was a very
comprehensive web page editor called 1st Page 2000 version 2.0. It can
be downloaded free from http://evrsoft.com
The program includes WYSIWYG editors and wizards that simplify the
creation of polished web sites. It also includes an impressive help
guide. Size 4.96MB.

Jenny had a problem opening a .wpd document received as an email
attachment in Outlook Express. She is using MS Word 6. Charlie had
successfully opened .wpd attachments by right clicking on the
attachment icon, selecting 'copy' and pasting the file to a temporary
directory. This does not work in Word 6. Merv said it was important to
see that the appropriate converter was loaded.  If Word doesn't
recognize the file format it tries to use the converters that
correspond to the filename extension.  If the appropriate converter is
not loaded tell Outlook Express to save the file somewhere.   Open
Word and try to open the file. If word cannot recognize the file
format, it displays the Convert File dialogue box. Choose 'Text Only'.
You may get some square boxes but the text should also appear.

John had a problem with Word 97 in keeping the Australian English word
dictionary. Merv said that best way to make sure that Word did not
keep reverting to American English was to first remove Word 97 then do
a custom install. Specify Australian English in the installation. If
not the US dictionary is installed as the default. See also John's
posting to the tip.coffee-chat newsgroup of 8 Oct 1999.

Elizabeth raised a problem with InoculateIt virus definition updates.
She was getting the message saying  'Engine needs to be updated'.
Merv said that this update was not yet available but would be
available within a fortnight. The new engine is version 10.1.0.13.

Ted said that he had recently bought a book on Visual C++. I came with
a CD-ROM on which he found a screen-capture program called Hypercam.
This could be used to create a training video showing various steps on
screen illustrating how to use Eudora for example. Bob mentioned
another screen-capture program, Hypersnap, that could be downloaded
from the same source as Hypercam , at www.hyperionics.com

Jim mentioned that the automatic updates of Norton Anti-virus using
LiveUpdate no longer work. He cannot contact the Norton server. Roger
and Jeff had the same problem. Jeff had spoken to Symantec in Sydney
by phone and had been advised to contact the bulletin board by phone
instead of trying to download from the internet. Jim had finally gone
to the tucows interact site to download the new definitions. The
author of these notes subsequently tried to download the new
definitions using LiveUpdate and after a long delay got the message
'Unable to contact server. Check your Internet connection'. On trying
again at 9.30pm at night he was successful, again using TIP. Is it
possible that the Norton server gets congested at times?

Peter mentioned a search engine from Norway called Fast Search at
http://www.fast.no/demo/search/alltheweb.html
It uses multiple search engines and searches newsgroups and web sites
concurrently. Peter did a search for ORB drives and was directed to
our Coffee and Chat notes, amongst other sites.  Jim said that he used
Web Ferret from http://www.webferret.com that gives twice as many hits
as Ask Jeeves. Ted said that he likes focused searches rather than
those producing voluminous results. He uses Google at
http://www.google.com
Google can also find pages linked to a selected web site. Gloria is
running a U3A course on using search engines.

Jeff has just upgraded his Word 7 program to Word 2000. He is
particularly impressed with the grammar check. It is possible to get
foreign language packs which also include a grammar module. At $132
for the upgrade with PCUG discount, Jeff thought this particularly
good value. Word 2000 can be purchased independently of Office 2000.
Jeff also has the book 'Special Edition Using Word 2000' published by
Que costing $72. A CD-ROM disk comes with the book including WOPR
add-on to Word 2000. Jeff had also tried Chris's Connection Manager
that can be found at http://www.tip.net.au/kits/
You need to define proxy settings and dial-up settings. 

Alan mentioned Star Office, a free alternative to Word 2000. The
program was bought by Sun Microsystems who are distributing it free
(70MB). Star Office 5.1 for Windows is on the CD burner in the PCUG
Centre.

Ken said that he had downloaded a program that converts help files to
manuals that can be printed out. He will bring some samples to the
next Coffee and Chat.

Hardware

Elizabeth solved her Cannon printer problem after it was discovered
that a generic printer driver had been installed instead of the
appropriate Canon driver. Jim said that the latest HP printer drivers
for Win98 could be downloaded from the Hewlett Packard web site,
http://www.hp.com

Ken said that he is going to reformat his hard disk and reinstall
Win98 Second Edition. He has two hard drives, a CD writer and a CD-ROM
drive. These take up four IDE channels. He was planning to put Windows
on his C drive and all other programs on his D drive. He planned to
make one hard drive removable, for back-up purposes. There was some
discussion about the virtues of separating applications from the
Windows operating system. Merv suggested that it is easier to have the
Windows operating system and applications together on the C drive.
Even if you install programs to the D drive several program files are
placed on the C drive. On a show of hands it seemed clear that the
most popular method of backing up was to a hard disk. Some members
used tape backups, some backed up to CD-ROM and some used removable
drives including zip drives. Floppies were also used. No one admitted
to not backing up.

Wolf had a problem with his CD-ROM drive appearing at different drive
letters depending on whether he had his removable backup drive
attached to the PCMCIA slot. He would like to nail his CD-ROM to the E
drive. Merv said that it could be done simply by going to Control
Panel, System, Device Manager, View by Type, CD-ROM, Properties,
Settings. Under reserved drive letters you can select start drive
letter and end drive letter. Merv also mentioned the latest Iomega zip
drive software, version 2.0 for Win 95/98, that has integrated drive
letter management amongst other things. It can be downloaded (11MB) at
http://www.iomega.com/software/

Wolf also asked how he could unpartition his hard drive. Partition
Magic was recommended. It is a lot friendlier than F Disk.

Bulletin Board 

Ted  T said that he would like some advice on connecting to the PCUG
BBS. He was told that it is possible to access the BBS through the
internet if he just wanted to download shareware files. The URL is
ftp://pcugbbs.pcug.org.au/
It was suggested that he might like to do a search on the internet for
the particular program that he was interested in as he may find a more
recent version. 


PH 	8.10.99

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