January Meetingby Herb Van Brink, LACS AnnouncementsLACS President Stephanie Nordlinger opened the meeting by describing three donated items that were being auctioned for the benefit of the Society. The silent auction items were an Athlon 650 MHz processor, a copy of Windows 2000 Professional Edition, and an HP DeskJet 420.Todd Martin said that there were copies of the 2001 edition of The Secret Guide to Computers available for purchase at the meeting for $15. Charlie Semple still has copies of the APCUG utilities CD-ROM available for purchase ($5). SIGsDigital Photography is a new SIG being formed by Helen Karagozian and Fred Kong. An interest list was passed around at the meeting. If you’re interested, call Helen at 310-454-3426.The Genealogy SIG, hosted by Leah and Joe Clark, will meet quarterly. Call (310) 677-2792 or send e-mail at lclark@ucla.edu for time and place. The Investment SIG has changed its meetings to the 3rd Wednesday of the month. Contact Cora Kamerman for information. New Attendees/MembersA substantial number of new attendees were at the meeting. Many of them said that they found out about the LACS through notices that have appeared in the L.A. Times. PresentationEric Johnston, a Channel Marketing Representative for Microsoft in Northern California, introduced the new Southern California Rep., Dana Burkowitz. His announced agenda consisted of: Windows ME Part 1, Pocket PC Video, Picture It! And Windows ME Part 2.He never got to the Pocket PC Video or Picture It! portions, and some attendees may have questioned whether he covered very much of Windows ME. He described the salient features of ME as: (1) It supports digital Windows ME has built-in support for direct connection of digital cameras and other "WIA" compliant devices. This new acronym stands for "Windows Imaging Acquisition." This support includes two-way communication and control, image viewing and storage facilities, and other features. He also gave a demonstration of the new Windows Movie Maker – a minimalist version of Adobe Premiere or Macromedia Director. As Doug Mechaber wrote in the January issue of User Friendly, "I’m pleased that … Microsoft … took to heart the federal judge’s finding … and stopped integrating features that we thought were separate." Johnston also spent a good deal of time describing two Windows ME features that are already available for older versions of Windows: The Windows Media Player (a free download from MS) and enhanced home networking with shared Internet access (included in Windows 98 Second Edition). He also described and demonstrated some of ME’s fail-safe operation, including self-repairing of lost or damaged system files and relatively easy restoration of the system (but not data) to how it was at an earlier date. The overall emphasis was on features of extreme disinterest to many LACS members — creating and playing CD’s of popular music and playing games. Q & AHere are some of the questions and his answers: Q: I have a Sandisk. Will ME support it? [Reviewer’s note: Sandisk is
a device used to read memory cards from digital cameras without having to
connect the camera to the PC, thereby avoiding a heavy battery drain on
the camera.] Q1: Why does ME take so much disk space - 450 to 550 MB - when NT only
takes about 120 MB? Q: You said that the network facility supports both MACs and PCs on the
same network. Q: What’s Microsoft’s "dot-net" strategy? Q: When’s the NEXT version of Windows due? Q: Is Windows 98 still available? Q: Will ME support DOS programs? A: You can run DOS if you boot from a System floppy, but not directly
with ME.
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February Meetingby Herb Van Brink, LACS Over 100 members, visitors, and new attendees (all of whom must have had their Valentine’s day shopping completed) braved the threatening elements to attend tonight’s meeting. SocietyBusinessPresident Stephanie Nordlinger opened the meeting at 7:00 PM sharp and introduced some of the people who make LACS work: Librarian Lea Pride thanked Al Wylie (sp?) for his donation of some new library materials. New acquisitions include Family Tree Maker 7.0, MSWorks 4.5 for Dummies, and Word Perfect Suite 7 for Dummies. Books may be borrowed at any meeting. A $10.00 fully refundable deposit is required. Product Review Coordinator Fred Moore described some products newly available for review, including an employee timekeeping suite. He also indicated that he would not be overly saddened if someone were to volunteer to take on the review coordination role. (See Stephanie’s e-mail of Feb. 14). Charlie Semple, presenting the Special Interest Groups (SIG’s), said that Carol Theodore would be unable to continue to coordinate the Hardware SIG. This position does not require technical expertise, but needs someone who will organize and arrange the groups get-togethers. The newly re-constituted Genealogy SIG, under the leadership of Joe and Leah Clark, will meet next on February 22. For information about the new Digital Photography SIG, please contact Fred Kong or Helen Karagozian. As Cora Kamerman started to speak about the Investment SIG, she was interrupted by the first of what were to be many deafening thunderclaps. Those threatening elements fulfilled their threat! When allowed to continue, Cora restated the need for contributing members. George Wolkon asked for volunteers to speak at the Office SIG about their experiences and how they use any of the Office products. Quicken 2001 PresentationMatt McCann, the night’s featured speaker, was joined by Richard Katz, a founding member of the LACS. The importance of our group was emphasized by the fact that the previous evening, Matt had been in Philadelphia and Richard was in Orlando. And they gave that all up just to be with us! For those who have emulated Rip Van Winkle for the past few years (my copy of Quicken for DOS, version 6.0, has files dated 1991), Quicken is a comprehensive personal and small business financial management tool from Intuit, which also produces TurboTax and MacInTax. Matt, in a dynamic presentation interspersed with real and apocryphal anecdotes, demonstrated some of its key features. Major modules described Tuesday evening included: The Investment Center. Provides connectivity with a quote system, allowing up-to-the-minute portfolio evaluation and assessment. It even allows the user to manage portfolio allocation - by amount of risk, by industry, and a number of other factors. The Electronic Accountant. Has facilities for allocating all income and expenses into categories and sub-categories. Can import data directly from your banks and credit card companies. The Tax Center. Can keep you aware of your year-end tax liability on an ongoing basis. The Household Center. For your home and auto, can automatically connect to www.edmonds.com (the publisher of The Blue Book of used car values) and home sales information so that you can include the current value of these assets in your net worth statement. The home sales data comes from www.homeradar.com, which you can use directly. I tried it after the meeting and found it to be one of the best listings of recent home sales. Matt explained how to use your financial records to make your teen-aged children do their chores! (He showed them how easy it was to delete their college funds.) The most impressive facet of this product is the extremely high level of connectivity and coordination of the many financially related aspects of modern living. It’s a better description than the material at www.intuit.com. Special user group pricing was available at the meeting, and LACS
members could avail themselves of these prices for a few days after the
meeting by contacting matt@ugpro.com
or by going to the ugpro website shown above. The prices were Quicken 2001
Deluxe at $29.95 (retail $59.95) and the Quicken 2001 Suite, which
includes Quicken Deluxe, TurboTax, TurboTax State, Family Lawyer, and
CleanSweep), for $49.95 ($99 retail). |
March Meetingby Herb Van Brink, LACS Computer Forum The formal meeting was preceded at 6:00 PM by the new Computer Forum. About fourteen people participated in this open chat, where a wide range of topics was discussed. Product Reviews As promised, a large number of new products have been made available for review. A full list can be seen on the society’s website, www.lacspc.org - click on "software reviews". Rosters The March 2001 roster was available to members who attended the meeting. Those who did not attend should receive it with this issue of User Friendly. Miscellaneous Bill Hughes said that FREENET has been deleting incoming e-mail that it suspects may be spam, but that you can set options to notify you of such deleted mail. It was also noted that AOL has been aggressively deleting suspect mail as well, and may be deleting mail containing such common words as "offer"! There were a number of first-time attendees, most of whom heard of the group through our notice in the Los Angeles Times. PRESENTATION: Presented by member Bart Koslow with PowerPoint assistance by Charlie Semple Bart has provided a complete version of his talk, which can be found elsewhere in this issue. I’m therefore including only a very brief summary. Upgrade Bart pretty much dismissed the notion of upgrading a computer except for adding memory or a disk drive. He said that anything that’s more than two years old is obsolete and won’t work with newer components. Even an older case, which is probably set up to use "AT" configuration motherboards, would not be able to accommodate the current "ATX" boards. He even said that even newer keyboards and mice would not work with older systems. (Ed. note: Adapters are available). Build The bulk of his talk concentrated on the components and their attributes that you should look for. He suggested various minimum qualities and ratings that should be sought after to optimize performance and to at least limit the rate at which your new system will become obsolete. In response to questions, a very limited amount of time was spent discussing the compatibility of various components with each other, appropriate combinations of controllers and drives, graphic/video cards and monitors, and the impact of how you plan to use the system on its configuration. Buy There wasn’t sufficient time for this part of the presentation. It is
covered in the accompanying article. ¨ |
