April 1, 2011
Calvary Baptist Church 28924 Ruus Road, Hayward, California
The meeting was called to order at 7:40 pm by President Chuck Horner. He introduced reporter Simon Wong in attendance at our invitation, with plan to write article about PCC in TriCity Voice newspaper.
Chuck then presented the raffle prize, a 7” portable TV with a remote control. Harold Smith at the ticket table has 3” x 5” cards to write questions to address to the experts at the end of the meeting. He also has tickets for the door prizes as well as for the raffle prize.
Member Michael Wong introduced his guest, Josie Solis.
The Clubhouse will be closed Wednesday March 30 through April 2 for Spring Break in Hayward. Clubhouse hours are Saturdays 8:30-1 and Wednesdays 4 to 7 pm. The phone number is 510 537-4138.
PCC needs people to help out with programs and with publicity. If you want to know more, talk to Jan, Chuck, or Bayle. We need to diversify the fun of helping organize presentations and getting the word out around town.
Sally Holt distributed a survey to see what kinds of things people would be interested in having for a future raffle prize.
Diane asked the attendees to look at the entries in the Southwest Computer Conference photo contest and vote for their favorite in each category.
SIG Announcements:
The Mobile SIG hasn’t been having presentations or good attendance lately, so it is going on vacation.
The Windows 7 SIG will meet at Bud Gallagher’s house on the 9th at 1 p.m. The topic is still undecided. Windows Home Server has been released to manufacturing. He has a flier to share with more information.
Jan Fagerholm runs the Spectacular Linux SIG looked which takes place on the last Saturday of the month. That will be the 30th of April this month. Last month they looked at the new Ubuntu beta release. The other main Linux desktop is KDE, which is more Windowslike than the Mac-looking Ubuntu interface. KDE is the likely spectacular topic of the spectacular April Linux SIG.
The Hardware SIG really a fixit SIG for both hardware and software, since most hardware problems turn out to be software problems. The SIG takes place the night after the main meeting at 8 pm at the Smiths’. If you’ve got a computer problem, bring it in and it will likely get fixed. More importantly, you’ll learn about fixing it yourself.
Presentation :
Office Suite Alternatives.
Member Jan Fagerholm presented several alternatives to Microsoft Office. LibreOffice has been issued as an update to OpenOffice. Jan reviewed the history of office suites and the development of consistent interfaces and Microsoft’s linking the programs through OLE.
Single-sourcing has become a problem for government and businesses. The current issue is not the word processing application per se but formatting and interchangeability. XML coding, current for the past several years, provides a common standard. Microsoft, especially with Office 2010, tries to distinguish itself with special features.
LibreOffice is working very hard at opening from any source. WordPerfect, with the unique View Codes feature, allows editing and repairing documents possible as in no other application.
Where is Portable Document Format (PDF) in all this? As a universal document viewer, it’s probably here to stay.
Spreadsheets, which hark back to VisiCalc, are generally more interchangeable than other applications in office suites. The Open Document Foundation is working on a common interface for all parts of an office suite–even a single application. While documents are becoming more interchangeable, each developer is trying to distinguish itself with features it hopes will attract customers.
After the break, winners of the door prizes were selected.
Congratulations to each of them.
Tip from Chuck: To keep Excel from hyperlinking when you enter a website or email address in a cell, click Undo. It will leave the text but remove the linking. Right Clicking and selecting Undo Link will accomplish the same thing.
Digital Art contest winners in 4 categories:
People: Bud Gallagher
Animals: Sally Holt
Landscape Nature: Diane George
Digital Art: Diane George
Thanks to George Kornbluth for taking care of refreshments and Pat O’Sullivan for bringing bagels.
The meeting was adjourned at 10:15 pm.
The next meeting will take place at the same location on May 6, 2011.
Respectfully submitted,
Bayle Emlein, Secretary
