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Archive of Meetings - 2006

Monday 11th December 2006 - Christmas Quiz

The meeting on Monday 11 December was in two parts. First Tony Hawes gave a short demonstration of the newly released version of Microsoft Flight Simulator X. At our September meeting he showed the capabilities of the limited trial version, which was on a free time restricted download. The latest version is a vastly improved product with a host of new features compared to "A Century of Flight" which came out in 2003. Tony describes it in ROM December 06/January 07. In his demonstration he showed short missions featuring a light aircraft, a glider and a helicopter. Perhaps the most obvious enhancements were the scenery, the showing of road traffic and the improved simulation of weather conditions.

The second part of the evening was devoted to our annual Christmas Quiz. As always Tony started by assuring everyone that this year it really would be easier by popular request. I am sure that at least some of us, no, most of us, were not of that view. It consisted of twenty written questions with four possible answers. While the papers were being market we had more Tea/Coffee and mince pies provided by the other Tony our chairman. To the delight of some and the embarrassment of others the results were announced. The winners were, 1st Paul Kuzmin, 2nd John Childs and 3rd Ken Kibbey. All contestant; I like this type of quiz, received super prizes kindly donated by Microsoft, Logitech, McAfee, Nuance (Scansoft} and others to whom we are very grateful. A very good evening.

The quizzes are available to download on their own page.

Monday 13th November 2006 - Canon 8600F Scanner

Tony Hawes demonstrated the CanoScan 8600F scanner from Canon. Priced at around £137, it comes with plenty of software and attachments to enable you to scan photos, slides, negatives and documents. Features include 4800 x 9600dpi, 48 bit colour depth, FAU - 12 x 35mm film strip and 4 x 35mm slides, FARE Level 3 dust/scratch removal for film, Super-fast scan engine, Comprehensive software package with SilverFast SE, USB 2.0 Hi-Speed, 7 EZ buttons and Fast Multi-photo mode. Tony scanned some 1950's photos and with the help of the new version of Paint Shop Pro turned them from faded images into great looking photos. Transparencies and negatives (of various sizes) were no problem for the scanner, and documents were easily converted to PDFs using the supplied software and the dedicated buttons on the lid of the scanner. Laurence came up to show how you can tweak a picture using PSP XI, before Tony finished the eveing by scanning some bowling negatives. The scanner proved to be versatile and good value for money.

Monday 9th October 2006 - Dragon Naturally Speaking 9

On Monday evening, 9 October, we were treated to an outstanding demonstration of the new Dragon Naturally Speaking 9 software by Dr Paul Kazmin. Paul is a partner in a local GP practice and has used Naturally Speaking from Version 5 to prepare patients clinical notes for a number of years thus saving much time and considerable expense. He wrote an article for ROM Aug/Sept 2002 on Version 6 and has reported on the latest Version 9 in the Oct/Nov 2006 ROM.

He started his talk with a brief history of voice recognition from the earliest IBM Voice to this latest version of Naturally Speaking. It is available in three levels. Standard at £80, Preferred at £150 and Professional at £645 (all prices including VAT). The software Paul was demonstrating was the Professional level with the medical enhancement. The facilities offered at the various levels were outlined. It operates with most popular applications, including word processors,email etc and has basic navigation and control functions for a limited number of applications, although for full computer control one must look to the professional level. Although the claims are that Version 9 "works straight out of the box" without training this was shown to be an exaggeration when Tony Hawes had a go but Paul confirmed that Version 9 was amazingly accurate; about 30% more than the prior release and his demonstration confirmed this. He also demonstrated the playback function which can be in the originators voice if you wish. He finally recorded some notes on a hand held recorder and then feed them into the computer to be "recognised". The evening ended with some interesting questions.

Monday 11th September 2006 - DVB-T (Freeview) and Flight Sim

The evening started with Tony Hawes demonstrating two pieces of hardware to provide TV reception on your PC. The first was a new USB connected device not much larger than a memory stick by TerraTec Electronic, the Cinergy T USB XE. Obtaining it's power from the USB socket this provided all the Freeview TV channels and the radio channels included in this service. Using his notebook the installation procedure ran well, channels were scanned and all the channels were available and selectable by the menu. Although the nearest DVB-T transmitter, Guildford, can be seen from our meeting hall it is only a gap filling station using the top channels (41 to 54 operating at 100 watts). The signal from the tiny 6-inch vertical aerial provided was obviously only marginally sufficient showing up very noticeably on movement. The cost of the hardware is about £39.

For comparison the second piece of hardware was in the form of a PCMCIA card provided as part of a laptop package from Tony's daughter's new Targa notebook. Operated with Cyberlink Power Cinema, this provided DVB-T (Freeview), TV analogue and FM radio outputs and used a slightly larger vertical aerial. Again the installation went well and output on the digital service was very similar to that of the TerraTec Cinergy T USB XE. It also coped very well and received dozens of DAB radio stations. No price for this as its comes bundled as part of the laptop package.

Tony, in complete contrast, then went on to show a demo of the trial version of Microsoft's Flight Simulator X, the successor to Microsoft's Flight Simulator 2004. This available as a free 636MB download from: http://www.microsoft.com/games/flightsimulatorx/downloads.html. Flight Simulator X trial version includes two airports, three practice missions, and three different aircraft. All of the missions take place at St. Maarten in the Caribbean.

The new planes included in the trial (there are more in the full version) are a de Havilland Beaver DHC2 floatplane, an AirCreation Trike Ultralight and a Bombardier CRJ700. With improved scenery and more variable weather conditions this new version of Flight Simulator would seem to be an interesting edition. UK launch date according to Amazon.co.uk is 13th of October.

Monday 14th August 2006 - Bring Your Own Computer

This was the one evening in the year when members can bring their equipment to the club to get expert views on any difficulties they are experiencing or merely to show off any new purchases they have made. We then had a short presentation by Phil Ely, a lecturer at the University College for the Creative Arts at Farnham who is also a PhD student at the University of Surrey. It was in the latter capacity that he spoke on Monday. He is looking for willing participants to take part in a pilot study on the way that we innovate with home interactive technology. The study involves one home visit to create “ Technology Biographies”. These are profiles of users of home interactive technology and their attitudes to past, present and future technology in their home. The research forms a significant part of Phil's studies at the Digital Worlds Research Centre at Surrey University. Phil received a number of interested Club members and any one else interested can get further information at: www.philely.com or www.dwrc.surrey.ac.uk.

The evening ended with Tony Hawes demonstrating Pinnacle Studio 10 Plus. This was a reprise of the talk he gave earlier in the year (reported in ROM February/March 2006), of the then recently released Pinnacle Studio 10 video editing suite. For his August talk and demonstration he concentrated on the new features of the enhanced Studio 10 Plus version which incorporates the latest downloaded patch to bring the program up to version 10.6. Using a number of digital sequences from the Farnborough Air Show he showed how they can be edited by being spliced together using some additional still photos, which when enhanced with a number of different transitions, sound effects, background music and titles, can produce an interesting short and topical video.

Tony also referred to one item that he omitted from his Microsoft Windows Vista demonstration the previous month. This is the inability of being able to use Microsoft's PhotoStory 3 application to create pseudo “movie” (slide-show) sequences from a selection of still photos with Windows Vista. Microsoft considers that MovieMaker, a feature introduced with Windows XP and with an updated and improved version included with Vista, will do all that PhotoStory 3 does plus more. Tony considered this a retrograde step as he found PhotoStory simple to use and ideal for a beginner to be able to try out this powerful but simple to use graphical application whereas anyone who has used MovieMaker will realise there is a much steeper learning curve to be overcome before being able to use Vista's MovieMaker successfully.

An interesting evening.