By Doug Mullis, Secretary, Tampa PC Users Group
dmullis@tampabay.rr.com

Vice President John Witmer started the SIG portion of our meeting at 6:35 pm. John reminded us that Pepin is moving on Aug 12^th to their new location at 4121 N. 50th Street. We have directions in this newsletter. Also let John know if you are interested in used 17-inch and maybe some 19-inch monitors that Pepin no longer wants.

John announced the Fall Conference of FACUG to be held Oct. 22, 2005 at the Sahib Shrine Temple, 600 N. Beneva Road in Sarasota. Go to their website for details.

Mary Sheridan, Member at Large, reminded us that election of officers for 2006 will be upon us soon. We will seek nominations in November with elections at our December meeting. We really need to get fresh blood as some of our officers need relief. Please think about serving.

Bob LaFave fielded several questions that members raised about programs available and updates to Microsoft’s Windows XP.

At 7:00 pm John introduced our speaker for the evening, our very own Merle Nicholson. Merle told us about Linspire, a Linux based operating system previously known as Lindows. For an annual fee of $49.95, you can subscribe to a website called Click & Run which allows you to download thousands of Linux based programs. PC club members can get a nice deal from Steve Singer of RDI, which includes an installation CD, a Linspire “Extras” disk AND the “Gold Membership” allowing access to their warehouse of programs. Such a deal!

Merle suggested you set up your system to operate bothWindows and Linspire in a dual-boot setup. In fact he offered a used computer for $150 already programmed with Linspire. This system has an AMD 1300+ MHz chip, 40 Gig hard drive, 256 MB RAM, speakers and keyboard.

Someone asked if Linspire would be compatible with his or her existing devices, printers, etc. Merle said in most cases they probably are but printer settings must be changed. USB connected devices work best.

Merle demonstrated how easy it was to use Linspire and showed us some applications. As usual, the hour and a half zipped by. If you are interested in trying Linspire, remember Merle’s pre-programmed computer, or get in touch with Steve Singer. Thanks Merle for an interesting evening.

After a short break during which Mary sold raffle tickets, we had a drawing for a year’s subscription to Smart Computing Magazine. Jim Purcell was the lucky ticket holder.

The meeting concluded about 9:00 pm. u