Hunterdon Computer Club

Today the Hunterdon Computer Club celebrated its 20^th anniversary with a breakfast for its members held at Perkin’s Restaurant in Flemington.  The gathering at Perkin’s was organized by John Warsinski who also gave a presentation at this meeting on How to Handle Email.  Approximately 35 members attended, some of whom were members in the early years of the club.  Danka  Kovalcik, a guest, also joined us at this meeting.  Lon Hosford, President, brought copies of newsletters and member directories from the early years to circulate among the members.

Following breakfast, members reminisced about the early days.

The club was born on July 16, 1988 and the first President was Dr. Rudy Ross.  The original newsletter was also named DOS HUG and its first editor was Joyce Tigner.    Evelyn Stewart was remembered for the many things she accomplished while a member of the club.  She was the newsletter editor and did a fine job for many years.  Also to her credit were the computer classes she was instrumental in starting for seniors at the Senior Center. The name of the newsletter was changed in February, 1996, to the Hunterdon Computer Club Newsletter and the computer keyboard was added to the masthead in July of that year.

In November 1997, Paul Glattstein became the web master of our original Club web page and learned HTML in the process.

The club met in various locations over the years, including the Circle Diner in Flemington, the Hunterdon Library, the Hunterdon Arboretum, the Pelican Pool Company on Rt. 22 in Whitehouse, and the Hunterdon Medical Center (the list is not in any particular order).

Jac Carroll was the Treasurer back then.  In 1993, an avid user of Compuserve, Jac set up and ran his Bulletin Board, Midnight Machine Works, which he managed from his computer set-up in his basement.

Jac and John Warsinski and others in the group remember using computers with a 10 megabyte hard drive and thinking how great it was.  John said his first computer was a Timex Sinclair with a hard drive of 4K with a memory expansion port on the back.  He even remembers writing a program to do calculations on it through a hit or miss method, but he got ‘er done.

Members also fondly remembered Rick Williams for the humor he brought to the club’s meetings.  He always had a good joke or story to get the ball rolling.

Some in the club expressed a desire to expand the current membership to more young adults.  Some suggestions to accomplish this were to talk to younger people in one’s family to see what would be of interest to them, get a young person to give a presentation at the club, and to suggest doing a presentation at a club meeting as part of a college student’s class requirements.

Q&A
Q:  I am having problems with Firefox.  I downloaded Service Pack 3.01 which I believe is causing the problems.

A.  Delete all Firefox files and reinstall the software.

Q.  I keep getting emails from people I don’t know.  I can’t send a reply to the person because the email is sent back to my correct email address.  When I send a reply, it just comes back to me.  I called my email provider but they say it is impossible for two people to have the same email address.

A.  Contact the sender of the email by email and ask them to contact the person who has the same email address as you do to make her aware of the problem and the need to change her email address.  Verizon, your email provider, is the only one that can change your email address to correct the error.

Q.  My new computer keyboard is too fast.  Can I purchase a new keyboard that would be slower?

A.  The keyboard speed is adjustable.  Go to Control Panel, click on Keyboard, and adjust the speed by moving the box on Repeat Delay to faster or slower as you wish.

Q.  I’m having a problem with frequently being dropped from my connection with Gmail while using it.  Is anyone else having this problem with Gmail?

A.  It is possible to download all of your email messages on the Gmail server to your computer so you will not need to be connected to Gmail for any length of time.  Also, check the date and time shown on your computer as that sometimes affects connecting to Gmail.

Presentation:  How to Handle Email – John Warsinski

So many of us like to forward emails we receive from our friends to others we think will enjoy them.  It is important though to clean up emails before you forward them.  Your friend that originally sent you the email does not want his email address and his contacts’ email addresses sent to everyone else.  It is only proper to protect their email address and delete them before you forward it to someone else.  There is more than one way to do this.

First, when forwarding the email, highlight all those addresses of the person or people on the email that sent it to you and click “Delete”.  Also do the same and delete the items that show up on the bottom of the page.  If there are small icons or even straight lines, just click on these and little squares will show up.  Just click “Delete” and these too will be gone.    Then you can forward the email to the next person without compromising the email address of the person who sent it to you and even those that sent it to that person, if they were not deleted.

Second, highlight the information in the message that you want to forward and copy it.  Then compose a brand new email and paste the information you copied into the new email.  Add the address information for the people you wish to send it to and any other message you might want and then send it out.

You can also create and use a “Recipient list suppressed” notation in the address line, using your own email address.  Then put the names of the contacts you wish to send the email to in the “bcc” line.  The email will be sent to you and to the others you listed under “bcc”, but the names and email addresses of your contacts will not be visible to each other.

You can also choose to send your email to your “Outbox” before you send it to everyone.  This gives you the opportunity to check the message your contacts will receive to see if the picture(s) that may be attached open properly or that you have sent it to the correct people.

Under Tools you can set up Message Rules.  This allows you to choose how your emails will be handled.  You can choose to delete messages received with certain email addresses or words in the message, or move the email to special folders.  You can set up rules for how messages addressed in a certain way will be sent.

Q.    Are links in email messages virus free?

A.  It depends on who sent it and if they actually checked the site.  All emails are checked before being downloaded to your computer by your virus software, but the links within the message can be affected by a virus.

SiteAdvisor is a piece of software that can be downloaded free that will check websites and put a symbol on them which indicates which ones are safe and which ones are not.  There is also a version of SiteAdvisor available for Firefox.  For more information, go to Google and type in “free SiteAdvisor download” and investigate those available.  You can also go to your favorite software download site for information.

Tramadol With Sertraline

Ambien Memorey Loss
Symptom Of Xanax Addiction
Ketoconazole Tramadol
Stada Tramadol
Ambien Is Generic
Xanax Abuse

Purchase Coumadin

Inderal

Lon Hosford, President of the HCC, opened the meeting with two items of new business.   

• Bill Smyth of Flemington, NJ, came to the club meeting to ask for support for his new proposal.  He submitted a proposal to the National Coordinator of Information Technology with a plan to use a person’s zip code to obtain that person’s emergency room hospital records from anywhere in the world.  This would greatly benefit travelers or others around the country or internationally when help is needed.  Anyone who wishes to support this effort should contact Bill at bill.smyth@patmedia.net.
• In September the club will mark its 20^th anniversary.  In celebration, club members and former members are invited to breakfast at Perkins Restaurant on Rt. 202, Flemington.  No presentation will be given after breakfast, but some activities are planned.  Please RSVP to John Warsinski at john@thecomputerfox.com.
• The facility where our meetings are held has begun blocking access to certain websites which will hamper presenters from using those websites as part of their presentations.  The club will have to investigate to find solutions to this problem.

Q&A
Q:  I thought Vista would be able to access any USB memory stick/flash drive as additional memory, but that has not worked.

A:  Ready Boost needs to be authorized in order to use it.  A Vista window will pop up with a list of options.  The Ready Boost option needs to be selected in order for Vista to use the USB memory stick/flash drive as extra memory.

Q:  While searching on Google, an ad popped up that blocked the entire screen and prevented access to any controls to close the ad or even close the computer.

A:  New features are constantly being added to browsers to block those pop up ads from appearing.  In Firefox, under “Properties/Privacy”, check off “No pop ups”.  You must have Firefox 3 for this to work.  In Internet Explorer, under “Internet Options/Security”, the security level can be adjusted for higher security to stop pop ups.

Q:  I forgot my Vista administrator password.  I had the ISO boot disk which had a utility to recover the password which saved the situation.

A:  Be sure to write down all passwords.  If you are a home user, you may want to use the same password for all sites when the password meets the criteria of the site; for example, the number of characters required or whether numbers must be included.  You may also want to consider using the same answers to all security questions too to keep things uncomplicated.

Q:  I’ve been trying to locate the address of someone in another country.  Can I do so through the Internet?

A:  On the Internet, access the local white pages in the phone book from that country.

Presentation:  Your PC on a USB –  Peter Czerwinski

Peter Czerwinski gave a great presentation on how to use something as simple and inexpensive as a USB flash drive (also called a thumb drive) when traveling to access the Internet and use your favorite software and files.  It is easy to set up and carry the USB flash drive in your pocket or purse while away from home to use on another computer. 

Most people just use their USB flash drive for storing information or pictures, but you can do a lot more than that.  The new USB flash drives are now fast enough to run programs for your computer through portable apps (portable applications).  For example, Firefox comes in a portable apps version.  When portable apps are copied to your USB flash drive, it is easy to carry it with you and plug it into an available computer and have access to all the programs you regularly use.  Nothing is left on the host computer when you close down all the programs and remove the USB flash drive from the host computer. 

If there is another version of the same software on the host computer you are using, you will have to close down the other version before you can use your portable apps version.

The input/output capability of the newest USB flash drives is fairly fast, but you are sacrificing some speed for portable convenience.  The slower speed is noticeable when first starting on the computer, but it is not noticeable when you continue working.  Your home computer does not need to be on when using portable apps and either Vista or XP can be used.

When purchasing a new USB flash drive for this purpose, buy at least a 15 mbps (megabits per second) to read and 25 mbps to write.  Make sure the drive you buy specifies USB 2.0 or higher speed.  A recommended brand is SanDisk U3.

To get the portable apps, go to www.portableapps.com   for open source apps.  Also go to www.youtube.com and search for portable apps videos for more detailed information.  More information is also available by reading the article “Carry a PC in your Pocket”, in the February, 2008, issue of PC World on the Internet at  www.pcworld.com .

In order to get the portable apps onto your USB flash drive, go to www.portableapps.com and download the suite of portable apps from the Internet onto your home computer.  When you access it on your computer, it will ask where you want to download it to.  Insert your USB flash drive into your home computer and download the portable apps onto your USB flash drive.  A variety of portable apps are available on the menu, such as an Internet browser and word processor, and more can be downloaded as needed.

After using the USB flash drive with your portable apps on another computer, be sure to shut down each program before removing the USB flash drive from the computer. 

Problems to consider –

• Sometimes libraries may have blocked usage of the USB port on their computers.  Solution:  Go to another library or an Internet café.
• It is not easy to sync the USB flash drive with your home computer.

Peter completed his excellent presentation by showing the club a video he made of his vacation using ProShow Gold.

October 20, 2008 ADDITION

This is an addition to the above post about Peter’s presentation on Your PC on a USB.  Peter submitted this information so you can see the videos about this from PC World Magazine.

Recommended OnLine Articles and Video for Using your USB Drive as a Portable Computer
These on-line references were part of the Hunterdon Computer Club presentation

          “Your PC on a USB” by Peter Czerwinski on August 16, 2008

1. PC World - Carry a PC in Your Pocket - Good PortableApps article by Scott Dunn - Feb 22, 2008
         http://www.pcworld.com/article/142515/carry_a_pc_in_your_pocket.html

2. Carry a PC in your Pocket - Vdieo from CNET “Insider Secrets” -
          http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5nnNI8RuSq8&feature=related

3. Carry A Computer in your Pocket - PortApps - Video showing how to install Portable Apps on your USB drive
          http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qcGKFm-yFH8&feature=related 

4. PortableApps.com - Website of PortableApps programs for information and free downloads.
           http://portableapps.com/ 

5. U3 - portable software - Website of Sandisk’s U3 portable software. Some are free.
            http://www.u3.com/ 

6.  U3 Thumb Drive - How To (Sandisk) - Video of  Sandisk’s “Get Connected” presentation.
            http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G8sZXeUBz1w&feature=related 

7. U3 Demo - U3 Smart drives - Video, Sandisk presentation of how to use their USB drives and thier U3 system.
            http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZN99pgivUM&NR=1