A highlight of this month's meeting will be the inaugural Ron Wilby Awards, aimed at honouring some of the stalwarts of PC Update, while at the same time stimulating contributions to the club magazine, which most members still rate as this group's greatest asset.

It would be a great privilege if we could have Ron's widow, Faye, at our monthly meeting to present the awards, which I hope throughout the life of this group will perpetuate the memory of someone whose articles constantly delighted and informed our members.

We've all seen a measurable improvement in the content of PC Update in the past year, thanks to the hard work of our editorial team, and a number of initiatives from the committee. We held workshops to assist novice writers, introduced the awards to recognise talent not just of new writers, but also of existing ones, introduced a new look for the pages, and appointed new advertising agents to bring in the revenue that had until then been steadily declining.

With all those steps, and the talent and enthusiasm of new editor, Carol Daniels, to whom we awarded our Volunteer of the Month prize in October, we've enjoyed a revitalised magazine that is also distributed by the Adelaide and Perth PC user groups, and is also being considered by our Brisbane counterparts.

As election time draws near, I've been hearing reports of renewed moves among those who have previously sought to run this club to hand the magazine over to external publishers, just as in the past we've had suggestions that the running of the group as a whole should be handed over to a group of so-called independent outside administrators - a rare species, I suggest, and no doubt a very expensive one.

I don't believe members who ponder the likely outcome of such a change in your magazine will be happy about that, and I'm certainly opposed to it. Make no mistake about it, the sort of commercial interests who are being approached about producing PC Update would inevitably change its distinctively independent voice. We would no longer be reading stories that have been judged on their ability to inform and entertain readers. Instead they would be chosen according to the need to pull advertisements. That would be a very different publication entirely, and it would entirely change the spirit of the group.

I addressed you last month in this column on the fragile nature of user groups, with the collapse of Boston Computer Society. As I write this, the international Association of PC User Groups is preparing conference sessions for its forthcoming annual meeting in November on the topic of Do or Die Planning for Your Group's Future, amid reports that another two major clubs in the US are about to fold, and many more are alarmed by shrinking membership, destructive divisions, financial problems and lack of participation.

Our prospects of surviving despite those influences have been enhanced by the willingness of some of our more senior members to join the committee. Morris Tobias has already rejoined the committee, and will stand as vice-president in the forthcoming elections. I've asked Yahya Abdul-Aziz also to stand. I believe another former committee member will also be standing, although I've as yet been unable to confirm that with him.

The new comms team has worked flat out over the past three months to dramatically upgrade our Internet service. As I write this, we have 130 modems connected, independent of administrative lines. We're still ironing some of the bugs out of a handful of modems that have been ringing out without a connection - an annoying problem - but by the time you read this, I expect that issue will have been resolved.

That means that we now have double the number of lines, and four times the bandwidth available before we began upgrading the service.

We have gone from a local cache to one that extends to connect.com and beyond, which gives us many gigabytes of fast disk cache, resulting in faster downloading of most Web pages.

We've also doubled the mail quota, and have allowed external POP access.

The new web cache server has been ordered, and will shortly be in action, indeed it may already be operating by the time this goes to press.

We have introduced and successfully trialled the PAP (Password Authentication Protocol), which makes logging on a far simpler procedure. Details are available on our MOTD (Message Of The Day) Web page.

In configuring the system, we've tried to provide a range of possibilities to counter the persistent problem of modem compatibility. A few users have reported problems connecting to the Dataplex modems on the 9690 rotary.

They will find the new 9686 4506 rotary gives them access to Netcomm modems. Those modems do, however, require PAP connections. [ Note: This number was discontinued in 1998  (SJ]

We are considering standardising on PAP across the system, so long as we can ensure that all users can make the transition.

Before the collapse of Boston Computer Society I had written another CPU, in which I reported on our moves to become far more active in representing members' interests in the political arena. Our first foray in this area has been to express our resistance on your behalf to Telstra's proposal for timed local calls.

Those members who attended the Internet seminar will have had the opportunity to sign a paper version of a petition on that topic. We have also produced an e-mail version for despatch to the minister responsible, Senator Richard Alston.

We recommend all members express their views on this topic, not just to Senator Alston, but also to their local members. We have also been working through industry bodies on this matter, and you can expect similar efforts on other appropriate issues.

I'm also representing the group on the Premier's Task Force on the Information Society, which gives us a voice in the development of IT and communications initiatives within the community.

Another matter I commend to the club is the NetDay schemes which are designed to help our schools connect to the Internet. Any member interested in assisting with the cabling of schools etc, can contact me at president@melbpc.org.au.

Reprinted from the November 1996 issue of PC Update, the magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia