CnC N'side 6Mar
MikeD presiding 32 attending
Two new attendees. Russ. & .JaneM who has a Word97 problem
1. Printer problems & show & tell - AnneG
2. Utilities & Spam FAXs - JohnS
A. I'm a self confessed Utility junkie. A couple of interesting ones
are:
FEM (File Extensions Manager) Vrs 1.0 Beta - add simple control of file
associations to the file right click menu. From http://software.xfx.net
and....
rjhExtensions organiser Vrs 1.3 adds a bunch of useful functions to the
right click menu including print folder contents etc. From
http://www.rjhsoftware.com/rjhextensions/
B. Even though your modem may be FAX capable and you have installed FAX
software - do not make my mistake and add your FAX phone number to a web
form. Spam E-mails are a minor annoyance compared to persistent FAX phone
calls at Midnight. I finally traced the culprit - a B & B offering "short
breaks"....
3. Bedtime story - RodS
4. 2 (ISPs) Email - Menus Operating systems - MervC
5. Win95 loads then freezes - GregB
6. Publisher & Tables - RodB
Troubles with tabs in Publisher '98 may be overcome by using the table
feature. Line spacing is then a bit of a problem, because it cannot be
reduced to a satisfactory value. Oddly, if an Excel spreadsheet is imported
to Pub., it forms a table whose line spacing is more dense. This can be a
very useful solution where tabular information in, say, Wordperfect needs to
be moved to Pub. Copy the information to Excel; tidy it up (easy in Excel);
import the result to Pub. Very little work is then needed to produce an
acceptable result. Other commentators at the meeting reported that Excel is
a very useful product for massaging data between programs in other
situations as well.
7. Digital photos -Jeff
Jeff reports:
My question about the quality of prints obtained from digital
photographs produced a lively discussion at the
end of which I concluded that high quality prints can be expected if the
user is prepared to learn the appropriate procedures. For example "Your
input should approximately equal you output" in terms of dpi and this will
depend on the size of the intended print. So a good digital camera and
an optimised procedure are needed to produce good prints but evidently when
a procedure has been developed for a particular camera and printer it can be
used routinely. Cost per print is expected to be low - for example
coated paper costs about $0.13 per sheet and each sheet can be used for 2 or
3 prints and the cost of ink is relatively small if ink-tanks can be
refilled using a refill kit.
The question followed my raptures about prints produced by simply
scanning
photographs and printing with a bubble jet printer as I described in the
Southside C&C notes by Trevor on 4 March.
Other queries raised during the discussions were:
A. The difficulty in developing optimal printer settings for brightness,
contrast, hue etc. for producing prints. To find these settings I used a
small segment of the scanned image as a source file to view the effects of
various combinations of settings . Thus for
example to get the optimal combination of brightness and contrast I used
Word to prepare a 3 x 3 table with 3 columns for levels of brightness and 3
rows for levels of contrast, giving 9 combinations on a sheet of paper. Two
trial runs were sufficient to indicate a near optimal combination for my
printer. The same procedure was used to choose other settings for saturation
and hue - the only need this showed was for a small adjustment for
saturation and
there seemed to be no need for other adjustments as for tone, shadow
intensity etc. So determining optimal settings for obtaining photographic
quality
prints from scanned photographs was relatively simple with my equipment and
I would expect a
corresponding relatively simple procedure for quality prints from a digital
camera .
B. The divergence between the quality of prints produced by the printer and
that of the image displayed on the PC monitor. According to my instruction
book this is due to common error in simply expecting the printed image to be
the same as that on the monitor. For this the monitor must be adjusted to
match the quality of the print and not vice versa! In other
words, if the print has washed-out colours, adjust the monitor to also show
the same washed-out colours. Then choose printer settings for brightness,
contrast etc. that give a good display on the monitor - these will then
correspond to those required to produce quality prints. Again, adjust the
monitor to match prints rather than attempt to adjust prints to
match the monitor.
All this is based of course on my limited experience with the Cannon
scanner
and the 6-ink printer as described for the 4 March notes and I am still
learning. Hence all comments are very welcome. I have yet to save up
for a digital camera and simply assume that I should then be able to produce
good "photographic quality" prints.
8. A. Web books
B. DTP software - MikeD
9. Spam & freebies - Jeff
10. GPS to PC - Alan
11. Video card - TV out - Kevin
12. AlanM mentioned:
A TV a promotion for a site giving information on where/how to get
freebies of all sorts. It also allegedly has lots of relevant information
for seniors. The site is http://www.piratepete.tv/
It may have information of use.
13. OwenC noted:
Following a query at CnC last Tuesday as to what is the best accounting
package,
The C'bank allows data download into
MS Money 98
Quicken 99
MYOB and even as
CSV (comma separated values) for spreadsheets like Excel
The ANZ seems to be tied to Quicken
Owen's view is that accounting packages are all the same, it is just a
matter of
what you get used to, and if you want to tie it up to your bank.
Return to the Index or the Coffee and Chat Page