 The magazine of the Melbourne PC User Group Editorial Ash Nallawalla ash@melbpc.org.au |
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Arrivederci
It is almost the end of the editorial road for me, as I am not standing for Committee this time. Technically I will still be the editor until the AGM but as the December issue has to be produced while I am at Comdex I have asked Peter Smith to write the December editorial. This is the last editorial that I will write in this magazine for some time.
There are many reasons for leaving but the main one is that I want to do a bit of serious hobbyist computing. You might think that is strange, but during the past two and a half years I have been subjected to information overload, and the time I might have spent writing little programs or learning a new language was spent on this magazine.
A perfect example is the DOS Doctor column last month. If I had bothered to read it properly, I would have saved a lot of time and frustration trying to remove DOS 4.01 from a machine and replace it with 3.3. I see so many magazines that I often cannot remember where I saw a particular item.
I have offered to help PC Update in some small ways, such as continuing to run the BBS and maintaining links with other APCUG groups and with suppliers of review software. In the not-too-long run I must depart the scene completely and take the "new blood" advice that I gave others last year.
I am helping the Western Suburbs Microbee User Group (I didn't know that there are at least four PC groups in Melbourne) to undergo a facelift and become a special-purpose PC user group catering to intermediate and advanced users only. Many of its members are radio amateurs and electronics hobbyists but that could change. This is another reason I cannot retain such a high profile in Melb PC.
I will permit myself a shade of modesty and say that PC Update is perhaps the second most attractive user group magazine that I have seen, but I leave it to my successor to make it number one. (That is a challenge to my APCUG colleagues at the Capital PC UG, Washington DC, whose magazine The Capital Monitor is worthy of emulation). I have not seen the magazines of other super-groups - Houston, Chicago etc so we might have some way to go yet. All this is healthy, friendly competition.
The credit for the content of PC Update goes entirely to the authors out there. Many of your articles are also published in other Australian and overseas magazines. Thank you for supporting this magazine and please continue to do so. I apologise to some people whom I have upset in the past some just caught me on a bad day and others asked for it. Thank you all - it has been an interesting experience.
PC Purchase Update
Last month I said I helped three people buy PCs that appeared to be good deals. All three PCs are exhibiting intermittent "hard disk controller failure" messages. The dealer told a customer to "open the lid and wiggle the controller card" - that's the sort of thing I'd try myself, but hardly the advice to give a customer. I helped the customer take it back to the shop, where we found four other customers with the same problem! The dealer got rid of us as quickly as he could, saying that he'd like to do a "burn-in" test over the weekend, and that we could collect it on Monday. The burn-in must have been fierce, because the AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS files had been replaced by FILEOOOO.CHK and FILEOOO1.CHK! The customer came to me for help, and as she had used the Mirror program from PC Tools Deluxe, we undid the damage within minutes. I wonder if other members out there have similar horror stories to tell.
Reprinted from the November 1990 issue of PC Update, the magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia
