The last C&C meeting referred to "Partition Magic". Well Emil Joseph has tried it out and reports a recovery of 200 Megs of disk space by converting 32 Kbit cluster sizes to 4 Kbits. It comes on a CD, but is only 16 Megs in size, and is foolproof, though they do warn you back up before using it. Allan Mikkelsen was to try it out on the fly, but on a Centre machine. A lot of discussion on partitions and hard drives in general. HDD failure was discussed. There are two types of HDD failures, the mechanical one where the drive mechanism dies, the HDD is well and truly kaput. The other failure mechanism is a software/logical failure. Here Norton Disk Doctor can be used to recover FAT information, MS has Scandisk, and both will pick up lost chains of information, though normally you can not do anything with them. The cost of software was interesting, Partition Magic costs $129 here before any discounting, in Melbourne, it is $99.95, with at least 5% discount, and up to 10% if you pushed it. Common complaint, everything is dearer in Canberra because Canberrans are richer. Scanmail has been raised in this newsgroup recently. Emil advises to look at Help|About, and you will see that the program expires on 1 Feb 1998. Judging by the way ISPs are "anti spamming" there systems, you may not be able to take advantage of Scanmails features, though I find it useful, (but not necessary), with two accounts on TIP. Question: What is the difference between HTML and HTM Answer. None really, DOS required a 3 character extension, but other operating systems do not have such a limitation. So when it came time to put HTML into DOS, it got shortened to HTM. You may have noticed in Sundays CT that the PCUG got a mention at the Seniors Internet opening at Woden last week. Gloria Robbins told the story of a senior citizen wanting to know about the Hotel Majestic in the Blue Mountains. Alta Vista, hit the button and there were 7 references to the hotel, a very impressed senior cit. TUCOWS was essentially an Internet software site, Emil however showed us two very good sites for other software; these were: http://www.shareware.com for all sorts of shareware, and http://download.com for mainly demos of commercial software. Emil also pointed us to http://www.blackstump.com.au as a good example of a mind boggling site. How do you keep track of all these URLs, like the Qool URLs in Sixteen Bits. Not easy, and a bit of a problem, so if anyone has some good ideas, let us know. When I joined the PCUG, I went along to a new members night and asked amongst other things, What is a modem, and where do you get one? It is pretty hard now to imagine people still wanting to ask the question, but they still do. Guess that is the beauty of meetings like this and C&C. Next daytime meeting will be Monday, 22 Oct 1997, 10am to 12.30pm or so, next C&C meeting, Tuesday 14 Oct 1997 between 10.30 and 11.30 am (really 10 to noon) Thanks to Emil and Allan for their demonstrations and explanations. Owen ****************************************************** Coffee & Chat Page, inluding archives of past meetings http://www.pcug.org.au/~rcook/c&c.htm ******************************************************
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