El Dorado Computer Users Group Minutes

April 7, 2008

Dave Leippe called the 235th meeting of the El Dorado Computer Users Group to order at about 7:00 PM on April 7, 2008. About 18 members and one guest, James Warness, who then became a member, were in attendance. This is the 32nd meeting held at the Placerville Seventh Day Adventist Church Fellowship Hall, 6831 Mother Lode Drive, Placerville.

Treasurer's Report: Gary Hoss read the Treasurer's for Beverly.

Webmaster's Report: Gary Hoss expressed appreciation for the timely program announcements.

Old and New Business: No old or new business discussed.

Short Program: Bob Cashatt gave a teaser demo for next month's LogMeIn program.

Useful Information - Dave Leippe brought handout on a good price for a usb turntable at Costco and refresh the group on accessing and using Google EDCUG email.

Program: Bob Cashatt demo'd the freely distributed graphic/photo editing application, GIMP - GNU Image Manipulation Program, which started out as a Linux application but now cross-platform. He showed us some of the features that are more efficient than PhotoShop Elements 6's and convinced us that it's a great application for the price.

May Presentation: Bob Cashatt will demo LogMeIn which gives secure access to your PC from any computer with an Internet connection.

June Presentation: Steve Ross and Dave Leippe will do program on mixing audio using programs like a DJay, etc.

July Presentation: Barry Waldron will wow us with high dynamic range imaging to improve pictures.

August Presentation: Dave Leippe to demo FoxIt Reader, PDF viewer, and PowerPoint viewer. John Adams will teach Google Hacks, real-world, tested solutions to use Google.

September Presentation: Discussion of software and hardware new releases; i.e., Internet Explorer 8 is out in beta, Windows 7 — Vista is Windows 6, etc.

October Presentation: Jim Bulger will demo watching TV on computer with antenna.

November Presentation: — to be determined —

Presentation Wish List - Open Office (Dave Leippe); mixing and converting music; Windows Vista; post videos to You Tube and Facebook; make usb jump/thumb drives bootable. Ken Allen suggested lesson on creating partitions.

Respectfully submitted,
Alice Soon, Secretary

March 3 , 2008

Dave Leippe called the 234th meeting of the El Dorado Computer Users Group to order at about 7:03 PM on March 3, 2008. About 15 members and one guest, Bob Montgomery, were in attendance. This is the 31st meeting held at the Placerville Seventh Day Adventist Church Fellowship Hall, 6831 Mother Lode Drive, Placerville.

Treasurer's Report: Dave Leippe read the Treasurer's report that Beverly Hoss emailed to him.

Webmaster's Report: None.

Old and New Business: EDCUG membership dues still being collected.

Short Program: None.

Useful Information - John Adams directed us to a site that will help us cut through the voice mail lines and button pushing to reach a real person at many corporate and government sites, GetHuman.com.

Program: Deb Cashatt demo'd in depth her seven-step workflow using the new features of Adobe PhotoShop Elements 6's organizer — get photos from camera, full screen preview, label, backup, edit with one-click quick and enhanced fixes, publish, and back up the Catalog.

April Presentation: Bob Cashatt to demo GIMP - GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a freely distributed piece of software for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition, and image authoring.

May Presentation: Bob Cashatt and Alice Soon will demo LogMeIn and NetMeeting.

June Presentation: Steve Ross to demo how to do audio mixing.

July Presentation: Barry Waldron to demo high dynamic range imaging.

August Presentation: Dave Leippe to demo FoxIt Reader, PDF viewer, and PowerPoint viewer. John Adams will teach Google Hacks, real-world, tested solutions to use Google.

Respectfully submitted,
Alice Soon, Secretary

February 4 , 2008

Dave Leippe called the 233rd meeting of the El Dorado Computer Users Group to order at about 7:00 PM on February 4, 2008. About 20 members and one guest, Don Harris, were in attendance. This is the 30th meeting held at the Placerville Seventh Day Adventist Church Fellowship Hall, 6831 Mother Lode Drive, Placerville.

Treasurer's Report: None.

Webmaster's Report: None.

Old and New Business: None.

Short Program: None.

Useful Information - Portable Apps, go online and download from Google. There are several to download then install on flash drives for use when at another PC. You leave no tracks on the other PC. It all goes back on your flash drive.
Virus problems can usually be cleaned by turning off System Restore and running Trend Micros sys clean program. It will also repair files. Be sure to turn on System Restore when PC has been cleaned.

Program: Dave Leippe demo'd Microsoft Office 2007 (Word, Excel, Access, and PowerPoint) showing its radical redesigned interface and new features. Dave also went over Office 2007 package pricings and alternatives -- i.e., Novell Open Office, Open Office, Star Office, Evolution (replacement for Outlook), AbiWord, Jarte (replacement for Wordpad), Online Office Products, and portable applications.

March Presentation: Deb Cashatt will demo Adobe Photoshop Elements 6's application and new features.

April Presentation: Bob Cashatt to demo GIMP - GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a freely distributed piece of software for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition, and image authoring.

May Presentation: Bob Cashatt and Alice Soon will demo LogMeIn and NetMeeting.

June Presentation: Steve Ross to demo how to do audio mixing.

July Presentation: Barry Waldron to demo high dynamic range imaging.

August Presentation: Dave Leippe to demo FoxIt Reader, PDF viewer, and PowerPoint viewer. John Adams will teach Google Hacks, real-world, tested solutions to use Google.

Respectfully submitted,
Diane Kirk, Acting Secretary

January 7, 2008

Dave Leippe called the 232nd meeting of the El Dorado Computer Users Group to order at about 7:05 PM on January 7, 2008. About 22 members were in attendance. This is the 29th meeting held at the Placerville Seventh Day Adventist Church Fellowship Hall, 6831 Mother Lode Drive, Placerville.

Treasurer's Report: Beverly Hoss gave the Treasurer's report. That time of the year for membership dues. You can renew it at the meetings or snail-mail it to EDCUG, P.O. Box 772, Camino CA. 95709.

Webmaster's Report: Gary Hoss requested timely program announcements for the EDCUG web site.

Old Business: Nomination of EDCUG 2008 officers in November resulted in Dave Leippe as president; Barry Waldron as vice-president; Beverly Hoss as treasurer; Alice Soon as secretary; Gary Hoss as web master; and Drew Martell newsletter editor.

New Business: Dave Leippe proposed that EDCUG prepays 12 months' rent in advance.

Short Program: None.

Useful Information - Monkey's Audio, a fast and easy way to compress digital music.

Program: Dave Leippe compared Acronis True Image 11 Homes and Norton's Ghost for backing up our computers with either IDE or SATA hard drives. Dave explained the difference between static (system) data or dynamic (personal) data and demo'd imaging the hard drive consisting of the operating system, programs, settings, updates, drivers, software licenses, personal data, etc.

February Presentation: Dave Leippe will give some training on Microsoft's PowerPoint, a presentation graphics program. We might be able to see it demo'd using Office 2003 and Office 2007.

March Presentation: Deb Cashatt to demo Adobe Photoshop Elements 6's application and new features.

April Presentation: Bob Cashatt to demo GIMP - GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a freely distributed piece of software for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition, and image authoring.

May Presentation: Bob Cashatt and Alice Soon will demo LogMeIn and NetMeeting.

June Presentation: Steve Ross to demo how to do audio mixing.

Respectfully submitted,
Alice Soon, Secretary

December 3, 2007

The 4th Annual EDCUG Christmas Potluck, the 231st meeting of the EDCUG, at 6:00 PM on December 3, 2007, was graciously hosted by Deb Cashatt and Dave Leippe at their home.

January 2008 Presentation: Dave Leippe will demo Norton's Ghost (imaging your drives) and updates to work with SATA drives. Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year,

Respectfully submitted,
Alice Soon, Secretary

November 5, 2007

Dave Leippe called the 230th meeting of the El Dorado Computer Users Group to order at about 7:11 PM on November 5, 2007. About 25 members and one guest, Marilyn Hagan, were in attendance. This is the 28th meeting held at the Placerville Seventh Day Adventist Church Fellowship Hall, 6831 Mother Lode Drive, Placerville.

Treasurer's Report: Beverly Hoss gave the Treasurer's report.

Webmaster's Report: Gary Hoss updated us about our web site.

Old and New Business: Nominations of EDCUG 2008 officers are: Dave Leippe as president; Barry Waldron as vice-president; Beverly Hoss as treasurer; Alice Soon, Deb Cashatt, and Diane Kirk as secretary; Gary Hoss and Drew Martell continue as as EDCUG webmaster and newsletter editor respectively.

Short Program: None.

Useful Information - Dave Leippe provided the link for the W2k, Xp, and other windows OS's Daylight Savings fix . If XP users have downloaded all the patches, they should not have a problem. Users with pre-XP systems, might not bother to patch. This patch will fix them all.

Here is the link to HP's free online courses that Bob Cashatt mentioned during the meeting. If the class you want is not presently running, you can sign up to be notified when it does become available.

Dave Leippe has info on a tool that can make Vista look like XP.

Program: Linda Swystun introduced us to her family as far back as the 600's with her genealogy research using Family Tree Maker 2006. Linda took us through the features and how-to's of the application, where to start, explained resources for searching, told us where she had traveled, get-togethers with new-found families, etc. She provides these links, FamilySearch.org, Ancestry.com, Genealogy.com, California Genealogy, Resources for Families History Research, Sutro Historical Library, Google, etc. Bob Cashatt provided this useful genealogy information link from the Kim Komando site.
Barry Waldron showed us samples of "high dynamic ranged" photographs, a new way for developing more levels of intensities.
December Xmas Party: 4th Annual EDCUG Christmas Potluck at Deb & Dave's . Deb will post menu and courses to bring.

January Presentation: Dave Leippe to demo Norton's Ghost (imaging your drives) and updates to work with SATA drives.

February Presentation: Sharon Balch will give some training on Microsoft's PowerPoint, a presentation graphics program. We might be able to see it demo'd using Office 2003 and Office 2007. Or Barry Waldron can do a program on High Dynamic Range imaging (record a greater range of tonal detail than a given camera could capture in a single photo).

March Presentation: Deb Cashatt to demo Adobe Photoshop Elements 6's application and new features.

April Presentation(?): Bob Cashatt to demo GIMP - GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a freely distributed piece of software for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition, and image authoring.

Presentation Wish List - Open Office (Dave Leippe); convert and mix music; Vista; post videos to You Tube and Facebook; make usb jump/thumb drives bootable. Ken Allen suggested lesson on creating partitions ... Dave Leippe will demo that with Norton's Ghost program.

Respectfully submitted,
Alice Soon, Secretary

October 1 , 2007

Dave Leippe called the 229th meeting of the El Dorado Computer Users Group to order at about 7:07 PM on October 1, 2007. About 27 members and one guest were in attendance. This is the 27th meeting held at the Placerville Seventh Day Adventist Church Fellowship Hall, 6831 Mother Lode Drive, Placerville.

Old and New Business: None.

Short Program: None due to long "Pains in your Windows" discussion.

Program: Jim Bulger gave us a comprehensive education on the Ins and Outs / Ups and Downs of Global Positioning Systems, covering how the GPS works, GPS devices, different uses, stand-alone GPS operation to mark waypoints and tracking (bread crumbs), device-specific interface software, third-party interface software, Easter egg hunts, and much more.

November Presentation: Linda Swystun will do a presentation on genealogy.

December Xmas Party: 4th Annual EDCUG Christmas Potluck at Deb & Dave's .

January Presentation: Dave Leippe to demo Norton's Ghost and updates to work with SATA drives.

February Presentation: Sharon Balch will give some training on Microsoft's PowerPoint, a presentation graphics program. We might be able to see it demo'd using Office 2003 and Office 2007.

Respectfully submitted,
Alice Soon, Secretary

September 3 , 2007

Dave Leippe called the 228th meeting of the El Dorado Computer Users Group to order at about 7:00 PM on September 3, 2007. About 21 members and three guests were in attendance. This is the 26th meeting held at the Placerville Seventh Day Adventist Church Fellowship Hall, 6831 Mother Lode Drive, Placerville.

Treasurer's Report: Beverly Hoss gave the Treasurer's report.

Webmaster's Report: Gary Hoss committed EDCUG.org with GoDaddy hosting for two years.

Old and New Business: None.

Short Program: None.

Program: Gary Hoss demo'd Microsoft Streets and Trips and its features; gave the history of Map Blast; talked about Mapquest, Yahoo Maps, GIS, and Terraserver; then Google Earth, live satellite, flyovers, and the new kid on the block -- Mapjack. Here are some links that Gary provided:

http://www.mapquest.com/ http://terraserver.microsoft.com/ http://maps.yahoo.com/yahoo/#env=F http://earth.google.com/ http://maps.google.com/ http://local.live.com/ http://www.mapjack.com/#qW9mWzQFcFEA.

October Presentation: Jim Bulger will do a presentation on GPS (global positioning system).

November Presentation: Linda Swystun will do a presentation on genealogy.

December Xmas Party: 4th Annual EDCUG Christmas Potluck at Deb & Dave's .

January Presentation: Dave Leippe to demo Norton's Ghost and updates to work with SATA drives.

Presentation Wish List - Open Office (Dave Leippe); convert and mix music; Vista; post videos to You Tube and Facebook. Ken Allen suggested lesson on creating partitions. Dave Leippe will demo that with Norton's Ghost program.

Respectfully submitted,
Alice Soon, Secretary

August 6 , 2007

Dave Leippe called the 227th meeting of the El Dorado Computer Users Group to order at about 7:08 PM on August 6, 2007. About 14 members were in attendance. This is the 25th meeting held at the Placerville Seventh Day Adventist Church Fellowship Hall, 6831 Mother Lode Drive, Placerville.

Treasurer's Report: Beverly Hoss gave the Treasurer's report.

Webmaster's Report: Icano dropped EDCUG's web hosting. Gary Hoss transferred to and committed the EDCUG domain name with GoDaddy for two months to see how things go and will probably commit for three years. The price is right.

Old and New Business: Information to BUILD YOUR OWN LAPTOP COMPUTER and map.

Short Program: Dave Leippe demo'd Ad-Aware 2007 from install to all its bells and whistles.

Program: Sharon Balch wasn't available to present Microsoft's PowerPoint, so Dave Leippe demo'd VCOM's SystemSuite 7 Professional, a multiple utility program in one simple interface — firewall, System Protection, System Health, Smart Test, JETDefrag, One-Click Solution, PC Diagnostics, Anti-Virus updates center for versions 5 through 7, Protect Cookies, Registry Fixer, and much more.

September Presentation: Gary Hoss will demo Google Maps, live satellite and flyovers.

October Presentation: Linda Swystun will do a presentation on genealogy.

November Presentation: Jim Bulger will do a presentation on GPS (global positioning system) or Dave Leippe will demo OpenOffice, which will include its version of PowerPoint.

December Xmas Party: 4th Annual EDCUG Christmas Potluck at Deb & Dave's .

January Presentation: Dave Leippe to demo Norton's Ghost and updates to work with SATA drives.

Respectfully submitted,
Alice Soon, Secretary

July 2 , 2007

Dave Leippe called the 226th meeting of the El Dorado Computer Users Group to order at about 7:06 PM on July 2, 2007. About 24 members and one guest, Gene, were in attendance. This is the 24th meeting held at the Placerville Seventh Day Adventist Church Fellowship Hall, 6831 Mother Lode Drive, Placerville.

Treasurer's Report: Beverly Hoss gave the Treasurer's report.

Old and New Business: Deb Cashatt suggested creating a wish list page on EDCUG's Google Group. Also add link to EDCUG's minutes from Google Group.

Short Program: Dave Leippe showed us how to join EDCUG's Google Group and gave a complete tour.

Program: Barry Waldron demo'd Microsoft Digital Imaging's touch up, brightness/contrast, red-eye, smart erase, crop, straighten picture, blending brush, auto color, auto exposure, stitching, organization -- and many more -- tools.

August Presentation: Sharon Balch, if available, will give some training on Microsoft's PowerPoint, a presentation graphics program. We might be able to see it demo'd using Office 2003 and Office 2007; otherwise, Dave Leippe will demo the many utilities within System Suite 7.

September Presentation: Gary Hoss to demo a landscape design application and/or Google live satellite and flyovers.

October Presentation: Linda Swystun will do a presentation on genealogy.

November Presentation: Jim Bulger will do a presentation on GPS (global positioning system).

December Xmas Party: 4th Annual EDCUG Christmas Potluck at Deb & Dave's .

Useful Information - Here is the link to HP's free online courses that Bob Cashatt mentioned during the meeting, http://h30187.www3.hp.com/all_courses.jsp. Bob shares the material (in PDF format) that he used while taking these classes:

PC Troubleshooting	Microsoft ® Windows ® XP 301: Advanced Customization
Building Your First Web Page	Combating Spam and Spyware

Presentation Wish List - Open Office (Dave Leippe), convert and mix music, Vista, post videos to You Tube and Facebook.

Respectfully submitted,
Alice Soon, Secretary

June 4 , 2007

Dave Leippe called the 225th meeting of the El Dorado Computer Users Group to order at about 7:09 PM on June 4, 2007. About 18 members and five guests, Bill Trinidad, Phyllis Rhoden, Steve Duffy, Linda Swystun, and Joyce Priebe, were in attendance. This is the 23rd meeting held at the Placerville Seventh Day Adventist Church Fellowship Hall, 6831 Mother Lode Drive, Placerville.

Treasurer's Report: Beverly Hoss gave the Treasurer's report.

Old and New Business: Need to pay rent to Placerville Seventh Day Adventist Church Fellowship Hall.

Short Program: Dave Leippe gave us a comprehensive tour of Spybot Search & Destroy by Safer Networking.

Program: Sharon Balch had a work conflict, the training on Microsoft's PowerPoint, a presentation graphics program, was postponed; therefore ....

Deb Cashatt introduced us to Yahoo Groups, covering how to create; how to join; the many features, such as posting messages, view folders, files, and pictures, create and take polls, view the calendar, create a database; and explained the usefulness .

Bob Cashatt demo'd freeware PortableApps, a new concept of running applications without leaving any personal data behind, such as OpenOffice, Mozilla Thunderbird and Firefox, GIMP, Audacity, and many others .

July Presentation: Barry Waldron will demo Microsoft's Digital Imaging in the long program; and Dave Leippe will demo a feature of PhotoShop Elements called Quick Fix for comparison and Irfanview, a very fast, small, compact and innovative FREEWARE graphic viewer for Windows in the short program.

August Presentation: Sharon Balch will give some training on Microsoft's PowerPoint, a presentation graphics program. We might be able to see it demo'd using Office 2003 and Office 2007.

September Presentation: Gary Hoss may demo a program landscape design application. If not, Dave Leippe will demo the many utilities within System Suite 7.

October Presentation: Linda Swystun will do a presentation on genealogy.

November Presentation: Jim Bulger will do a presentation on GPS (global positioning system).

December: 4th Annual EDCUG Christmas Potluck at Deb & Dave's .

Presentation Wish List - Linda Swystun would like to see an application that will autofix pictures. Open Office (Dave Leippe), convert and mix music, Vista.

Respectfully submitted,
Alice Soon, Secretary

May 7, 2007

Dave Leippe called the 224th meeting of the El Dorado Computer Users Group to order at about 7:07 PM on May 7, 2007. About 12 members and three guests, who then became members, Larry Palm, Donna, and Craig Milliron, were in attendance. This is the 22nd meeting held at the Placerville Seventh Day Adventist Church Fellowship Hall, 6831 Mother Lode Drive, Placerville.

Treasurer's Report: Dave Leippe gave the Treasurer's report.

Old and New Business: none.

Short Program: Dave Leippe talked about the various antispyware products — Spyware Blaster, Adaware, System Suite, etc. — and will continue this subject in future short programs. A good spyware research site is http:www.spywarewarrior.com.

Dave commented on Adaware's LSP Explorer that allows you to view active LSP and Name Service Providers on your system, along with detailed information about every one so you can determine whether or not they're legitimate. It can be downloaded here.

Program: Dave Leippe demo'd transferring music from analog (vinyls, audio tapes, VHS, etc.) to digital (DVD, avi, mpg, etc.) with his USB turntable using freeware Audacity, an open-source software for recording and editing sounds; and he also explained the myriad of audio adapters.

June Presentation: By popular demand, Sharon Balch will give some training on Microsoft's PowerPoint, a presentation graphics program. We might be able to see it demo'd using Office 2003 and Office 2007. Dave Leippe to demo Irfanview, a very fast, small, compact and innovative FREEWARE graphic viewer for Windows in the short program.

July Presentation: Barry Waldron to demo a digital imaging program in the long program; and Dave Leippe will present a feature of PhotoShop Elements called Quick Fix for comparison.

August Presentation: If no specific program is requested, Dave Leippe can demo the many utilities within System Suite 7.

Presentation Wish List - Open Office (Dave Leippe), convert and mix music, Vista.

Respectfully submitted,
Alice Soon, Secretary

April 2, 2007

Dave Leippe called the 223rd meeting of the El Dorado Computer Users Group to order at about 7:10 PM on April 2, 2007. About 20 members and one guest, Linda, were in attendance. This is the 21st meeting held at the Placerville Seventh Day Adventist Church Fellowship Hall, 6831 Mother Lode Drive, Placerville.

Treasurer's Report: Beverly Hoss gave the Treasurer's report.

Old and New Business: none.

Short Program: John Adams demonstrated the program Jacquie Lawson's animated eCards. The one-year membership fee of $12.00 allows you to personalize and send all the e-cards on her site, and any new ones which she creates in the future, to anyone you like, as many times as you like, for the duration of your membership. Thanks, John, for sharing ...

Program: Deb Cashatt gave us the 101 on blogging with the added bonus of using RSS feed and showed us how easy it is to create a blog site, just in time for Beverly and Gary Hoss to share their vacation in St. Croix with us. Beverly ... great job!! Blogging sure was intimidating til now .

May Presentation: Dave Leippe will talk about anti-spyware, anti-malware, anti-adware, anti-rootkit, anti-virus, etc. — Ewido (AVG), Spybot Search and Destroy, Adaware, etc. in the short program. In the long program, Dave Leippe and maybe others will show us how to transfer music from analog (vinyls, audio tapes, VHS, etc.) to digital (DVD, avi, mpg, etc.).

June Presentation: Sharon Balch to demo PowerPoint in the long program; and Dave Leippe to demo System Suite 7 in the short program.

July Presentation: Barry Waldron to demo a digital imaging program in the long program; and Dave Leippe to demo a free photo imaging application in the short program.

Useful Information - Dave Leippe informed SBC DSL clients to change mail server settings to pop.att.yahoo.com and smtp att.yahoo.com per http://helpme.att.net/article.php?item=287.

Presentation Wish List - PowerPoint (Sharon Balch), Microsoft Office 2007 (Sharon Balch), Open Office (Dave Leippe), convert and mix music, Vista.

Respectfully submitted,
Alice Soon, Secretary

March 5 , 2007

Dave Leippe called the 222nd meeting of the El Dorado Computer Users Group to order at about 7:10 PM on March 5, 2007. About 19 members and two guests were in attendance. This is the 21st meeting held at the Placerville Seventh Day Adventist Church Fellowship Hall, 6831 Mother Lode Drive, Placerville.

Treasurer's Report: Beverly Hoss gave the Treasurer's report.

Old and New Business: none.

Program: Deb Cashatt demonstrated a folder styles program, EZ/IconMaker, and showed us how easy it was to personalize our folders.
                Dave Leippe demonstrated the Foxit Reader PDF creator and reader. This program can replace the large Adobe Acrobat Reader PDF program. He showed us the plus sides of this program such as the speed it launches and also the fact that the program is very small in comparison to Adobe Reader.
                Dave also demonstrated the Folder Size program which shows the total sizes of your folders. All of the above programs have a free version to download.
                Bob Cashatt then demonstrated the No Clone Program which will find duplicate files which they can be removed to free up space on the hard drive. This program has a 30 day trial version which he used to clean up extra files.
                Gary Hoss demonstrated several small programs: Folder View V2.2 — Free Trial, Treesize V 1.7.9 — Free, Tree Size Personal V4.2 — $21.95, Spam Bully V4.0.0.94 for Outlook & Outlook Express $29.95 — 14 day free trial, and WordWeb — Free ( English Dictionary, synonyms and much more).

Dave Leippe informed us of the new POP & SMTP settings for SBC-ATT Internet customers that will go into effect March 31, 2007. All of the programs presented appeared very easy to use.

April Presentation: Dave Leippe will demo System Suite 7 and the Auto Save Feature. Deb Cashatt will be educating us on Blogs/Blogging.

Presentation Wish List - PowerPoint (Sharon Balch), Microsoft Office 2007 (Sharon Balch), Open Office (Dave Leippe), convert and mix music, Vista.

Respectfully submitted,
Diane Kirk, Acting Secretary

February 5 , 2007

Dave Leippe called the 221st meeting of the El Dorado Computer Users Group to order at about 7:05 PM on February 5, 2007. About 17 members were in attendance. This is the 20th meeting held at the Placerville Seventh Day Adventist Church Fellowship Hall, 6831 Mother Lode Drive, Placerville.

Treasurer's Report: Beverly Hoss gave the Treasurer's report.

Old and New Business: none.

Short Program: Dave Leippe compared XP vs. Vista Home and XP vs. Premium performances. Result: XP was slightly faster than Vista with the exception of encoding video. Hardware requirements are steeper for Vista. Dave also explained that the XP Prefetch folder and the Vista Superfetch folder cache program files you are running on your computer and watch the demands for dlls, etc. and prefetch or make a map so they'll be ready when you need them. March Presentation: Deb Cashatt suggested if anyone has a useful program(s), to share with the group. Foldersize, Treesize, Foxit, Spam Bully, No Clone are some that have been called out.

Program: Dave Leippe demo'd how easy it is to create simple web pages that groups, friends, and families can edit together with "Wikipedia create a web site" at Wikispaces for FREE.

April Presentation: Dave Leippe will demo System Suite 7 and Deb Cashatt will educate us on Blogs/Blogging.

Useful Information - TechRepublic is a good tech site.

Presentation Wish List - PowerPoint (Sharon Balch), Microsoft Office 2007 (Sharon Balch), Open Office (Dave Leippe), convert and mix music, Vista.

Respectfully submitted,
Alice Soon, Secretary

January 8, 2007

Dave Leippe called the 220th meeting of the El Dorado Computer Users Group to order at about 7:05 PM on January 8th, 2007. About 21 members and two guests were in attendance. This is the 19th meeting held at the Placerville Seventh Day Adventist Church Fellowship Hall, 6831 Mother Lode Drive, Placerville.

Treasurer's Report: Beverly Hoss gave the Treasurer's report.

Short Program: Dave Leippe explained the recent new spyware developments and rootkits in the BIOS. Rootkits are powerful tools to compromise computer systems without detection. He explained why virus scanners and desktop firewalls are not enough. February Presentation: Dave Leippe will introduce us to Wikispaces, wiki for everyone, to create simple web pages that groups, friends, and families can edit together.

Program: Bevery Hoss entertained us with her 1978 70-Day Cross-Country Family Vacation video that she and Deb Cashatt collaborated on back in November using PhotoShop Elements.
Vince Warde showed us how to build and the advantages of the free NAS (Network Attached Storage), www.freeNAS.org, running on Linux. It's a quick and easy way to turn an old computer into a file server.

Respectfully submitted,
Alice Soon, Secretary

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