News

David Stonier-Gibson This may be the last PC Update you read before submitting your proxy votes for the November AGM. That meeting will be online only, so votes will have to be done by email or snail mail. You should already have received an email notice about all that a week or two ago. If...Continue reading→

  DOTW is a lighthearted look at some of the sillier events of the week. Don’t take it too seriously and do pop over to Chit Chat and vote each week. Thanks to those of our members who occasionally ‘feature’ for taking the gentle humour in such good part. August winners were: • Former urban...Continue reading→

George Wright (with maths advice from Ann Lawry) Humans can identify complex relationships with each other and their habitats. I’ve come to think that the ancient Greeks who invented numerical theories were actually laying the groundwork for a study into the context of how we interact. They identified Prime Numbers which were divisible only by...Continue reading→

Harry Lewis In his intriguing article ‘Elephobia’ in last month’s PC Update we were transported to Planet Wright where George (of that ilk) introduced us to folk with interesting traditions regarding backup. The standout for me was the practice of backing up to the same hard drive as the one that holds the data you...Continue reading→

David Stonier-Gibson The Committee has decided not to accept any new subscriptions for the printed version of PC Update. Here’s why: The large, fancy colour laser printer we use in the office is costing us well over $6,000 p.a. on a lease/rental agreement. We tried a couple of years ago to get out of that...Continue reading→

Dennis Parsons NBN Questions and Comments Steve posed the question of whether it was possible to use the 4G fall-back capability of a Telstra Smart Modem to tide his father over for a few days while broadband was connected during his move into a retirement village. The modem was currently in use by his father...Continue reading→

Neil Muller Host Paul Woolard opened the July meeting, again with all members back at home joining the meeting via Zoom. The first presentation of the night was George Skarbek presenting his normal Q&A segment. Q. I have a question on Dropbox. I installed Dropbox a number of years ago to send large files to...Continue reading→

George Wright My wife loves an Apple. I like apples too, but I like eating mine. My computer is Android. Hers backs-up automatically, several times a day. I’ve pointed out that backing-up to a drive in the same computer is not safe. She disagrees. Mine backs-up to a hard drive in a docking station on...Continue reading→

Katharine Kemp, UNSW I spent last week studying the 26,000 words of privacy terms published by eBay and Amazon, trying to extract some straight answers, and comparing them to the privacy terms of other online marketplaces such as Kogan and Catch (my full summary is here). There’s bad news and good news. The bad news...Continue reading→