October 2009

October 2009

Last Updated (Thursday, 31 December 2009 17:17) Written by Bayle Emlein Monday, 05 October 2009 00:00

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October 2, 2009

The meeting was called to order at 7:31 P.M. by President Chuck Horner. He welcomed new member Robert Stump.

Chuck surveyed those present as to whether they would like a presentation about scrapbooking. The question will be posed in the newsletter, also.

The Clubhouse will be open tomorrow and there will be a cookout.

SIG Announcements:

Bud Gallagher announced that the Windows 7 SIG has been cancelled this month. Instead there will be a Windows 7 Launch Party. He needs to know tonight if anyone else would like an invitation, which is necessary for all attendees. The November SIG will probably be cancelled because of its proximity to the Launch Party.

The Hardware SIG is cancelled this month.

Other Announcements:

Chuck reminded the membership that the election of Board of Directors will take place in December. He opened nominations. The following people were nominated:

  • Chuck Horner
  • Michael Wong
  • Jan Fagerholm
  • Verne Perry
  • Bayle Emlein

Nominations will be accepted again at the November meeting and just before the election in December.

Ruth Churchill was presented with a certificate honoring her 3rd Place recognition for Digital Art in the Southwest Computer Conference Photo Contest. Diane George received a Certificate of Participation.

Q&A:

Q: Is there anything in Vista or XP that will allow one to block a specific Web site?

A: You can block it on the router or in the browser.

Q: In Yahoo e-mail you can’t always change the font.

A: Many people have been successful with gmail. You can import from other email programs once you’re set up.

Q: Can no longer get into a specific Web movie site.

A: Subscribe to Smart Computing, at the User Group rate, and get tech support for a year.

Q: What is Virtual PC?

A: The ability to run a second operating system without having to have a second computer.

Presentation:

Gene Barlow of User Group Relations joined us via webinar. Backing up is the theme for the night.

Perfect Image 2010 has just been released and will be available for sale tonight. Backup is a two-stage operation. The first stage is to back up your hard drive to some other device. The second stage is Restore, which will take place when your hard drive dies. Backing up should happen frequently. Gene suggested that the best backup hardware is another hard drive—an external or internal hard drive. There are mini and standard sizes of external hard drives. You need a dedicated external hard drive for backing up. Shop for the best deal.

Backup software comes in two flavors. The older technology is file backup software. Image back-up software is a newer technology. File backup software is slower, and copies only selected files. Image backup copies the entire structure of a hard drive and is much faster and easier to Restore. Acronis True Image 2010 is the best product on the market. It can create full images, incremental images, and differential images.

Disk Director Suite makes it easy to create a new partition on your hard drive. That way you can keep your operating system and program files on one virtual drive and your data files on another virtual hard drive.

Go to Gene’s website at www.ugr.com to read various articles expanding on tonight’s topics.

The meeting was adjourned at 9:21 P.M.

The next meeting will take place at the same location on November 6, 2009.

Respectfully submitted,

Bayle Emlein, Secretary

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