MINUTES
EXECUTIVE BOARD MEETING
of January 25, 2010
CALL TO ORDER: President Bill Barnes called the meeting to order , held at Shomars on Eastway, at 6:08PM.
THOSE ATTENDING: Bill Barnes-President, Jack LaPointe-Vice President, Dewey Williams- Web Master, Galin Bolin-valued member, Rob Wilson-Newsletter Editor and Myself.
MINUTES: It was moved by Dewey and seconded by Jack that he previous meeting's minutes be approved as posted on the club web site. Approved.
GENERAL MEETING: February's general meeting will be held on 2-11-10 at 7 PM. Bill, Jack & Galin will give a presentation on free antivirus programs such as AVG, Avira, MS Security Essentials, those provided by many ISP's (Internet service providers) and CA.
March's meeting will include our annual elections. Barbara will step down as treasurer so we need candidates for that post.
Several ideas have been put forward but no firm commitments have been made at this time. A full program on the features of Internet Explorer – both old and new, video editing for the non-professional including Adobe or Movie Maker, Hodgepodge, Windows Home Server, Cloud Computing/Google apps, Own your computer/data organization, 64 bit computing – software and hardware compat-ibility, Sutterfly and Picassa are some of the subjects that have been discussed.
FREE SUBSCRIPTIONS TO BE RAFFELED! The club has free subscrip-tions to Smart Computing that will be raffled off over the next two months. The club got these free subscriptions when members (and other people) used the club’s Internet site (
http://pc3.org) to subscribe or renew subscriptions. The program will end in April. They are smart enough to extend the subscription if it hasn't run out yet.
OTHER GIVEWAY! The club has several copies of Viper AV. Viper is an antivirus, anti-malware suite that consistently ranks in the top 10 of such programs. It is known for working smoothly and taking up less resources (think RAM) than the more well known suites such as those from Symantec and McAffee. For an additional $10 one can buy a license for 3 computers so you can protect all the family's computers. The copies we have are free to use for one year and include regular updates.
MEMBERSHIP DEVELOPMENT: Jack reports that we are still looking for ideas. We will have a roster at the meeting so everyone can check their infor-mation and correct any errors. Jack also suggested that one our meetings be a chat & discuss session for the entire evening. It will also be for wives and interested children. Of course, the best thing is to BRING A FRIEND.
NEWSLETTER: The newsletter will be sent the weekend before the 2nd Thursday so it will have more immediacy and be a better reminder to some who want to attend the meeting. Any contributions to the newsletter need to be submitted the weekend of Saturday the 6th.
SIGs -Special Interest Groups: Dewey suggested single topic SIGs. A one- or two-session class given on a topic of interest. Some suggestions were:
a) Basics of setting up a home network. Protocol N is now official.
b) Installing and using SKYPE.
c) How to set up and use a proxy.
d) Driver managers; free and safe.
e) Genealogy
f) moving your data form Windows XP to 7.
g) Hi Def video to your TV from your NANO and other devices.
THE 'CLUB CD': We compiling a cd that will be a most useful resource to NEW members. It will have many utilities and small programs that the board and other experienced members use more or less regularly for the little annoyances of computering. It will also have a menu system that will automatically start that, when a title is clicked, will give the member a choice of a brief description and list of uses (user's guide), run the item itself or a more complete review of it.
The board and some other members will take a program(s) and assure we have the latest version, and write the user's guide and review.
Attendees suggested several applications and utilities that would be useful for inclusion on the 'CD'.
A flash (thumb) drive imprinted with the club logo and name was suggested by Dewey but the cost may be prohibitive.
Next Board Meeting: The next board meeting will be on 2/22/10 at SHOMAR'S on Eastway Drive at 5:30 PM.
ADJOURNMENT: It was moved by Paul and seconded by Rob that the meeting be adjourned. Passed unanimously at 7:11 PM.
Submitted respectfully by Paul I Reiss, Secretary
