July 2002 Volume 20, Issue 7

Kokomo PC

Users Group

July 2002

Presidents Message:

Welcome to another lazy summer day of PC computing. The weather seems to be trying to make up for the cold wet spring by being extra hot and humid. I may have to work on my computer just to avoid the mid-day heat.

We had a great presentation from Circuit City at the last meeting. We saw a digital camera, photograph printer and PDA that were very cool. We were able to take several pictures of Group members on the digital camera and then print them in full photo quality on the printer. Our presenter emphasized that Circuit City prides itself on it’s highly trained staff and excellent customer service. This is what sets them apart from the discount electronics stores.

We have elected to take a break for the month of July. Several of the officers will be out of town. Also the new date for the 4H fair puts it in direct conflict with our meeting. We will be back in August with a great program, questions and answers and all the fun and fellowship you could ask for.

I saw in the news that Microsoft is giving the tablet PC another try. The hardware is made by ACER and the software is an application the runs on top of Windows XP professional. The system can record messages written on the screen - just like a PDA - and then translate them into text or just process them as digital ink. The reviewer that wrote the article I read seemed to think that this may be the time to invest in one, but I still have my doubts. Only time will tell.

Hope to see you at the next meeting in August.

Mark Pendergast

Da Prez

[email protected]

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Get rid of SPAM

My wife has found a neat feature of Microsoft Outlook that can help minimize your SPAM load. When you are in a message, you can select Message > Block Sender from the main menu and register the sender of the message as being on your ignore list.

When you receive future messages from that sender they will be automatically dumped in the delete folder.

This works great with SPAMers that use the same email return address every time, but I have seen many of them that change the address every time. For these you will need to get an external program. On the other hand, for emails that you have subscribed to and no longer want, but don’t know how to unsubscribe or low budget SPAMmers that keep the same return address this is a good way to ignore them.

If you want to edit your block list just select Tools> Message Rules > Blocked List from the main menu. It will list all the people you have blocked and allow you to unblock them.

If you have any tips on banning SPAM from your mailbox please send them in to the newsletter so we can pass them on to the rest of the Group. You will be held in high esteem by the group and it could lead to a career in consulting or at least newsletter writing.

Mark Pendergast

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Check it out

If one does not have Microsoft Office and doesn’t want to pay out the big bucks you can get Excel and the rest of them for free at openoffice.org. It takes 45 meg so don’t try it unless you have broadband . This is a Sun production. Perhaps some club member could make disk ?

Richard Ingles

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Escape from a Frozen Mouse

If your mouse pointer locks up on the screen, but your keyboard is still working you can shut down your computer without powering down.

Just use the keyboard shortcut commands to get a ‘clean’ exit form the system.

Press the window key to open the start menu. (If you have a cheap keyboard the Window key is the same as holding down CTRL and pressing ESC.)

Then press the u key to activate the Shut Down command.

Last press enter to activate the OK button on the Shut Down menu.

This will prevent any damage to your hard drive from killing the power when your mouse locks up.

Mark Pendergast

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The MAC is back ...

I have seen a few of the new ads for the Apple Macintosh. You know, the ones with the former PC users that are just so happy that they have a computer that just works.

I will be the first to admit that Microsoft Quality is an oxymoron, but I have found that PCs work reliably most of the time if all you ever do is word processing and a drawing or two.

The main advantage of the MAC is the same as the main advantage of AOL. It works great as long as you do exactly what it wants you to do. This has been the MACs claim to fame since day one. It is the computer for people who don’t know anything about computers- and don’t want to know.

I have always enjoyed the PC. When it came time to upgrade from my Apple 2E to a MAC I switched to the PC because of the wide range of software and hardware options I got as well as the ability to customize my PC anyway I wanted it.

As far as I am concerned the MAC will always be a niche machine for people who really don’t want a computer, but need one to get some stuff done. The PC is the machine to get you where you want to go.

Mark Pendergast

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