C C C C N E W S L E T T E R
CENTRAL COAST COMPUTER CLUB
Santa Maria, California
VOLUME XVI: NUMBER 2 FEBRUARY, 2001
NEXT MEETING: FEBRUARY 20, 2001 7:00PM KNOLLWOOD VILLAGE 4012 S. BRADLEY
PRESENTATION: Randy Whittle from MicroVision Development on
CD-R's, CD Labeler, and CD Business Card Kit.
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| CONTENTS |
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(1) Officers, Helplines, S.I.G.s
(2) President's Corner Charles Barney
(3) Review: SnagIt Charles Barney
(4) Feb. Presentation-CD Recording Randy Whittle
(5) Classes Dick Trissel
(6) Editor's Comments Dick Trissel
(7) January Internet SIG Dick Trissel
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Officers Helplines
President Juno
Charles Barney 937-1240 Gilbert Smith 925-3743
cbarney@lightspeed.net colgil1@juno.com
Vice President Windows 95
Phil Grycel 937-1805 Amy Malicki 925-5780
feliksy@juno.com amymal@juno.com
Secretary Hardware & DOS
Barbara Godwin 934-9885 Ray Isenson 937-6938
yungbag@best1.net risenson@juno.com
Treasurer Voice control & Input/Output
Gerald Miller 934-1396 Amy Malicki 925-5780
2741 Banyan Way amymal@juno.com
Santa Maria CA 93455
gmiller33@excite.com
Librarian Desktop Publishing & scanners
Sharon Allen 928-2209 Don Harelson 934-3926
sallen4060@aol.com qef1@juno.com
Publicity Software User Identification
Bill Corning 934-0775 Fred Adams 934-1128
foster95@juno.com fred421@juno.com
Newsletter Editor Visual Basic
Dick Trissel 937-7572 Gerald Miller
rtrissel@juno.com Gmiller33@excite.com
Program Chairman AOL
Ray Isenson 937-6938 Frank Maciel 922-2318
risenson@juno.com frm8198@aol.com
Special Interest Groups (SIGs)
Windows 95/98 Internet
Amy Malicki Dick Trissel
amymal@juno.com rtrissel@juno.com
CCCC Membership is $15 for twelve months ($20 family). For this you
receive:
Monthly newsletter
Access to the clubs software library
Disk of the month (usually for $1)
Helpline support
Monthly presentation
Valuable door prizes
Question and answer sessions
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CCCC Page 2 February 2001
President's Corner
by Charles Barney
We kicked off a new year for the 4C's with an enthusiastic crowd of about
62 members at the Jan 16th meeting. Amy Malicki, feeling under the weather,
was regrettably unable to be there for her popular Windows SIG, but hopes
to return by the next meeting. Dick Trissel did a great job filling in and
conducted his Internet SIG in the main room with all present. As usual, a
lively exchange ensued.
I'd like to welcome to our group new members Edward Sage, Lloyd Gay, and
Carl Geisler. Carl came out all the way from Solvang to join us last
meeting. We are pleased to have you all aboard and hope that you find your
experience with the 4C's a most rewarding one. You will meet folks here
with all levels of computer experience. None of us claims to have all the
answers, but many of us have picked up some useful knowledge along the way
that we are willing to share. Please feel free to participate in any of the
activities at the meetings and speak up if you have a question or perhaps
would like to share some your own personal knowledge.
It has come to the attention of the executive board that many of our
members simply do not get enough of their computer questions/problems
addressed in the short amount of time we have at the monthly meetings.
During our last get-together I asked for a show of hands to indicate how
many of you would like to have additional SIG type meetings during the
month if it could be arranged. A good number of you were in favor and said
that you would attend. Well, it now looks like this is actually going to
happen, thanks to the volunteer efforts of our usual volunteers. See Dick's
announcement elsewhere in this newsletter!
I had the pleasure of presenting to those present the Association of
Personal Computer User Group's First Edition CD with over 200 freeware and
shareware programs on it. Using the club's computer, I opened up the CD's
html interface in Internet Explorer and demonstrated how to "download" and
install programs from the disk.
I explained that the APCUG created the disks to provide a great deal for
individual members while also serving as a fund raiser for clubs. The
response to the disk sale after the presentation was overwhelming. We
immediately sold out of the 26 we had, asking just $3.00 each. I know many
of you who wanted to get the disk missed out, but don't worry, more are on
order! Hopefully, they will be here by the February meeting.
Regarding one of the CD programs that I showed, "Read Please 2000," there
is a problem with the file if you use the download feature to retrieve it.
The wrong file gets copied over and won't open when requested. The real
file that works can be manually copied from the CD if you are interested in
trying it. In Windows Explorer, navigate to your CD drive and look in the
folder PROGRAMS\FILES for READPL10A.ZIP and copy it over to your hard
drive. Sorry about the mix-up.
The door prize drawing was once again conducted using the Picwin program
and, perhaps a bit cranky after being left home last month, the club
computer was very unforgiving of non-attendees. Joining the Order of the
Crying Towel were absent members Enid Gilham (she left early), John
Pfister, Bill Rich, Don Feragen, Bill Reineke, Frank Voci, Mal Plambeck,
Richard Savage, Bill Rust, Barbara Flood and Diane Hughes. The attending
winners and their prizes were Charles High - ream of printer paper, Richard
Holmes - MGI PhotoSuite III, Gilbert Smith - Drive Image 3.0, Charles
Saylor - Partition Magic 5.0, Leonard Smith - Organic Art Deluxe and Dick
Jones - Borland tee shirt. Folks, you can't win if you don't show!
At the upcoming meeting on February 20th, we will have once again as our
guest speaker, the inimitable Randy Whittle. You may recall Randy's visit
to our group last September when he represented MGI and gave us a very
lively and well-received presentation. This time, he's got some exciting
new products from MicroVision to show us and we anticipate another great
evening. I would like to ask all of you to make an honest effort to turn
out for the meeting as the continued support that these vendor
representatives give us depends in large part on the support we show them.
I'll see you all at the clubhouse. - Charles
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CCCC Page 3 February 2001
Review - SnagIt 5.1
From TechSmith Corporation
By Charles Barney
Making the rounds among the various tables at the Vendor Reception on my
final evening at the APCUG Fall Conference last November, I met a pair of
bright-faced young reps from a company called TechSmith. I had never heard
of them until then but they told me about a screen capture program called
SnagIt that caught my interest from the start.
It turns out that TechSmith has been developing screen capture technology
since 1990. SnagIt 5.1 is a robust and fully-developed program, rated
number one in its class. In this review I will tell you about some of the
most important features and give you some "real world" uses that I've found
for the program.
Screen capture is the process of copying graphics images and text off the
computer screen to use in another way such as inserting into an application
or saving to a file. But wait a minute, doesn't Windows already have built-
in screen capture capabilities with features like the Print Screen key and
Copy & Paste? Sure it does, but SnagIt gives you what Windows left out plus
a whole lot more.
SnagIt will grab editable text from screens that don't support the Windows
Copy function such as error messages, system properties windows and lists
of files from Windows Explorer. Imagine the benefit of pasting the exact
wording from an arcane error message into an email to tech support.
Furthermore, at a recent meeting, a member asked me how to print out a list
of file names in Explorer. I mentioned that it could be done in DOS by
redirecting the DIR command, but I might as well have been speaking an
alien language. SnagIt makes it a simple task to quickly configure its
options in order to capture the text of file lists in Explorer and send the
output to the printer.
For image captures, the Windows Print Screen function is limited to taking
a "snapshot" of either everything that appears on the screen or the active
window and copying it to the Clipboard for pasting into and processing in
another application such as Windows Paint. SnagIt will selectively copy any
selected portion of the screen including the mouse pointer (something Print
Screen won't do) and show your selection in a preview window.
From there, if you are satisfied with the result you can, for example,
crop, scale, rotate, change the resolution and apply various effects before
sending the capture to the printer, the Windows Clipboard or saving as one
of several of types graphics files.
"A picture is worth a thousand words" goes the old adage, and that saying
is so true. A friend recently asked me how to perform an obscure task in a
program that I had to research and get back to him on. I "hot keyed" SnagIt
to capture two screens that showed the needed steps, including the drop
down menus and mouse pointer, saved them as small .JPG files and sent them
to him as email attachments. He instantly understood what to do and was
delighted that it was so easy.
SnagIt also features the ability to record on-screen motion or "videos" of
program activity that saves as a standard .AVI file. To test this out I
recorded a brief session of mouse movements, menu selections and opening
and closing windows.
It does work and is easy to do, but I found the playback to appear somewhat
jerky and the resultant 28-second video file was a hefty 1.6 megabytes in
size. This application might be useful for say, creating tutorials on CD
ROM. Registered users of SnagIt get an audio editing program called DubIt
that allows adding sound such as voice annotation to images and video
clips.
AutoScroll is an invaluable feature in SnagIt that allows you to capture
images and text in vertical scrolling windows that are too large to fit on
the screen, such as web pages and long directory listings in Windows
Explorer.
I wanted to print a list of all the dialup numbers my Internet provider has
in the local area code (over 100!). The complete listing on their web page
could only be viewed partially at a time by dragging the scroll bar in the
page frame, and if you've ever printed out whole web page screens just to
get hardcopy of some tidbit of information, you know that all the graphics,
banner ads and other stuff gets printed as well. I used SnagIt to do an
image capture of the web page with AutoScroll enabled. It grabbed a copy of
the entire long page and brought it up in the preview window where I
cropped out the list from the rest of the graphics (the crop tool scrolls
too), resized it to 75% and printed out all the numbers neatly on two
pages.
Selecting the Catalog output option allows your text, image and video
captures to be saved and conveniently organized in one place where they can
be viewed as thumbnails in SnagIt's Catalog Browser. Click on any of the
thumbnails and the captures open in the Catalog Viewer. Image files are
opened in a graphic viewer (with image editing and manipulation controls),
text files are opened in a text editor and video files are opened in a
video player.
SnagIt Studio that also comes with the program is a "markup" editor that
you can use to annotate your captures by adding things like titles, arrows,
text boxes, sticky notes, and highlights; a very useful tool for anyone
involved in creating documentation or other educational materials.
I found SnagIt 5.1 to be easy to learn and the interface fairly intuitive
to use. The on-disk help files provided adequate reference when needed. A
Capture Wizard offers a straightforward tutorial that will get new users up
to speed quickly.
I highly recommend this program to all Windows users and am personally
discovering new uses for it almost daily. SnagIt 5.1 has earned a hallowed
spot on my Quick Launch Toolbar!
System Requirements: Windows 95, 98, Me, NT 4.0, 2000 or later version. 90
MHz processor (400 MHz recommended). 16 MB RAM (64 MB recommended). 10 MB
of hard-disk space for program installation.
The program retails for $39.95 and can be ordered online at
www.techsmith.com where you can also download a free 45-day trial copy.
Call 1-800-517-3001 or email sales@techsmith.com and ask for the 10%
discount being offered to user group members.
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CCCC Page 4 February 2001
Special Presentation
by Randal Whittle
MicroVision Development
(www.mvd.com)
Randal makes a presentation that is not only highly informative but also
very entertaining as exemplified by his presentation to CCCC last September
on photo editing.
This month Randal will give us another presentation. Here are excerpts of
the description in his own words:
Randy will discuss CD-R/RW (CD Recordable & Re-Writeable) Concepts, Tips,
How-to's, and pitfalls to avoid. Writeable CD's are destined to be your
next portable storage medium.
Just think of the possibilities:
Easily create universally-readable disks to share with others.
Create your own Music CD compilations, playable in standard CD Players.
Transfer your old recordings to CD!
Make room on your hard drive by offloading lesser-used data to CD's.
Back up your Software CD's to keep a copy safely at home while you travel.
Fast, inexpensive Hard Drive Backups, readable without any special
equipment.
Bootable CD's, making disaster recovery much easier.
Long-term archival on durable, optical media! (CD's can last 100 years!).
Save (and share!) your collection of digital photos & images to safe CD's.
Make your own CD-Video disks, rather than watching your videotapes
deteriorate.
You can even treat your CD-R/RW Drive like a giant floppy/removable drive!
And when you make your customized CD's, MicroVision Development has the
solutions for protecting and identifying them. "SureThing CD Labeler" is
the market leading software for making CD Labels (all the rest license a
reduced version of this software!). Create professional looking labels for
CDs and jewel cases. The unique SmartDesign feature provides hundreds of
backgrounds with coordinated templates and text layouts geared towards
common CD uses such as music CDs, data back-ups, image collections and
more. SureThing even lets you "Scan and Print" original CD's & their Jewel
Box art-its built right-in! SureThing CD labeler also comes with thousands
of clipart images and hundreds of backgrounds, a CD label applicator, free
labels. See for yourself why ZDNet gave SureThing CD Labeler 5 Stars and
said, 'This powerful program is so easy to use it's almost amazing.'
MicroVision's companion product, SureThing CD Business Card Kit, takes the
exciting capabilities and applies them to the exciting new mini-format of
Business Card-sized CD-R's, each one small enough to fit in a shirt pocket,
yet powerful enough to hold a multimedia presentation. So many
applications await, from video resumes on each business card to photo
galleries and product information. Each kit contains all you need to
create these special CD-Rs, from blank CD-R card-discs to labels and an
applicator, along with the software to make it all happen.
You will come away from this meeting entertained and informed. Randy will
provide time for an open Q&A period and will bring valuable door prizes,
informative handouts, and staggeringly low user group pricing for these
products at the meeting.
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CCCC Page 5 February 2001
New CCCC Classes
by Dick Trissel
After several years of threatening to have CCCC sponsored sessions of some
type to assist all computer users, we've finally got it. The term "Class"
is misleading, as the meetings will not be formal structured classes.
Think of them more as Computer Learning Assistance SessionS (C.L.A.SS),
where everyone shares their problems, solutions and knowledge.
We have confirmed the use of Luis Oasis for Wednesday afternoons. Classes
will be every Wednesday. The first class will be Wednesday, February 28,
at 1:00PM-3:30PM. Luis Oasis is in Old Orcutt just west of the Orcutt Jr.
High School on Soares Ave. To get there, go west on Clark from the
expressway, go to Gray St., turn south and go 3 blocks, turn west on Soares
and it is on the south side of Soares.
/\
North
Expressway
|
| Clark Ave. |
-----------------------------
Gray | Ave. |
----------|----- |
----------|-----
--Soares--|-----
X |
Luis Oasis
The parking lot is a little parse, but street parking is available.
I and/or Ray will start out moderating, and maybe others will volunteer to
assist. The classes will be much like the club Special Interest Groups
(S.I.G.s) only without the "Special".
Attendance is not mandatory once you start. There is no start or finish.
Each week come if you wish. Bring pencil and paper.
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CCCC Page 6 February 2001
Editor's Comments
Dick Trissel
The transition to all dues payable in January is almost complete. There
are still about 37 members that have not paid for the remainder of 2001.
Obviously, some have no intention of remaining with the club. The others
should pay the amount shown in the upper right corner of this newsletter's
mailing label.
With the new dues pay schedule comes the question of the new member sponsor
reward--how? Here are the proposals so far with their pros and cons:
1. Three 50/50 tickets. Sponsor must be present at member signup.
Treasurer must communicate with 50/50 chairman.
2. $2.50 cash to sponsor. Treasurer must carry cash.
3. Sponsor receives a $2.50 discount slip to be used with the next January
payment. Burden on treasurer
4. Treasurer tags sponsors name on member roster to receive a discount.
Burden on Treasurer.
5. Eliminate the sponsor reward. Reduces member incentive to recruit--
maybe.
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CCCC Page 7 February 2001
Internet S.I.G.
by Dick Trissel
We had an interesting S.I.G. with over 60 attendees--it was a captive
audience because we held it in the main room and it was too cold to go
outside to get away.
The main topic of discussion was the JUNO free Web/Email. With so many
"free" ISPs either closing down or not providing access to from the 805
area code, JUNO is one of the few remaining. Although, it is only free for
the first 25 hours each month. After 25 hours on the Web you lose access
until the next month. The free e-mail is still free and unlimited because
you are only connected while sending or receiving which I like because it
doesn't tie up my only phone line.
Some members have opted for the $2.95/month that was offered last year--it
is no longer available. Some have chosen the $4.95/month, but it may not
be available any longer. To get a free JUNO CD disk, call toll free 1-800-
try-juno (1-800-579-5866).
Some of members reported problems getting a connection to free JUNO, both
e-mail and Web. Some of us have found that a 33.6Kbps modem connected at
28.8K or 31.2K is much more reliable. I have two computers with 33.6K
modems and have very little problem connecting (I can't remember the last
failure). However, my 56K modem has frequent problems unless it
automatically steps down to 28.8K.
This is probably a function of the quality of the phone line connection
and/or the compatibility between our 56K modems and JUNO's 56K modems. We
have three phone number options from Santa Maria and Nipomo for the e-mail
connection, but only one number for the Web. So, we're stuck.
Another problem was presented in which the person is unable to use the CC
in JUNO Write as a BCC (Blind Courtesy Copy) as described in last month's
newsletter. I tried both enclosing the BCC entire list in parenthesis and
then each address separately (with each address separated by commas in both
instances). The individual addresses in parenthesis automatically got
changed to the list with only parenthesis at the start and finish of the
list. You can see this happen by putting the message in the Outbox and
then retrieving it. The BCC worked as advertised.
Since this S.I.G. was a little bit of a combination with the usual Windows
S.I.G., we covered one question about speeding up the operating system
Startup/Restart which was also an article in last month's newsletter. One
person did the cleanup of the Startup items in the MSCONFIG program, but
didn't see an appreciable increase in startup speed. There are two other
factors that can slow up the startup--the size of the Registry files, and a
large number of fonts in the Windows Fonts folder.
The registry gets loaded in to memory at startup (and accessed repeatedly),
so the larger the slower. There are registry cleaner programs available,
but use them with extreme caution.
Now, the number of fonts can be reduced. I don't know why the fonts are
involved in the startup, but that's what the books say. The Fonts icon in
the Control Panel will let you preview and delete the unneeded fonts.
There are several megabytes of strange fonts installed with the operating
system, MSOffice, and other applications. I saved the fonts to disk before
I deleted them, just in case. And it is good that I did. MSWord needed
the Tahoma font that I had deleted.
There was a complaint that an e-mail message that was sent came back from a
person the sender didn't know. Yep, the e-mail you send may get forwarded
over and over until it gets forwarded right back to you. Be careful what
you put in e-mail--you don't have any control over who may read it.
The reoccurring complaint about receiving unreadable e-mail came up. Users
of AOL (and Compuserve) may receive "mimed" attachments that need to be
"unmimed". These attachments can be unmimed with Winzip or a program found
at www.fundoc.com.
Under the subject of "spam" filters, it was mentioned that some mail
reading software can be setup to filter certain incoming e-mail. That is,
it automatically deletes it. Also, some ISPs filter the incoming e-mail
before it gets put in your inbox. I have e-mail accounts at JUNO, Netzero,
Hotmail and Excite. I get a lot of X-rated e-mail at Hotmail and Excite,
but I don't recall ever getting any through JUNO. And, the only e-mail
address I give out is my JUNO address--interesting.
There's a Web site that claims to have 500 times more information than the
normal Web. It's called DeepWeb. For more information go to:
http://www.completeplanet.com/tutorials/deepweb/index.asp.
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Free Software
By Dick Trissel
Everybody likes free. Here's a Web site just filled with free software of
all types:
http://www.sover.net/~whoi/Priceless.html
For example, here's where you can get free utility programs:
http://www.sover.net/~whoi/pricelesssystemutilities.html
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