Williamsport Area Computer Club

Newsletter / Meeting Minutes

August 1998

Don't forget our Computer Show and Swap Meet, Saturday, September 19, at St. Mark's Lutheran Church, 142 Market Street, Williamsport. Open from 9 AM to 2 PM (vendors and tailgaters set up at 8 AM). Admission $3, tailgaters $5. Call 435-4245 for vendor prices.

Our next meeting will be held on Tuesday, September 8, at 7 PM, in Room B-309 of the Lycoming College Academic Center. It will be a "Beginner's Night" where we will have no guest speaker, but open the floor for general questions and discussions following the business meeting.

All meetings are free and open to the public.

Our last meeting began at 7:05 PM, August 11, with introductions of our members and many new attendees. This was, in fact, our best-attended meeting in recent months.

Committee Reports:

Advertising / Awareness / Public Relations / Home Page:

• No action this month, other than show advertising.

Computer Show / Swap Meet:

• We have new business cards promoting our show. In addition, promotional flyers have been printed and all members are asked to help spread the word about the show.
• The show will be promoted on Ken Sawyer's radio show the preceding Tuesday.
• So far, we've sold 6 indoor tables to vendors, and computer training company "The Fourth R" will have a display in the conference room.
• There is still plenty of space for outside vendors, and some indoor vendors.
• Suggestions for means of low-cost advertising are still solicited!
• At least six people are still needed to help at the show. Nancy, Jim I., Bob, and Mike volunteered.
• Dan or Kathy will look into obtaining an event permit from the city so that we can set up traffic cones around the parking lot.
• Lou has contacted Bill Wilkins and the Lycoming Creek Lions Club about selling food at the show, and they are considering it.

Computer Recycling (finding charitable uses for old computers):

• The local Adult Literacy program thanks us for our equipment donations.

Other Business:

• The J.V. Brown Community Net, which helps nonprofit organizations create a Web presence, will hold its next training session on September 30. See http://www.lycoming.org
• Kathy proposed starting a Business Internet Users Group (or "I.B.U.G." was suggested) for the purpose of letting business with web sites exchange ideas. She proposes to meet every three months at a location such as the library, and keep it an open group with any interested parties invited. Everyone agreed that it was a good idea.
• Announcement was made of Internet Business Day, to be held at the Penn College Technology Transfer Center on September 1.
• The annual Internet World show will be held in New York City on October 7th. Anyone interested in carpooling should contact Kathy or Dan.
• Club member Wayne Palmer, of Palmer Multimedia Imaging, has been asked to present a digital imaging program for us.
• Kathy suggested that we find someone to talk about the Year 2000 problem next year.

Computer Networking / ISP News:

• Jim is still interested in updating the Local Users Homepages List. If you have a personal home page, or you know of a free homepage hosting service or URL-redirector that isn't listed, please send it in. He is puzzled by the lack of activity.
• Microsoft is making available all US Geological Survey aerial and satellite photos, as well as other parts of the world, for free at http://www.terraserver.com
• www.anonymizer.com will hide your Internet address as you browse the web.
• Dan reports considerable success in getting unsolicited mass-mailers ("spammers") removed from their ISPs.

Program:

Our guest speaker was local computer consultant Sharon Souter, who discussed the new features of Windows 98. Among them are:

• "Fly-out" menus (submenus which slide out from their parents rather than just appearing)
• Changes to the Start menu system, including the ability to add and remove programs by dragging and right-clicking their icons just like a directory window, and the addition of a Favorites list.
• The ability to use an Internet Explorer 4-like interface, including the ability to select an icon by moving the mouse over it and activating it with a single click, having icons for common functions on an expanded taskbar, and having an HTML page as your desktop background; or the Windows 95 interface.
• New accessibility features such as a screen magnifier.
• A Live Update Wizard, which automatically downloads new software versions from Microsoft -- however, third-party developers are warning that it may overwrite necessary components such as DLLs.
• The ability to automatically download (fake "push" distribution) "channels" of information like news and stock prices for a live desktop display.
• A disk speed increase for FAT32 filesystems, which also use space more efficiently because they use 4k blocks instead of 32k as in the old FAT16 filesystem. However, FAT32 isn't available as an upgrade for Windows 95, and there is no way to convert back after you've converted to FAT32.
• Maintenance Wizards which will do things like disk scanning and defragmenting on a scheduled basis.
• Automatic running of ScanDisk after an improper shutdown.
• A System Info utility which is better than Device Manager, a DLL management program, and a better Registry Editor that does automatic backups.
• A utility called Dr. Watson which logs errors.
• The ability to use multiple displays simultaneously, and support for DVD drives and USB devices.
• Automatic Power Management support, which requires turning off the BIOS APM to avoid interesting lockups.
• Integrated support for TV tuner cards.
• Faster booting than Windows 95.
• A Windows Scripting Host, which allows you to control Windows with VBScript or Java programs.
• All Help screens are now in HTML rather than the Windows 95 hypertext format.

Sharon also related her experiences in installing Windows 98 on various systems. She says that it only took about an hour and wasn't very difficult in general, but there are some things to watch out for. For example, you should remove all programs running in the background, such as antivirus programs, and other unnecessary programs launched from your autoexec.bat and config.sys files, because Windows must reboot the system three times to complete its installation and configuration. She recommends not converting to FAT32 until after you've tested the upgrade. Also, surprisingly, among all the new drivers there are still some old sound and video cards missing, plus it ships with an older version of DirectX than that available online! And if you don't like Internet Explorer 4, it's very hard to uninstall cleanly. In addition, Microsoft provides no toll-free or email support anymore.

Following the Windows 98 demonstration, there was a brief discussion of the general future of computing. Sharon thinks Windows 98 will eventually be replaced by Windows NT. Dan and Kathy disagreed on the future of Internet Explorer. Dan thinks Microsoft will start charging extra for it due to its popularity, but Kathy thinks it will always be a part of the system since great trouble has been taken to make it so.

The meeting adjourned at 8:45 PM.

Treasurer's Report:

$29 was paid to KwikKopy for flyers. After paying $100 for the hall rental, our treasury is down to approximately $270 and we haven't paid the $275 insurance cost yet. Any donations will be gratefully appreciated, and all members are reminded to pay their dues in a timely manner.

We are in need of speakers, and suggestions for speakers, for our meetings. Any computer-related topic is welcome!

Reminder: The next meeting is Tuesday, September 8, at 7 PM, in the Lycoming College Academic Center room B-309.

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