PC Community Main Meeting
7:30 - 10 pm January 8, 2016
Calvary Baptist Church 28924 Ruus Road, Hayward California
President Chuck Horner reported in sick. The meeting was called to order at 7:40 pm by Sally Holt. From Lola Hunter, get your raffle tickets, door prize tickets, and 3” x 5” cards to write questions for discussion/answers at the end of the Meeting. Get at least one $5 raffle ticket for this raffle prize, a Bestec wall charging station that will handle up to 7 devices, including phones and iPads.
The Mobile SIG is still alive, but needs more input. Perhaps it could schedule a get-together at a convenient coffee shop or restaurant where all PCC members would be invited.
Paul Cooper announced the 2016 Executive Committee:
President: Chuck Horner
Treasurer: George Kornbluth
Secretary: Bayle Emlein
Membership: Jan Fagerholm
Community Relations: Lola Hunter
Refreshments: Yorkman Lowe
Newsletter/Website: Diane George
APCUG: Diane George
Sally Holt will continue to be raffle prize coordinator.
Presentation: Members talked about new stuff they got.
Sally Holt started off talking about the SimpliSafe security system. SimpliSafe sells the components. Another company sells monitoring services, if you want them. SimpliSafe has been featured on several network television programs. Andrew Tews pointed out that fire and police departments levy a fine for false alarms, so you might want to forgo the alarm alerts. You might want to skip the $15/month monitoring component and just use your cell phone to monitor. You get 3 days of testing after you activate the system before it goes live. The company suggests installing motion sensors upside down if you have pets. Cameras are not yet available.
Bayle Emlein reviewed her recent trip to CES in Las Vegas. She saw lots of stuff looking for a use. Several groups were promoting the entry of youth and women into technology fields. More trained workers are needed and a wider range of the user base needs to be considered in development. The presentation of some products did not explain their function very well. France and Taiwan were major national presenters.
Andrew Tews presented some features of a clean installation of Windows 10. Several games from Windows 7 did not update. He found a program to modify them. For some reason Internet Explorer did not automatically play sounds. In order to turn on the sound in IE, he opened Internet Options, chose Advanced, and then scrolled down to Multimedia and chose Play Sounds.
Andrew reviewed the Microsoft's recommended steps for upgrading from Windows 7 to Windows 10. Paul Cooper noted that you can run many functions by right-clicking. Everyone agrees that it is critical to back up before changing a drive. Be sure that you have a large-capacity hard drive. You have 30 days to work with Windows 10 and decide whether or not you want to keep it, or go back to Windows 7. If you decide to stay with Windows 10, you can delete those big files backup files from Windows 7 and free up drive space.
There was some discussion of whether or not defragmenting an SSD makes sense, given that it is nonvolatile memory. The only reason Paul would defrag would be if he saw an improvement in performance. This is not likely, given the speed at which an SSD functions.
Michael Wong got a new blood pressure cuff that just straps on the wrist and works with no inflating. There was group discussion of the importance of body position for accurate reading. Mimi Tse noted the importance of using the correct kind of battery in devices.
Paul addressed a question about a screen page changing sizes. It might be a video card starting to go out.
Yahoo “remember my password” keeps asking to be remembered. Paul thinks that being remembered is helpful.
Can I keep my old email address and have my mail forwarded? It probably depends on the vendors. Check with your old company and your new provider.
Door Prizes
Slice water bottle--Yorkman Lowe
CES backpack--Lola Hunter
Twine tee-shirt--Paul Cooper
HP keyboard--Bob Dunn
Storage Visions bag--George Kornbluth
Pepcom bag--Mimi Tse
NanoDimension bag--Michael Wong
Raffle Prize
Bestek wall charging station--Paul Cooper
The meeting was adjourned at 9:36 pm.
Thank you to George Kornbluth and Michael Wong for helping with meeting logistics. Special thanks to Yorkman Lowe and Mimi Tse for the extra refreshment goodies at break time.
The next meeting will be February 5, 2016
7:30 - 10 pm
Calvary Baptist Church 28924 Ruus Road, Hayward California
Respectfully submitted,
Bayle Emlein, Secretary
