Vol. 26 number 3 March 2009 The newsletter of the Ottawa PC Users' Group Calendar OPCUG General Meeting National Museum of Science and Technology 1867 St. Laurent Blvd. Second (*first) Wednesday of each month, 7:30pm Mar 11 Computers and Persons with Disabilities, Elizabeth Dussault, Natural Resources Canada Apr 08 The Future of Home Automation: What's in-store for 2009, by Steven Totolo / tvcAutomation, Ottawa May 13 How the Web Works by Chris Taylor, OPCUG Jun 10 Pizza + Video Editing by Roger Wambolt, Corel Corp. Beginner SIG After the OPCUG General Meeting, at the Museum. IT Pro SIG After the OPCUG General Meeting, at the Museum. Linux SIG After the OPCUG General Meeting, at the Museum. PIG SIG (Wing SIG West), after all the SIGs, at 10 p.m. Chances "R", 1365 Woodroffe (at Baseline), College Square Beer BOF (Wing SIG East), after all the SIGs, at 10 p.m. Liam Maguire's, 1705 St. Laurent at Innes (formerly Hooters) Please note that unless otherwise noted, SIGs meet at 9:00 p.m. (immediately following the OPCUG General Meeting). ____________________________ Coming Up... March 11, 2009 Speaker: Elizabeth Dussault, Natural Resources Canada Topic: Computers and Persons with Disabilities Elizabeth is the Accessible Computing Analyst for NRCan and runs the department's Technology Accessibility Centre where she helps people who need assistive technologies. She will provide information on the opportunities made available by the computer and the Internet for persons with functional limitations as well as provide some insight into the challenges posed. Elizabeth will cover some of the major disabilities and provide a brief overview of some adaptive technology and how it can help people with disabilities to go to school, hold jobs and generally participate in our society. The presentation will include interactivity. Ever wonder what it is like for a disabled person? Come to the March meeting and find out. April 8th, 2009 Speaker: Steven Totolo / tvcAutomation, Ottawa Website: http://www.tvcAutomation.com Topic: "The Future of Home Automation: What's in-store for 2009" Steven will present an up-to-date view of the home automation industry. A lot has changed since his last presentation to OPCUG in September 2003, in whole-house audio, intelligent lighting, security systems, home theatre and networks. tvcAutomation specializes in working with homeowners and homebuilders to find personalised home automation solutions. May 13 Speaker: Chris Taylor, OPCUG Topic: "How the Web Works" June 10 Pizza night and speaker Roger Wambolt, Corel Corporation Topic: Video Editing ____________________________ March Raffle At the March general meeting, thanks to the generosity of Microsoft Canada's Ottawa office, we will be raffling off a copy of Microsoft Office Ultimate 2007. The version of Office is absolutely packed with tools to cover a huge variety of tasks. If includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook with Business Contact Manager, Access, Publisher, Groove, OneNote, and InfoPath. For details on this power- pack suite of tools, see http://office.microsoft.com/en- gb/suites/FX101674121033.aspx. The going price of Microsoft Office Ultimate 1007 is $900. With tickets at only $1 for one, $2 for three, or $5 for ten, can you afford not to buy a bunch? ____________________________ February Prize Winners The prize winners from the February 2009 general meeting were: Don Chiasson & Harry Gross winning an OPCUG Clock Calendar and Bob Gowan who won the raffle prize of a Blue Laser cordless mouse and a WebCam donated by Microsoft. Correction At the January meeting, Morris Turpin did not win an OPCUG Clock/Calendar. ____________________________ Product Review The tax man cometh... and here comes the Taxman by Alan German It's that time of year. Once again, you have to dig out all those slips and receipts, spread out a raft of paper forms over the kitchen table, sharpen your pencil, and dig into the preparation of your tax return. Well, of course, nobody actually uses pencil and paper any more - do they? - everyone uses the computer. But, it still irks to have to pay out good money for a commercial tax package just so you can send even more of your hard earned cash to the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA). Of course, you could create your own tax forms in a spreadsheet program. But, it turns out that you can never use the same spreadsheet twice. CRA, in their wisdom, change the tax structure every year, not only modifying things like the levels of taxable income (which can be efficiently dealt with using specific cells for data input in the spreadsheet, and appropriate although mind-blowingly complex formulae), but also changing the way in which some tax items are calculated. Now, if you only do one or two tax returns, typically yours and that of your spouse, it can take much longer to re-program the spreadsheet to handle the new structure of a tax item than to calculate the amount payable manually. And, you can guarantee, that there won't be just one such change in any given year! So, rolling out your own tax program isn't a particularly appealing option. But, neither is shelling out more and more dollars each year for a commercial program that offers less and less in the way of functionality. There's a reason for those 29 versions of your favourite tax software package - it's to separate you from more of your cash just so that you can complete the number of returns that you require! So, is there any help available in the form of freeware? Well, yes, there is. You need Taxman - a Canadian specific tax program - developed by G. Thompson of Victoria, BC. The program's author states "I make a humble living using my own software (since 1995) to knock out T1 General tax returns for Canadian residents. Using my own customers as guinea pigs, I've tested and bulletproofed and souped up this baby to the point where now she's just wasted on the likes of me. For some strange reason I like writing software, and so I've now got 28,000 lines of code buried in over 80 forms, and every time-saving trick I can think of. Maybe you can use a tool like this?" Now, one limitation is that Taxman doesn't support net filing, so you have to print out and mail in the completed forms. But, if you don't use Netfile, the program offers a simple yet powerful mechanism to complete your tax return. There is no limit to the number of returns that you can produce and you can easily link your return to that of your spouse to facilitate various forms of revenue sharing. And, best of all, it really is completely free. The author has a tongue-in-cheek indication that he will (if forced) accept donations but promises "...to spend the money only on Scotch and cigars..." At the time of writing (January, 2009), only a preliminary version of the program is available for downloading from the web, and this in the form of an update to an existing version. So, if you are a first time user, you will need to download the full package from a previous year and then add on the update for the 2008 tax year. I would recommend that you first install Taxman2007 Version 1.6 (if you run Vista, you will need this version anyway) and then add in the latest update for 2008 (currently Taxman2008 Upgrade Version 1.2). Once you have the program installed, and run the application for the first time, it's necessary to establish an entry for a tax payer using the menu item Records - New Person/Record. The data entry form requires the information that goes on page 1 of the T1 General form, i.e. name, address, social insurance number, etc. Now, you can use the Open T1 General tab to provide access to a set of electronic forms, with pages 1 through 4 of the T1 General form, plus the associated schedules and supplementary forms. The nice feature is that, while these look just like the paper forms, you enter data into the appropriate fields and the program takes care of all the maths! There are also automatic controls on the data that can be entered, and error checking, in order to avoid erroneous entries. Another fail-safe feature is that Taxman won't let you hit the big red X to exit from the program. You must use the Quit Taxman menu item to ensure that any changes you have made to the system are saved before exiting. Eventually, when you have completed all of the data entry, the bottom line on page 4 of your T1 General form will tell you the good news about your tax refund - or the bad news about the amount payable (boo, hiss!) Now, all that's left to do is to print out the forms, put them in an envelope, add a stamp, mail in your completed tax return - and wait for the postman to deliver your refund - to spend on scotch and cigars! Bottom Line: Taxman (Freeware) G. Thompson, Victoria, BC http://pacificcoast.net/~gthompson/ ____________________________ Product Review Vipre by Chris Taylor Every computer that connects to the Internet - indeed, any network - needs to be protected. The oldest and most basic protection is antivirus. According to Wikipedia, antivirus programs date back 21 years, to 1987. Over those years, the changing landscape of malware (a generic term for all malicious code) has forced the constant evolution of antivirus programs to handle many different attack techniques. As a result, antivirus programs have turned into bloated hulks that can steal incredible amounts of memory and processing power - resources that you bought to do useful work. Nobody goes down to the local computer store and says, "I would like to buy a computer so I can scan for viruses." I have gotten used to buying computers with more power than I need just so I have reserve power for the essential tasks of protecting the computer. And that certainly is a solution. But then I ran into a friend Lynda who did not want to spend money upgrading her computer. It is a tired old Pentium III running at 850 MHz with 512 MB RAM running Windows XP. And it is slooooow. I found that the antivirus on it was bogging things down a lot. I heard of some antivirus vendors who were designing antivirus programs that would not steal huge quantities of memory and processing cycles. One such vendor was Sunbelt Software. They created a brand new antimalware program called VIPRE that they claimed used less memory and had a lower CPU utilization than nine other commercial programs they compared themselves to, including the major heavyweights in the antivirus world, McAfee, Symantec and Trend. I decided to give it a try. I contacted Sunbelt Software and they sent me two review copies of VIPRE. Why two copies? I wanted to see how it performed on a fairly capable computer as well as an underpowered one. Most of this review is based on my experiences with my laptop computer, an HP Pavilion DV9000, with 2GB RAM, twin 120 GB hard drives, and a Pentium Core 2 Duo running at 1.66 GHz. I am running 64-bit Windows Vista Ultimate. I removed my current antivirus and rebooted. I put in the CD for VIPRE and the installation proceeded pretty normally and at the end a re-boot was requested. Then the first oddity with VIPRE happened. Nothing popped up when I logged into Windows. There were 2 icons in the system tray. One had a tooltip indicating Active Protection is disabled and Email Protection is disabled. I would expect any new installation of an antivirus program would come up with protection enabled. The other icon, which displayed an exclamation mark, had a tooltip that said Your risk definitions are out of date. Because I was keeping an eye on things, I noticed that the installation of VIPRE had turned off Windows own antispyware program Defender. This is actually a good thing, as VIPRE includes an antispyware component but I do object to not being told that this is going to happen and why. I right-clicked the VIPRE icon in the system tray and there was an option to update, so I chose it. A newer version of the entire program came down the wire, uninstalled the old version and installed the new. After a required reboot, VIPRE's protection was still turned off. I again chose the option to update and this time it said it was downloading risk definitions. The program reported, Current Version: 0. After several minutes the risk definitions were downloaded and it reported, Current Version: 2229 (2008-09-11 6:05:13 PM). So was all well? Not just yet. I manually started the main program for VIPRE and was greeted by the notice that I had to complete a wizard prior to using VIPRE. Forgive me if I feel that a program as essential as antivirus should automatically load and take you through any required steps without expecting you to manually start the program. Many people would have just assumed the program was doing its job and not bothered doing anything. Maybe if I had waited long enough, something would have popped up and told me what to do. The CEO at Sunbelt has asked that the next major release runs the wizard automatically on first reboot. The wizard was clear and easy to follow. One small thing I found odd - at one point you can specify that you want a full scan of your computer done every night. Aside from the fact (in my opinion) that this is overkill to the nth degree, the only option at this point is to run the scan at 1:00 am. You can change it after the wizard has completed, but given all the options the wizard provides, surely it would be a simple matter to allow the person to choose how often they want the full scan done and at what time of day. Sunbelt agrees that I have a valid point and they are looking at changing this. At the end of the wizard, you are then in a 15-day trial mode unless you enter your registration key. I purposely transposed two digits (I know, I am such a rotten person to actively try to foul things up). VIPRE did not complain and simply left me in trial mode. Again, this is something that some people might not notice and certainly deserves a big warning that you entered an invalid license key. It offered a demonstration of VIPRE which takes you to the Sunbelt Software web site for a pretty decent overview of the program. Definitely worth watching. Although VIPRE has the ability to do separate scanning of email, I have not tested this feature. I use two separate email programs - Outlook (with an Exchange Server back end) and Thunderbird (with multiple mail servers with multiple configurations for special ports). From what I can tell from the manual, I will not be able to get it to work given my plethora of accounts and settings. A quick scan of my computer first scanned in-memory processes, followed by what VIPRE considers "commonly affected areas of your computer." For me, that came to 23 in-memory processes, 5,000 files, almost 30,000 registry items and over 2,300 cookies. It recommended removal of 161 tracking cookies. It took just over nine minutes to complete the scan. I ran a deep scan, which scans your entire computer. For my system, that meant 25 in-memory processes, a quarter million files, the same 30,000 registry entries, and 2,500 cookies. Scanning that took two and a half hours. I am not sure why it found an extra couple of hundred cookies to scan. All in all, I found both times to be entirely acceptable. But I only have experience with three antivirus programs - McAfee VirusScan, Avast!, and VIPRE. I had some severe performance problems whenever I tried using my email program Thunderbird. Just reading a new message would cause the main process of VIPRE to use 90% or better CPU utilization for up to a minute before finally allowing the message to be displayed. I tried various things and wrote a very detailed email to tech support at Sunbelt Software. There were a couple of email exchanges back and forth with suggestions of things to try and requests for log files. Then I was told, "...this issue is being resolved in the next version of VIPRE, we don't have a release date for it yet, but it will most likely be sometime in October." Being September 22nd, I promptly uninstalled VIPRE, installed Avast! and waited for the new version. I enquired back with Sunbelt Software at the start of November and was assured the problem had been fixed, so I re-installed VIPRE and tested. Thankfully, the performance issues with Thunderbird were indeed fixed. From a performance point of view, I found no issues with VIPRE on my computer. With the Thunderbird compatibility issues behind me, I never notice that VIPRE's active scanning is running. And that is the way things should be. I have been a McAfee VirusScan user for many years and it didn't bog down my computer ... most of the time. But every now and then, for no apparent reason, VirusScan would steal about 95% of CPU utilization and go off and do something for maybe up to a minute. It didn't happen often, but it was maddening when it did. So far, I have not had anything like that happen with VIPRE. But remember when I spoke of Lynda's computer? She was using McAfee VirusScan and unfortunately, it had a huge negative impact on her slow, memory-starved computer. Lynda was used to things taking a very long time on her computer. I removed VirusScan and replaced it with VIPRE. I told her it would "probably" give her better performance. Well, she noticed a dramatic improvement in the performance of her computer right away. I declined to give actual performance numbers in terms of memory used and CPU utilization while scanning, etc. The reason is pretty simple...and complex. Windows is very good at adjusting how it does things depending on the resources at hand. Bits of programs can be tossed from memory when memory is scarce because Windows knows it can always re-load from disk. Prioritization of what program gets to use the CPU is not a simple thing to define either. And even timing how long it takes to load a program from disk to see the effect of scanning the process while the file loads is not necessarily a fair test. Different virus scanning programs can take different amounts of time for different files because of the way they are architected. One program might be better at one file and worse on another. I just really can't come up with objective tests that will give meaningful numbers. But I don't think that leaves me totally out of luck in talking about performance. From a very unscientific point of view, I have come to the conclusion that, if you have a pretty decently powered machine that is currently not showing any signs of being bogged down, I bet just about any antivirus program will probably perform not too badly. Certainly, in my experience, McAfee VirusScan, Avast! and VIPRE all give acceptable performance on my laptop computer. Perhaps the nod would go to VIPRE and Avast! slightly over VirusScan. But, if you have an underpowered computer that is struggling to keep up, the difference can be nothing short of astounding. VIPRE definitely does use significantly less memory than VirusScan on an under-powered computer and this makes a huge difference. It does seem to also use less CPU cycles and, if you have a slow computer, this can also make a big difference. Just as an aside, I noticed Avast! also has low memory and CPU utilization. What really matters with an antivirus program is how good it is at picking up malware. Although I don't have 20,000 different viruses I can test with, over the last few months there has been an abundance of brand new viruses being spammed to millions of addresses over the course of a few hours. This has presented an opportunity. I decided to see just how quickly various antivirus companies come out with signatures for new malware. I could test quite easily with VIPRE and VirusScan. A couple of other antivirus companies - Sophos and Kasperski - allow you to submit samples online and I used those facilities to see if they already knew about new strains I came across. I found that no one company was first out the gate all the time with signature files to detect new malware. Nor was any company last all the time. All were pretty good, with updated signatures files to detect new malware generally within 2 days. Occasionally, it took three or four days. If I had to pick a winner, I would give the nod to McAfee. Outside of performance and ability to detect malware, I also looked at VIPRE from a usability and "fit and finish" standpoint. The help file talks of the option to Exclude removable drives from scanning and says "It's best to keep this selected all times, except when you are intentionally scanning those external drives." Of the three types of scanning available; Quick, Deep System, and Custom, only Deep System even has a check box where I can select it. The default is not selected. The help file goes on to say "By default, Quick and Custom scans will automatically exclude these drives." For Quick scans, I can see the sense of this. But shouldn't Custom scans allow you to be as thorough as you like? On my system, I was unable to select the option to enable rootkit detection. The option was greyed out and I could not select it. On Lynda's computer, it could be selected. Is this because I am running 64-bit Windows? I don't know. Neither the help file, nor the manual provided any clue. While the on-demand scanner scans all files, the on-access scanner - what VIPRE calls Active Protection - is set to scan 48 file types, based on file extension. You can add your own file extensions to the list to be scanned, but I could not find an option to scan all files. Even more problematic, I could not see any way to have VIPRE scan the contents of archives, such as ZIP files. This does not create any real danger to my computer because if I try to access anything within a ZIP file, I first have to extract the files to disk and then the Active Protection scanner will presumably catch anything bad. But it would allow me to receive a virus-laden ZIP file and accidentally pass it on to someone else who might not be so well-protected. Sunbelt told me this was done to "greatly improve performance without causing any risk to the user." I grudgingly have to agree with them. I think their approach is a good one - for most people. I am just paranoid when it comes to malware. It is worth noting that the on-demand scanner scans everything - all file types including files in archives. When the on-demand scanner finds malware, it provides the name of the malware and the risk level. There is a button you can press to get more details, as shown here. From there, if you want even more information, the Learn More button takes you to a web site. This is very helpful when you need to decide what action to take, especially if you think you might have run this program before there was a virus definition file that detected it. Unfortunately, the Active Protection scanner - which is likely to be the scanner that finds most malware - gives much less information about the threat. For example, when copying a file that had a virus, I was told the process that was trying to copy the file, the file it was trying to copy, the fact that it was "known bad", and the threat ID of 421791. I could find no way to look up information on the threat ID. I would much prefer to see the level of detail the on-demand scanner provides. For some reason I was never able to figure out, when the Active Protection scanner logs that it found some malware, it always creates multiple log entries. Not dangerous, certainly, but strange, as seen here. In conclusion, I have mixed reactions to Sunbelt Software's VIPRE. I think overall, it will do a quite good job of protecting your computer from malware. And really, that's the main thing. If you have an older computer which has a slower processor or minimal RAM, VIPRE will operate much more efficiently than some of the other big names in antivirus. But I have quite a few little issues with the flexibility in configuring the program, default settings, information the program provides, etc. Sunbelt Software certainly seems receptive to suggestions. I expect the program will steadily improve in the "fit and finish" areas that I found to be problematic. If you are the type of person who just installs the program and expects that the vendor is going to configure it right for your needs, you will likely be happy with VIPRE. If you are the type of person who is always looking to tweak things and make sure the program is doing what you want it to do, you might want to look elsewhere for now. Bottom line: VIPRE Antivirus & Antispyware $29.95 (annual subscription) $49.95 (site license for all computers in your home, annual subscription) www.sunbeltsoftware.com/home-home-office/vipre/ ____________________________ OPCUG Free Software Guide - Part 4 Compiled by Alan German Outlook on the Desktop If you use Microsoft Outlook, this utility will place Outlook's calendar on your desktop. The calendar object gets pinned to the desktop so you can always see upcoming events. And, because it's Outlook's actual calendar, you get all the functionality, such as direct editing. The calendar's position, size and opacity are all adjustable, and you can switch between calendar, inbox, contacts, tasks and notes views. Web Site: http://www.outlookonthedesktop.com/ Easy Duplicate File Finder This free tool for Windows 95/98/Me/2000/ XP/Vista will help you to find and remove duplicate files on your PC. The program will conduct a byte-by-byte comparison to identify files with the same contents. You can set conditions for the scan, such as using file name masks, specifying certain folders, and protecting system files. A list of duplicate files can be produced as an HTML document or a text file. Current Release: Version 2.2.1 (19-Dec-08) Web Site: http://www.easyduplicatefinder.com/ Tweak UI This "unsupported" PowerToy for Windows XP is free from Microsoft and gives you access to system settings that are not available by default in the user interface. These include settings for the mouse, Windows Explorer, and the taskbar. Version 2.10 of Tweak UI requires Windows XP Service Pack 1 or Windows Server 2003. Current Release: Version 2.10 Web Site: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/powertoys/xppow ertoys.mspx LogMeIn Do you provide computer support for a friend or relative, or does someone do this for you? Want to have remote computer access to make such support activities more convenient? You need LogMeIn. Create an account on the LogMeIn web site, install the software on the target PC, and you can access it from any other PC, just by using a browser. Web Site: https://secure.logmein.com/products/free/ AVG Anti-Virus The free edition of AVG Anti-Virus provides protection against viruses, spyware, adware and identity-theft. The program can be set to scan any file that is read from or written to your hard drive to provide "on-access" protection, and to scan attached files in incoming and outgoing E-mail messages. Daily updates to the virus signature files are automatically downloaded and installed. Real-time virus protection. Frequent updates. Free. What more could you want? Current Release: Version 8.0.176 (25-Nov-08) Web Site: http://free.avg.com/ Ditto-cp Ditto is an extension to the standard windows clipboard. It saves each item placed on the clipboard, retaining up to 500 entries, and allowing you access to any of those items at a later time. You can specify what gets saved - text, images or HTML - conduct keyword searches for specific material, and transfer any item to another computer. Current Release: Ditto - 3.15.4 (17-Jan-08) Web Site: http://sourceforge.net/projects/ditto-cp/ Sandboxie Sandboxie runs your programs in an isolated space which prevents them from making permanent changes to other programs and data in your computer. This will, for example, allow you to try out new software, securely browse the web, and receive E-mail attachments, without worrying about malware infecting your system. Sandboxie works on Windows 2000, XP, Vista and Server 2003 (but not on Windows 95, 98 or ME.) Current Release: Version 3.32 Web Site: http://www.sandboxie.com/ Picasa Manage all your digital photographs with Google's Picasa utility. Perform simple edits such as fixing red-eye and cropping your images. Create slideshows, collages and movies. Upload your pictures to the web to share them with your family and friends. Current Release: Picasa 3 Web Site: http://picasa.google.com/ Previous Reviews: Picasa - Image Management by Google, Alan German, http://opcug.ca/public/Reviews/picasa.htm ____________________________ Computer Magazines by Don Chiasson A few years ago, Byte Magazine ceased hard copy publication. Byte covered hands-on hardware and architectures other than the Intel / PC. I feel the complete victory on the desktop of the PC architecture led to the magazine's demise. Two long time computer publications are PC Magazine and Dr. Dobb's Journal (DDJ). The former is a general magazine for PC users. The latter is for programmers, and has been in print for over 30 years. Both are going web only. The Editor of PC Magazine announced their plans for web-based issues starting in February, 2009. http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2335009,00.asp And Dr. Dobb's Journal is changing to Dr. Dobb's Report and will be delivered as a new monthly section in InformationWeek magazine, with articles on the web, http://www.ddj.com/linux-open-source/212700891 It was bound to happen, a lot of other magazines and newspapers are going this route. I think it is the wave of the future and it saves so many trees in the process. I stopped buying PC Magazine a few years ago, as there seems to be little new or exciting to read about. Like it or not, Microsoft has won. As for DDJ, few users do any programming so it has become somewhat boring and academic except to a few specialists. This is understandable, but I do feel sorry to see them go. Too bad. ____________________________ OTTAWA PC NEWS Ottawa PC News is the newsletter of the Ottawa PC Users' Group (OPCUG), and is published monthly except in July and August. The opinions expressed in this newsletter may not necessarily represent the views of the club or its members. Member participation is encouraged! If you would like to contribute an article to Ottawa PC News, please submit it to the newsletter editor (contact info below). Deadline for submissions is three Saturdays before the General Meeting. Group meetings OPCUG normally meets on the second Wednesday in the month, except in July and August, at the National Museum of Science and Technology, 1867 St. Laurent Blvd, Ottawa. Meetings are 7:30-9:00 p.m. and Special Interest Groups go until 10 p.m. Fees: OPCUG annual membership: $25 per year. Mailing address: 3 Thatcher St., Nepean, Ontario, K2G 1S6 Web address: http://opcug.ca/ Bulletin Board - PUB II (BBS): http://opcug.ca/default.htm President and System Administrator: Chris Taylor, chris.taylor@@opcug.ca, 613 727-5453 Meeting Coordinator: Bob Gowan, bob.gowan@@opcug.ca Treasurer: Alan German, alan.german@@opcug.ca Secretary: Gail Eagan, gail.Eagan@@opcug.ca Membership Chairman: Mark Cayer, Mark.Cayer@@opcug.ca, 613 823-0354 Newsletter: Brigitte Lord, brigitte.lord@@opcug.ca Email: (Mr.)Jocelyn Doire, Jocelyn.Doire@@opcug.ca Public Relations: Morris Turpin, PR@@opcug.ca, 613 729-6955 Facilities: Bob Walker, 613 489-2084 Webmaster: Brigitte Lord, opcug-webmaster@@opcug.ca Privacy Director: Wayne Houston, privacy@@opcug.ca Special Events Coordinator: Don Chiasson Beginners' SIG Coordinator: Chris Taylor, chris.taylor@@opcug.ca, 613 727-5453 Linux / Open-Source software SIG: Don Chiasson Note: We added an extra "@" to the emails to reduce spam. (c) OPCUG 2009. Reprints permission is granted* to non- profit organizations, provided credits is given to the author and The Ottawa PC News. OPCUG request a copy of the newsletter in which reprints appear. *Permission is granted only for articles written by OPCUG members, and not copyrighted by the author. ____________________________ Newsletter by email: To receive the newsletter by e-mail, send a message to listserve@@opcug.ca with the plain text "subscribe NewsletterTXT" or "subscribe NewsletterPDF" (without quotes) in the body of the message. No subject line is required. Cancelling the Paper Newsletter: You can help the environment and save us some costs by sending an email to Mark.Cayer@@opcug.ca asking to cancel the delivery of the paper version of the newsletter (or ask him in person - Mark is usually at the back of the auditorium at General Meetings). Announcements Mailing List: To subscribe to the Announcements List send an email to listserve@@opcug.ca, leave the subject blank and in the body of the message put "subscribe announcements" (without the quotes). Within a couple of minutes you will receive a confirmation message from the list server. OPCUG clock/calendar/calculator and mug: Check out the clock/calendar/calculator and thermal coffee mug sporting our club logo at the back of the auditorium at General Meetings! OPCUG insulated mugs are $15 and OPCUG clocks are $20. Reuse, recycle: Bring your old computer books, software, hardware, and paraphernalia you want to GIVE AWAY to the general meetings, and leave them at the table near the auditorium's entrance. Please limit your magazines to publication dates of less than two years old. If you don't bring something, you may want to TAKE AWAY something of interest, so look in on this area. Any item left over at the end of the meeting will be sent to the... recycle bin.