If you weren't able to attend COMDEX with us, you missed a good time. COMDEX seems to have lost a little of its flair. There seemed to be fewer vendors, but there were some that used interesting techniques to get the attention of the attendees. The Polish buffet dinner following COMDEX was a hit as usual. Thanks again to Leo Hoffer or arranging the trip.

WAUC is currently looking for a PC Librarian to produce the Disk of the Month and maintain the PC softwar library. It is not a hard job and doesn't take a lot of time. If you are interested in giving it a try, let me know.

Are there any topics you would like to see presented at a future meeting? Do you know anybody that would be a good presenter? We are always open to ideas.

WAUC's Executive Board gathered on February 27, 2002, at the home of Marcia Zientek. Those present included Doris Regner, Marcia, Terry Harvey, Bob Banerian, Marie Bellin, Leo Hoffer, and John Hirsh.

The raffle at the March general meeting will be the choice of a Hewlett-Packard Apollo printer or Windows XP - Home Version. Tickets will be $1 each or 6 for $5.

There will be an election for the office of president at the March general meeting.

Welcome New Member: Patricia Latshaw

After completing any upgrade or update to your system, even if it is not required, always shut down your computer, turn it off, then restart your machine. This process is called a "Cold Boot" and forces all components in your system to reset. This is the best way to make sure that the changes you made are going to work.

Vice President Doris Regner opened the meeting in the absence of Roger Brinkmeier, who resigned. Roger's letter of resignation was available for anyone to read. Doris said impaired hearing prevented her from assuming the role of president; therefore, a new president would have to be elected. There were two nominees: former president Bruce Kosbab and webmaster John Hirsh. There were no other nominees from the floor. Ballots were distributed and counted; Bruce Kosbab was elected president.

Treasurer's Report: Treasurer Bob Banerian reported.

Disc of the Month: Bruce Kosbab has Pop-up Killer as the program on the DOM. It kills the pop-up windows that appear when one is on the Internet.

Audit: John Schoenfeld and Fred Young will audit the books.

Sam's Club: Bruce Kosbab will handle the memberships, which are $17. At the time there were two openings.

Buy/Sell: Leo has HP Colorado T3000 tape drive with tapes, never opened for $100, Turbo Tax federal version for $5, plus other software. Jim Seeburn has an 8 MB GraphicsCard, Radion AII-in-Wonder; he's asking $35 for it. John Hirsh would like to buy a voice reader. WAUC sweatshirts are $14 for the embroidered logo, $8 for the iron-on logo.

Questions/Problems: Everyone's computer seems to be in good working order. We welcomed Dave Gutlian, whom we haven't seen in a long time. New members and guests were welcomed and told something about themselves.

Indispensable Person Award: Richard Durand was awarded a new sweatshirt and certificate for his consistent taking of minutes at SIGs. Eric Nietzke from Office Depot was also awarded a sweatshirt and certificate for stepping in at the last minute to give presentations at our WAUC meetings.

DOM Librarian: Bruce had been the librarian, but will need to be replaced now that he's president. Doris asked for volunteers. Bruce told us what the job entailed; former DOM librarian Marie Bellin added some comments. No one volunteered at this time. Hopefully some will come forth.

Eric Nietzke from Office Depot gave a presentation on digital cameras. Eric began by surveying how many of us had regular cameras and were not using them. A variety of reasons were given, i.e., the entire roll had to be shot before it could be developed, storage of prints, many prints not satisfactory, cost of processing, etc.

Eric's goal was to make picture taking more fun with greater success. He had two cameras, a Kodak EX3600 and an Olympus 10x zoom. Using the 10x zoom Eric showed how two pictures looked shot from the same distance, but zoomed in. The difference was remarkable. One thing to keep in mind is the difference between digital and optical zooms. The digital zoom might be the main selling point of a camera, but one can enlarge a photo with photo software programs. The picture taken with a digital zoom enlarged very pixelly, whereas the one taken with an optical zoom was clear. Another feature to be aware of is lens quality. The better the lens, the better the picture quality. The size of the lens is usually a good indication of lens quality.

The software that comes packaged with the camera is another consideration. Some software might be highly rated, but difficult to use.

Eric told of various ways to get the pictures from the camera to the computer, keeping in mind that when the viewing window is open there is a big drain on the battery. Eric mentioned ways to save pictures without draining the batteries. He also told us about the different kinds of batteries and using battery chargers. Various accessories might include additional memory cards, especially when going on trips and more pictures are usually taken.

Eric demonstrated the Olympus' movie feature by taking a movie, complete with sound, of our group. He gave us ways of displaying and saving our photos by either printing them, saving to disk, even showing them on our TVs.

There was lively exchange of questions and comments from the group, reinforcing Eric's presentation.

Again, Eric is to be commended on a demonstration that made owning a digital camera something we should consider as a complement to our computers.

Five of us met this month for the Apple S1G: Mary and Dick Reinhard, Bob West, Sr. Samuel and Pat Nye.

Our plans this month were to continue going through the WAUC Apple Software Library. We decided otherwise when Bob West mentioned that he had an Apple computer in his trunk, and that he was hoping to get help in setting it up, since he himself had run into problems.

We did take some of the disks up to Sister's Lab to try them on her computers. We found that some of the software would not work, which could have been the cause for our failure to get Bob's computer up and running. We're hoping for more success at our next attempt.

Pat Nye

Windows has a feature called Autorun that automatically detects when a CD or DVD has been inserted into the drive. That's nice, but the downside is that in the background, this feature is constantly asking your drive if it has anything new inserted. This can cause your CD Games to "hiccup."

You can turn off this feature in Control Panel. Select the System Icon. Click the Device tab and open the CD/DVD drive. Right-click the name of the drive you want to alter and select Properties. Click the settings tab and uncheck the Auto Insert Notification.

So you have selected three documents to print, and the first one is printing. After inquiring, you realize that the second document that will print is huge, and you really need the third document as soon as possible. Not to worry. Open the printer queue screen by double-clicking the small printer icon that appears on your taskbar while your printer is printing.

Left-click the job you want to move. Hold down the mouse button and drag it to its new location in the queue. Release the mouse button. That job will print in its new queued order. To return to our example, you click and hold on the third print job, drag it to second place, and release the mouse button. This document now stands second in the queue. One note: You cannot change the print jobs of other people on a net-work. You'll just have to wait for that one guy to print his 1,000-page manual. How rude!

0n Tuesday, 5 March, thirty-six intrepid WAUC members and guests boarded Lamers bus 660 and departed at 8:40 am southbound for Chicago. Our destination was COMDEX at the McCormick Place convention center where we could explore the future of Information Technology. Me, I was looking for a break from work and an excuse to spend the day with a friend. COMDEX is about the business of computing and did reflect that business has shrunk somewhat this past half-year. It's primarily a marketplace where Information Technology professionals and business decision-makers flex their buying power. All the different business directions for applying such technology provided something for everyone on our bus. This year's theme quote was "... for collaboration [technologies] to work well, it has to be between people, not just machines."

Several business speakers spoke that day. Computer Associates, covered e-mobility and the challenges related to security and storage. IBM talked on wireless e-business; comparing the installation of desktop computers and the migration to laptops that spurred productivity gains in the 1990s, to how the implementation of mobile solutions will allow progress to continue during this new decade. Wearable Computing was very intriguing. A panel of law enforcement officials gathered at the Wearable Computers Pavilion to discuss "Law Enforcement and Homeland Defense applications of Wearable Computing." Wearable Computing also showed remarkable ways to broaden the capabilities of the disabled; particularly learning tools and opportunities available for special needs children now and tomorrow. A wearable e-mail/MP3 device from Xybernuat was on display. Intel's technology leadership workshop called "Transitioning the Enterprise for eMobility" let attendees glimpse into the history of Intel's strategic enterprise mobility strategies, from arming 80 percent of employees with notebooks in the late 90's, to initiatives designed to further increase worker productivity, in handheld wireless technology, Research In Motion displayed its newest Black-Berry device that adds voice services to the wireless handheld, which also combines e-mail, browser, SMS and organizer features. The Henderson Network demo's focused on help desk applications, notebook batteries, clever storage devices and evolved anti-virus security and wireless tools, that were all available for perusal on the exhibit floor. The IRS provided a free tax products CD-ROM. The people at the Biometopolis booth wanted to see your thumbs, face, and eyes. Biometrics will play a role in U.S. airport security; it remains to be seen in what form the technology will appear.

We got the chance, as our personal tastes suited, to explore the latest connectivity/networking technologies such as wireless and VPNs or check out the latest IT educational technology. While there was a lot of walking, the enterprising among us managed to reach the Massage Break Lounge tovibrate our cares away.

My favorite was not the I-Bart (Electronic Bartering services) charity spokesperson, as alleged by the disreputable among us, but rather Hash.com's really cool computer animation software. That demo was astounding as I thought how computer graphics have revolutionized animation technology. It's not your father's Wait Disney any more!

By 4:30 PM, COMDEX wound down and so did we. The Polish buffet at Jolly's Inn was everything a hungry computer user could wish for; excellent cuisine, great variety, cold beer, attentive wait staff, and boon companions. We rolled home to "Days of Thunder" showing on the very comfortable bus's video players. The day was the best $25 I had spent. Thanks, Leo, for showing us all a great time.

Have you ever opened a file, expecting a document, spreadsheet, or presentation, only to be greeted by a screen filled with what looks like random characters? This can happen when Windows mistakes a file type, and attempts to open the file with the wrong program and/or file type. Do NOT save this file! Exit the file and / or program without saving, and then open the file manually using the correct format and program. Saving this file in the wrong format can PERMANENTLY corrupt the file.

Our club has a HP 2100C Scanner. There are many scanners out there such as Mustek which a lot of us have, and Visioneer is another club favorite. All of them come with Scanner Software such as iPhotoPlus 4, Picture it, Ulead, Adobe PhotoShop etc.

The first thing we looked at was a picture of Carol's little grandson, Nickolaus. Doris did many things to his picture. It was a valentine picture and he had little angel wings on. She showed us how to cut out one wing (using the lasso tool) and replace the area with background color. When working on pictures, be sure to go under view arrcrzoom tn on pictures. This makes it much easier to see the detail that you are working on. We tried the magic wand on his picture but the color wasn't prominent enough. She used the smudge tool to show how to blend in color and how to even give Nickolaus little elf ears.

Always remember, if you make a mistake, just go up to Edit-Undo.

When scanning pictures with skin tones make sure to use the best color setting.

The software we spent the most time on was iPhotoPlus 4. Under the Adjust button -iPhoto can crop, fix red eye, rotate, flip, and more. Under lighting -gamma gives a picture more contrast which makes the image (the prominent color) lighter and text darker. Under the Enhance key- iPhoto can add text, use paint to clone, airbrush, smudge, and much more.

To remove something from a picture click on Selection -lasso. Using the lasso select what you want to remove and click on cut. Then you can use the lasso tool to select a section of color to fill in the removed piece which Doris did on Nickolaus's picture-. Drag the new'section over the cut area and drop it in place.. To get rid of a selected section click on Edit, select merge floating. You can also do a selection, Edit - copy and paste. The magic wand works to select solid color then you can cut it out.

We had a picture that had too much blue color. We scanned it and sent it to the paint program in windows, (to get there go to Start, Programs, Accessories and then down to paint). We then went to Edit- select all, then Edit- copy and pasted it in the photo editing software (iPhoto Plus 4). We went to Color-color balance, where we dragged the slider- blue to change the color to what we thought looked best. Red and Green colors are also available. Also under Color is Hue and Saturation- this makes colors lighter or darker.

When in Paint you can also go to file and set the picture as wallpaper.

When saving pictures remember that BMP format is a large file -it has all the pixels and is uncompressed- this format takes up a lot of space on your hard drive and may not even fit on a floppy disk depending on the size of your picture. You should edit BMP pictures first and then save as a JPeg. A JPeg is a much smaller format and you can save many on a floppy disk.

The last thing we worked on was scanning text. A lot of Scanners come with OCR (Optical Character Recognition). This small program allows you to copy text and change or add text to it. This is a very nice program, but you do have to check what you copied carefully because there are usually a few errors in the text. When copying anything with columns, draw your selection box around one column at a time and scan each separate or it won't work. In order to change any fonts or text size, remember to highlight the text first.

If you only need to copy an article and not change anything such as a newspaper article you can save it as a JPeg, and it will copy it as a picture which can't be edited. When copying a newspaper article to get the gray background color of the paper out- copy and paste to your scanner software. Using iPhoto Plus we went to Lighting- we increased brightness and decreased gamma. This took out the dark background and darkened the text leaving a white background.

As you can see, we learned a lot of information in two hours. It was a very interesting and enjoyable evening -Thanks to Doris.

Sandy Karlovich

Doris did the presentation for 16 WAUC members at the March 21, 2002, Internet SIG. Many topics were covered including: (1) Spam (2) Pop Ups (3) Viruses & Worms (4) Internet etiquette (5) BBC (6) Advantages and disadvantages of WEB MAIL (7) Deleting URLS (8) News Groups

(3) Worms and Viruses are very much around and we were reminded to be careful in opening attachments and to NEVER open an attachment with an "exe" extension.

(4) The internet does have its etiquette, and forwarding large files should never be done. Terry suggested that, if you find something you wish to forward, you highlight the title and go to Google to locate its URL. You can then forward just the URL and the recipient can decide if he/she wants to download.

(5) BCC should be used when you are sending or forwarding to more than one person. This will eliminate the recipients getting a long list of all the people who are being sent copies. Doris demonstrated how BCC is used in Netscape and Outlook Express.

(6) Web mail was thought to be cumbersome for daily use, but has its advantages if you are traveling or outside your calling area. In a web based e-mail you can go to the Internet and type in the URL for your service, enter you name and pass word and read your mail. This does not delete this mail in your home computer. Lack of a "spell check" is one of the disadvantages of using web based e-mail to send messages.

(7) The next question was whether one could get rid of the URLs of recently visited sites which show up under "Addresses" in your Internet Browser. I don't know why one would want to do this as it makes it so convenient to revisit a site you have recently been on. Doris did, however, demonstrate how it can be done in both Netscape and Outlook Express. You do this by going to Tools-Internet Options-Delete off-line Contacts-Clear history.

On March 13th, twelve WAUC members were disappointed to arrive for the Investment SIG only to find that our regular meeting place, Corporate Technologies, had already closed for the day, even though Harold Bauer had called to confirm the use of the facility. Another call only reached an answering machine.

The clock was ticking so we fell back on our backup plan, Milwaukee PC, at Hwy 100 and Cold Spring. On arriving there, we found that they would be closing up before we would be able to finish our SIG. Some members then just went home and some reconvened informally at Organ Piper Pizza. Next month we will try again and the topic will be the same, mutual funds.

Sheepshead If you enjoy playing Sheepshead with your friends, you will enjoy this 3 handed Sheepshead game, as you match wits against two computer opponents. Good graphics.

The PC SIG was held March 6th , 2002 at the Speedway station on 60th and Layton in Milwaukee. There were 30 people in attendance. (REMINDER- If you plan to attend these SIGs, please bring a folding chair as there aren't enough chairs to go around). A demonstration was scheduled to show how to install an internal CD-ROM in a computer that came with a CD-ROM and to demonstrate how to burn a CD. However, it was discovered that the computer tower that was available did not have an open slot to install the hardware. That was plan A, so Bill Regner, who was giving the demonstration, had to go to plan B. The meeting consisted mainly of a question and answer session with demonstrations on using the software available for burning CDs. Bill did have another computer at the meeting that had an external CD burner.

We learned that we can add to a CD-RW many times, using it just like a 3.5in. floppy to store data, as long as we don't close out the CD-RW disk. Bill stated that the software, EZ CD Creator, will prompt us to close out the CD when the eject button is pushed. We learned that recorded music tracks on a CD-RW can only be played on a regular CD-ROM player if the disk is closed. If MP3 files are saved they must be played on an MP3 player. We learned that we could also record from a turntable or cassette player by plugging into the line-in jack on the computer. We were cautioned to turn off any screensavers or virus scanning software when we were burning a CD because they would interrupt the burning program and ruin the CD. Bill demonstrated how he copied a CD to a CD-RW. This took about 5 minutes to burn.

CD labeling software came up next and several were discussed. One was NEATO which comes with HP. Another was BURN and GO GOLD. Bill showed us a CD label that he scanned off the Internet. It looked really professional. Another burning program Bill liked was HOT BURN, by Iomega.

To update drivers, we go to My Computer,->Control Panel -> System >Device manager, highlight the desired Device-> then scroll down and click Properties, >Update Driver, then follow directions to find driver.

Bill showed us a program he downloaded from the Internet called "Invisible Desktop". It made the text boxes that identified the short cuts on the desktop invisible, but it left the text. You can change the color of the text so it's readable on your desktop wallpaper. WIN XP has this feature built in.

WAUC members have discussed it from time-to-time. Some members recommend using DISK CLEANUP weekly. To access the utility, you need to find it. Try the Start menu, Programs, Accessories, and System Tools folders.

Click the DISK CLEANUP option and then, when the SELECT DRIVE dialog box appears on your screen, specify the drive you want to clean up. Mine is the "C" drive. After clicking the OK button, DISK CLEANUP should appear on your screen.

Now you will need to look at the listings in the FILES TO DELETE field and select the file categories that you want to delete by check-marking the boxes. Many members recommend choosing Temporary Internet Files and Temporary Files each time you run the DISK CLEANUP utility.

After making all your selections, you can click on OK. A verification message will appear, asking if you want to continue. Click YES. DISK CLEANUP closes automatically when it completes its work. For more information, Bruce recommends the WINDOWS SUPPORT CENTER (http://www.aumha.org).

Also, Bruce continues to offer FREE web page creation for WAUC members who subscribe to MPC or NaSPA Internet Service.

If and when you decide to upgrade your Windows operating system, there is another option of which you should be aware. Normally when you're upgrading, you probably just insert the new CD and run it. Windows will then change files, alter the registry and make many other changes. This is all well and good, but if you have a PC that has been acting flaky, the last thing you need is an upgrade to the next Windows OS, which will result in even flakier problems.

In this last instance, I always recommend what is known as a Clean or Virgin Installation. This entails completely removing everything from your hard drives, installing the new version of Windows, and then reinstalling applications within the new OS. (Note: This procedure is not for the inexperienced or novice user. If you are uncomfortable with this, consult a professional.)

Remember, this procedure is not quick, simple, or for the faint of heart. If you have doubts, don't do it! Have a professional do it for you.

I plan on ordering Ink Cartridges shortly. If you need compatible ink cartridges for Epson, Cannon, Lexmark, or ribbons, sorry no HP, see me at the April meeting or send me an E-mail with your printer name & model and OEM cartridge number, black or color. I can then provide you with prices. I will try to have delivery for you at the May WAUC meeting. This is one of your benefits for being a WAUC member.

Thank you,