Meeting begins with an old nostalgia song with the graphics displayed to go along with it.

Q & A Session (answers by Bob Young #2)

Q: My e-mail program won't open attachments. The prompt is a warning about "unsafe attachments."

A: In Outlook go to Tools>Options>Security>Do Not Allow Attachments and uncheck.

Q: Windows 98 won't shut down.

A: Go to Control Panel>Add/Remove Programs and delete Security Update KB891711. An alternate method is to go to Run>type in "msconfig">Startup and uncheck Update KB891711.

Q: In Win98se the computer boots up in Safe Mode.

A: Don't hit start button on your computer twice when turning it on.

Q: Computer malfunctions after updating BIOS even after following instructions.

A: Backup your old BIOS (answer supplied by the person who posed the question)

Q: How much memory does your system have?

A: I don't remember :-)

Q: What is the best way to use Easycleaner on the registry?

A: Don't clean out duplicate files. The new version has an undo feature.

Spyware

Lavasoft (a.k.a Ad-Aware) has gone commercial, but you still can download the free version on Snapfiles or Tucows. John Sturgis recommends that you download the free version (1.05) while you can and save it to disk.

Spybuster is a program that causes software conflicts. This has a program that sets off false alarms in Norton Anti-Virus 2004. The solution to this is to uninstall Spybuster.

One of the best anti-spyware programs is the free one from Microsoft. According to John Sturgis and a well-known computer television program called Call For Help [(now defunct, see Petition Spot to help bring it back). The best solution is to use a combination of the Microsoft program, Ad-Aware, and Spybot. This will get 99% of spyware.

Spacecam

For more pictures from space of Earth go to NASA's site. This is one of the best-designed sites I have ever seen, but to view it properly you need broadband. Internet2 or a T1 line would help even more.

Voice Over Internet Protocol (VoIP)

While you need a computer to set up and administer an internet phone, you don't need one to use it. Any old phone will do as long as you get a box called an Analog Telephone Adaptor. You also need a broadband connection using either DSL or Cable.

Creating Your Own Website

You will need an FTP (file transfer protocol) program like WS_FTP or Leap FTP to upload a website to your ISP unless you have a full-featured web authoring program like Dreamweaver. One member is interested in setting up a genealogy site. There is a freeware program from the Mormons called PAF designed just to do this. It will automatically do many web authoring functions for you except for the FTP part.

The club is asking for volunteers to do the coffee and bring in cookies.

John Barker showed us another example of Autostitch with his panorama of the Espanola Paper Mill.

Jokes

A Bad Day Movie was shown with a really bad car crash. There was a great TV program from France featuring a man in a jumpsuit covered with bicycle horns dancing and playing classical music from Beethoven, Strauss and others.

Q & A Session Part #2 (answers by Bob Young #2)

Q: How do I get letters to fit onto the sheet with a dot-matrix printer?

A: Cut and paste into a word processing program with word wrap then print.

Q: How do I put pictures on cd?

A: Use a scanner and burn the saved images to a CD.

Q: How do I print Internet pages?

A: There are several techniques. The easiest is to use the "printer-friendly" button if the site offers it. Other methods include:

• changing the screen resolution
• printing in landscape mode using the page setup feature of your printer
• highlighting the text only with the mouse and only printing the selection
• hitting Print Screen, saving the image, and printing from that

More Cute Pictures

A cat within a desktop computer stalking the computer mouse is shown as well as a computer that has been damaged by a snake that got inside.

Adobe Acrobat

John Sturgis gave us a great presentation on Adobe Acrobat. This program creates the .pdf files most people have seen. Unless you wish to spend money, you will only get the reader when you download it from reputable sources. There are several security settings that the author of a .pdf document can use. Most documents won't allow you to alter the contents. When security is not high, you can often alter the document.

With Version 5 to extract images you use the icon at the upper right. The file can be pasted into MS Word or Open Office. To extract text, use the "T" button. You can copy and paste into even more programs such as Wordpad. The buttons on the second row are shortcuts and the navigation bar is at the bottom. John recommends Version 5 as 7 is too bloated and 6, what I have, is not secure (to me, it is also buggy, and all the updates fail to install).

You can make your own PDF files without buying the Adobe package using PDF Factory or Open Office with built-in PDF export. Get Open Office while you can as it is so close to Microsoft Office that MS may take them to court.

John has some more recommendations. If you want to learn XP a good way to start is to get Easy Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition. It comes with a bonus CD. If you are sick of spending money for programs, how about a new easy version of Linux called Xandros? It can be configured to look much like Windows, and I have seen it and it looks much easier than other Linux distributions like Red Hat and Slackware. Now that I've upgraded my Celeron 466 to a Pentium III 733, I can now run Xandros and XP.