The Windows SIG started at 6:00. Our President was not in attendance at this meeting, so we had Steve Singer give us brief presentation on Windows Millennium (Me). Me will be the new Win 95/98 upgrade, and it is due for retail sale on September 14. Along with fixes and updates, Me contains Internet Explorer 5.5, a new Media Player and network wizard, and built in movie capture and editing

Mike Hodges started the general meeting at 6:30. We now have a new projector, which was presented to the group at this meeting. Special thanks to William LaMartin for his initiative in this matter. Our presentation was from Ryan Harris of Atlantic.net. His company provides both analog and DSL Internet service. Mr. Harris discussed the differences and advantages of DSL service over cable modem. Cable modems offer a theoretical speed of 30 megabytes per second compared to DSL’s 1.5 mps. However, real world use shows cable in the consumer market is only running between 300 kbs and 1.6 mps. Cable is also a shared bandwidth network, the more users on at one time, the slower the individual connection. DSL does not share this problem. DSL also has the added advantage of using existing phone lines to provide point of service to the customer.

A good reason to start looking into broadband will be the growth of Application Service Providers. Several companies, including Microsoft, have announced plans to make their applications and programs available only over the internet on a pay per use schedule. Priceline.com is an example of an Application Service Provider. Mr. Harris ended his presentation at 7:40.

Our monthly drawing was held after the presentation. Mike Hodges was the big winner with a month free internet access from Atlantic.net and three T-shirts ( don’t be surprised to get one for Christmas ). Roger Waters, Brian Lance, Denise Adams, Mike Brazas, and Jim Purcell were all also winners.

The meeting ended at 8:00. u