Seniors - Tuesday Group
Group meets at 9:30am - 3rd Tuesday each month. Visitors welcome.
AUGUST TUESDAY SENIOR SIG REPORT
Hello Everybody,
I'm a bit late getting the newsletter out, as after the meeting, I went down with a bout of flu.
Based on a previous month's question Peter mentioned a good imaging program called Clonezilla which could replace Ghost or Aconis. It is open source and can be obtained at http://www.clonezilla.org/
Malcolm talked about problems he was having in purchasing the annual subscription for PC Authority from the club web site. The code that applies is 6013. Malcolm has been able to talk to an operator and secure his subscription.
Roger raised a problem he was having with his U3 thumbdrive. While the U3 side of the drive worked OK in XP there appeared to be a problem with Vista and Win 7. Since the meeting I have tried my U3 thumbdrive and have the same problem. I'm not overly concerned as I did not use it.
Philip raised a problem he was having while downloading from YouTube. His videos would play up to a point then stop. After much discussion it was suggested he download VLC media player and try that. John Lucke suggested, try using "YouGrab3" PC User's exclusive YouTube download manager which is on the August 2010 magazine DVD. John said it appears to be a good program.
Alan Matthews wants to set up a dual boot machine, this would be Win7 and XP on one hard drive, he has an iso image but was unable to unpack it and asked for advice. I think the idea was to burn the image during the break but I do not know what happen, did it work?
A question was asked if you could have Skype on two machines, that was not considered a problem, you just logged in with your normal user name and password.
I outlined a problem I was having trying to install Ubunta on an old machine I had. It seemed to install correctly but on restarting my machine it said "DISK BOOT FAILURE, INSERT SYSTEM DISK" It was asked if I had the hard drive set to Primary Master. On checking I had it set to Primary Slave. I changed it to Primary Master. But now it says Hard Disk Error and then the previous message. This hard drive had work OK with Windows 95 on it. I'm still working on the problem.
Thomas asked how did people dispose of there old computer systems. It was suggested that it could be given to "Reverse Garbage 8/142 Addison Road Marrickville" plus there are other places.
Roger showed us how to change our mouse pointer for a very interesting one called Hands 2, which I admit I'm still having problems locating.
After the break I talked about the video capture faclity in the program Ashampoo SnapIt 4, while there are some interesting features and the video capture works resonably well, more work is need in understanding the audio settings and getting the optimum results.
I talked about a problem I had with my Canon printer drivers and disk printing program that can with the printer. I had no problems running it on Windows XP but had problems with both Vista and Win 7. With a bit of work around I could get it to print but could not use the other programs that came with the printer. I down loaded the latest drivers etc for my machine (Win 7 64 bit) from the USA Canon site. It still did not work correctly. A couple of weeks ago, doing a bit of checking around I found a driver etc, for my machine but with a different number, this was on the Canon Thailand site. I downloaded it and ran it, now everything works perfectly. I think the motto is,if at first it doesn't work, check around.
While not wanting to tread on the Digital Photography SIG shoes I showed a little program called KUSO Exif Viewer from http://www.softpedia.com/get/Multimedia/Graphic/Digital-Photo-Tools/KUSO-Exif-Viewer.shtml It is an application to view Image EXIF from Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox by right click function menu.
Hope to see you all next month,
Graham Grant
June 2010 REPORT
Hello Everybody,
At the start of the meeting Thomas said did anybody have use for 6 ink cartridges he had, which were for the Epsom RX510 printer, as his did not now work. This led on to a very interesting discussion on printer ink cartridges, such as cost and the different types of inks etc. Later in the meeting Malcolm asked what were people's thoughts on Kodak pigment inks. A number of group did not think that the Kodak printers were very good.
Oscar had a query regarding GIMP and changing the colour palette. Peter showed how to set up the colour palettes and a number of other features that helped us understand the program.
John Shortland had a query from the genealogy web site "familysearch.org", from this site it is possible to view Research Classes On line for English family history, this can also be downloaded for later viewing. At the site are similar Research Classes for Irish and Italian family history, which can be viewed but in their case cannot be downloaded. John's question is how can he capture these videos for later use.
The answer from the group was to investigate the use of "video screen capture" programs.
Thomas said he was having problems with the aspect of digital pictures shown on his computer screen, they were normal when printed. He was told to try by changing his screen resolution and pick a "standard 4-3 resolution.It was also suggested he ensure he had up todate drivers for his video card.
After the break I used some screen shots that shows, using my system at home, how I can "mount" images that I had previously saved using Acronis. Further showing how you can then "look" into the image and copy files etc from within that mounted image.
I then demonstrated a Windows 7 utility called Problem Steps Recorder (psr). You use it to automatically to capture the steps you take on your computer. Once you capture the steps, you can save them to a file that can be sent to a user forum or someone else to help you with the problem. To run the program click on the Start button and then type psr. In the list of results, click psr. Peter: the program is located in Windows/System32. I wonder what other gems might be located there but we don't know about.
The final utility I showed was a beta program called Soluto from www.soluto.com which is a program that allows you to understand your bootup time and then displays a graphical representation of the startup time. This showed you parts of the startup which were critical, some you might not want and others that you can do without.
Don't forget our next meeting is 20th July.
Graham
