News

Neil Muller The February meeting opened with George Skarbek conducting his usual Q&A segment. Q: I’ve lost the Google Play icon on my Android phone. Is there any way to get it back? A: I haven’t tried this but I’d search Google Play Store and you’ll get to it from there. I’m not sure how...Continue reading→

Graham Swanston These procedures seem to work well on a 64 bit Windows 10 desktop. Do regular backups. Disaster or an accident is always a possibility. Backup onto external drives, which are stored away from the computer. Little time is wasted even if planned to be done daily. There are several free backup programs such...Continue reading→

Wallace Boone Law, University of Adelaide On the night of January 9 2020, my wife and I secured our Kangaroo Island home and anxiously monitored the South Australian Country Fire Service (CFS) website for bushfire advice. After many horrific weeks of bushfires, the winds had again shifted, and the fire front began a slow, nightmarish...Continue reading→

Geoff Cumming, La Trobe University Many other key arrangements have been tried. Some are claimed to be easier to learn or faster to use than QWERTY. But none has proved good enough to beat QWERTY. Flickr/Jeff Eaton, CC BY-SA Curious Kids is a series for children. If you have a question you’d like an expert...Continue reading→

Dick Maybach, Member, Brookdale Computer User Group, NJ Modern personal computers are complex assemblies of hardware and software. A problem in a single component can disable the entire system, and sometimes the reason isn’t evident. Often, you can boot the ailing PC from a rescue system on a bootable USB memory stick to find the...Continue reading→

Dennis Parsons Computer Help With the recent official demise of Windows 7 I decided to conduct another of my “quick and dirty” Yammer polls to discover the state of play for members – had they already embraced the inevitable and moved to Windows 10, abandoned Windows entirely, or were they clinging desperately to Windows 7?...Continue reading→

Tim McQueen Technically Wrong – sexist apps, biased algorithms and other threats of toxic tech. Sara Wachter-Boettcher, Norton 2017 232 pp There have been several analyses of the current state of computing technology reviewed in PC Update over the last year or two. The author of this book, which is now a couple of years...Continue reading→

The December Monthly Meeting will be held Wednesday February 5 at 7pm. Guest Speaker: Dr Alasdair McAndrew Our guest speaker is Dr Alasdair McAndrew. His topic is “Modelling complexity with very simple rules”.  This brief talk will demonstrate how to start with a few letters, apply some simple rules repeatedly, to produce graphics of stunning...Continue reading→

David Hatton The first meeting for the year was opened with the now traditional Linux News which featured a video reviewing the rise of Open Source software in the computing landscape. The video featured comments by several “heavy hitters” of the Open Source world, for example Nat Freidman (CEO GitHub), Chris Wright (CEO Red Hat),...Continue reading→