Previous Meetings
Monday 14th June 2010 - iStorage diskGenie and Paintshop Photo Pro X3
The evening started with Tony demonstrating diskGenie, an external hard drive with 256-bit hardware encryption, by iStorage. It does not require any additional software and has pin code access to the drive, powered by the USB port. The data is encrypted/decrypted on the fly so you don't see any slow down in access. It is quite expensive though, at around £115 for a 250GB capacity, up to £200 for a 640GB. It uses a 2.5in hard drive, but you can get an SSD version (£200 for 30GB, £1210 for 256GB). An alternative is to buy a 2.5in hard drive (£30 for 160GB) with an external enclosure (£8 or less), and use some software like Stegano Safe (version 11 is £27). That's £68 or less for effectively the same kit (without a number pad).
Laurence then continued with a demo of Corel's Paintshop Photo Pro X3. The full editor has some new features, like Smart Carver, which can adjust the size of a picture whilst keeping objects the same size (like making a picture widescreen without stretching the people). A new Object Extractor makes it easier to take an object from one photo and place it in another, and there's an improved object remover to take unsightly objects out of your photo. The text function has been improved as well, and there's a new Vibrancy filter (which does the same as increasing the saturation). You also get four KPT plugin filters to add extra features to the program. The Project Creator is the same software from the Digital Studio 2010 package Corel released a while ago which let's you create calendars, collages, slide shows and easily upload to Facebook and Flickr. The final piece of software in the box shown was Painter Photo Essentials 4, which takes a photo and paints it like a watercolour, pencil drawing or oil painting. This is a cut down version of Corel's Painter program but some good results can be achieved and it's fun to watch the picture being automatically 'painted'.
Monday 10th May 2010 - AGM/Acer Aspire 1825PT Netbook
The AGM was fairly quick, with Francis and Tony standing down and being re-elected as Treasurer and Chairman/Editor. As Paul Kuzmin was no longer going to attend the meetings, Laurence Fenn was collared, sorry elected, as secretary. The subs were agreed to remain the same at £20, and members who paid up were offered some software for free. Afterwards Laurence demonstrated the new Acer Aspire 1825PT netbook, on loan from Acer. This was after a system restore was needed (which took ages to complete) as some of the updates applied by Tony seemed to cause problems, like lack of internet access and ability to play videos/music.
The netbook (which doesn't appear on Acer's site as yet) has an impressive 9 hour battery, and as well as three USB ports and an SD card reader, has an HDMI out port. This was shown with the big screen television in the hall and the picture quality was very good. However you can't use this as a blu-ray/DVD player as there is no built-in drive, but it would work with an external one plugged into one of the USB ports. The touch screen works well but can be difficult when accessing small items on the desktop, like the close button on a window and the screen does hold the finger prints. Still, if you don't mind waiting a while to run programs and only one at a time (netbooks are not good at multi-tasking) then the €600 price tag along with the built in Bluetooth/Wi-Fi could entice you.
Monday 8th March 2010 - Laurence Fenn Graphical Adventures
First Tony showed us a Ricoh CX2 with built in video. Power DVD 10 out soon 3D compatible - need glasses 3D and a special 3D graphics card.
Laurence's talk followed giving the history of graphical adventure games, including:
- 1982 Philosopher's Quest on BBC micro and was text based.
- 1980 Mystery House on Apple 2.
- 1978 Atari console Adventure - 2D with Easter egg required 4k of memory 128 bytes.
- King's Quest interactive game series from Sierra 1984 - 1998 each improving in graphics eventually 3D we saw a video about the making of KQ6.
- Prince of Persia 1989 - 2003 Sands of time ongoing realistic movement 3D eventually - Disney releasing a film based on the game in May 2010.
- 1990 Secret of Monkey Island (Lucas Film games) - pick up objects from one side to move to the other side has been re-release 2009 with speech. Involved character who undergoes trials to become a pirate.
- Another World Delphin software 1991 & 2006 versions on many consoles and DOS - difficult game to win without cheat codes.
- Alone in the Dark 1992-2001 about a detective up to Win 95 - had a movie made that was a flop.
- LucasArts games 1992-93 include Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, Day of the Tentacle & Sam & Max. We saw a Fate of Atlantis demonstration.
- 1993 Myst - Apple Mac 3D background different endings. Riven and further Myst versions.
- The 7th Guest - 1st game for PC CD ROM and Mac and Phillips CD-i. Sequel 11th hour 1995 all puzzle games with videos in between, the latter on 4 CDs.
- 1993 Return to Zork - a couple of famous actors involved was combining real motion pictures with cartoon animation.
- Under a Killing Moon - a Tex Murphy adventure with two sequels, 1994-1998 with famous actors. On up to 6 CDs!
- 1995 Phantasmagoria - By Sierra on 7 CDs based on The Shining - banned in Australia! Uses objects picked up to progress through the adventure.
- 1995 Full Throttle by LucasArts - cartoon-like game with Mark Hamill
- 1997 The Curse of Monkey Island - improved sound interactive cartoon.
- 1998 1st 3D graphics Grim Fandango (I loved that game for its humour and super graphics) was a commercial flop so LucasArts people all left to join different companies.
- 2001 Runaway A Road Adventure. Spanish version detailed 3D graphics.
- 2006 Scratches. Very dark imagery and spooky music very well done but disturbing.
- 2008 A Vampire Story. Ex-LucasArts people as well - quite humorous - sequel awaited.
- 2009 Tales of Monkey Island - more from Guybrush the hero made for Windows & Wii. It is released in sequels that form episodes.
- 2009 Machinarium - large Czech Flash game with a little robot and thought bubbles.
- 2010 The Whispered World - about a clown and a pet worm.
He then explained how to play the games on a modern PC. Four ways, firstly, check for Windows updates for games. Some like The 7th Guest, Under a Killing Moon, and 11th Hour have updates that will run the game in Windows instead of DOS. Some games have been released on Great Old Games which have been tweaked to run in Windows and are cheap. Myst: Masterpiece Edition $5.99, Simon the Sorcerer $5.99, Phantasmagoria $9.99.
Secondly, Microsoft offer a free download of Virtual PC, which allows you to set up an environment to run the game. MS-DOS 6.2 is currently free from Microsoft as well, or you can use FreeDOS.
Thirdly, If it is a LucasArts game, Simon the Sorcerer 1 & 2, Return to Zork, The 7th Guest, King's Quest 1-4, Gobliins 1-3, Disc World, Space Quest 1-3, Flight of the Amazon Queen, Beneath a Steel Sky then ScummVM is a program that will run the game using its own code, so it can run a game. Versions for Mac and Pocket PC available as well.
Lastly, Any other game can be run using DOSBox 0.73. A free download that sets up an environment with virtual drives that can be mapped to any folder. If ISO images are made of the CDs needed, these can be mount so you don't need any of them when you play the game. The CD can be changed with a keystroke. It can be quite complex to set up, so there are front ends to DOS Box that help you set up the game.
If you want to search for old games, here are some sites:
http://www.dosgames.com/gameindex.php
http://www.dosgamesarchive.com
http://www.classicdosgames.com
http://www.abandonia.com
http://hotud.org
As a final note, if anyone saw the video files Laurence played before the demo, they you can see them online. The Hero and the Jazz Hamster.
Monday 14th December 2009 - Christmas Quiz
Our Christmas Festive meeting on 14th December 2009 consisted as usual of our annual Christmas Quiz. A splendid selection of donated "goodies" was up for grabs (the most expensive being worth over £200 retail). We had joint highest score winners in the shape of Paul Kuzmin and Mike Bray who both managed to score 14 questions right out of 20. Being Christmas we ensured everyone attending the meeting had a warm mince pies and went away with a prize!
Monday 8th February 2010 - Gizmos and Gadgets
At the meeting on Monday 8th February of Gizmos and Gadgets we had a demonstration of a variety of items.
1. This included the Cygnett FM Transmitter, ideal for streaming your iPod or MP3 music to your in-car stereo to a vacant spot in the FM band. Also
ideal if you have a mini-DAB radio and want to listen to DAB stations on your in-car FM stereo.
2. Also shown were two Hard-disk enclosures from Sandberg:
a. Multi hard Disk Box 3.5" for IDE or SATA 3.5" hard disks c/w PSU and
b. Multi Hard Disk Box 2.5" lets you use a 2.5" IDE or SATA hard disk as a portable external hard disk. The box connects to a computer
either via USB 2.0 or eSATA, giving speeds of up to 3 Gb per second (IDE hard disks cannot, however, be connected with eSATA).
Both Boxes come with an adapter bracket to convert an internal SATA port to an eSATA port. As an added bonus an eSATA cable is supplied with both boxes.
3. Doro MemoryPlus was demonstrated to show how a bleeping receiver with key-ring can be attached to hard to find keys or whatever. One press of the
transmitter and the key-ring receiver bleeps to show its whereabouts - ideal for older folk with short-term memories who may have forgotten where
they've put essential items, like keys for example.
4. We saw introductory videos from Corel showing the features of their just released latest versions of their popular photo and video editing
programs: Corel PaintShop Pro X3 and Video Studio Plus X3.
5. Also saw instructional videos of some other newly released programs.
Overall the February meeting was an interesting and informative evening with a variety of new and fascinating items on show.
Monday 9th November 2009
Two items on show this evening:
1. Tony Hawes brought along his laptop with Windows 7 64-bit installed and demonstrated and commented on the features in Windows 7 which appealed to
him most: Aero snap to pin items to the sides of your desktop. Aero Peek for temporarily minimising (clearing) the icons on the desktop. Libraries
for quick access to most used documents and images.
2. He then moved on to a demonstration of Nuance PDF Converter Professional 6 in action with his Epson Perfection V700 Photo scanner doing the
scanning. He demonstrated the main features of the program which included how to create, convert, edit and share PDF files. At a fraction of
the cost of Adobe Acrobat, PDF Converter 6 was shown to be a worthy and cost effective alternative.
Monday 12th October 2009
This month's meeting consisted of three items:
1. A short practical introduction to some of the new and interesting features of Windows 7 which went on sale 10-days later.
2. We then saw three short introductory videos from Corel showing what's new in Corel's new, cheap and easy-to-use Digital Studio 2010 suite of programs.
3. Laurence Fenn then gave a practical demonstration of Corel Digital Studio 2010 in action.
Monday 14th September 2009
Paul Kuzmin showed his 1-TByte Linux Ripserver NAS (Network storage System), Linn Akurate DS (Digital Streamer) and speakers showing how the whole system worked together.
Monday 8th June 2009 - Improve Your Photo Taking
John Childs presented an interesting evening discussing his photography hobby using Canon cameras and various lenses which he manages to wield without a tripod. All these lenses are zoom lenses apart from a 50 mm traditional fixed lens and he mentioned that fixed lenses are actually more expensive than zoom lenses. He discussed the difference between JPEG for every day use and RAW images for special pictures that can have a lot more processing done in Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro. He also gave a number of useful tips for our summer holidays such as avoiding putting the subject in the middle of the picture and much better to put in one of the outer 1/3 sections. This tends to make the picture look more dynamic. Also if the subject is moving in especially sporting pictures it is a good idea to leave a space in front of the subject to move into which looks much more natural than the subject heading out of frame. In animal shots he generally aimed for the eyes and blurred the background and often crops the picture to focus especially on the animal. He said the blurring the background was very difficult for small cameras to achieve.
Another mistake in photos was not to include a focal point in many landscapes that draws the eye. The timing of pictures was also thought to be essential in landscape pictures with dawn and dusk being the best times. It is also good to give an object of sense of scale in the case of statues and monuments especially. In wildlife scenes it is best to go in as close as possible. He also favoured the use of diagonals such as in a picture of motorbike racing and he showed as some successful panning where the motorbike was in focus and the background was blurred with the motion. He then brought out his spectacular prints which looked incredibly lifelike, my favourite being the otter. I was really impressed with the quality and it is good to see such enthusiasm.
Photos taken at the meeting (resized for display)
Next September and I plan to demonstrate the Ripserver LINUX network storage device alongside a Windows or LINUX computer with loudspeakers I bought some time ago from Tony. This has enabled me to archive my entire CD collection and I hope to also put a couple of DVD movies and some pictures on just to show what it can do.
Monday 11th May 2009 - AGM and Epson Scanner
Monday 11th May 2009. We held our annual general meeting and Francis Jacques was re-elected treasurer, Paul Kuzmin secretary and Tony Hawes the chairman and editor of ROM magazine. The treasurer said that the subscription to the club would remain at £20 but this would not quite sustain us in through the next year. The membership had fallen quite drastically and as the landlords insisted that the charge for our hire of the hall for the night could not be reduced below the existing £36, it was decided that we would miss the July and February meetings as well as the August meeting so that we met nine times a year. This was proposed by Kevin Kibbey and was seconded by general agreement and a show of hands. With just nine meetings we should be able to cope without raising the subscription. There was also discussion about whether a different venue could be found but this might be more a longer term objective. The University of Surrey was one considered location.
Tony then went on to demonstrate an Epson scanner - not the one that he had hoped to be lent by Epson, but his own Epson Perfection 4990 photo instead. He demonstrated the various masks for transparencies and negatives as well as the very good OCR capability of Abbyy Fine Reader. His laptop was running the first release candidate for Windows 7 and seemed to function perfectly well. We all admired the photo restoration qualities of Epson's software that comes with the scanner, in particular the restoration of badly faded colour transparencies with a pronounced pink cast to near true colours, and all at the click of a mouse, without the intervention of Photoshop or PaintShop Pro was quite amazing.
Monday 20th April 2009 - Crazy Talk 5
Our webmaster (that's me) Laurence Fenn gave a demonstration of Reallusion's Crazy Talk 5. This program can take a photo and turn it into a talking animation. He showed how you mark the defining features on a face and then import a sound file to animate to. You can add background music and move tehe features on the face as well as add effects and objects like glasses, hats or a moustache. As the whole process can take a while to create, he played some files he created earlier, like a gorilla singing Phil Collin's "In The Air Tonight" and also his niece's dog Ozzy singing "Take Me Out" (by Franz Ferdinand). YouTube has quite a few videos created with this software, and you can create video files in a variety of formats, included mobile phone files and flash video files.
You can see examples of what can be done with the software at this Ozzy Sings link or this Tom Speaks link.
Monday 9th March 2009 - Resizing Images/Ricoh R10 Camera
Our meeting on Monday 9th March was in three parts. It started with a most interesting talk by Laurence Fenn on Resizing Images on your PC with the minimum loss of detail. He first listed the various image sources, digital cameras, mobile phones, email scanner or web downloads etc. and then asked the question "why resize". Perhaps your image is too big, it consists of too many KBs to send by email, to add to a document or for a web page or even too small to print out for your requirement. He then went on to explain the resampling methods available and the factors to consider:- blurring, colour depth, resolution etc and showed examples. He then listed the software that can be used to resize images and their various prices. Laurence will be putting an expansion of his talk on the club web site, available in the Articles section.
Continuing on this theme Tony Hawes demonstrated a free program Image Resizer which is part of Microsoft Power Toys for Windows XP. This is available at Power Toys website. By right clicking on an image and selecting "Resize Pictures" the image can be converted to one of four standard sizes, small, medium, large or handheld PC. For example when an image of 400KBs is reduced to "small" it occupies only 69KBs. The image can also be resized to a "custom" size.
The evening finished with John Childs describing the Ricol R10 camera. This is one of the better compact cameras available in the £150 to £200 range. It has a 7.1 optical wide angle zoom and 10 million effective pixels. The sensitivity is given as ISO 1600 but John (who is a very experienced photographer) detected noise starting to show above about ISO 400. It has a 3 inch LCD monitor and has a well constructed body. For the market it is designed for it would be a good choice. That ended a most interesting evening.
Monday 12th January 2009 - Continuum Theory
We had an interesting and rather different talk at our meeting on Monday 12 January, our first meeting in 2009. Miles Osmaston agreed to give an introduction to Continuum Theory. His talk was based on a paper he delivered to a conference on the "Physical Interpretations of Relativity Theory" held at Imperial College, London in September 2008. In his talk, which took the form of a Power Point presentation, after a brief introduction to Continuum Theory, Miles argued that the aether as required by James Clerk Maxwell in has famous equations of the 1870's but avoided by Albert Einstein in his Special Theory of Relativity of 1905 was of fundamental importance. Its neglect under the general relativity banner had been highly detrimental to scientific progress as it had fostered the intangible concepts of Big Bang, Dark Energy and black holes. He explained how the acceptance of the aether can lead to a new understanding of gravitational forces and he then went on to illustrate how this can clarify the formation of galaxies and planetary systems like our own. A very complex and thought provoking talk requiring much concentration. We must thank Miles for the work he has put into these subjects and sharing his conclusions with us. The paper he gave to the conference sponsored by the British Society for Philosophy of Science is on the internet at www.physicsfoundations.org.
Tuesday 9th December - Christmas Quiz
Due to a clash of bookings this months meeting was held on Tuesday 9th December 2008. It was our annual quiz competition night again, with the quiz nearly completely compiled by Tony Hawes, as every year. This time he did not start off by assuring us all that this years questions would be much easier. We never believed him anyway. As usual the quiz consisted of twenty questions with four possible answers. As the papers were being marked we had coffee or tea with mince pies while we waited anxiously for the results. The winners were, first Paul Kuzmin and second equal, Francis Jacques, Laurence Fenn, Mike Bray and Dave Thomas. I go no further down the list to avoid embarrassment. It is a great quiz as all contesters managed to get a prize.
The superb range of prizes were donated by Corel, Logitech, Magix, Norton, Paragon and others to whom we are very grateful.
The quiz questions and correct answers are on the web site from here.
Monday 10th November 2008 - Logitech Z5 speakers and Nero 9
Our meeting on Monday 10 November was in two parts. It started by Tony Hawes showing the new Logitech Z5 speakers designed for use with a laptop. These are small Omni directional stereo (2.0) speakers powered from your computer's USB connection. Being Omni directional the stereo experience fills the room. Tony demonstrated them by playing extracts from CDs and a DVD. This included a wide selection of music which included the following:
- Jazz: The Jacques Loussier Trio's famous recording of Bach's Air on the G String from the album "Play Bach". This recording was used in the Hamlet cigar advertisements for over 35 years.
- Vocal 1: Katherine Jenkins singing Pie Jesu from her new album "Sacred Arias".
- Vocal 2: Elena Kats-Chernin singing "Eliza's Aria" from the "Wild Swans" ballet. "Eliza's Aria" features in the Lloyds TSB advertising campaign.
- Instrumental: Alison Balsom playing the first movement of Hummel's Trumpet Concerto from her album "Haydn and Hummel Trumpet Concertos".
- Orchestral: Elgar "Coronation Ode 1902 - Land of Hope and Glory" finale.
- DVD: Walt Disney's "Fantasia 2000". Camille Saint-Saens "Carnival of the Animals" (finale).
We were all very impressed by the quality from such small speakers. They came on the market about a month ago priced at about £60.
The second part of the evening consisted of a demonstration by Laurence Fenn of the Nero 9, the latest version of the world's best selling digital media suite. Laurence found the installation tedious, taking over four hours. He had to download the updates from the website in order tog et it to install. It is a major revamped interface. In addition to CD and DVD burning it includes a wide range of functions including video editing, media streaming, and file backup. The software can now identify and remove commercials from recorded TV programmes. Some Vista enhanced features (such as the Live TV sidebar gadget) are not yet available and will appear in an update, but as details are not given in the updates as to what is included, it could be difficult to know when they are available. Taking everything into consideration including the installation Laurence was not impressed and suggests that if you're satisfied with version 7 or 8 you should stay with it.
Monday 12th October 2008 - Dragon Naturally Speaking 10 and Dyson DC25 Ball vacuum cleaner
Paul Kuzmin showed his expertise with Nuance's Dragon Naturally Speaking 10. Starting off with a minimal voice training session, using a headset/mic connected to the audio front ports of a Acer Laptop. Paul showed how easy it was to talk to the computer and get a legible stream of spoken words to appear in a MS Word document. He showed how to format the document with different font styles, paragraphs, heading etc.
He then tried the wireless headphone option using a Plantronics wireless headset. This worked brilliantly with Paul being able to walk around the computer dictating all the while. As an experiment we asked him to get as physically far away as possible from the computer to see whether the increased range would degrade the signal received by the computer. No difference was noted and again a legible stream of text was translated into the document.
Our next request was for him to talk as quickly as possible to see whether it was possible to overload the signal processing capabilities of the program (and computer) in transcribing speech into text. Again the program coped very well indeed, there was a short delay between Paul's dictation and the result appearing on the screen, but it did appear as an almost verbatim transcription.
Overall this was a very good demonstration of Dragon Dictate 10's capabilities and Paul is to be complimented on his expertise in his use of the program.
We next had Mike Bray showing how easy it was to manoeuvre Dyson's DC25 Ball cleaner around our feet, under the tables and around the chairs. Given that this was Mike's first time in handling a ball cleaner he did remarkably well, even if he did dent a few toes during demo. An interesting evening.
Monday 8th September 2008 - Acer Aspire 8920G Laptop
No meeting, as usual was held in August and our meeting on Monday 8th September took the form of a demonstration of the new Acer Aspire 8920G laptop by Tony Hawes. The 8920 is a powerful computer with an Intel Core 2 Duo 2.4 GHz processor, 4GB RAM and a 320 GB hard disk. It has a 18.4 inch TFT (1920 x 1080) screen and an integrated HD Blu-Ray DVD system.
The first demonstration consisted of comparing HD Blu-Ray output with normal DVD using Sony's $quot;International Blu-Ray Demonstration DVD". The substantial benefits were easy to see and a number of examples were shown. The next demonstration was done using Dolby's "The Sound of High Definition" DVD, again a useful introduction to the benefits of Dolby's sound processing with clips from Blu-Ray Dolby encoded movies.
The laptop includes a built in 5:1 speaker system. The "HD" aspect of the sound was interesting but one wonders if this provision is justified when taking into consideration the poor quality, as you would expect, from the small built in speakers. The sound system itself, is of course to Dolby's HD Standard and would have been better demonstrated by connecting the sound output by way of the fitted HDMI interface to an external Dolby 5.1 or 7.1 sound system. On the left of the keyboard there is a very clever and useful touch-screen type control system for the DVD system. The very interesting evening continued with a demonstration of a commercial Blu-Ray DVD film "Underdog" how standard DVDs looked when played on the laptop and concluded with a short demonstration of Microsoft's Flight Simulator.
An impressive looking laptop - currently on sale at Amazon.co.uk for £899.99.
Monday 14th July 2008 - Relational Databases
The talk on Monday 14 July was given by Dennis Skinner and Frances Jacques on producing a relational data base using Microsoft Access. Dennis explained that in the 1970's separate programs or tables were produced to cover a particular event or in a company a particular project. It was not until the 1980's or 1990's that tables were being produced to use the same facts for a number of purposes or combining one set of facts with another. These tables are part of a relational database and Microsoft Access is a relational management system.
Dennis outlined a number of tables (about 13) associated with cycle racing. They covered such things as participants, venue, race length, clubs, race dates etc. and he outlined how they could be associated for a particular race.
Frances then demonstrated how the tables are created in Access, how the fields are specified, the properties of each field are set and the data type for the data the field will store. When all the tables are completed the information for a particular race at a particular venue can be set up by creating Multiple Table Queries which he demonstrated. Frances also showed how handicaps can be calculated using Excel and added by the use of a basic query.
Although the tables require detailed setting up which is time consuming the series of tables can be used for many events and can be updated as required. Frances has not yet completed the whole procedure but promised to demonstrate the complete operation at a later meeting. Members will remember on Monday 8th October 2007 Frances demonstrating on Excel and Access a program he had developed for a single race with up to 120 participants. This new program takes the documentation much further with a more general application. Frances, our treasurer, enjoys cycle racing in his spare time.
Monday 9th June 2008 - Vectrasoft
Ross Carter was supposed to be demoing Vectrasoft web author, but didn't turn up. Instead, Tony showed the press pack for one of Epson's new A3 printers, the 2880. This takes nine cartridges (one yellow, two cyan, two magenta and four different blacks) to product some great looking prints. Tony had emailed Epson some of his photos which they printed on the new printer and sent back to him in the mail. A full review of the printer will appear in ROM if we get one to review. The members that turned up to the meeting had a general chat about computer topics, but the evening finished quite early.
Monday 12th May 2008 - Microsoft One Care
Your editor showed Microsoft's Windows Live OneCare 2.0, which Microsoft describes as an all-in-one, self-updating PC care service. Windows Live OneCare has had a shaky history, but as demonstrated the latest version, Windows Live OneCare 2.0, is vastly improved and fixes most of the problems of the earlier 1.6 version whilst at the same time adding a matching set of features that complements the built-in security and PC health features as found in Windows Vista.
Like previous versions, it combines antivirus, anti-spyware, and firewall security features with PC tune-up functionality and a first-class PC backup and restore service. But the latest version takes these features to the next level with centralised multiple-PC management, monthly progress reports, online photo backup, and other new features. One particular feature that Tony enthused over was the Start-time Optimizer. While Windows users can turn to a number of places in the User Interface to control what applications run when Windows boots, there's never been a truly excellent and centralised control panel for this kind of functionality. OneCare 2.0 seeks to fill this need with a new Start-time Optimizer, which is available via the Tune-up tab of the OneCare Settings dialog.
Among the other features the anti-virus trapped Tony's pet nasty virus in its tracks and the Firewall appeared safe whilst backup backed up working files on a daily basis, with very little in the way of impact on resources.
A fine set of tools with a demonstration that made for an interesting and informative evening.
Monday 14th April 2008 - AGM and Encyclopaedia Britannica 2008
The evening started by holding the AGM. As the Chairman position is vacant the meeting was opened by Tony Hawes, the Editor of ROM. Tony emphasised the importance of ROM and but said it was still an uphill struggle to get articles. He thanked these who regularly provided contributions but asked for more members to give some thought to it.
The Secretary, Bryce McCrirrick, pointed out how important it was to increasing our numbers. It is only with a considerably larger audience that we can reasonably invite representatives of manufacturers to come and discuss their products. The last five or so months the talk has been given by Tony, and we are very grateful to him for this but he must be running out of subjects. The Treasurer, Francis Jacques, presented the accounts. Under the new management of the hall our rent expenditure over the last year has decreased and we are still in the black and showing an increase in our reserves. He recommended that the subscription for the next year should remain at £20. The committee then stood down.
Tony Hawes was proposed and seconded as Chairman and Editor of ROM which was agreed unanimously. The other positions of Secretary, Treasurer and Web Master remained with the incumbents who were elected unopposed by the members present. The first action of the new committee was to propose that the subscription remain at £20 as suggested by the Treasurer. This was agreed and the AGM closed.
The evening talk was given by Paul Kurmin and his subject was the new DVD Encyclopaedia Britannica 2008. He started by comparing Britannica with Encarta. He found that Britannica was considerately more academic than Encarta which was rather "theme park" but commented surprisingly, with examples, that Encarta gave more emphasis to British matters. Britannica was rather "Americanised".
Britannica includes over 100,000 articles, 20,000 photos and illustrations and over 2,000 maps and organises them in a logical way with a browser-style presentation with a clear row of icons at the top.
The user is introduced to three age categories: Britannia Elementary Library for ages 6 to 10, Britannica Student Library for ages 10 to 14 and Encyclopaedia Britannica Library for older students and adults. Each category had a further subdivision such as (for the main library) Brainstorm, Timelines, Workspace, Explore, Atlas and Dictionary with a A-Z Browse down the left side. The atlas division, however, Paul felt was disappointing in that it did not provide detail and was to a small scale. Paul will be writing an article for ROM giving more details and installation information. A most interesting DVD and so different from the early 90's with its Britannica Encyclopaedia in 32 volumes (which I once had a copy of). The DVD is priced at £40.
Monday 10th March 2008 - Microsoft Office Publisher 2007
On Monday 10 March Tony Hawes demonstrated Microsoft Office Publisher 2007. This is part of the Microsoft Office Professional 2007 suite of programs but can be purchased separately. Tony said that 2007 seemed very similar to Microsoft Publisher 2003 which he uses for the production of ROM every second month, except that with the 2007 version it is now possible to download an add-on for the creation of PDF and XPS files. There appears to be an increase in the number of pre-designed templates for various projects.
Using Office Publisher 2007 he demonstrated how he prepares ROM. He starts by dividing the A4 page into three columns and places a text frame in each. On the front page he has a fourth text frame across the top for the headings. He showed the effect of various fonts and colour combinations to attract attention. He then imported text into the columns demonstrating how it can be made to flow from one column to the next and even to the next page.The inserting of pictures with their captions within the text and how the text wraps round them was shown. The rather tricky job of page numbering and labelling was discussed and the "Continued on page xx" and "Continued from page xx" link facility was shown.
The evening ended by illustrating what can be accomplished using the various templates for calendars, greeting cards, business cards, brochures etc which are provided. Tony's final demo was to show how easy it is to create individual "Lost and Found" and "For Sale" notices complete with photographs etc.