NVMUG eNews 5/12/2007
Last updated 5/5/2007
Informative Circle, New Members, Wi-Fi Locations, and .mac
New members with questions and experienced members made this a very information rich meeting, plus we listed Wi-Fi locations in the Northeast Kingdom, and we decided to investigate a free .mac account.
1.Meeting Report
Vicki Giella and Russell Carlson joined us. They have a Õ98 Windows computer and dial up and are considering a desk top Mac for their next computer. They asked which Mac we would recommend. The live in Monroe, N.H.
Geof said that the Mac Mini is very quiet, but has only an Intel Core Duo chip and you have to add your own monitor, keyboard, mouse and cd/dvd burner. He said they should only consider the Mini if they already have a monitor. They do, so they could select a Mac Mini if cost was their highest priority.
Geof Gonter recommended that they look at either 17" or 20" iMac. He said the the 20" iMac with the 250 gig hard drive and cd/dvd burner was the best buy. It has a Core 2 Duo which is a much more powerful, faster chip. He was sure they would be happy with it. None of the members debated the recommendation.
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Warren Walker brought in his latest four wildflower pictures, the first ones from his new digital SLR camera. The pictures were impressive with wonderful detail.
Warren holding pictures. New members in background.
Warren said that taking pictures in camera RAW does make a difference, and saves time in editing. He is only shooting RAW now.
Gene Levine asked him what printer and paper he used . Warren said he uses an Epson 1280 printer with six colors, and printed the pictures on heavy weight mat Epson paper which will last for 20 years without fading. He said the same kind of glossy paper would only last 10 years before it would start to fade. He would not want to sell prints that would not hold their quality for more than ten years.
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Vicki and Russell asked about sharing files between a Mac and a PC. Geof recommended a 2 gig USB pen drive available from Staples for $20. You plug it into your Mac at home and drag a file on to it, then plug it into a PC at work to read in the file, and vice versa.
I said that Pages does a pretty good job of reading Word files and can saving to Word files. Geof recommended using TextEdit, which comes free with a Mac, and to save and read RTF, rich text format, files for working on both Windows and Macintosh machines. (Note, if you have some text in Pages or some other document in rich text format, and you want to us it in an HTML file for the web, copy it into TextEdit, and select Format > Make Plain Text.)
On a Mac, you can make anything that can be printed into a PDF file by simply selecting print and choosing PDF in the resulting dialog box. You can read the PDF file with its original formatting on any Windows or Mac computer.
Vicki and Russell would like to get something faster than their 56k modem. Their experience was the same as Warren's, a 56k modem on our telephone lines gives only about a 36k transfer speed. The Mac no longer comes with a modem so they would like to find something faster.
Geof said, when he was using Comcast cable, he called them about a problem getting the cable program directory. They told him he would have to upgrade his service at higher cost to get it. Then he called the local Comcast provider to say he was going to cancel because the directory was no longer available. He was told he still had it. Comcast had changed it to channel 70 without telling anyone.
He has had better experience with Adelphia. He said his cable transfer speeds have gone up three times. He used to get 800 - 900 mb average, and now is getting 2 gigabytes with Adelphia. (They advertise that they are up to 4 times faster than DSL.)
Geof said DSLExtreme, http://dslextreme.com, is a relatively inexpensive national DSL service. Others who provide DSL service include SoverNet, http://www.sover.net, Verizon, http://www.verizon.net, and EarthLink http://www.earthlink.net/highspeed.
Key in your telephone number to see if they provide service in your area. (I did not find the DSL test on the www.sover.net but it may be there somewhere.)
Richard Lubot said that, if you are interested in Dish satellite service, he as some equipment he could sell you. He said that, if you cannot get anything else, it is better than dial up. It is reasonably fast downloading, but uploading is slow, and weather can be an issue.
Norm Johnson is back renting a house here for about a year and has high speed internet access. However, the people he is renting from use Vonage internet telephone service and it has problems when he is downloading files. (For some not so strange reason, Vonage service does not appear to be compatible with my Verizon DSL service.)
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Neil Raphel said St Jay Works is putting up a community web site for St. Johnsbury using push ideas to get people involved; for example blog issues in St. Jay. They want to make it visitor/tourist friendly, maybe even sell some stuff. It might have the top ten places to visit in St. Johnsbury, merchants' specials, and lodging - but they want to get people involved - to ask questions.
They are considering other projects such as the creative community - a better place to be, and moving from providing a site with information to one that engages people. "Web 2.0" refers to these community engagement interactive concepts along with any new technology that supports them.
St. Jay Works is a bunch of organizations fostering business in st. Johnsbury promoting downtown St. Jay. The Chamber in St. Johnsbury promotes the Northeast Kingdom.
Neil is seeking information on the best way to do audio and video on the web. He said Audacity sound quality may not be good enough. Should they use a camcorder or something else for video? I believe someone said that if you connect your camcorder to your Mac, GarageBand, or iMovie can compress it for Internet use.
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We talked about Wi-Fi sites in the Northeast Kingdom (see below), and someone asked if they use their computer in a public space, is their computer safe. The Mac is safe by default unless you give others access to your files. Even if you give them access to your files, you system files are password protected. The PC is not safe out of the box.
Geof said that all of the experts agree that, in addition to the Administrative Account on a Mac, you should set up a standard account for your daily use. You should only use your administrative account when you want to authenticate and install programs. That way no one can install a program on your computer unless you give them both your administrative account name and your password.
Other people may be able to read your communications in a public space, specially when you are not on a secure site.
Geof recommends that you use a net router to be safe when you connect to the Internet. User activity is the key, not whether your computer is on 24 hours a day.
He described how packet transmissions work. What you get back has to come back with your router's transmission ID to be accepted by your router. Using a router keeps them a step away from your computerÕs ID.
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Gene Levine is setting up a Windows Vista computer, and says that the Vistar strategy is that you cannot do anything. By default you have to use a password when you run programs or have programs call one another. He says there are so many obstacles that you end up shutting the stuff down. Really bad.
Once spyware is on your computer, you have to reformat your hard drive to get rid of it. So far there are no known instances of spyware on a Mac.
Jane Fuller tried to buy a $99 ticket on Jet Blue's web site and was interrupted by a dialog box saying it was not an authenticated site. She wondered if it was a phony Jet Blue site.
Geof explained that it probably meant that it was not a secured site. A secured site should have a padlock and HTTPS to indicate that it is secured. (You would not want to send your credit card account number on a site that was not secured.)
Someone asked about copying audio off videos for a Mac. Neil suggested using Google with copying audio off of video. (It is amazing how often Google does answer just about any question you ask it. Try putting in your own name and state and see what you can find out about yourself.)
If you have audio or video on a CD that is not copy protected you can make your own copy of it. Geof said to Highlight that CD, then go to Disk Utilities and select "Make an Image" which will create a file with just the image of the CD on it. Put in blank CD and tell Disk Utilities to burn it.
2. Wi-Fi Sites in and around the Northeast Kingdom
Following up on a suggestion by Veer Frost we put together the following list of Wireless Internet site that we know about.
To see this list, please select the Contact button.
3. NVMUG .mac Account
We will investigate getting an NVMUG .mac account.
The primary purpose will be to deliver information and files to Mac users, and to encourage communication among Mac users in this area. If we do get the account, its success will largely depend upon your use of the system and whether you want to share pictures, share information, and exchange your thoughts with others.
We will continue our NVMUG eNewsletter, and maintain our web page at http://www.sover.net/~nvmug
Gene Levine suggested the best uses would probably depend upon using feature supported by iWeb.
- some discussion/blogging pages focused upon your interest areas, maybe a swap page,
- photo pages to show images and artwork by and about members and their interests
- resource pages with files to download
- podcasts depending upon what you want to include - or links to podcasts based upon your interests
It could be a place to learn, develop skills, and show off projects in a friendly, nurturing environment.
Since iWeb supports pass-wording, the website could also include membership addresses and other information not intended for the general public, and accept participation by NVMUG groups.
Most of the pages would have to be self-publishing. Once the overall structure is set up, individuals could contribute as they like, and blogging, podcasting and photo sharing aught to be pretty self-sufficient.
Neil Raphel has found that most blogs have zero comments, so we may not need different blogs on different subjects.
I will be exploring to see how we go about getting the free user group .mac account, and will share what I learn with you. If we do get the account, Neil Raphel has offered to help me with it. It will then be an experiment to see whether and for what NVMUG wants to use it. We will encourage you to participate in this experiment.
