Minutes of the May 1, 2009 meeting of the Sioux Falls Seniors Computer Club:
The meeting was called to order in room 204 by President Norm Knox. The secretary read the business parts of the minutes of the April meeting, which were approved. Norm expressed thanks to the club for the get-well card signed by members at the April meeting. He was absent in April because of a medical procedure, which had a successful outcome. There was no old business to be considered by the club.
New business the May meeting consisted of the annual election of officers.Nominees for president were Bob Black and Norm Knox, but Bob withdrew, leaving Norm to be re-elected. Vice President Bill Goebel nominated Bob Black for the office of vice president. Bob accepted this nomination and was elected as the new vice president. Bill will continue as the club's technical advisor.The club re-elected Secretary Garth Peterson to his previous position.
Norm reminded club members of the availability of the club's laptop computer. (Interested members can call him at 370-3957.)
The club members then moved to the computer classroom for the technical part of the meeting. Bill Goebel began the classroom session by reviewing various points about using e-mail in Outlook Express. Outlook Express can also be used for participating in newsgroups, but not many computer users are involved in newsgroups lately, so Bill skipped over that part. When making changes in e-mail options, it is important to click on the Apply button in each window where changes are made to make sure the changes actually take effect. Changes in font sizes and font faces affect outgoing e-mail. Incoming e-mail is affected by the options chosen by the sender. If users want a spell checker to help compose e-mail messages, there are several possibilities available. Microsoft Word provides spell checking, but is charged software. Open Office has similar capabilities but is free. There are also spell checkers available for e-mail only that are not complete word processing packages. These can be found by searching for "freespell checker", but some sites that offer free software make the free software difficult to find, while making paid software very visible. When downloading software, it is important to right-click on the link to the software and choose the "save" option rather than the"run" option. Bill usually puts new downloaded software in a folder by itself before executing the downloaded installation program. New software that does not work well can usually be uninstalled, but in case this does not work, it is very desirable to make a restore point before installing it so that System Restore can back it out if uninstalling it does not work. Having an icon on the desktop for System Restore makes it easier to create restore points. Midco offers a combination of cable modem and router for under $100. Club members discussed whether this would be a good deal or whether separate components would be better. If a toolbar from MSN has gone missing, it can be obtained again from the MSN web site. MSN as a homepage can be set under Tools and Internet Options." Fact or Fiction" is a WWW site that is an alternative to Snopes.com. (Its complete address is http://www.factorfictionblog.com/ .) The "Computer GIG" meets on the second Friday of each month in the computer classroom from 10:00 to 11:30. See also http://siouxvalleygenealogicalsociety.org/Tips.html . Bill is using VodaHost (www.vodahost.com) to maintain this page. VodaHost charges, but the cost is modest, and it works well. Norton Anti-Virus should be uninstalled if it is not in use anymore. More memory is usually a cheap way to improve computer performance.The need for more memory can be checked by running msinfo32 in the Run box.
Bob Black reminded the members of the SeniorNet Conference coming on June 25. (See www.cfag.org/seniornet.htm for a list of topics of the break-out sessions.)
The June meeting will be about Facebook and Twitter. At this point it appears that club members have limited familiarity with Facebook, but those who have tried it like it.
Respectfully submitted by Garth Peterson, Secretary
Showing posts with label GIG. Show all posts
Showing posts with label GIG. Show all posts
Saturday, May 2, 2009
Saturday, April 4, 2009
Minutes of Meeting - April 3, 2009
Minutes of the April 3, 2009 meeting of the Sioux Falls Seniors Computer Club:
Vice President Bill Goebel called the meeting to order in room 204 in the absence of President Norm Knox, who was unable to be present. Bill announced a change in the planned program and offered to see members in need of assistance after the meeting. On a motion by Nellie Reeves, the club voted to accept the minutes of the March meeting as submitted by the secretary in e-mail.
Visitor Phyllis Knutson of the Sioux Valley Genealogical Society spoke to the club about the Genealogy Interest Group (GIG), which is new at the Center. This group will meet in the computer classroom at 10:00 a.m. on the second Friday of every month. Membership in the Center for Active Generations is not required of those who attend, but Center members pay $1 per meeting, while others pay $2.For further information, call 528-6375. Ms. Knutson also announced the expected presence in Sioux Falls of Rick Crume, contributing editor for Family Tree Magazine and a published author on genealogical subjects. Mr. Crume will be in Sioux Falls on April 17 and 18. For further information, call 275-4197 or visit http://siouxlandlib.org/adults/genealogy.aspx and http://siouxfallsevents.com/eventDetails.CFM?EventID=9225
Bill answered a couple of questions sent to him in e-mail. The first question was about how to uninstall Internet Explorer 8. System Restore can do this. The second question concerned a printer problem. Steps that may help a printer problem are as follows. Run the error checking program Check Disk (right-click the C: drive in My Computer, click on Properties, click on Tools, and click on Error-checking). Uninstall the printer and reinstall it. Use System Restore. Use a Web searcher such as Google to find help. Find and remove temporary files (files with the name pattern *.TMP).
The main part of the April meeting was a survey conducted by Justin Smorawske, Eric Sivertsen, and Kevin Kennedy of Epic Multimedia on behalf of the Good Samaritan Society. Members who chose to participate in the survey received a $5 gift card to use at a local business. Everybody opted in. The first part of the survey asked us general questions about our computer familiarity, Internet usage, and such. The second part was about our interest in long-term care and how we may choose this care. The third part asked for our reactions to the Web site of the the Good Samaritan Society with particular attention directed to the homepage of the Society and its page showing services in Sioux Falls.The survey was conducted in room 204, and the Web pages were projected onto a portable screen. This gave us more room to sit and write than we would have had in the computer classroom. The wireless service of the Center's router does not go as far as room 204, but a cable connection is available there that our visitors used. Members who were present signed a get-well card for the President. The club welcomes new members Eleanor Sturdevant and Carol Moon.
Respectfully submitted by Garth Peterson, Secretary
Vice President Bill Goebel called the meeting to order in room 204 in the absence of President Norm Knox, who was unable to be present. Bill announced a change in the planned program and offered to see members in need of assistance after the meeting. On a motion by Nellie Reeves, the club voted to accept the minutes of the March meeting as submitted by the secretary in e-mail.
Visitor Phyllis Knutson of the Sioux Valley Genealogical Society spoke to the club about the Genealogy Interest Group (GIG), which is new at the Center. This group will meet in the computer classroom at 10:00 a.m. on the second Friday of every month. Membership in the Center for Active Generations is not required of those who attend, but Center members pay $1 per meeting, while others pay $2.For further information, call 528-6375. Ms. Knutson also announced the expected presence in Sioux Falls of Rick Crume, contributing editor for Family Tree Magazine and a published author on genealogical subjects. Mr. Crume will be in Sioux Falls on April 17 and 18. For further information, call 275-4197 or visit http://siouxlandlib.org/adults/genealogy.aspx and http://siouxfallsevents.com/eventDetails.CFM?EventID=9225
Bill answered a couple of questions sent to him in e-mail. The first question was about how to uninstall Internet Explorer 8. System Restore can do this. The second question concerned a printer problem. Steps that may help a printer problem are as follows. Run the error checking program Check Disk (right-click the C: drive in My Computer, click on Properties, click on Tools, and click on Error-checking). Uninstall the printer and reinstall it. Use System Restore. Use a Web searcher such as Google to find help. Find and remove temporary files (files with the name pattern *.TMP).
The main part of the April meeting was a survey conducted by Justin Smorawske, Eric Sivertsen, and Kevin Kennedy of Epic Multimedia on behalf of the Good Samaritan Society. Members who chose to participate in the survey received a $5 gift card to use at a local business. Everybody opted in. The first part of the survey asked us general questions about our computer familiarity, Internet usage, and such. The second part was about our interest in long-term care and how we may choose this care. The third part asked for our reactions to the Web site of the the Good Samaritan Society with particular attention directed to the homepage of the Society and its page showing services in Sioux Falls.The survey was conducted in room 204, and the Web pages were projected onto a portable screen. This gave us more room to sit and write than we would have had in the computer classroom. The wireless service of the Center's router does not go as far as room 204, but a cable connection is available there that our visitors used. Members who were present signed a get-well card for the President. The club welcomes new members Eleanor Sturdevant and Carol Moon.
Respectfully submitted by Garth Peterson, Secretary
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Added note: On most PCs System Restore sets up restore points automatically at regular intervals. However, it is advisable to take an extra restore point manually ahead of any major system change. This provides a convenient place to roll back to when necessary. If a rollback is needed that goes back to an automatic restore point that is several days old, there is the problem of saving recent user data prior to the rollback. User data that is newer than the latest restore point should be downloaded into files from whatever software has it stored, and these files should be copied out to a backup medium before the rollback. The best backup medium is probably a recordable compact disk (CD-R).
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