Coffee and Chat Meeting on Tues Mar 7th 2000
41 members were present.
Ted in the Chair.
Apologies received from John Wicken who is in hospital.
1) New members None.
2) Charlie Treasurer : Current balance is $945.
Purchase of a microphone/speaker system to counteract the
acoustics of the room was discussed. Several people contributed
and the general consensus was to try for a more disciplined
approach with speakers standing to address the group and private
conversations to be conducted in the computer room or kitchen.
07/00
3) Esther/Kryn
Hoax e-mails. Involving Jesus and Wobble. And not very good ones
at that as the wording was almost identical. At this point the
discussion was temporarily suspended by the telling of a hoary
old joke by hoary old Ken. (Perhaps we should include the odd
joke in the minutes. A topic for the next meeting?)
The correct procedure with these hoax e-mails is :-
a) Reply to sender informing him/her of the true nature of the
message.
b) If in doubt check at one of the following sites
??????????????? JOHN to supply
c) Inform your Webmaster, etc
07/00
4) ?
A general discussion mainly concerned with the proposed cabling
of all Canberra by ACTEW. Doubts were expressed about the
economics of the project and the lack of content for
distribution. It was noted that the TPG contract at
$19.95/month included free cable TV but involved approx $600
hardware cost.
07/00
5) Ted
In a refreshing change of subject the chairman applied his
forensic skills to the well known self portrait of Leonardo da
Vinci pointing out the presence of a scar (cicatrise?) which
might be the result of a laboratory experiment that went wrong.
Next week are we to hear about M's broken nose?
07/00
6) Bob
Problem with e-mail spell checker. The system in use was Outlook
Explorer with Word 97 which share a common dictionary.
Consequently there should be no problem. The best advice was to
go to Add/Remove ask for Remove and then select Repair when this
option is presented.
07/00
7) Ann
Unable to locate a particular file. This was concerned with a
Win 3.11 operating system and an upgrade to a faster CD. It
seems likely that the newer CD unit no longer sets up/needs this
file/directory and the solution is to remove the call for the
file in the CONFIG.SYS file.
07/00
8) John
a) Teaching. Looking for someone to teach the use of the
Internet. Lecture notes available. Four 2 hour periods with
payment of $30/hr. Location Phillip.
b) How to get a Watermark using Word 97. For a pile of people
this was so easy they had forgotten how they did it. Practical
help came from Charlie with the loan of the book 'Running Office
97'.
07/00
9) Charlie
Problem with dropouts while dialling with Maestro modem. After
much tooing and froing Maestro admitted a hardware fault which
they will repair for $10. It is suggested that if you have a
similar problem you ask Maestro if there was anything faulty
with the money you spent.
07/00
10) Charlie?
Free ISPs
1) TPG as noted at the last meeting. From am to am. TPG is at the
address
http://www.tpg.com.au/
2) GlobalFreeway.com.au A 6 week delay before receiving a disk.
Similar to AOL it takes over your system. It is also slow and
downloads frequently fail. In Charlies' case he was able to
remove the advertisements and other aspects of this set up. If
you don't possess the same level of expertise - be careful.
3) Another Canberra one.??? Charlie to supply
07/00
11) Trevor
1) GEN in site addresses. Like .org, .com, .Gov etc what does
.gen stand for. Somewhere in here John was unwise enough to
comment adversely on the Pommy propensity to use co rather than
com and to muck about with the established order of the parts to
the extent that things such as .co appeared after .uk. It would
seem that lost causes are alive and well everywhere.
2) How to turn off modem sound. a) There is usually a volume
control either by software or by rotary switch. b) Option is
usually switch off sound after connection made. c) an AT M
command ??????????????
07/00
12) Adele
Would like the files associated with the book issued at the PCUG
Word 97 course. Mike thought that these were ones associated
with Word 97 and would be on the CD or installed already.
07/00
13) Alan
Has a tiny floppy type disk which is probably holding photo data
wants advice re reading same.
07/00
14) Joan
Cleaners used with audio CDs. OK for digital CDs. General view
was yes but most technicians avoided cleaners and new versions
of CDs had self cleaning built in.
07/00
15) Chris
Need to read discs written by old Classic Mac.
Solution: TRANSMAC Version 4.0 from
www.asy.com or www.tucows.com
07/00
General
Microsoft Outlook Express for Diary/Calendar. General feeling
was that this software is for use in offices and is vastly
overdesigned for individual use. There are better simpler
products.
07/00
PIM: Ted is trying to corner the market in PIM's and reported
further progress. Some expensive ones such as Sharp do not offer
full two way communication between PIM and PC and they also need
extra software at a cost of approx $100.
07/00
Next meeting Mar 21st 2000
Notes by John Armstrong
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Recent Coffee & Chat pages are available on the Internet news group
tip.coffee-chat.
Archives of past meetings are available at the web site:
http://www.pcug.org.au/pcug/candc/c&c.htm
These Archives are searchable, and also include some minutes of the
Internet SIG, run on alternate Mondays
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