January 7, 2011
The meeting was called to order at 7:40 PM by VP Membership Jan Fagerholm, substituting for President Chuck Horner, who was away. Jan advised silencing of phones, explained Internet access, and welcomed firsttime attendees.
SIG Announcements:
The Mobile SIG is on sabbatical. The Windows 7 SIG is cancelled for January due to scheduling conflicts. The Spectacular Linux SIG will be held on the last Saturday of the month and will probably focus on Linux Mint 10 and Google Chrome OS. The Hardware SIG will meet the Saturday after the Main Meeting at 8:00 PM at the Smith’s.
Presentation:
Jan Fagerholm showed how your computer can deal with a tough economy with the best in free software for Windows. Software included the following:
Utilities
Advanced System Care 3– http://www.iobit.com/advancedsystemcareper.html – anti-malware, reg cleaner, disk cleaner, security, disk defrag (Smart Defrag 2)
Avast Anti-virus– http://www.avast.com – antivirus, internet security. Requires annual registration.
AVG Free Antivirus–http://free.avg.com antivirus, Internet security.
MalwareBytes Anti-malware– http://www.malwarebytes.org– anti-malware, anti-spyware.
Graphical Applications
The GIMP– http://www.gimp.org – graphical bitmap editor for Windows, Mac, and Linux.
Bitmap vs. vector. GIMP vs. photo organizers.
Picasa 3- http://www.google.com/picasa/ – photo organizer and editor. Upload photos to Web site for sharing.
Internet
Firefox– http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox – Web browser.
If you use IE7 or older, you need to upgrade for security.
Thunderbird– http://www.mozillamessaging.com/en-US/thunderbird/ – full featured e-mail client for Windows, Mac, Linux. (client-sides Google and other e-mail accounts).
Google Chrome– http://www.google.com/chrome/intl/en/landing_chrome.html?hl=en – faster way to browse.
Brief tour for those unfamiliar.
http://www.chromium.org – for chromium projects including ChromeOS.
Office Suites
Open Office– http://www.openoffice.org – full featured office suite using open source XML standard for documents.
XML vs. DocX (M$) format.
Demo open-close-save M$ Office docs.
IBM Lotus Symphony 3– http://symphony.lotus.com/software/lotus/symphony/home.nsf/home – browser based basic office suite with M$ Office file compatibility.
Though browser-based, does not require cloud computing.
Google Docs– http://docs.google.com –Web-oriented document maker. Demonstrates cloud-style computing.Refreshment Break:
The refreshment break was taken at 9:50 PM.
The meeting was adjourned at 10:15 PM.
The next meeting will take place at the same location on February 4th, 2011.
Respectfully submitted,
Jan Fagerholm, VP Membership
substituting for Bayle Emlein, Secretary
