The magazine of the Melbourne PC User Group Pres Said John Beck

John Drake and I attended the October meeting of the Ballarat Regional SIG. There were over thirty people present, and the photographer from the local paper was present for the early part of the meeting, and took several photographs. Four new members were signed up. Many availed themselves of PD Software and blank disks, and there is promise of a few articles for PC Update. Submissions of articles and reviews is a good idea for New Year resolutions. 

At last I have been cajoled into accessing the BBS. The long standing reluctance to use it has been overcome by the need to have articles ready for publication on time. Australia Post does not always deliver as speedily as the try to make us believe, and that causes difficulty for the PC Update team. This column is always written after the monthly meeting, as there may be items that arise which call for comment or passing to a wider audience than attend the meetings. Probably I will only access the Board once or twice a month when uploading, in which case I will look at the message area for interesting snippets. Incidentally, I used Telemate (disk MELB 1405) as the communications program, and it is very simple and quick to set up. It also has Zmodem contained within the program. Colin our sysop recommended this program, as he is impressed by it (and probably thinks it is a good one for non-comms people). 

The group has been offered a PC for use in the office by Alloy Computer Products. It will be an 80286 machine with either a 40 or 80 Mbyte voice coil disk, a 1.2 MB and a 1.44 MB floppy disk drive, either 4 or 8 MB of extended memory, a VGA screen and multi-user multitasking software. This will enable David Sloan to carry on computing (sounds like a good title for a movie) even when the PC Update mailing labels are being printed, which takes about 2 hours. Our thanks go to Robert Kopp the Managing Director of Alloy for this generous assistance.

A motion is being proposed at the Annual General Meeting to increase the size of the committee. A committee of nine serving a membership between 3500 and 4000 is too small. Each year the workload increases and the current incumbents will tend to become less enthusiastic as a result. Several members have expressed a willingness to work for the advancement of the Group, and if they are officially resident on committee, that enthusiasm will be sustained. The alternative to keeping the status quo, will be to increase the paid staff. At present the administrative costs are higher than the membership fees warrant. However the committee are addressing this aspect of our operation and will allocate expenses to the facet of activities which generate it, rather than class it as an expenditure overhead. It is hoped that the members will approve the motion. 

The Administration Officer advises that a lot of members have not renewed their membership. If the reason is memory jogging, please read the address label of PC Update which states MEMBER UNTIL (date), to advise when subscriptions are due. If your magazine is opened/circulated by a secretary or someone other than yourself, ask them to advise when subs are due. If you do not receive the magazine a couple of weeks after the normal time, become suspicious. 

If you are waiting for registered shareware programs ordered through the Group, we have been advised that PC-File dB and PC-Write are delayed due to reprinting. It appears that in the case of PC-Write the large number of orders is far greater than was expected, and has caused a holdup. We have been advised that the manuals are in the country and are held up by customs. 

Anyone who did not take opportunity of seeing the demonstration of Quattro Pro, or could not attend because of geographical reasons, missed an excellent presentation of a very comprehensive spreadsheet program. The graphics are as good as many purely graphics programs, and the formatting of reports for printouts is excellent. When you consider all these functions are available without having to exit the program, it is very convenient to use. 

Reprinted from the December 1989 issue of PC Update, the magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia

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