Williamsport Area Computer Club
Newsletter / Meeting Minutes
March 1999
Our next meeting will be held on Tuesday, April 13, 1999, at 7 PM, in Room B-309 of the Lycoming College Academic Center. We will discuss online income tax tips. All meetings are free and open to the public.
Our last meeting was called to order at 7:10 PM on March 9, 1999 by President John Yarosz. The minutes of February's meeting were approved. Dan reported that we have a balance of $502.69. Two people paid yearly dues last month.
Committee Reports:
Advertising / Awareness / Public Relations / Home Page:
- Kathy has updated the home page.
- It was suggested that we increase our newspaper advertising efforts.
- Kathy also suggested printing new posters for the local computer stores and approaching any stores missed last time. Several people volunteered to distribute materials. Jim has not had time yet to obtain suitable stock for printing the posters, and is having streaking problems with his Deskjet.
- Jim will again post notices of our meetings on the wacc-chat mailing list the Sunday before the meeting date.
- Kathy asked Jim to compile a database of contact information for our members from the monthly sign-in sheets. This has not been done to date due to lack of free time, but should be done in the course of the next month.
- Kathy suggested donating a copy of SimCity to the Williamsport City Council as a promotional opportunity.
- We should contact computer class instructors at the high school to promote our meetings to their students.
- Please note, our business cards need to be updated to reflect the new 570 area code.
Computer Recycling (finding charitable uses for old computers):
- Robbie reports that we still have five or six complete systems ready to go.
- Jim relayed a request from Camp Kydnie for a machine to do multimedia presentations. He will suggest that they contact a local computer vendor about borrowing a system because ours are older.
- Muriel has several individuals in mind who could use computers for educational purposes, but they want Internet-ready systems. Our systems would be capable of accessing the net if someone bought inexpensive modems, but modern web browsing software would not run efficiently on them.
- There may be Y2K problems with the BIOS in our older systems, but this shouldn't be a problem for casual users. Replacing all the BIOS chips wouldn't be economical.
- Lou received an offer of donated systems from a person in Indiana. We will probably decline because of the shipping costs.
Computer Show:
- We still need volunteers for the Computer Show Committee. Members so far are John, Lou, and Kathy. It is also not too early to commit to staffing the show itself.
- Before we can choose a definite date, we need to have a definite location. Kathy talked to Bill Nichols at the bus company about the possibility of holding the show in their new parking deck which should be opening around our target time in early Fall. It would be excellent publicity to hold the show in conjunction with their Grand Opening. We would need to determine, however, whether adequate electrical outlets for our vendors would be available.
- Another suggestion for an economical location is the South Williamsport Legion.
- It was suggested to make the Y2K Problem a theme of our show.
- Another promotional idea is to hold a car wash at the show location.
Computer Help:
- Norm got rid of his virus problem. (See last month's minutes.)
- A member is in need of a Wordstar manual or command summary sheet. Contact us if you can help.
Program:
This month was one of our Beginner's Nights, when we open the floor for general computer discussion instead of having a guest speaker or other planned program. On this particular occasion we began by discussing the Happy99.exe virus and how to avoid it. John noted that popular free email provider hotmail.com now offers virus scanning for attached files.
The main topic was Y2K Problem testing software; specifically, is it worth the price? Several members suggested that it would be better to save your money and test your system yourself by adjusting the clock temporarily, because any commercial software package would be targeted at only a specific set of applications.
Home Page | http://www.sunlink.net/wacc |
Chat Room | http://www.talkcity.com/chat.cgi?room=Williamsport, Tuesday and Sunday evenings |
Secretary | Jim Shaffer, Jr., jshaffer@csrlink.net |
Mailing List | Send a message to wacc-chat-request@sunlink.net with the word subscribe in the subject |