With November being Annual General Meeting time, this month PC Update carries the details, and being time critical with a minimum notice period it has an earlier cut off. It's end of September as I write this, with plenty of challenging issues.

Management Committee Elections

With nominations just closed, there are single nominations for the four Executive positions and nine nominations for the eight general committee positions. We will therefore need an election to select the eight, and I invite everyone to exercise their voting rights to decide the outcome. There are three methods available: be at the AGM on Wednesday 1 November, or by postal vote, or by appointing a proxy to vote for you, using the proxy form available at the office. Should you not know someone attending the AGM you can appoint the Chairman as your proxy, and still be able to exercise your rights.

Having served for three years as President, I am now standing down — and as our current Vice President, Lyn Goodall is the only nominee for President — she will take over from me at the end of the AGM. I take this opportunity to thank those who have supported me during the last three years, and now look forward to a lesser role as Treasurer of our great group.

PC Experience

Across our membership, we have a wide variety of experience; some are just beginning on their PC, which is possibly even a hand down (up?) from their children, while others are real experts. This breadth presents some interesting challenges for us, as to how to best cater for these diverse needs. Applying our "Users helping Users" motto, I have two suggestions.

For "beginners", there is a great introductory tutorial in the. New Members section of the Monthly Disk. As well as that we have a number of groups that provide initial help, such as the Beginners East which meets on the 4th Sunday, and New Users East which meets on the 2nd Tuesday, and various formal Training Courses, such as Computers for Beginners with XP. Discussion on a 1-on-1 basis at our Workshops is also an excellent learning opportunity.

For "experts", there are opportunities to share your expertise at the Sunday workshops. These are held on 1st Sunday at Kilsyth, 2nd Sunday in Mount Waverley and 4th Sunday at Chadstone. Come along and help those who have brought their questions, problems and/or equipment to these sessions.

Animation Group

Following queries from members with an interest in Computer Animation, we have recently started a subgroup covering this topic, where tools such as Flash and Anime Studio are used. They meet on the 3rd Monday evenings at Chadstone and extend a welcome to people thinking of applying their PCs to this innovative form of entertainment.

PC Data Backup

We constantly remind members to backup their critical data but recently I listened to a serious and sad tale of woe. When trying. to create an extra partition on a hard disk, this person had inadvertently formatted the wrong partition — and had no backup of some key family data. That led to discussion at the. Beginners EAST group about what problems might occur and what type of backups would be needed.

For accidental deletion or corruption of a single file, a second copy via a Copy/Paste or Save As command is a good start,: but to protect from disk corruption, or inadvertent format, saving to a separate device such as an USB-key, CD or DVD or external Hard Drive is a good idea. An added advantage of the separate device is that it can be stored offsite, away from your home; this provides a safe backup in the advent of a PC being lost or stolen or destroyed in a house fire. One freeware program that I found indispensable for synchronising these backups is Clone Directory; Ian Rankin has included it on the November Monthly Disc.

I cannot over-emphasise the need for "safe computing". We all need to be sure we have appropriate data backups, up-to-date Virus and Spyware checking and a firewall to protect both data and hardware investments.

Monthly Meeting

The November meeting begins at 7.00 pm sharp, Lecture Theatre 1, Deakin University, Burwood.

We will have the usual monthly presentations, this month covering "VoIP Over the Power Grid" followed by "How to Build a Web Site and Stay Sane" by one of this country's top Internet developers, Jonathan Oxer. It will be an interesting night, don't miss it.

AGM

Tables will be set up early so that you can vote as you arrive on the night. The AGM begins at 7.30 pm, will be adjourned while votes are counted and will resume later in the evening when results are known.

The WAFFLE session following the meeting for those seeking dinner sustenance will again be at Dolci's, Pizza & Pasta Bistro, 173 Middleborough Rd, Box Hill. I'll see you there! By then as "Past President".

Reprinted from the November 2006 issue of PC Update, the magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia

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