Toledo PC Users’ Group

A Forum for Personal-Computer Users — March, 2006

March Program: Computer Genealogy,
by Irene Martin

Monday, March 6, 2006 at 7:30 PM, Sanger library, 3030 West Central Avenue, Toledo, Ohio.

In This Issue ...

TPCUG Data
From the Prez
Minutes
Treasurer’s Report
Membership Expirations
Computer Investing Group Meeting
A web-page to link to that generates useless email-addresses
Rich Schinnell s column for the Capital PC User Group
Open-Source Software Opens Up
TOLTBBS Information

TPCUG’s Website:
http://www.toledopcug.org

Coming Meetings: Monday,
April 3, Mai 1, Jun 5, July 3, August 7, August 28, October 2, November 6, December 4.

The Toledo PC Users’ Group
P.O. Box 13085
Toledo, OH 43613

Officers
President: Floyd Miller
Vice-President: Rick Snyder
Treasurer: Steve Tryc
Secretary: Sándor Halász

Standing Committees
Computer Shows: Steve Tryc
Librarian: Open
Membership: Roy Ballogg
Programs: Lester Miller
Public Relations: Lavern & Eugene Curtis
Complaint Dept.: Helen Waite

SIG Leaders
Internet SIG: Jim Bell ............ 419-877-1109

Statement of Intent: The Toledo PC Users’ Group is a not-for-profit corporation, formed to provide a forum for the exchange of ideas and information regarding the use and enjoyment of personal computers.

Affiliations: TPCUG is a member of APCUG (Association of Personal Computer User Groups), which provided the APCUG logo.

Meetings: Meetings are generally held the first Monday of each month, at UAW-Local-14-Hall, 5411 Jackman Rd., Toledo, OH. In the event of emergency, members may be reached during meetings at a pay phone in the hall, 419-473-9571.
Visitors are always welcome at monthly meetings!
Executive-Board meetings are generally held after the regular monthly meetings.

Membership: Dues are $25. per year. To obtain an application, call any officer or member.

Moving? Notify the Membership Chair to redirect your newsletters.

Copyright 2006: The Toledo PC Users’ Group, the publisher of this newsletter, is a not for profit organization. Although it asserts a copyright for the newsletter, permission is granted to reprint this publication in whole or in part for any noncommercial use, with credits acknowledged.

Newsletter Deadline is the 15th of each month. All members are encouraged to contribute articles and reviews for this newsletter. Submissions may be made by email to the editor.

Advertizing: Business cards (2”×3½”) will be run in three issues for $5. Commercial ads: $10 for ¼ page; $20 for ½ page; $30 for ¾ page; $40 for full page. Larger ads are run in two issues from a graphics format, JPEG or GIF or … Members may place free ads for the sale of computer-related personal items on a space-available basis. Contact editor for details.

Production Notes: This newsletter was compiled with Microsoft Word 6 for Windows, Open Office 1.1.5, Brief, and Notepad.

TPCUG Mailing List: If you are on the Internet, keep in touch with club doings by subscribing to the TPCUG mailing list: Send e-mail to “tpcug-request@toltbbs.com” with only “subscribe tpcug@toltbbs.com” in the body of the message. You will then receive communications sent to the list through e-mail.

The President’s Message

It is always interesting to look at what might be ahead in the Computer World much of which boggles the mind. Such a thing is Nicholas Negroponte’s proposed $100 laptop opted to go with Linux for his hand-cranked, lime-green machine, that needs no electrical or telephone connection. Bill Gates seems to be taking his position against the $100.00 laptop only because that darn $100 laptop doesn’t run on Microsoft’s Windows operating system. Negroponte chose a free Linux-based operating system—and then gored Microsoft by saying he picked it not because it’s free, but because it’s better.

Worse for Microsoft, if tens of millions of Negroponte’s Microsoft-free laptops spread through the Third World, that kind of product base would lure developers to create more software for the machines. Major manufacturers such as Sony or Dell might decide to make better, competing supercheap non-Windows laptops.

Gates says that laptops aren’t going to do much for the poor if they can’t get on the Internet and that most of the poorest regions don’t have Internet connections. But there might be answers to that, too—with Wi-Fi and microwave or satellite connections. Lockheed Martin is working on geostationary blimps that could act as a wireless Internet tower serving a large area.

Who knows Toledo might here our own geostationary blimp hovering overheard as our area-wide wireless Internet tower. What was it a famous and now infamous Representative from Ohio said, “Mr Speaker, beam me Up”. So Toledoans may become “beamer uppers”!

Of course that is a way in the future, but the wireless-Internet era has a good toe-hold in our immediate Internet-connecting future.

But for our next meeting’s program our Program Chair, Lester Miller, is pointing us in the opposite direction to take a look at our family roots by way of a Genealogy Program in the Sanger Public Library as per the Program Announcement elsewhere.

We might be a little brief for the month. We have had some computer problems. It takes some doing to get materials from programs and files in one operating system—Win 2000 amd get it to another operating system’s e-mail in Win ML. Clipboards do not survice reboots. That would be a good project for some Toledo-PCUG member. Up to the Challenge??

We see you at the Sanger Library the first Monday night of March.

As always:
Visitors are welcomed
Members are expected.

Respectfully Submitted,
Floyd L. Miller, President

Minutes of February 6th

The meeting was called to order at 19:50 by Floyd Miller, pres.

The minutes of January 2d were accepted.

The treasurer s report was accepted, subject to audit.

It was reported that Donna Bardis s picture was printed in the Blade.

The Internet SIG meets in Whitehouse, always interesting. If you found the Holy Grail of computing, come to the meeting. If you are thoroughly confused, come to the meeting.

The meeting was adjourned at 19:59

Lester Miller, along with others, presented experiences of OpenOffice.org.

Respectfully submitted by Sándor Halász, secretary

Treasurer’s Report

Balance Ending 1/15/06 $1340.32

Income
$0.0

Expense
APCUG 2006 Renewal $50.00
Rent 1/1/06 thru 6/30/06 $150.00
total $200.00

Balance Ending 2/15/06 $1140.32

Steve Tryc, treasurer

Expired & Expiring Memberships

Computer Investing Group

BETTER INVESTING REGIONAL CONFERENCE is coming again!

March 17–18, 2006

Kellogg Center, Michigan State University, E. Lansing, Michigan

Register by February 15 for the best deals!

For details on program, hotel, and registration form, go to http://www.betterinvesting.org/chapter/article/semich/3234

Open-Source Software Opens Up

By Orv Beach, Principal Member, Simi-Conejo Linux Users’ Group

Open-Source software is programming code that’s generally available at no cost to you. But we should draw a distinction between “freeware” and Open-Source programs.

The premise of Open Source (and, hence the name) is that the source code of the program is available to you. That’s not so much so that YOU can modify it (although you could and are free to if you knew how). It’s more in order to place the program in “public escrow”. Once a program has been licensed under the GPL (General Public License), it can never be retracted, and thus never orphaned.

That’s an advantage for both individual users and companies; you don’t have to worry about future forced upgrades by your software vendor! This licensing arrangement also encourages community development. Coders add features, fix bugs and document applications, and return those improvements to the users.

Open Source: Party Animal

Open-Source software continues to gain in popularity as a result of it being, well, open to coders. The best current examples are probably the Firefox browser, and the OpenOffice office suite (This article was written in OpenOffice.). Both are popular and powerful applications that run equally well on several operating systems.

Firefox is generally faster than Internet Explorer, and arguably more secure. Tabbed browsing and a wide array of theme choices are popular features. Patches are generally provided very quickly to rectify any security problem that might appear in contrast to the relatively slow pace of fixes for commercial code. OpenOffice has improved in functionality, and in compatibility with Microsoft Office since its first release about two years ago. It can read from and write to Word, PowerPoint and Excel formats, compose HTML documents and output to Flash and Acrobat files.

Need more? How about a database? Both applications are frequently updated; current version for Firefox is 1.5, OpenOffice, 2.0.1. Best of all, both are free for the downloading.

Applications Not Just for Linux

Some other good examples of Open-Source software available for both Windows and Linux are

There are Windows applications with no perfect analog in Linux, but the situation is improving daily, and Linux has matured in all desktop areas. For example, multimedia programs for manipulating graphics or editing video and audio are often on par with their commercial counterparts. In fact, Linux “distributions” either come with all that good stuff, or if not, they can be downloaded separately. The distributions range from completely free via downloaded CD images, or inexpensively purchased, with some customer support and documentation included. Much of the differentiation between these distributions (Fedora, Ubuntu, SuSE) lies in the graphical installer and system tools, driving development of a more user-friendly experience for even a novice.

Of course occurrences of viruses happen about once a decade, thanks to the inherent security in Linux. Spyware, or malware programs aren’t a problem because they can’t install themselves.

And Linux is stable; it doesn’t crash very often. If you leave your Linux box running, several months later you’ll realize it’s still running, and hasn’t had to be rebooted.

It’s a Freebie

If you’d like to experiment with Linux, but don’t want to commit to loading it on a computer, there are “Live CDs” available. These are bootable Linux CDs—everything runs off the CD rather than from a hard disk. This allows you to “try before you install”. I’d say “try before you buy”, but the buying is optional! Some examples of bootable Linux CDs are Knoppix and Mepis.

If you’re still dependent on some Windows applications, or want to be able to use both Windows and Linux, you can “dual-boot” your computer. That means putting both Windows and Linux on the same hard drive (or separate ones), and when you boot, be able to select which operating system will boot. That gives you a lot of flexibility in what you can do with your computer.

Linux isn’t perfect; there are some shortcomings:

Hardware Requirements

For good results a modern “full-house” installation of Linux intended for desktop use should be installed on a computer that has the following characteristics:

Note: inexpensive WinModems are not well supported; neither are WinPrinters; the inexpensive ones that require the CPU to do all the formatting.

If you’ve read about Linux and are interested, your local Linux-user group may be doing an Expo. For instance, every year in February, there’s an Annual So-Cal Linux Expo in southern California. Check http://www.socallinuxexpo.com for details.

Copyright © 2006 by Orv Beach is a Principal Member of the Simi-Conejo Linux Users’ Group. Reach him at orv -at—orvsplace.net. Article reproduction coördinated by Steve Bass, PC-World Contributing Editor and author of PC Annoyances, Second Edition. Read a sample chapter at http://snurl.com/sample_annoyed2. It’s available on Amazon at http://snurl.com/annoyed2. Visit Annoyance Central at http://snipurl.com/AnnoyCentral