 The magazine of the Melbourne PC User Group Editorial Ash Nallawalla ash@melbpc.org.au |
 |
Save Your Mailer!
If your copy of PC Update is opened for you by a secretary or by someone else, please ask them to check when your subscription expires. This fact appears on the top of your mailing label. Better still, open your own mail and give the secretary some more important work. So please get into the habit of checking the expiry date on the mailer, and make a note in your calendar to renew the subscription.
Membership Database
We are cleaning up the database, so here is another chance to advise the office of your current details. If you changed phone numbers, employers etc since you last filled out a full-page renewal form, then please fill out the form in the centre of the magazine and send it to the office.
I am pleased to note that our print run is back to 4000 copies.
Become Famous
Allen J. Browne, a regular writer for PC Update will be pleased to know that his article Getting the Most From Your Console in the October issue has been reprinted in Toggle, the magazine of the Tacoma-Seattle Area CP/M and MS-DOS Microcomputer Users Club. If a good article is reprinted by every APCUG member group magazine, the potential reader-ship is almost 200,000!
Ventura 3.0
The local magazines appear to have missed the Comdex Fall announcement of three upgrades to Xerox Ventura Publisher: Release 3.0 of the present product will be called the GEM version and will incorporate the Soft Kicker, Network Server and Professional Extension. Price in the US will be the same as that of the current version. New OS/2 and Windows 3.0 versions will also be released.
The Presentation Manager versions (OS/2 and Windows 3.0) will be different in operation to the GEM version - the four modes of operation (frame, paragraph, text and graphics) have been combined. The OS/2 version will appeal to professional users, who will need a fast 386 machine with about 6 MB RAM and a 100 MB hard disk.
Subeditors Wanted
As Peter Lazarus has left for an extended period in the US, we are looking for several subeditors. I have thanked Peter personally, but I repeat my gratitude to him on your behalf. Charles cannot handle the task alone, as his job takes him all over the place. Some articles are still awaiting subbing, so authors should be patient.
Applicants must own a modem, although we have a couple for loan if necessary. Skills required are word processing, computer literacy and English language. It is not necessary to have Ventura skills. Duties involve processing articles into a standard format (ASCII) and uploading to the BBS. Attendance at some committee meetings or media events is desirable. Please write to me or leave a note on the BBS if you are interested.
New Submission Procedure
As we will soon have several subeditors, authors may not know which person to send mail to. The new procedure is detailed in the inside front cover.
This procedure will also end those continuing, unsubstantiated com-plaints about articles not being published with no corresponding acknowledgment from the editor.
Personal Milestone
At least four of our members have completed with me a Graduate Diploma of Computing from Deakin U. I must thank my previous employers for this, because I started the course out of spite. Back in early 1986 (pre-Ventura days) I foolishly recommended the Mac as "the way to go" for desktop publishing. I was advised by a very senior officer from Canberra that "Macs were for fish-and-chips shops." Another officer remarked that our department's submission had been prepared by a "gifted amateur," even though our final request was based around a Unix workstation. As several of those `experts' had a graduate diploma in computing, I felt that nothing less would give me their wisdom. I'll refrain from listing the tragedy of errors that followed, but my boss and I eventually resigned in disgust.
Well, the diploma hasn't changed my original vision. It taught me quite a few things about computing, but zilch about DTP. I don't feel smug just sad, and still an amateur.
Reprinted from the Jan-Feb 1990 issue of PC Update, the magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia
