WINDOWS SIG The Windows SIG got under-way at 6:15, led by Mary Sheridan, President.

Bob LaFave suggested that installing Internet Explorer 5.5 slowed his computer down by a significant amount and that he found a solution to it by deleting EMM386 in CONFIG.SYS.

There was a discussion and speculation on the forthcoming operating systems from Microsoft. One thing that was agreed on was it’s confusing.

Bruce Register put in a plug for the help list in the back of each newsletter to encourage members to call for help and to participate if possible.

Mary mentioned the ITEC trade show coming up in May. We – TPCUG – will have a booth there. ITEC is also looking for volunteers.

Other news: http://www.bigzoo.com is offering long distance service for 2.9 cents per minute. It’s a $20 pre-paid service. An announcement was made that memory prices are at rock bottom right now, and there’s not a better time to upgrade the memory on your computer.

PRESENTATION William LaMartin gave an excellent presentation on digital photography. He brought some of his equipment with him and had prepared a terrific PowerPoint presentation.

William began by relating his long history in amateur photography using film and his transition to digital using film to digital equipment and scanning to the present where he’s relying more on direct digital photography and using his computers.

In the presentation he showed 35 mm photos that were scanned in and the list of his equipment that he has acquired over many years.

Two good web sites mentioned are:
Http://www.dpreview.com for digital camera reviews and http://www.luminous-landscape.com for photographic techniques, opinions and images.

In his presentation, William took pictures, with and without flash. He then transferred these files to his notebook computer, made adjustments to the size and made some contrast changes.

William showed us some of his varied interests in copying old B & W family photos, Mardi Gras photos scanned from slides and close-ups of wild flowers from a 35 mm camera and scanned from negatives with the HP photo scanner.

He also demonstrated his "Hyde Park Project" where he is taking digital pictures of all 400 plus houses in Hyde Park and is arranging them in a new Visual Basic program that he wrote to manage and display them.

He concluded by showing a panorama of his back yard that consists of multiple digital pictures taken with his Canon G1 and merged with Photo Stitch.

Thanks must go to William LaMartin for an excellent and informative talk on the hottest topic in home computing.

Gary Ennis won the door prize, a copy of Intuit’s Quickbook Pro 2000 business financial software. u