Christmas Party

Today was cold outside but we were toasty warm at the Kankakee River Valley Computer Users Group Christmas Party.  We had plenty of tasty treats.  Mary and Ray brought some really good wrapped  wieners.  Fran brought some yummy Sweet Potatoes.  Diana brought in some great Brownies and Peanut Brittle and a shrimp ring.  And the club supplied  a meat and cheese tray and soda and coffee.

Mark had a new set up for us that was more centrally located and showed how you can hook your computer to your TV and use the TV as the Monitor. Kelly had some printers he wanted to test against getting the paper wet and if the ink survived.

Santa made an appearance and gave all the members Christmas Presents of 8 gig Flash Drives.

The day started out rather chilly but we had a warm reception for a few visitors to the club.  Thanks for coming to Eric Merry, Bob Benoit and Joe Tietjems.

Of course we had the usual goodies of juice, Donuts, and coffee.

 This was Ray at his best.

Gary gave a demonstration of the Picture printer HpPhotosmart 8646.  Diana took some pictures and they were downloaded to the computer and showed how they could be printed from the printer and a frame inserted or the picture cropped. The printer prints either 4x6 or 5x7 pictures.  You can take pictures from the computer or from the SD Card inserted in the printer.


Mary brought in a list of the sights given  at the October Meeting of the Website Workshop of Sharing Resources for purchases.

Here is a reminder that next month is the Christmas Party and Santa will  be making an appearance too.

Today was a great day for a meeting.  It was a beautiful day outside.  We had a nice turnout.

We had a presentation and discussion with Janice Miller from the Community Arts Council on the benefits of belonging to the council.  She suggested to advertise in their flyer and put our meetings on their Calendar of Events.

Kris had a presentation of "where everyone goes on the Internet".  We went around the room for where each person goes to find things they are looking at.  Don had a a gel speaker called Wowee that he had purchased on-line from e-bay and if you put it on a hard surface, it uses the vibrations of whatever you put it on to play the bass.  Everyone gave various locations that they go to do their purchases from locally Best Buy, Office Max, Target, and Sears to just on-line such as Amazon.com, All Recipes, Tiger Direct, A Books. Or you can go to Google( or whatever search engine you like) and  put in what you are looking for and it will give you a list.

   Today was the annual Computer Club Picnic. It started out overcast and we thought we sould have to move it inside but the weather prevailed and it was a very pleasant day.

 

  There was a lot of food from salads to chips to Italian Sausage and burgers, to chips and Soda Pop.

  Fran showed her picture of her and her motorcycle. New member Donna brought in her desktop and her laptop. Mark showed how to make long distance calls free by using the internet.

Kelly and Mark won the drawing of 4 gig flash drives.

Today was really gorgeous outside. There was donuts and coffee and juice.  Donna brought some delicious Brownies. Inside we had a nice meeting with lots of computer talk. Mark helped Donna with her desktop then helped her with her laptop. He also took a look at Fran's Monitor.

We discussed the Picnic that we are having next month and how we can increase membership.

Blake showed Kelly how to e-mail the pictures he takes from the card off his cell phone on his laptop.

E-Readers Demonstration

Kris' blue-screen machine

The day started out rather warm with a temperature of 87 degrees at 9:30. We had a nice meeting with the usual food and beverages.  There was a nice couple that came in for the e-reader demonstration.

Kris started out the demo starting with the Libre. This has a lot of versatility with changing fonts, listening to music and looking at Pictures.  One of the bad things is that when you shut it off it is not off. After 1 week it goes dead and you have to recharge the batteries.  With most e-readers when you shut them off it goes back to where you left off. This is about $70.

The uninformed instructing

Mark showed what the Kindle will do.  He showed that his Bible travels through time but that the eReaders do not.  They are only good until the next one comes out.  He showed his wife’s Kindle and what the difference is between them.  It has a screen saver and you can increase the font size just like the Libre.  You can get it with and without the 3G   network.  Within minutes you can get a map, it can hold several books; you can hook it up to a computer and download things to the Kindle. It can hold 2 or 3 thousand books. It ranges in price from $110 to $190.

Miss Jane in action

Jane and Kris gave talked about the iPads and the various icons on the desktop. The reason for buying it is for the educational applications. You can turn it horizontal or vertical and the screen automatically moves with you.  On the iPad, unlike on the Kindle or Libre, it has sound.  You can have the e-reader read to you, or put your own voice in it to read the book, or read it yourself. Jane has the iPad1.  It doesn't have all the flash the iPad2 but you can surf the web, get the weather, use a calculator just like the iPad2.  There isn't a camera like on the iPad2 and it is a little heavier.They run from $499 to $849.

Flyers & Business Cards

Today was a little overcast but it was a rather pleasant temperature.  We had a pretty good food layout from a shrimp ring to cookies to juice and coffee as well as our usual rolls and veggie tray.

Kris and Mark

The business meeting was brought to order at about 11:30 today by Gary.  The business card was presented with the modifications that was discussed last month and approved.  Mark brought out the tri-fold flyer that was discussed at last months meeting and Mark and Kris worked on it to do some minor modifications and it was approved.  Mark checked in to the cost of printing the flyers.  It was agreed that the demo for e-readers on the Kindle and iPad would be held off until the July meeting.

Kelly got a standing ovation for coming today. On Kelly's laptop VLC Media Player was installed for watching DVD's and On Gary's Laptop Dropbox was installed in both Linux and Windows.

Kelly the Video Slayer

There was a discussion on the difference between different versions of Linux – Ubuntu, Puppy and Mint.  You can open mail in Linux if you think it may have a virus in it and have it go no where.  Also how to boot from a Linux disk when your Windows won’t load.  In the future we will have a workshop on how to boot from a Linux CD and have a capability to access the windows files.

MEMBERSHIP BENEFITS

The pres & his vice.

During some meetings the club conducts a drawing for prizes. Actually, it seems like they've been drawing for the last few consecutive meetings. Anyway.... This month's drawing was won by Don. We can see him standing next to our benevolent president and Santa impersonator, Gary. The prize was a 4g Flash Drive, and has been for several months. Dianna must have gotten a great deal on them or something.

PrimePhoto hardware

Presidential address

Today started out very wet outside but it was dry and warm inside and we had some interesting conversation. We talked about everything from Mark’s train trips to amusement parks and roller coasters to flying in airplanes and taking train trips.

Gary presented the business part of the meeting for the officers to be accepted and he presented a quick flyer that we are changing from a straight flat single page flyer to a tri-fold flyer with who, what, when, where and why for the club. Also presented was a business card we printed and of course (I) Diana misspelled Linux so they need to be reprinted.

Kris and stymied sidekick

Kris gave a demo on PrimePhoto hardware. This machine is a stand-alone product which does not use a computer. Its primary function is to copy data (pictures) from a variety of flash cards to a blank CD. It supports CF1&2, microdrive, SD, MMC, SM, MS, MS PRO, MS DUO, XD (WITH OPTIONAL ADAPTER). He showed how to show the pictures and how to set up an album that you can use on any DVD player.

A Noble winner

MEMBERSHIP BENEFITS!

There was a drawing for a 4g flash drive. Our new secretary Mary Noble won the prize. No investigations were called for by the rest of the members present.

Business Meeting and Nominations

This month at the meeting we had a different fanfare of coffee cakes and rolls as well as the veggie tray and coffee and juice.

There was a Business Session with Nominations for Officers:

• President: Gary Johnson
• Vice-President: Don Longtin
• Treasurer: Diana Johnson
• Secretary: Mary Noble

We also went over ways to increase the interest in the club.  We decided to join the Community Arts Council of Kankakee.  With this we can put articles in their Quarterly Newsletter called Connections and we can get a table at their various shows they put on.

Gary showing off how much Diana taught him

Gary gave a demonstration on creating a disk of various groups and how to burn this on to a disk and flash drive, setting up and normalizing the sound in which you make the music the same volume in all the songs. He also showed how to take the 2 second delay out.

Fran with loot

MEMBERSHIP HAS ITS PRIVILEGES

Every few months the club will have a drawing for gear (flash drives, mice, etc.). These give-aways are part of the bonus for members. Fran offered to show how this little activity would work by agreeing to be the first to be chosen, winning a 4 gig flash drive. All the rest of the members appreciated her selfless leadership. ;)

Hand-held Scanner

Today was a little light.  Mark was out with a terrible head cold but was available through google chat. We had the usual Donuts and Veggies, as well as juice and coffee. We worked on a computer relocating the USB plugs.

Kris and his Magic Wand

Kris gave a demo on VuPoint Magic Wand up to 600 DPI Color and Black & White Hand Held. The VuPoint scanner is an extremely light hand held pocket scanner with a couple of AAA batteries and a slick carry bag.  We will see it copy any type of material (magazines, books, fabric, etc.) available for import into your favorite software.  It has adjustable resolution, color/b&w and power saving settings.

At a future workshop Kris will be doing a demo on eReaders. He sponsored this workshop at a Mac Users Group meeting and the information was very useful. Come see a comparison of eReader technologies. We will have several on hand for people to see, as well as printed literature for people to look over.

Skype-n-stuff

Attendance was light today due to there not being a lot of people here.  Those of us who were here talked of a number of things, from theology to passwords - but Skype dominated the activities of the day. 

Jane, Gary, and troublemaker Don

Don opened the can of worms by hyping his Skyping to his family and friends.  Kelly, always easily excitable, was lamenting loosing his abilities to Skype when Mark put a (proverbial) gun to his head and forced him to put Ubuntu on his laptop. While Don worked with Jane on getting her Skype on, Mark updated Kelly's laptop to get it ready for the software's installation.

Don called his daughter over Skype and we all talked with her.  She was a good sport talking to all of us old coots, demonstrating how the technology worked to keep people effortlessly connected!

Fran shows how to use the food table

As usual, we had fruit, veggies, and death by sugar along with coffee, juice and milk. There were a lot of left-overs because, well, see the first sentence and work it out for yourself!

Portable Picture Printing

Mr. & Mrs. Claus

This month's meeting was a rather cold one.  It was a whopping 10 degrees outside.  But inside it was warm.  We had a demonstration from the Johnson's on a new portable printer they gave to each other for Christmas. It is an HP Photosmart H8646 printer. It has borders, edit capability, a touch screen and prints both 4 X 6 and 5 X 7 pictures.  It even comes with its own carrying case and only takes 1 ink cartridge.  You can use an SD card of different sizes or a USB Flash drive.  You can also hook this printer to your computer with USB to USB.   In the future there will be a follow-up workshop on this printer after we get to know it better.

Mark was working with Kris getting an operating system installed on his laptop. And of course everyone enjoyed the Donuts, Veggies and beverages.

For those that couldn't make it to this months meeting we hope to see you next month, February 12th.  And just to let you know the meeting is on the Club President's Birthday.