Williamsport Area Computer Club

Newsletter & Meeting Minutes

February 2001

Our next meeting will be held on Tuesday, March 13, at 7 PM, in the Winters Room of the James V. Brown Library, 19 East Fourth Street, Williamsport.

We will be having a "Show & Tell" session. Attendees are encouraged to bring their favorite useful tips and tricks.

Our last meeting was opened at 7:07 PM Tuesday, February 13 2001 by Vice-President Kathy Kolb. The minutes of the January 2000 meeting were approved.

Treasurer's Report:

• Balance at the end of November 2000: $616.21.
• Income since November: $21.21 as follows:
  • $15.00 dues and donations
  • $6.21 interest
• Expenses since November: $0.00
• Balance as of February 12, 2001: $637.42
• Several members paid yearly or partial dues at this meeting.

Old Business:

• None.

New Business:

• Jim forwarded an offer to donate equipment to Robbie.
• Notice was received that the JVB Library is starting a new service to help local nonprofit organizations to locate and acquire grants. We have provided them with our contact information, but we are unsure whether they will become involved with groups which aren't registered nonprofits.

Discussion & News:

• Alltel is going to install ADSL service in Muncy, Montgomery, and Watsontown this spring.
• Uplink/Sunlink/OneMain will be completing the switchover to Earthlink in February and have announced that there will be no changes in addresses for current subscribers.
• The Danville Apple Pi users group meets the same night as WACC.
• John is impressed with the Xbox, a new game machine from Microsoft.
• Kathy reported that the Industrial Modernization Center is going to bring Microsoft Technet Briefings to Williamsport. These conferences are oriented toward business users.
• Pennsylvania is once again having a tax-free week for purchasers of computer systems, February 18-25.
• The James V. Brown Library has two Aubrey terminals for searching the card catalog.
• Kathy is amazed at the growth of the cell phone market.

Program:

Geoff demonstrated VMware, a package that allows the user to run two operating systems on one computer simultaneously. He uses it on his Linux systems when he needs to run Windows. It emulates a complete computer, including BIOS, so that the "guest" operating system and its programs need no modification. It also provides a simulated network interface on both the real and the virtual computer to allow communicattion between the two systems. The guest OS can run full-screen or in a window, and there was no noticeable performance degradation of the host or guest systems under a light load.