May 2009

Written by Bayle Emlein

May 1, 2009

The meeting was called to order at 7:30 pm by President Chuck Horner.

Announcements:

The Southwest Computer Conference will take place in San Diego May 29-31.

There will be a Clubhouse cookout tomorrow.

Note. There are 10 kinds of people: those who understand binary and those who don't.

Diane reports she is restructuring the website using Joomla. Joomla uses a database. It allows more control over when things are posted. Updating will be easier, too. SIG leaders take note.

Diane also reported that the PCC website tied for 3rd place in the APCUG international website contest.

Rain or shine, there will be a cookout at the Clubhouse tomorrow.

The July meeting has been moved to the 10th to avoid the holiday weekend.

SIG Announcements:

The Mobile Computing SIG meets on the 3rd Monday.

Del Parton reminded everyone that the Hardware SIG will meet at the Smith’s from 8 pm to midnight.

The Smarter Computing SIG is ending due to lack of attendance.

Jan Fagerholm said that Ubuntu 9.04 is out. It has some neat new features. Jan will look for some applications to show as well at the Linux SIG. They will meet at 2 pm on the last Saturday of the month at the Spectacular Smith residence.

Presentation: 

Bud Gallagher reviewed some Service Pack 2 for Office 2007 has been released. Explorer 8 is part of the automatic Windows update. Caution: it will break Advanced Admin Console. He’d rather have Advanced Admin Console than IE 8.

Windows 7 Release Candidate 1 was available yesterday. It's a large download and slow because of demand and Microsoft server problems. There are no limits on the number of downloads of the beta. After May 5, it will be available at www.microsoft.com/windows7.

System requirements are similar to Vista. There are, of course, several versions.
Bud thinks Windows 7 Starter and Windows 7 Home Basic are not worth bothering with. All 32 bit versions of Windows 7 will support 4 GB of RAM. Ultimate, Professional, and Enterprise will support 192 GB of RAM. 

Bud showed a 5-page feature list comparing the various versions of Windows 7. Wome neat new features include right clicking on an icon to bring up a 'Jump List' that can facilitate navigating. Some things in Vista are now a separate download, such as Mail. Wireless network connections are much easier. Bit Locker is an encryption utility available in Vista, also; BitLocker toGo is supposed to secure USB drives. AppLocker can lock an application.

The included XP mode is likely to facilitate the transition to Windows 7. Support for versions of applications based on older operating systems is dropping off.

There is no direct upgrade path from XP.

The first Windows 7 SIG will meet Saturday June 13 at Bud's house, 2700 Otis Drive in Alameda. If you're interested, give Bud your email, and phone. He's  budgal@comcast.net. Call him at 269-2623.

Bud reminded attendees that there are 'a ton' of Windows 7 videos to look for on the Internet. 

General Drawing

Balanza digital luggage scale:  Bud Gallagher
Insight Systems Exchange flashlight:  Verne Perry
Intel Microsoft tee shirt:  Dan Peterson
Leatherman Micra tool:  Prentice Hayes
Microsoft tee shirt:  Paul Rogers
Sharper Image tee shirt:  Jack Howard
Sing to Learn bag:  Ron Seipel
Pepcom bag:  Del Parton
Pepcom bag:  George Kornbluth
Ulead Video Studio 10 Plus:  Del Parton

Raffle

Seagate 250e external USB Hard Drive:  Bayle Emlein

The meeting was adjourned at 9:10 pm.

The next meeting will take place at the same location on June 5, 2009.

Respectfully submitted,
Bayle Emlein, Secretary