NWA-PCUG Newsletter Article, December 2003
The President's Column
November Meeting Question & Answer
by Dale Oliver
d_oliver@swbell.net
(click to email author)


We had a very informative Q & A session during the November meeting. If you did not attend, you missed more than I could possibly cover in my monthly recap column, but I will mention several popular topics that a majority of members will likely be interested in.

Also, we breezed through officer elections for next year since all officers will continue in their current roles except for me. I am reluctantly stepping down due to time constraints related to competing business, personal, and community service commitments. David Hinds will be our new club president in 2004. Bill Moeller will assume the role of vice president, and will use his impressive photography experience to bring us interesting programs revolving around digital photography.

KUDOS: Our club would not function without the following people. Please be sure to give them a pat on the back the next time you see them. Bill Shook for being the “lynch pin” that has held our club together for more years than I can remember. Besides creating our excellent monthly newsletter, Bill is instrumental in making newsletter content available on our club Web site, and many other behind-the-scenes activities that keep our club running. I can remember when Bill was the club BBS SysOp back when we would dial into a computer sitting in his house at the miraculously fast speed of 2400 baud! David Hinds for being a past club vice president and president, and being willing to do it all over again. Not to mention the times he has bailed me out when I am running late to the meetings or have a schedule conflict that prevents me from attending. John Clark for lugging huge containers of software, videos, books and magazines to each meeting for us to peruse and check out at will. John has been doing this for longer than I can remember. He even let me say his tag line at most meetings this year, “Remember, the more you check out the less I have to lug back home.” Pat McAlister for many years of service as our club secretary. Pat takes notes at the regular club meetings and board meetings, as well as writing a monthly newsletter column. Don Boudeman for being our club treasurer and membership chairman for a number of years now, and volunteering to do it for another year. Past president Joe Schork for jumping through all the hoops to make sure we have a meeting place at the Jones Center every month. This is a more daunting task that you might imagine. Last, but certainly not least, Ed Maxey for his club contributions that go back to the pre-Windows era of our club. He has served as club officer and director, and still attends virtually every board meeting we have.

Needless to say, I am delighted with the prospects for our club in 2004, since such an esteemed group of people will be at the helm. Now, onto those technical things I promised to discuss…

WINDOWS START-UP ITEMS: Many members took interest in John Gable’s comments during the October meeting when he discussed ways to make Windows run faster and more efficiently. Members especially perked up during the discussion about using MSCONFIG to disable needless programs from being loaded every time Windows starts.

A fair amount of discussion at our November Q & A session revolved around exactly which programs could (or should) be disabled without disabling some of the features we have grown to know and love. Since this is a highly personal question based on each user’s preferences, Jim McGrew hit the jackpot for us by finding an excellent online reference to explain exactly what each startup item is, how necessary it is, and exactly what it does. You can find this information at the following URL:

http://www.pacs-portal.co.uk

After clicking “Startup Tips” from the URL given above, the listing of startup programs is about halfway down the page under the heading “The Programs.” It is organized in a number of ways for quickly finding the item you are looking for. The growing list of start-up programs that can be found here is updated weekly. In addition to explaining all of the startup items you are likely to ever encounter, the site also contains helpful information and discusses why it is important to be selective about all the “stuff” that runs every time you reboot Windows, and many other helpful topics.

FOLDER REDIRECTION: We have talked about efficient storage of hard drive contents on numerous occasions. Most of you have heard Bill Shook, Ed Maxey or me talk about best practices for utilizing multiple hard drives, multiple partitions, or external storage devices. So by now you know that it is a common practice to utilize separate partitions and/or drives for separating programs and data files. By not commingling these different items—think “apples” and “oranges”—your programs and data files can be backed up with relative speed and ease. There are many other advantages to this strategy that are too numerous to mention here.

Starting with Windows 2000, there is a neat way to keep the “My Documents” contents in a location defined by you (whether it be a different partition, hard drive, networked computer, etc.) by using Folder Redirection. A couple of advantages of using folder redirection over manually creating these folders includes the fact that appropriate folder permissions will be created for you, and that add-on programs you add later will automatically point to the redirected folder. In essence, the new location you specify becomes associated with the default “My Documents” folder.

If you are running Windows 2000 or newer, search the help file contents for “Folder Redirection” to learn more. The technical explanations found here can be a bit daunting, so you might want to search the discussion groups at Google for tips, tricks and possible problems to avoid. There is additional information about folder redirection available at Microsoft.com, as well.

WIRELESS INTERNET ACCESS: Another topic that has garnered a lot of recent attention is high-speed wireless Internet access. I recognized visitor Ron Grigg at the November meeting, but it was not until I chatted with him afterwards that I realized he is the person behind Dlux Information Systems, the company responsible for bringing broadband wireless infrastructure to Northwest Arkansas. As a bit of background, I met Ron while I was obtaining my computer systems engineering degree at the University of Arkansas. Ron was a member of the teaching staff at the university then, and he is an extremely knowledgeable person in the area of computer and electrical engineering.

Since wireless Internet access may be a reasonable alternative to DSL or cable modem service for many of our members, I asked Ron if he would be willing to do a presentation for us, and he said that he would. There were questions brought up by members about signal reception during strong storms or other environmental conditions, privacy of transmitted data, upload and download speeds, pricing, coverage area, etc. I think it would be great to hear Ron talk about these things and answer whatever questions we might have. Please be sure to let David Hinds or Bill Moeller know if you would like to hear a presentation about broadband wireless Internet access. In the meantime, you can find out more by visiting http://www.dluxlink.com.

HAPPY HOLIDAYS! I would like to take this opportunity to wish each club member and their families a very happy holiday season. Remember that we will not have a club meeting in December. I will look forward to seeing each of you at the meetings next year, and hopefully I will be able to socialize a bit more since I won’t be at the front of the room the entire time!

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