February 2008
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This Months General Meeting Presentation '
Troubleshooting your Computer' This Months Featured Articles South Sound Adobe User’s Group Please check our website for current topics: www.gpsmmug.org Meetings are free and are software specific not platform specific. (Good will offerings are accepted.) KaCe Whitacre Windermere Realty, 10009 SW 59th, Lakewood, WA. Use side entrance
-- main offices are closed. Moving on to Vista – Part 5 As most PC users know, after you've used your computer for a while the data on your hard drive starts to get fragmented. This affects your computer's performance and causes programs to run more slowly. With Windows XP, as well as all previous versions, you had three ways to defragment you hard drive. You could do it manually (click Start --> All Programs --> Accessories --> System Tools --> Disk Defragmenter). You could do it manually (click Start --> All Programs --> Accessories --> System Tools --> Disk Cleanup). Or you could create a scheduled task to do it for you automatically ( click Start --> All Programs --> Accessories --> System Tools --> Scheduled Task and the click on “Add Scheduled Task" and follow the wizard instructions). Windows Vista automatically defragments your hard disk for you. Not only does it defragment you hard disk, but it does it in background mode. This allows you to do other things on your computer while the defragmenting program is being run. The down side of this is that programs will run more slowly while the defragmenting process goes on. On the other hand, because automatic defragmenting runs fairly frequently it should not take too long to complete. Of course you still have the ability to defragment manually. Right-click on the "Computer" icon on your desktop and select properties. In the window that appears, click on "Performance" (lower left corner), then "Advanced Tools" (upper left corner) and then "Open Disk Defragmenter". Notice that at this point you have the options of scheduling when the defragmenter runs or running it immediately. At this point Vista will defragment ALL hard drives that it finds on your computer. Previous versions of Windows allow you to select which hard drive to defragment. Windows Vista SP1 (when it is released) is supposed to add this capability to Windows Vista. While we are on the topic of computer performance, lets go back to the "Performance Information and Tools" screen (right click on the "Computer" icon, click on "Properties" and click on "Performance" in the lower left corner of the screen). Note that this screen provides you with some general information about the performance of your computer. It numerically scores processor, memory, graphics and hard disk performance. You'll find links on this screen that explain what the numbers mean and how to improve your computer's performance. Many of the suggestions do not require changes to you hardware but recommend changes to the programs that you run or do not run. On the upper left side of the "Performance Information and Tools" screen you'll find a number of tasks which control how your computer performs. If your PC is a laptop, click on "Adjust power settings". On the new screen, examine the "Power Plan". The decision you make here effects the length of time that your laptop will run between battery charges and its speed. Most laptops come configured to balance performance against battery endurance. There are many options available. If you normally operate your laptop plugged into an external power source, you'll want to change the setting to maximize performance. Before we leave the “Performance Information and Tools” screen, you should also look at “Adjust visual effects” (in the upper left corner under “Tasks”). When you click on this item you'll see three tabs. We are only going to address the “Visual effects” tab for now. The first button, “Let Windows choose what is best for my computer” is probably selected. This gives you the maximized “eye candy” on your computer but may have a negative effect on performance when resource intensive programs are running (i.e. Video editors). Notice that you have additional choices to “Adjust for best appearance” and “Adjust for best performance” as well as a “Custom” button that lets you choose what features to turn on and off. If your computer performance appears to be sluggish, try selecting “Best performance”. APCUG Conference Report We arrived Thursday, too late to register, but we were still allowed to attend the evening social. This was held at the top of the hotel with a spectacular view of Las Vegas. They said that that usually when you attend a conference you don’t have a chance to see any shows. This year they arranged a show for us. We saw a magician. He wasn’t half bad. Saturday morning we had a continental breakfast sponsored by a company called Pinnacle, after which they talked about their latest programs and all the things they can do. This is a program for making and editing movies. Wow! The things that can be done are simply amazing. Upon leaving, everyone there received a copy of their program Studio Ultimate version11. Over the next few months we will have two copies for review. Following breakfast, we went to our discussion groups. I chose “How to Increase Membership, Interest and Speakers in your user group”. Following that, I chose a group “Creating a Podcast and Remixing Music with Acoustica.” After that, we went to lunch. Lunch was provided by APCUG, and we had a Keynote speaker, Dwight Silverman. He spoke about “Running Windows on your Mac”. We received two copies of his book (signed) and will have them as door prizes at a later date. The floor was then opened for a question and answer session with the vendors. Our time was really filled. Next we had a break to get dinner on our own. After dinner, we had the vendor fair. This is an opportunity to talk individually with the vendor. This is where the vendors donate their products and there is a big raffle. Bill was quite lucky, and won twice. (More door prizes). That was Friday, and Saturday was similar. I’ll tell about that in next month’s issue. Thanks for the opportunity . Maggie’s Mailbox: Have a question: When I send e-mails with pictures (not just photos), Janet gets them with a blank and a red "X" in the corner. Why is this. Thanks for your help. Hi Gallivanting Lady, Glad you're home. You could stay for awhile. Your message had great timing! I read it, then finished reading the rest of my messages before coming back to answer you. One of the messages I received had about 15 little red boxes with Xs in them! There are two reasons a person will get a message with no pictures or graphics. Because Janet is the only person telling you this, the problem is at her end. I will address this one first. The first reason is because a person will havewrong setting. Have her go to Tools/Options. Click on the Security tab. About in the middle of the window is Download Images. The box directly under that (Block images and other external content in HTML e-mail) should not be checked. Uncheck if necessary. Click on Apply, then OK. That was easy, now you're done. The second reason is the sender's fault. Open up OE and go to Tools/ Options/ Send tab. Under the "Mail Sending Format," make sure HTML is selected and then click on the HTML Settings button. In there, make sure the "Send pictures with messages" box is checked. That should solve your e-mail issues. I noticed when I received your message it was in Plain Text. You can change that for each message if you want to keep the plain text setting for security reasons. (The missing pictures are blocked by Outlook Express as a security feature to prevent you from downloading pictures and other content (like viruses) from the email server. Just don't open messages from unknown or suspicious sources. Also, make sure that your anti-virus and anti-spyware definitions are up-to-date and run those programs regularly!) OK, I'm off my soap box now, back to problem solving.:-) When you start composing your message, go to Format/ and click on Rich Text (HTML). When you click on the Send button, if a requester box comes up telling you your picture can't be found, click on the Cancel button and go back to the graphic. Right Click on it, and go to the Properties. Browse to where it is Saved, click on it, then OK. If the graphic is from a message you had received, go back to the original message, right click on each graphic, go down to the Save Picture As... Give it a better name than 17d45tr3956hn443.jpg :-) Go back to your message, right click on the picture again, going to the Properties. Browse to where you had Saved it, then OK. I'm fairly sure Janet's problem is the first solution I gave though. Maggie Raincoast 2008 Hi, Many emails have been sent to the officers in the Region 12 (WashingtonOregon specifically) groups to see if anyone is interested in helping put on a 2008 Raincoast conference. Neither Clint Tinsley (your region's advisor), Marilynn (the person trying to put the conference together (she's with the NW Apple Pickers group) nor I have heard back from anyone. I'd appreciate your answering the below questions so I can see if there is any interest anywhere to have another Raincoast conference and, if not, why not. I'm the co-chair of the conference in San Diego and have been working with Marilynn for well over a year trying to get something going in your area. As an FYI, the regional conferences have nothing to do with APCUG. They are stand-alone events put on by local people. Patricia Hill in Arizona and I in California have put the SW conference together for many years. 1. Is there anyone in your group who would be interested in
helping put this conference together? If not, why not? One other item - the Region 1 advisor (Northeast) has recently put on a one-day leadership conference at a local mall in NY. All of the officers from the surrounding area were invited to attend. It was quite successful and they are planning to expand to a 2-day conference in May 2008. They ate at the local Hometown Buffet and were able to have the meeting room for 4-5 hours for the meeting. The only cost to the attendees was gas to get to the meeting and lunch. Unlike SW, the conferences in Florida and Chicago, this is an APCUG-sponsored event. We have had something like this in California for over 10 years. SCRUGS was started by Steve Bass and we have officers from 20+ groups in the area surrounding Los Angeles who meet every quarter to share ideas, speaker information, pluses and, etc. A couple of the attendees drive almost 100 miles. I always come home with several new ideas to try with my group. One group that almost disbanded credits all they learned at SCRUGS to bringing them back better than ever. The 1-day leadership conference is this type of sharing meeting but with a specific topic such as: growing membership, succession planning, etc. The NY event even had raffle prizes. Regards, Judy Taylour 2006 Disks of the Month
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