June 2009

Written by Bayle Emlein

June 5, 2009

The meeting was called to order at 7:38 P.M. by President Chuck Horner.

Elsie Smith announced that O’Reilly Media has donated four books for us to use as door prizes. She encouraged members to review any O’Reilly book and receive it free when a review is written and submitted.

Paul Cooper announced that there will be a barbecue at the Clubhouse this Saturday, tomorrow.

Bud Gallagher announced that the Windows 7 release date is October 27. BestBuy is having a pre-sell program.

SIG Announcements:

The Windows 7 SIG will meet on June 13 at 1:00 P.M. His email is budgall@comcast.com. He has some extra Windows 7 RC disks to hand out.

Jan Fagerholm reminded the group that the Spectacular Linux SIG will meet on the last Saturday of the month. Last month they looked at the netbooks and Ubuntu 7. This month they will look at applications.

Other Announcements:

The July Main Meeting will be postponed until July 10 because of the July 4 holiday.

Presentations:

Paul Cooper talked about CPUs. He showed slides clarifying the difference between the P4 and new i7 motherboards. Old memory, old power supplies all will need to be replaced. The sound on newer boards is much better.

Considerations when shopping: CPU speed in MegaHertz, Cache Memory, Front Side Bus Speed, Number of Cores.Wikipedia has a lot of information about the history of processors. Netbooks have a variety of processors. The more you pay, the faster the processing speed. In the real world, currently dual core is probably enough. Currently not many programs take advantage of quad core processors. Adobe Creative Suite 4 does, CreativeSuite 3 does not.

Diane George and Bayle Emlein provided a retrospective of last weekend’s Southwest Computer Conference.

Jan Fagerhom talked about LCD monitors after the break. TN technology is the least expensive, but it is the most responsive. Vertical alignment technology has a great contrast range but not quite as good a response time; this is the entry point for photo editing.IPS is the top of the line. LG Phillips or Apple monitors are instances of this high-end monitor. LED monitor are brighter.

Active technologies help reduce display artifacts for some of the pricier models.

Newegg.com is a good online source for electronic gear.

The meeting was adjourned at 9:38 P.M. The next meeting will take place at the same location on July 10, 2009.

Respectfully submitted, Bayle Emlein, Secretary