Snippets from Previous Meetings
(President of the Christchurch-based Apple Users Group of Canterbury) and
Margaret Harvey
(Treasurer, AUGC)
Visitors at the meeting, being en route from Southland to Christchurch.
Allan explained a number of points concerning the Mactropolis Bulletin Board, to which AMUG members have access (of you are not connected and would like to be, please contact Barry). Some issues discussed were:
MELBOURNE USERS GROUP (AUSOM) : access to their folders on Mactropolis gives us a great deal of scope.
SOFTWARE : some 1500 titles, including latest updates, will soon be available for download on Mactropolis.
DIFFICULTY LOGGING ON : if you have difficulty logging on to Mactropolis, it is likely to be a Telecom problem. Turn off First Class, then start it again and retry.
PROFILES : Anyone can include a personal profile in Mactropolis - this gives information about you to others online.
Allan also distributed free Adobe CDs to members - these have demos of a number of Adobe products (if you missed out, more CDs will be available at the June meeting).
BUY/SELL/EXCHANGE
Several items were offered for sale.
Lorraine Jamieson has an older Macintosh computer (Classic?) and printer for sale - contact her (phone 686 2239 or e-mail lmj@xtra.co.nz) if interested.
DIGITAL PRINTOUT
Stephen Belanger-Taylor showed a very large printout, several square metres in area, from a digital image of a stained glass window, which provided an interesting example of the quality of product which can be obtained using a digital camera.
PLANNED VISIT TO TIMARU HERALD
4pm on a Monday was suggested as a possible time for members to visit the Timaru Herald, to see the use they make of Macintosh computers in the production of the newspaper. Barry will contact Elizabeth to make further arrangements.
ALADDIN SOFTWARE
The applications provided by Aladdin for AMUG members to review are still available.
DRAG STRIP (No, this application is NOT what one of our member thought it was!!!) An advanced type of Launcher which enables instant access to applications and files on the hard disk.
STUFFIT DELUXE program for compressing and decompressing files for optimum use.
SPRING CLEANINGChecks the hard disk for unwanted aliases, duplicates, cookies, histories, cache files, read-me files, etc, and frees up memory.
NEW iBOOK
Sheryl gave a description of the recently-released new model of the iBook, which has a 500MHzG3 processor, 10GB hard disk and 2 USB ports. It is smaller and lighter than previous iBooks. Sheryl made available an information sheet on this new model.
USEFUL REFERENCE
Joe Adams drew members' attention to a very useful reference book entitled Upgrading and Troubleshooting Your Mac.
DESKTOP PICTURES
Barry gave a presentation on how to change the appearance of your computer's desktop (if you have MacOS 8 or later) by using the Desktop Pictures facility in the Appearance control panel. Also possible is the ability to have a random choice of picture appear, by selecting a folder instead of a single picture. Pictures (if not available from scanned images or a digital camera) may be obtained from the Web, eg from www.webshots.com
MSN: WEB-BASED MAIL & CHAT
Wilfrid explained how Hotmail works, and demonstrated how to open a Hotmail account so that e-mail can be accessed directly from the internet without using an access application. This can be useful when accessing your mail from another computer, such as when travelling.
Wilfrid also explained how MSN Chat works: this enables two operators to chat via their computers, having prearranged their session so that they are online simultaneously. The chat facility can be accessed at www.msn.com or www.msn.co.nz
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REMINDER
Next meeting is on Friday 29 June
ALL WELCOME - BRING A FRIEND
Tony Climo
Secretary, Aoraki MacIntosh Users Group
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