Our meeting began as usual with a Windows SIG, which Merle Nicholson started and Mary Sheridan picked up upon her arrival. We discussed one member’s problem with a modem not connecting properly. After a brief debate the group decided it was time for our friend to upgrade to a version of Windows a little newer than 3.1.

Disposal of computer parts came up again. As you all know, monitors cannot be thrown out with your regular trash, but were you aware that those old motherboards couldn’t go out on a regular pickup either? They contain elements such as lead that qualify as toxic or hazardous material. If you have any of these items you can still take them to the dump yourself. Homeowners will need to bring a copy of your tax receipt for proof of residence, and apartment dwellers can use a phone or electric bill.

Power saver problems were brought up, with several members claiming similar stories. It seems that when the system goes into power saver mode it will occasionally crash instead of warming up. This appears to be common to Win95 and Win98 users. It was suggested that, if you suffer from this problem, you should disable power saver functions in Windows. If the problem continues, then try disabling the BIOS settings.

For those of you who want a web browser with 128 bit encryption, but couldn’t find it in Internet Explorer 5.0, Microsoft has the plug-in available on their site.

Merle started our general meeting at 6:45 PM. He reminded the members present of our membership drive, so please try to enlist the aid of your friends into our little family. An announcement was made that if any of you have a personal web site, we would like to link it from our User’s Group web site. If you are interested contact our editor, William LaMartin.

Chuck McPhearson of Laser Perfect was our first presenter. His company started in 1988 recycling toner cartridges for copiers. They now remanufacture laser and ink jet cartridges as well. There is less than a 2% failure rate on their product, and if it does fail, Laser Perfect will replace it postage paid both ways. The cost of a remanufactured cartridge can save you up to 50% off retail cost if you send them your old cartridge, but if you don’t have the empty available yet you can still purchase a backup at less than the cost of a new one. To order call their number, 1-800-989-2666, and they will send you a price list with a prepaid return box. Fill out the order form, put your empty in the box and the new cartridge will be back to you within seven working days. If you have a larger item they will send you a postage paid label.

Laser Perfect also assists charitable organizations by purchasing old, empty cartridges at $1.50 each. These organizations in turn get larger sponsors to save empty ink cartridges instead of throwing them away, helping the environment along the way.

Next, Jim Weber gave a brief discussion on MP3 music with a demonstration of Music Match Jukebox. MP3 is a compression scheme that allows a 10:1 compression ratio over standard .WAV and CD music files. This means a minute of CD quality audio now only takes up 1 Meg of disk space. Songs can be transmitted over the Internet without tying up a phone line for hours, and music can be stored and played directly from a hard drive. That means you can now store the long version of "In A Godda Davida" without buying a new hard drive. MP3 works with a combination of removing sounds the human ear can’t pick out anyway and mathematical compression algorithms. Since MP3 is a compression scheme, processor power comes into play for decoding during playback. A Pentium 75 is the minimum recommended speed with 16 Meg of memory. In reality a P166 is the least you will want to use on a Windows system if you plan on doing anything else while MP3s are playing. Music Match Jukebox is the first, and therefore favorite, MP3 recorder and decoder I use. It allows a user to create MP3 files from Compact Disks or wave files and convert MP3 files to a wave file. It functions like a Jukebox, which means I can set up a play list of up to 99 songs depending on the type of music I’m in the mood for, and it will proceed to play through my selections. A full description and a demo version is available from http://www.musicmatch.com. It costs $29.95 and comes with a FREE lifetime upgrade. I’ve upgraded mine twice without any trouble.

In the door prize drawings, Mary Sheridan won a free year of ink cartridge refills, Clark Evans won Nuts & Bolts 98, Roger Waters won ProComm Plus, and Brian Lance won McAfee’s Virus Scan. The meeting ended at 8:30 PM. u