From the August 1992 Bits of Blue

Secretary’s Report
TAMPA IBM USER’S GROUP

MINUTES OF 7/8/92

This meeting proved that we can improvise when we do not have a scheduled vendor presentation. We did it all in-house this time, and it was a very good, interesting and worthwhile meeting - in very large measure due to the effort and talents of Tom Cone, who gave an excellent rundown on GeoWorks Pro, and our SYSOP, Kevan Sheridan, who gave a rundown on the FIDO Net of which our Bits of Blue BBS is now a part. And, there were a large number of members and guests on hand to take advantage of the opportunity. If you weren’t there, you missed another good one. If you are not a “regular” at the meetings, a bit of advice -- you really should be, because every meeting is interesting and packed with useful info.

Harvey opened the meeting noting the “new look” of the newsletter and soliciting views on same. The response was an approving round of applause. Good work, Mary Lee (and helper Harvey).

Harvey also noted that newsletter volume was at a breakpoint - 200 copies for mail distribution. That is the breakpoint for non-profit mail status (which takes time to arrange) and that the logistics of handling the increasing volume is becoming something of a burden for him and the editor to handle by themselves - in addition to their other club obligations. Be prepared for some changes in the not-too-distant future and to make yourself available to help if you can.

Harvey pointed out that non-current addresses cost the club $8, and deny the affected party the newsletter. Please keep your address on record with the club current. When your address changes, send a change of address to the address shown on the front of this newsletter -- PLEASE!

Our Prez summarized a decision taken at the last meeting to end club-financed refreshments at our regular meetings to make funds available for club needs. Later in the meeting we returned to this subject with a different twist. The funds for the refreshments came from 50% of the proceeds of the sale of “raffle” tickets at our meetings. The other 50% of the proceeds have been given away as one of the raffle prizes. The idea of also retaining this 50% to finance club needs (e.g., a new modem, etc.) was offered as a proposal. Discussion and a vote on this were deferred due to the late hour, but will likely be presented again at the next meeting.

Harvey announced that our Education Director, Ed Buzza, would begin a 4-class series on Word Perfect 5.1 for DOS at 5:45 PM -- 45 minutes before our regular meeting on Sept. 9. The 2nd and subsequent classes will be held at the same time on our regular meeting nights for Oct., Nov. & Dec.

Each class will be 45 minutes long and will dismiss at 6:30 to rejoin the regular meeting in time for any program reviews that may be scheduled.

Four 45 minute classes is not, of course, enough time to cover a sophisticated program like Word Perfect in great depth. But I caution you to not let this be a deterrence to your taking advantage of this opportunity. ED IS GOOD and will cover a lot of ground in a short time - plus, it will be a good opportunity to ask questions.

Our own Tom Cone is an attorney and uses GeoWorks Pro as his “desktop” and he finds it meets his needs very well. Tom decided a rundown of the program at one of our meetings might prove beneficial to others. This meeting was the time - and he gave an excellent rundown of the program, including the following:

It has an environment much like MS Windows, with many of the same kinds of features as Windows. (I believe it is easier to use than Windows.)

One big advantage is that the program will work on an XT. It requires a minimum of 512K RAM (likes 640K), DOS 2.1 or higher, and needs about 7 MB of hard disk space. It will work with just about any monitor, including monochrome and CGA (which gives B&W picture).

Another good benefit is that some users report laser quality print from a 9 dot matrix printer. (I have a 24-pin DM and I do get very good quality out of GeoWorks 1.2, but it is no better than I get from Windows 3.1, Adobe, Powerpak, or Bitstream Facelift, all of which are very good quality.)

The program provides three levels of use: Beginner, Intermediate, and Advanced:

The BEGINNER level is limited to the desktop features: An excellent planner/scheduler, address book, calculator, note pad/text editor, and a solitaire game and a banner maker.

The INTERMEDIATE level provides the forgoing, plus GeoWrite word processor, GeoDraw drawing program, a scrapbook, and immediate access to DOS at all times. Applications are available thru icons for all documents stored on disk. This level of GeoWorks Pro is locked into a document sub-directory of Geos where documents are stored. Each document is represented by an icon on the screen. Double clicking any document icon will load the application that generated the document, with that document loaded into the application. This level makes available a “waste basket” into which you can move files, individual and up to and including entire directories -- a convenient feature of file maintenance. Another nice feature is capability to store additional info about your individual files, including up to 200+ characters of notes (similar to high end word processors). It also provides the capability to group/ungroup files/objects for manipulation, a formatting capability, and file management.

The ADVANCED level provides all of the above. However, instead of being locked into a document directory, a desktop is used, with all applications represented by icons. The desktop is called Geo Manager and is similar in nature to Windows managers. Applications, other than those mentioned above, which appear on the desktop include:

Geo Com; a nice, flexible communications program; and a realities kind of address book with links to Geo Com and the Planner.

GeoWorks Pro can be bundled with Quattro Pro SE, a scaled down, but still powerful version of Quattro Pro. Quattro Pro SE is not a GeoWorks application, but GeoWorks Pro has been designed to allow importing from Quattro Pro SE spreadsheets whatever info you may require.

GeoWrite is somewhat more powerful than WinWrite in that GeoWrite allows use of columns - up to 4. GeoWrite accepts files only in ASCII or GeoWrite. GeoWrite will import a wide variety of graphics, but it does not wrap text around graphics - you can have no text that is not a part of the graphic on the same lines as the graphic.

Other nice features of Geo Works Pro include: A special viewer that allows looking at prospective cut/paste imports into GeoWorks applications; GeoWorks Pro allows shutting down with applications running and files loaded into those applications; it will be returned to that same configuration at next start-up. Another nice feature is the cost; some at the meeting reported purchasing the program for as little as $59. That is cheap. Thanks, Tom, for a super presentation. I have GeoWorks 1.2 and like the program very well, and GeoWorks Pro is a good improvement over that. The biggest problem I have is that, like Windows, it does not have powerful enough built-in programs -- word processors, DTPs, etc. - to meet my needs. Unlike Windows, however, there are no major applications on the market written for GeoWorks Pro. Hence, you are limited to the internal features of GeoWorks Pro and shelling out to DOS to use other applications.

Kevan Sheridan, our Bits of Blue BBS SYSOP, gave an excellent rundown of the FIDO Net system that our BBS recently joined. A layman’s definition of FIDO Net is “a worldwide message network” that allows the exchange of messages between any subscribing BBS anywhere in the world. At present, there are some 17,000 nodes on the FIDO Net. It is a real bargain for us - costing only $3.50 per month for the 10 ECHOs we have subscribed for:

Desqview Shareware
Novell QModem
Windows ZModem
Virus OS/2
WordPerfect Disney

Each ECHO on our BBS is limited to the 500 most recent messages. Thus, there are some 5,000 FIDO Net messages on our BBS at all times. That is a LOT of reading. Hence, you are asked to select Only those conferences (ECHOs) you are most interested in and download for subsequent leisure reading, rather than tie up the BBS reading the messages. It should be noted that the Net is designed for the exchange of messages between BBSs and not messages among members of the same BBS; Bits of Blue members sending messages to other BOB members should use the main conference message feature.

For turbo log-on to the BBS, type: (first name) (space) ( last name) (space) (password) (space) (!). That will get you to the main menu where you then select Join Conferences. You may then select any conference you desire, with the FIDO Net conferences listed as Public Conferences. M gets you to the QWK mail door. The first time, you must select the compression system you will use (e.g., ZIP) and the conferences you are interested in downloading; these can be changed later if desired. The BBS will keep track of the conferences you select and the messages you download so that the next time you download, only those messages added since your last download of that conference will be downloaded.

You may read the messages on the BBS, but that is not practical and really limits the utility of the BBS for all members. You are asked to download those FIDO Net conferences you are interested in -- it takes a lot less time to download than to read, and you can then read at your leisure. But, you will need an off-line mail reader. The BBS has at least two available:

OLX-TD.EXE for use with DOS, and WINQ200.ZIP for use with Windows. (I believe both have essentially the same features, but I will mention only OLX, which Kevan described.)

When you first crank up OLX (Off-Line Express), you must configure the program to your computer, identifying such as your upload directory, download directory, etc. It is suggested that you set the FIDO Tagline to “Yes”. OLX will then allow you to read all messages or selectively read, to print all or selectively print, and/or to save all or individual messages. It is reported to be a nice and easy-to-use program and should meet all your needs in dealing with FIDO Net downloads.

Kevan, you did a super job. I haven’t used this new feature yet, but I believe I can do so with confidence after having the benefit of your review of the system. Thanks much, from all of us.

AND THE WINNER IS:

The following had the good fortune of winning some very nice prizes:

Geo Works Pro - Emelie Jurado
Diskette Manager - Calvin Johnson
Box 3 V diskettes - Ruth Redlein
How To Backup Your PC - Bill White & Roger Waters

I recently ordered 0S2/2.0 from a Massachusetts mail order firm, Corporate Software. I received the program after some justifiable delay, due mostly to the need to send in proof of ownership for upgrade price purposes. I had anxiously awaited marketing of 0S2/2.0 after having seen a couple of demos of the program and reading several articles describing the program.

After receiving the program, I used a good bit of scarce “spare time” to read the documentation. I was interested in all of the documentation, especially loading and start-up, with a particular interest in compatibility. I learned much, including that compatibility info was contained in files on the disks -- not much help until I loaded the program. I learned, among other things, that the program included Windows 3.0 and not 3.1. Since 3.1 is a great improvement over 3.0, I wanted to know if 0S2 was compatible with Win 3.1. I also had some other technical questions.

So, I called Tech Support at IBM. I learned that 0S2 was not compatible with Win 3.1. During the course of the conversation, I mentioned disk compression programs. At that point I was also informed that 0S2 was not compatible with any disk compression programs on the market (Stacker, SuperStor, DoubleDisk) and would not recognize the compressed disks. These factors made 0S2/2.0 unsuitable for me.

At that point, I looked at the return documentation from Corporate Software. Among other things, it said it would accept return of only unopened or damaged products. That left me out. I should have read the company’s documentation before I opened, you say! It wouldn’t have made any difference. I had no reason to believe that I would not want the software -- I had no indication on the surface that the program was not compatible with my setup (to the contrary, compatibility data is imbedded in the program), or contained features I would not want (e.g., Windows 3.0).

So, what are the options: (1) Send in to the producer of any software you have an interest in your complete setup to ascertain compatibility; (2) Buy the software and be stuck with any that you cannot use; (3) Don’t buy software from a source that will not permit legitimate returns, including incompatible software. The latter is now my practice, along with complaints to the companies involved in this exercise. I would suggest that all software purchasers give similar thought regarding their purchases. WHAT DO YOU THINK?  u