The magazine of the Melbourne PC User Group President's Page John Drake

0ur March meeting at Clunies Ross House was devoted to communications and showed that a lot of our members were keenly interested in the topic but very nervous about actually installing a modem and diving down the telephone line. 

So we are going to hold a communications workshop during May to give everybody a hands-on opportunity to access a bulletin board, with expert backstopping from resident communications experts like George Skarbek, Colin Macauley and Doug Brooke. 

We will have a computer loaded with three or four different communications packages, a modem linked up to a telephone line and several bulletin boards ready to take your calls. If you're puzzled about your own modem, bring it along and we'll hook it up and see how it works. 

If you've got a different comms program (we'll probably provide at least Telemate, Telix, Boyan and Procomm) bring it along on 360 kB diskette and we'll try that, too. This offer to try your own gear and program will, of course, depend on the number of members who turn up and the time we have at our disposal. But we will plan on a session running up to about two hours and a lot of members ought to be able to access a lot of bulletin boards in that time (no file downloading). 

But a word of warning. We are aware that quite a number of non-members come to some of our ordinary monthly meetings to look us over. In moderation, they are welcome and many of them like what they see and join up. This communications workshop is for members only and there will be no facility for joining up at the meeting. So if you want to be in it, bring your membership card or some other proof of membership we will be asking for it and if you haven't got it, well were sorry. 

The meeting will be held at Clunies Ross House at 6:00 P.M. on Wednesday, 15th May.

The May Meeting

The theme of the May meeting will be Windows add-ons. These seem to be proliferating like rabbits and we will by to pick some of the best. I can't say what they will be at the moment. The vagaries of publishing deadlines mean that I am writing this column immediately after the April meeting and I'm frankly a bit overcome by the amount of material from which we must choose. 

I recently expressed curiosity about some of our members who seem to access the BBS only to download files. I had a couple of messages (appropriately enough on the Bulletin Board) from members who admitted to downloading large numbers of files. However, they said they were not collecting them as trophies but sifted through what they had downloaded and threw away what they couldn't use. Andrew Phillips said he had downloaded megabytes of files but retained only two programs.

And the topic was taken up by three correspondents to this magazine who also contributed some interesting ideas to the debate. 

Obviously there are some very good reasons to download software by the truckload but I still think the message areas, and particularly the technical conference message areas, are visited much less than they deserve. 

But I have to agree with Laurie Dixon, in Ballarat, that too many messages are empty salutations (Hi Laurie - how are you?).

The Editor's Disk Runneth Over 

Another interesting question I would like to see discussed in these columns is how much material you should have on your hard disk. Doug Brooke wrote last month that his 20 MB hard disk usually had about 10 MB free. I'm in Doug's class. My 20 MB disk carries a DTP and a word processing program, a spreadsheet and a data management program, Norton utilities, PC Tools, a communications program (Telemate - what else?) and a handy little collection of utilities. And even with a few permanent data files that I need to access frequently, I usually have 7 or 8 MB free. But our gallant editor says (or is it boasts? or confesses?) that his hard disk is loaded with more than 140 MB of matter. What can he have on it? - l wouldn't like to ask him. But one thing I'm sure of: He may live out past Croydon but the day his hard disk crashes, the windows will rattle in Werribee.

All you wanted to know 

Doug Brooke has recently updated what I think is thoroughly misnamed "The New Members Disk". I think it is misnamed because it is also full of information for the old member and all of us can learn from it. It is a collection of files describing all of the activities of the Group, its history and how it is managed. There are the statutes and an up-to-date report on its finances; there are files on all of our special interest groups and just what they do and two files about the Bulletin Board and how to access it. This disk is given free to new members and if you are an old member and you missed it you can buy it for $2. It is brilliantly simple to access. Put it in your floppy drive, nominate the drive and enter the instruction "GO". From there you can choose all the files from a simple menu. Compulsory browsing for anybody who wonder; where all that membership money is spent.

After the Meeting don't know how many of our members who attend the monthly meetings at Clunies Ross know that there is a pleasant bar and bistro upstairs - the Sciences Club - where you can get a drink after the meeting, or a good meal for $10 or $12.

Reprinted from the May 1991 issue of PC Update, the magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia

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