Mary Sheridan’s Windows SIG got underway right at 6 PM. The SIG strays from time to time with discussions about Comdex and Digital Camera, but for the most part it’s about Windows. Any suggestions on topics you’d like covered will be appreciated. You can email Mary at mcpease@aol.com or give her a call at 988-6480.

Merle Nicholson began the club business portion of the meeting at 6:35 PM. He announced the importance of keeping the PCs quiet during the presentation. SIG sign up sheets were distributed. The current SIGs we offer are: Windows SIG at 6pm before the regular meetings, Internet SIG the first Monday of every month at Reflectone, Genealogy SIG, the second Monday of the month at MOSI and the Visual Basic SIG the third Tuesday of the month at Gateway . Check the SIG page of the newsletter for any additional SIG information. Bruce Register announced the nominations for next year's officers will be presented at the October meeting. Be sure to come and nominate yourself or someone you’d like to see as an officer.

At 6:50 PM Steve Singer of RDI Hardware (morevalu@tampabay.rr.com) presented the group with a video camera for a door prize. The camera is used for video conferencing with 30 frames per second in 24 bit color capability. The camera uses a USB port on the computer. Steve says you must load the driver before plugging in the camera. Windows 98 (recommended) and USB make the camera very easy to use. When used with NetMeeting, there isn’t any jerky video because of an onboard chip. Video movies can be made into AVI files. The price of the camera is $98 and the name is C-It. Steve gave tips on the industry and how memory manufacturers raise prices by shutting down plants and decreasing supply.

The presentation started at 7:15 PM. Vinny Barber from Alps Printer started by explaining what Alps is and the products they make. It’s a 50 year old company that has for 48 years made the components used in almost every device you can think of. They make (of course) printers, but they also produce a mouse, keyboards, and Touch Pro. They are the third largest makers of floppy drives in the world. They make VCR parts, switches, power window switches, Alpine stereos, etc. The printer was the focus of the meeting, and it really is a wonderful machine.

The MD 1000 is a micro dry printer with dry ink. It uses a thermal print heat, so heat is how the ink adheres to the page. The ink is a resin based, plastic pigment based product; it will not fade, and it’s waterproof. It uses a Deposition on Silicone (DOS) print head and a ribbon. The printer notifies you when the ribbon is empty. They have a gloss ribbon that prints a photographic quality print on notebook paper. It was really something to see this demonstration and to look at the finished product with a photographic loop. It was impressive. The printers are comparable in cost to other brands, and the inks are the same price or cheaper. The MD 1300 is like a dye-sublimation printer. This is the kind of printer used by magazines for the glossy photos. The printer had true photo quality output.

Vinny gave away photo loops and a squirt gun for everybody.

Vinny was one of the funniest and most entertaining presenters we’ve ever had. You really missed something special if you weren’t able to attend.

Charles Howe won the 50/50 drawing. Brian Lance won the video camera. Charles, this was your lucky night: Charles Howe also won a copy of Partition It. Warren Fuss took home a game called Gnome and Brian Lance left with Disk Clone (Charles isn’t the only lucky one). u