January 9th, 2009
Chuck Horner was ill. Jan Fagerholm conducted the meeting.
Secretary Bayle Emlein was at CES. Jan Fagerholm took the minutes of the Main Meeting.
The meeting was called to order at 7:40 P.M.
General Announcements:
Announcement was made to silence personal devices. Sign-in sheets were not available, so names were taken on a sheet of notebook paper to be transcribed later to the HAS attendance sheets. Rest room locations were explained.
Announcement was made about the raffle prize for the evening, and for door prize tickets.
Greetings were made for new attendees and new members. There was one new member and one non-member attendee.
Announcement was made explaining how to gain access to the Internet through our wireless router.
General announcements were made about the February Main Meeting, which will take place Feb. 6th, 2009.
Clubhouse cookout was the Saturday before the Main Meeting.
SIG Announcements:
Genealogy – Bill George announced that it remains popular. Next meeting Jan. 20th.
Hardware SIG – Del Parton – will meet on Jan. 9th.
Linux – Jan Fagerholm – will meet Jan. 31st. No topic yet.
Mobile – Dan Dolgin – meeting at Starbucks next to old civic center in Hayward on Jan. 19th.
New User – Bud Gallagher – on hiatus – Bud is considering a different SIG.
See the events calendar at www.pcc.org or the newsletter for details.
Presentations:
Paul Cooper announced his plans for a new Windows SIG. He wants to cover Vista and general Windows topics like security. Paul is enthusiastic about open source software and is using it a lot. He discussed multimedia center PCs and home theater as potential topics. Also podcasting: what it is, how to do it. Paul likes Audacity for music mastering and making podcasts. He illustrated ways to use portable media in cars; FM transmitters with MP3 players, burning CDs, etc. Paul likes the Maximum PC Web site for these topics and hardware topics.
Jan Fagerholm showed how to degunk and fix Windows XP and Vista and distributed handouts outlining and explaining the procedure, which is: chkdsk x: /r /f to fix Windows file systems, CCleaner to clean out abandoned files and the Windows registry, and the use of Perfectdisk or Diskeeper rather than the built-in Windows defragmenter to consolidate file placement on hard drives. Methodology: first perform a regular defragmentation, followed by a system file/offline defragmentation, then finally a regular defragmentation again to fill the holes left by the system file defragmentation.)
Bud Gallagher showed the new beta of Windows 7. He outlined the new features of Windows 7, among which are faster startup and shutdown, Jump Lists to place persistent shortcuts on the Start menu, new windows controls for organizing windows on screen, HomeGroup for simplified network sharing, integrated Device Stage that displays all removable media together, Internet Explorer 8, view all networks and connections in one place, and more.
Break was announced at 9:25 PM.
Meeting was resumed at 9:40 PM. Further announcements from the membership were solicited, but there were none.
Door prize drawings were begun and completed, followed by the drawing for the raffle prize, a Western Digital MyBook Essential 500 GB USB 2.0 external hard drive. Prize winners are listed on Page 8.
The meeting was adjourned at 10:10 P.M.
Next meeting: 7:30 P.M, February 6th, 2009 at Hayward Adult School, Multipurpose Room.
