Internet Update

The promised improvements are coming - they have taken substantially longer than expected as Telstra is only now completing the installation of its new equipment at our premises - as this column goes to press.

The connect time should be three hours per day over the peak period (4.00 pm until 2.00 am) or at least six hours per day if you connect before 10.00 am.

By the time this issue of PC Update is printed, the new Web home page facility should be available to all members who use the group's Internet service. As an added bonus we will provide each user with a folder named Private. This folder will not be accessible via a browser, only via FTP (File Transfer Protocol) and it can be used, among other things, to store off-site backups. All Internet subscribers will be given 10 MB of disk space. See http://www.melbpc.org.au/report/mmeetingnews.htm for details on how to obtain and use the FTP program to upload your home page files onto the server. Further information will be posted on http://hww.melbpc.org.au/motd/ as it becomes available.

All Melb PC members will soon be notified on how to apply for their free Internet e-mail and newsgroup account. Members who have an existing Melb PC Internet account will be able to have two e-mail addresses. See http://www.melbpc.org.au/faq/mailbags.htm and then click on "Additional Identity" for help on methods of configuring your e-mail readers to use the second account.

Apart from the installation of the Telstra lines, all the other work has been carried out by a small group of volunteers putting in a lot of effort in their own time, mainly at nights and weekends, in order to provide this service.

IT Expo

The Melbourne IT Expo was held in early September. This is no longer a PC show as computers have become a commodity item and no computer manufacturer was there. The IT Expo was aimed at the corporate sector with telecommunication, recruitment and software solutions being prominent. There were numerous half-hour lectures given throughout the show.

For the home user there were sufficient vendors present to make the visit worthwhile if you had a specific reason for attending. I went for a number of reasons, the main one being to observe the trends in the various computer industry sectors. The seminars and exhibitors are a good source of information on many areas such as trends in fibre cable and bandwidth issues. Another reason was to replace my very old UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply). At the show there were four UPS vendors and this enabled me to compare features such as the number of protected outlets, monitoring software and naturally, the price. Thanks to show specials there was over 50% variation in price for very similar units and I was able to purchase a unit for a good price.

Essendon Daytime SIG

If you live in the Essendon area then watch the Web page http://www.melbpc.org.au/sig/ for news. This page lists the location of the various SIGs and it is updated regularly.

In some ways the term Special Interest Group is becoming a little inaccurate. Many of the SIG names now refer to the geographical area, where members meet locally to avoid travelling longer distances to other meetings.

The inaugural meeting of the daytime session of the North East group which meets in Ivanhoe started with not much publicity and the hall was not over-crowded. Fortunately there is still plenty of room available if members wish to attend future meetings. For full details see that above Web page.

Next Monthly Meeting

Date: Wednesday 3 October 
Venue: Pharmacy College, Parkville. 

Due to many requests there will be an extended session on Burning CDs by Kelvin Cording. This will cover creating Data, Audio and MP3 CDs as well as "Buffer Underrun" problems, multi-session recording and re-recording.

There will be also be a demonstration showing DivX Video Compression Technology that can shrink digital video to sizes small enough to put a DVD onto a CD or be transported over the Internet, while maintaining high visual quality.

The meeting will also have our Random Access session (your chance to ask the experts), the regular giveaways and raffle with usually several thousand dollars worth of prizes, plus shareware library sales, etc.

For a map of how to find the Pharmacy College see page 63 or Melway 29B12. Hope to see you there.

Reprinted from the October 2001 issue of PC Update, the magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia

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