Minutes of Meeting - February 1, 2008

Minutes of the February 1, 2008 meeting of the Sioux Falls Seniors Computer Club:

President Norm Knox called the meeting to order in room 204, and announced that Susan Niemeck would be our speaker, replacing Bev Johnson. Under old business, the club discussed what to do with the club's laptop computer. Bill Goebel reported that he has done software cleanup work on it, and it also now has new power cord. The club decided that the computer will reside in a locker at the Center when no member has it checked out, that Norm will keep the key to the locker, and that a member who currently has the laptop checked out on the day of a meeting should bring it to the meeting. Norm will put instructions for borrowers with the laptop. Norm lives close to the Center and is often at the Center itself during the day.

The minutes of the January meeting were approved after being viewed in hard copy.

In the computer classroom Bill introduced Susan Niemeck, who gave the club a first look at Windows Vista. Susan started with the sign-on procedure. One PC with Vista can have multiple users. Visitors, such as grandchildren, can have their own user-IDs without changing the rest of the system. Different users can have their own desktops, with choices of plain or fancy wallpapers. The Vista desktop has some parts that are similar to the XP desktop, but some parts and new features are quite different. A whole new feature is the sidebar on the right side, which contains new things called gadgets. These gadgets need to remain unchanged on the computers in the classroom, but home users can remove some of them or add to them. Special gadgets are available from software vendors outside Microsoft. New users of Vista may want to leave gadgets alone at first in order to become familiar with features that are not so different from XP.

There are several versions of Vista available, including Home, Home Premium, and Business. Susan has Home Premium. (Norm says the premium version is worth the extra cost.) Computer hardware must match the requirements of the version of Vista. In any case, higher computer power is needed for Vista than for XP. When Susan gets a new version of Windows, she studies its new features not only to understand the changes Microsoft has made, but also to understand why these changes have been made. This is her philosophy for studying new versions of Windows.

The start button in Vista is in the familiar place in the lower left corner, but is now an icon without the word "Start". The start button provides access to recently used programs, and to All Programs. Under All Programs there are folders as before, but as the user navigates through the folders, they do not spread all over the desktop. Instead all folders are opened within the same window. Another change is that folders within folders are shown after programs rather than ahead of them. Individual programs within folders can be started with one click. A brand new feature of the start button is that its display shows an icon that represents the current user. Any action on the computer that affects security brings up a small security warning window. This is useful when a PC accepts remote log-ins, but this window also pops up whenever the User Accounts icon is selected in the Control Panel.

Vista has an improved search facility that can search by context, but this searching requires a fast computer. "My Documents" has been renamed as "Documents" and is also reorganized. Folders for pictures and music and such have been moved out to become folders beside Documents rather than being folders within it. Functions of Microsoft Outlook are now in Vista. These functions are more powerful than Outlook Express. The calendar function of Outlook is a significant new feature. E-mail is now handled by Windows Mail, which is more like mail in Outlook than mail in Outlook Express. "My Computer" is now called "Computer", but it still opens a window to give the usual access to different drives. This window gives a choice of opening a drive with one click on the left side of the window, or with two clicks on the right side. Any programs presently on a older machine should be freshly installed on a Vista machine. Copying program files across from the older machine is not advisable. Data can be brought across by means of export and import. Documents can be written to a CD and copied into a folder on the new machine. All open programs in Vista are shown on the taskbar. Hovering over a button on the taskbar creates a miniature display of the button's window. In the quick launch part of the taskbar there is a button that activates a 3-D display of current windows. This display is radically different from anything in any previous version of Windows and made a strong impression on the club members. It is very demanding of a computer's hardware, and needs the premium version of Vista or higher. Vista needs at least 1 gigabyte of main memory, but 3 gigabytes is a desirable number. The hard drive should provide 250 gigabytes of storage or more. If a printer from an older computer is installed on a Vista machine, it may need a driver. The computer's manufacturer should be able to provide the driver.

The Center for Active Generations will have an introductory course in Vista soon. The first offering of this course will begin on March 18.

Vista needs a new version of Microsoft Word, and does accept a too old version of Office. Office 2003 and Office 2007 will work in Vista, but Office 2000 does not. Microsoft Word has a Save-As option for compatibility with older kinds of formats. Older formats may be needed in e-mail attachments for recipients who have older computers. It is now possible to get a CD that installs Vista on a computer that is currently running Windows XP, provided the computer hardware is suitable for Vista. Before any installation of a new system, back up all data. When you put in the Vista CD and run the install program, you will have a choice of installing Vista over XP, or creating a new partition on the hard drive so that it will contain both XP and Vista. Information about Vista can be found in books at Barnes and Noble or in the very good help screens that come with Vista. Click on the start button and then on Help and Support to get to the help in Vista.

The club welcomes new members Don H. Platt, Patricia A. Powell, and Tom VandenBosch.

Respectfully submitted by Garth Peterson, Secretary