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A short note on the Veterans Memorial Building, An item in the Canadian Armed Forces in house publication , the "Warrior" , The VMB will be renamed The Camp Hill Veterans' Memorial Building. The Camp Hill name is part of a tradition dating back to 1758. Here is a link to Canada's Veteran's web suite where one can browse information related to Canada's fallen.
The next general meeting will be February 23rd at 6:30 at the Camp Hill Veterans Memorial Building on Jubilee Rd. The beginners corner topic will be a look at the internet ,and will be presented by David Potter. As we near the end of February , it is becoming income tax time. Demos will be presented of some of the various income tax programs that are available. And there will be a question and answer session on the programs for tax purposes.
The HAPCS has two kinds of meetings. There is the regular Sunday night meeting which most members attend regularly, and there is the monthly (approximately) Planning meeting which organizes the business of the Society, including what happens on the Sundays. The planning meeting is held on Monday , a week after the regular meeting in Room 1602 of the Camp Hill Veteran's Memorial Building on Jubilee Road. (the same building as the regular meetings; different room). All members of the Society are urged to attend.
At the planning meetings, we discuss feature speakers for regular meetings, finances, membership, training, and other computer related subjects.
Articles can be submitted in almost any format, ASCII text, AMI Pro, MS Word, Windows Write, WordStar and of course WordPerfect. If you are on the Chebucto FreeNet, Internet, or any type of e-mail system that has a gateway to the Internet, you can send something to me via the internet to where I work - hlfxtrad.educ.stuartce@gov.ns.ca. And to assist in posting a news letter on the Chebucto net a copy can be forwarded to hhhil000@cycor.ca.
Norman has produced an internet web page for the blind and visually impaired which is speech friendly and links to a page explaining the meaning of a speech friendly site. It is nice to see that there are people like Norman who thinks of others and is always willing to help in any way he can.
You can reach Norman at: af380@chebucto.ns.ca (which is no longer functioning) and visit his web site at: At the Sign of the Flashing Cursor.
Announcements
Your new computer Things to look for
The Newsletter - A few notes about what goes into this document
Meeting Schedule 96/97
Meeting dates for the upcoming meeting year
GENERAL INFORMATION
This document is mailed to all paid up members and to anyone who has attended a meeting within the past three months. Yearly membership dues are $15.00.
Society Mailing Address -
P.O. Box 29008, Halifax N.S., B3L 4T8.
Executive:
Chairperson - David Potter
Vice-Chair - Bill Marchant
Secretary/Newsletter Editor - Colin Stuart
Disk Librarian - Thayne MacLean
and but not least Norman DeForest, Henry Hill, Arthur Layton, Rob MacCara, Andy Cornwall, George Richards, and Diane Smith.
ANNOUNCEMENTS
We have only a few announcements for this month's issue.
Membership Expiry Dates
For those of you who are not already aware, the membership expiry dates are printed in the upper right corner of your newsletter mailing label. If you wish to continue to receive this newsletter and know what interesting meetings are coming up, you either have to renew ($15 per year) or come to the meetings and put your name on the list that is passed around.
DELPHI
The Delphi User's Group meets on the first Tuesday of each month. The meetings are held at the CCL Group building 2669 Dutch Village Road in Halifax, at 7:00PM. For more information call Carey Rolfe at 462-4551 or on e-mail crolfe@fox.nstn.ns.ca or Dave Hackett at 835-3894.
Advertising and Want Ads
We don't charge for small individual want ads like the one above. That is any Society member or other interested person with some computer related item that they wish to sell, trade, or give away can contact the editor to place an ad in the newsletter. We would expect that more commercially oriented advertising provide the Society with some remuneration for carrying the ad.
An ad will normally only appear once but let me know if you reed it repeated. Ads can be given to me at meetings or give me a call two weeks to ten days before the next general meeting(newsletter deadline).
Faster CD-ROM Drives
Hitachi is now making a 12x CD-ROM drive which is being put into a number of new computers. Companies using this drive include Micron, Gateway, Midwest Micro.
Cost at present is about $50 higher than the 8x drive. See PC Magazine Vol 15 No 21 Page 33 for the story.
Faster Modems
Most current modems operate at 28,800 bits per second. Modems being offered on some new machines operate at 33,600 bps. The 56K bps modem is just around the corner.
An ad in PC Magazine Vol 15 No21 Page 265-268 by US Robotics. Also an article on page 9. The modem operates at 56 K when downloading to your computer, and at 33.6 K when going the other way, i.e. from your computer to the host. This depends on the host being able to send at the 56 K rate. Obviously there will be some lag in getting all the internet suppliers fitted at the new speed.
Floppy Drives
Your next floppy could be a 120Mb system. PC Magazine Vol 15 No 21 Page 37 has a story about the LS-120 standard, and several manufacturers who are using it. Compaq's DeskPro line now ships with it. The unit is 1 inch high, and can be installed as a replacement for the 3 1/2 inch floppy drive. The replacement drive currently costs $210. With the replacement you also need Floppy-Max, a plug and play ATAPI controller, that fits a standard ISA slot. It costs $49. The drive is made by OR Technology, for info 408 866 3000. The controller is made by Promise Technology, for info 408 452 0948. There is no word on the cost of the disks.
Printers
Dot matrix printers have lost their appeal to the home user. Certain specialized uses still require them, such as a need to make carbon copies. These will soon be met by industrial strength machines which will tend to be more rugged, and cost a bit more. Laser and Ink Jet printers are competing for the home and home/office market. Lasers may still be more economical unless you want colour. Ink Jet printers with colour are now being sold for very low prices. Laser colour is more expensive.
If you buy an Ink Jet machine, get a four colour unit. i.e. Three colours plus black. This will give you more flexibility when you need to buy more ink. Most machines are now of this kind, but watch it! A couple of new printers are now using a solid ink cartridge as opposed to liquid ink. This may be an advantage if the printer is not used every day, where liquid ink would tend to dry out. See PC Magazine Vol 15 No 19, the printer issue for lots of good information.
Some new printers now use what is called GDI (Graphics Device Interface). This means that a lot of the graphics processing is done in the computer by the CPU instead of in the printer. The result is a cheaper printer, but it does tend to require a more powerful computer. A fast 486 is the slowest CPU recommended. It does not seen to indicate in the literature which printers have this feature, so you will probably have to ask.
Newer parallel ports called EPP or ECP ports have a bidirectional capability which enables printers to send more information back to the computer. Pentium computers probably are so fitted, older 486 computers might not be. The newer ports permit faster processing speeds and faster data transfer speeds to the printer. Also because the printer will now be able to tell the computer about itself, the front panels of new printers are beginning to disappear.
ABOUT THE NEWSLETTER
Newsletter Articles
We are almost always in need of good articles. If anyone has something that they feel would make a good article, an interesting story to tell, or even a good meeting topic, please don't hesitate to pass it on.
Articles can be submitted in almost any format, ASCII text, AMI Pro, MS Word, Windows Write, WordStar and of course WordPerfect. How does one get an article to me? Various ways are available. You can bring it to a meeting or give me a call and upload it to me. If you are on the Chebucto FreeNet, Internet, or any type of e-mail system that has a gateway to the Internet, you can send something to me via the internet to where I work - hlfxtrad.educ.stuartce@gov.ns.ca.
It does work, that is how a number of articles in previous month's editions were received, but if you are sending a file attachment to your message, it should be UUencoded and not a mime attachment.
Newsletter Production Notes
As usual , for those who may be interested, the newsletter was formatted this month with WordPerfect for Windows 6.1 running on either a 386SX-25 or a 486DX-33 (each has 8mb of RAM). Much of the clipart used is from Novell (formerly WordPerfect)Presentations 3.0.
The original was printed at 600 dots per inch resolution on a HP Laserjet 4M. If I don't have access to this printer then we print it on an Okidata 850 at Bits and Bytes on Queen Street in Dartmouth where they allow the Society to print the originals at no charge.
The main body of the newsletter is set in 10 point Palatino with the article headings being 14 point bold. The title on the first page is ITC Zapf Chancery Medium Italic 19.2 and 16 points.
There was about the same number of copies made this month as compared with the last few months, with about 80 copies produced of which around just under 50 were mailed out. Any extra copies from the previous few months issues that I have will be brought to the next meeting for those who are new to the group or may not be in regular attendance.
I do have a complete set of all the previous newsletters and if someone wanted to look through these, let me know and I can bring them to the next meeting.
MEETING SCHEDULE - 96/97
We decide on the meeting dates for upcoming year at the last planning meeting. The dates for these are listed below:
23 February
23 March
27 April
25 May
22 June
As in previous years, the December meeting is moved to the early part of January due Christmas Eve being the fourth Sunday of the month.
The planning meetings are normally held on the second Monday (8 days) after the general meeting. They are also located at Veterans Memorial Building. Anyone is welcome to assist in the planning of future meetings or events.
Any changes to the scheduled dates will be announced where possible at the regular monthly meetings and/or in this newsletter.
