Our next meeting is
the day after Valentine's Day. Remember to get
yout significant other something good or else
you may not be able to go to the meeting...
SWAP MEET = SUCCESS
I was happy to see all
the stuff that we had at the Swap Meet. I think
everyone made a little room in their storage
areas by bringing in their stuff and selling it
and then they filled the holes up with the new
stuff they bought at the swap meet. My boys
liked the LED hats and I'm sure my wife will
enjoy her Valentine's Day Present when I give it
to her on the 14th. Thanks for participating and
I hope you had fun wheeling and dealing...
FEBRUARY DEMO IS...
FIREFOX / MOZILLA and THE AMAZING PLUG-INS
Dennis McMurtrey
volunteered to do a demo on one of his favorite
programs. The browser that everyone knows and
loves... FIREFOX. If you don't know and love it,
you need to come to the meeting to learn why it
is better than IE. If you are a die hard IE fan,
you need to come and heckle Dennis as he gives
his demo. If you are a true FIREFOX lover,
please bring your favorite plug-ins and share
them with the group. After Dennis reviews the
basics, It is going to be a group participation
demo so we can all learn how you and your
friends at the club have souped up Firefox to
fit your needs...
COMPUTER SHOW IS FEBRUARY 17th ,18th ,19th
We're are going to be
working the FREE TECH SUPPORT booth at the
Computer Show this month. We'll have sign-up
sheets at the meeting.. (Thanks Victor) If you
can work the booth for an hour or two, you get
free admission to the show. Please help out and
have fun and possibly learn a few tricks while
we help the community with their computer
problems du jour...
PROGRESSIVE RAFFLE
Our progressive raffle
is up to $150 and we'll try to give the jackpot
away again this month. As usual, we'll have five
winners in the raffle and they'll get to pick a
card from the deck in hopes of getting the
Joker.
CD CLEARANCE SALE
Jason was pretty
successful in selling the large collections of
CD's. He is going to continue his sale at our
February meeting. Make sure you stop by and see
him at the meeting and check out his bargain
basement pricing....
GCC
Jan. 2006 Minutes
GCC Minutes
by
Carlos Mariles/
GCC
Secretary
President Mike Taphorn
opened the meeting at 7:00PM on the 18th of Jan.
2006. As usual, he welcomed the membership, new
members and guests. He continued to explain
about the door prizes and how the system works.
Mike also described the different door prizes
available on the table. President Taphorn talked
about the upcoming computer show and describe in
detail as to how the members can help represent
the GCC at the show on Fri. 17th – Sun.19th of
Feb. 2006. A list will be available for the
members to sign on the specific date and time
that they want to participate.
Our librarian announced that the club is selling
all the CD copies of all CDs that are in the
library for $30.00 dollars the set. He also
apologized for not having the new CD available
but the CD copiers are down.
Q & A followed for approximately 25 minutes and
following the Q & A session the “swapping” of
computer related items continued for the rest of
the meeting.
The next meeting will be held on Feb. 15th at
7:00 PM at the same time and location.
Respectfully submitted, Till then, your Sec.
Carlos B. Mariles
In order to coincide with the demo for this
month on Firefox, its plug-ins, and other useful
utilities, I’m including the newest releases of
Firefox, including the portable version. I’m
also including a variety of plug-ins that can be
used with Firefox. I’ll see what plug-ins Dennis
will be using and work to include those in this
disk release. I’m not going to try and include
all the plug-ins that are available for Firefox,
as they get released or updated nearly every
day, and there’s no way to be completely
updated, but I’ll try and do the best I can.
Also I’m going to update the monthly program
updates of critical programs like virus
scanners, spyware checkers, etc that I started a
few months ago. I’ll include updates of Spybot
Search and Destroy, Adaware, Avast antivirus,
AVG antivirus, and various other programs that
are of constant use while dealing with an
internet connection.
And last but not least, the main focus of the
disk release for this month is a program update
that I released a few months ago called
Autopatcher. I was intrigued by the fact that
this program did all the updating for my Windows
XP system, without downloading the updates off
the net. I searched Google for this program, and
found the main site that supports the program.
I’m going to quote from the support website, as
it does a better job than I, explaining what
these updates will do. Here is the quote:
“How often do you install Windows? Crashes,
viruses, or even fixing other peoples'
computers... Most people install their operating
system regularly, whether they want to or not.
After a while, you will get sick of going to
Windows Update and continuously downloading
patch after patch, update after update. Well, we
have just the thing.
AutoPatcher is a comprehensive collection of
patches, add-ons and registry tweaks that give
you peace of mind in the knowledge that your
Windows system is up to date, even before you
connect it to the Internet. It's designed to
quickly patch a system with the most current
updates and tweaks available, and requires no
user interaction once you have selected what to
install.”
I’m including a Full release and an update file
for each Operating System. The full release
needs to be installed first, then the
corresponding update file after. Apparently,
they release a new full release approximately
every quarter, then release updates as needed
per what updates Microsoft releases. I’m
including releases for Windows 2000 (w/Service
pack 4), Windows XP (w/ Service Pack 2), and
Windows Server 2003 (w/ Service Pack 1). As new
updates are added, I’ll add them to that current
month’s disk release.
If you have any questions about anything I’ve
written here, please let me know and I’ll be
happy to try and clarify everything.
Anti-Spam,Mouse
Tip & Context Menu
by
Mitch Graves / Mitch's
Corner
Have a few goodies for
you this month:
Anti-Spam:
Here is a massive anti-spam resource from Anne
Hennegar.
She writes; "FYI, several years ago I wrote a
guide to controlling spam.
It included product reviews and descriptions of
the various types of tools.
I've since pulled the product reviews and
applied a creative common license to the
remaining portions which I converted to PDF."
http://www.timeatlas.com/mos/Reviews/Reports/Guide_to_Controlling_Spam/
Mouse Tip:
One of the 1st things I try to drill into a
newbies head when I am teaching windows is
Left Click = Do it! / Right Click = What
are my choices?
Context Menu:
More and more programs are stuffing choices into
the context menu
and it can be annoying and slow you down if it
gets too bad.
Here is an app that lets you edit that context
menu:
ftp://ftp.externet.hu/pub/mirror/sac/utilfile/cnxtedit.zip
Here are instructions for it's use:
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,4149,9879,00.asp
The demo as you have read at least 3 times now, is
Firefox.
I'll be covering these areas: Brief History,
Features of Tabbed Browsing, Extensions & Search
plug-ins. Towards the end of my demo, I will ask
others to share their favorite features. please
'SAVE" the links or at least know the correct
names so I can make a follow up page to the
tutorial on Firefox.
Now I'm NOT an expert on Firefox BUT I have been
using it for over a year. And LOVE IT! I'm am a
power user when it comes to using my pc...cause
as many of you know I'm on it most of the time
doing graphics, web work & gaming. So you will
be getting this demo from a non-geeky
perspective in everyday terms.
This demo is just a basic overview cause there
are far too many features to Firefox it would
take several demos to cover them all. And
hopefully now that Webmaster Steven has
installed the GCC Forum board, I'll be posting a
special category for Firefox for follow up info
and tips.
Thx -
Dennis
Jackpot: $150.00 Get your jackpot tickets 1 for 1.00 / 10 for 5.00
Mar. GCC Board Meeting : Ponderosa
Steakhouse (Map) Wed., February 1st, 2006
5 Eastport Plaza Drive
Collinsville, IL (618)345-5006
Everyone is welcome
The meal starts about 6:00. The Meeting starts at 7:00
