The Lenawee PC Users Group met Monday, February 22nd, at 6:00 PM, in the Lenawee County Library meeting room. Sixteen members were present. It was a snowy night and our meeting was a week late because the Library is closed on President's Day. Our meetings are on the third Monday of the month starting at 6:00 P.M. and ending at 7:45 P.M.
Even though our program was titled "Show & Tell" we spent the bulk of the meeting time doing Questions & Answers. This fact tells us that we have been neglecting the Q & A part of our club activities. When 16 people come out to the meeting on a snowy night to present their questions to the group, it means that we need to make our Q & A portion the program a bit more prominent. We will make this change slowly because we have programs already planned for this year, but the point has not been lost!
Among the many questions, there was a good question about Bluetooth technology. We see it mentioned as a feature in a lot of different equipment advertisements, but it seldomly explained. Bob explained that it basically uses radio transmission and reception to replace cables. A more detailed answer can be found here.
There were questions about router security in wireless networks (WAP, WEP) encryption.
What is the role of I.P. addresses when connecting to networks?
What are the limitations of cell phones--why do some work well in a given location and others perform poorly? Think about line-of-sight transmission between your location and the cell tower. Also think about the low power and poor antennas that most cell phones have for aesthetic reasons and battery life between charges.
When downloading free antivirus programs, use CNET, since the original software site usually buries their free programs in places that take 15 minutes to find.
We discussed methods of digitizing 78 RPM records so that they can be listened to using CDs.
We talked about the need to uninstall all but one antivirus program on your computer. Same with firewalls.
We talked about ReadyBoost, a feature of Vista and Windows7. Basically, it uses a thumb drive (flash drive) to speed up an old machine that is lacking in memory. If the machine has a gigabyte of memory or more, there will be no advantage to ReadyBoost. In fact, memory sticks are about the same cost as thumb drives, and they are faster. You might as well get more memory into the machine. There are work-arounds for using a substitute for ReadyBoost in XP machines, again with the came caveat --if you need more memory, buy more memory! You will be much happier. Hey, I had to research this one!
We talked about how important it is to have the latest drivers to talk to your devices that use drivers. Go to the manufacturer's website and download them. They usually come complete with an installer, so it just takes a mouse click to get them installed. Your computer manufacturer will also have new drivers on their website.
Finally we talked about the latest version of Picasa to handle simple digital photo tasks, from finding photos on your hard drive, to editing them, to uploading them to a website. We could use a whole program devoted to this software, now that it has become mature, with no major bugs.
Anyone with an interest in learning more about computers is invited to attend LPCUG meetings. We usually have a main program followed by a question and answer session. If you forget the URL for the club website, simply Google "Lenawee PC" and it will usually be the first or second return.
Come join the fun!
