ELCC Computer Club

General Meeting Minutes

3 June, 2005

 

Question and Anwser Session

Name
Q&A
Details
OS
M.I.G.S. Q I lost SpelChek™ in Outlook Express. All
Bob Young 2 A Since you lost it after deleting Microsoft Word, you will have to reinstall that program.  
M.I.G.S. Q I can no longer use the Add/Remove programs option in XP XP
Bob Young 2 A Do a System Restore. John Sturges added that the Group Policy Editor can be used in Administration Tools for XP Pro. To use this hit F8 at boot and log in as the administrator.  

Atlantic Inkjet

John Barker showed us how easy and cheap it is to order refill cartridges from Atlantic Inkjet. He bought four refill cartridges for $22.90. After ordering he got an e-mail from Canada Post showing his ordering status. The items arrived in a few days. The cartridges work fine.

Digital Image Suite

Helen Gordon showed us the Microsoft Digital Image Suite v10 that the club is testing out through the Microsoft Mindshare Program. At 1.3 GB it is a very large program, larger than one of my files going by the name of Star Wars III Revenge of the Sith.avi. She gave me a summary in writing of the program suite.

The following is Helen's summary in writing of her presentation.

Through Microsoft Mindshare, the Elliot Lake Computer Club received a promotional package consisting of Ed Bott's Your New PC Book, Mindshare tee-shirts, along with a full program of Microsoft Digital Image Pro 10 and a copy of the Photo Story 3 Disk.

Using the presentation disk that came with the contents, I briefly introduced the aspects of the Digital Image Pro 10 program. I also showed how Photo Story 3 worked.

Digital Image Pro 100 has a few more features in the Touchup menu than the previous offered program, Microsoft Digital Image Suite Pro 9 as it has added new tools, one of which is Exposure Fix which is softer than the Levels Auto Fix. Another new tool is called Dodge and Burn which mimics darkroom techniques used in film photography where you can use dodging to lighten tones in a picture while burning is used to darken tones. This tool enables you to specifically make changes to brightness and contrast in specific areas of a photograph. Another added feature is a camera phone auto fix.

A new tool added is the Panoramic Stitching. This tool makes it easy to do panoramic pictures without having to pre-sort or arrange the photos. It does recommend that pictures to be used as such should overlap by 1/3 to 1/2 for a better result. The program will analyze the photos and advise if the panoramic stiching can be done' and it will also show what photos that were left out.

With Photo Story 3 you are able to make a slide/movie show with your photos using the various customizing motion options that are offered. This program takes a little work to get the photos into the right place and using the right panning or motion effect. You can add audio either by microphone or music. With the music you can add music from your own collection or you can create music with the various effects offered. You can add titles to the photos and various other effects such as dressing up a picture with added graphics. When you have completed the project, you have several options to save the project. You can save it in an e-mail message or save it to disk in a Pocket PC format, a Smartphone format, or in a Portable Media Centre format. There are many settigs that are offered for this program. It all depends on how you will present it.

I was impressed by the program, especially how it does transitions for still pictures. The overall effect is much like local television advertising in the late 80s or early 90s. To use it you will need the new Media Player 10 from Microsoft. You can keep the old media player if you download this.

You can download Photo Story 3 for free.

Xandros Linux (Presented by John Sturgis)

oving from Windows to Xandros Linux is a very good idea right now. Microsoft is ending support for Windows 98 and 2000 and upgrading to XP is expensive, especially since it requires you to prove that all your Microsoft software is non-pirated by using the Genuine Windows download site to destroy pirate programs. There are ways for the ultra-geeky to defeat this, however.

There are other reasons to switch. These include Xandros' ability to work on old computers (it was demonstrated on a Pentium II 400) and protection against viruses, spyware, and hackers. You won't have to worry about updating virus definations with this program and you won't need Zone Alarm either. The firewall settings are set automatically. Network settings on wired groups of computers are set automatically.

When you install the operating system you will be asked if you wish to keep Windows. It's a good idea to say yes. What you will have is a dual-boot system which will ask you which operating system you wish to use when you boot your machine. During installation you can request that Linux look like Windows. This makes learning the system much easier. You will be able to access your Windows files in Linux, although you won't be able to access your Linux files in Windows. This is very important if you have such files as Star Wars III Revenge Of The Sith.avi on your Windows partition!

Unlike other Linux distributions like Red Hat, Xandros makes it easy to install new programs as it automatically knows all of the folders to place the programs into. John Sturges has been experimenting with Linux for five years, and Xandros is the easiest version of Linux to use.

For people getting involved with Linux for the first time, Tux Magazine has been written for Windows users who want to switch. It comes in a .pdf format every month.