By William LaMartin, Editor, Tampa PC Users Group
lamartin@tampabay.rr.com

Another year has gone by for me as newsletter editor. What you say, it is not the end of the year yet. Well, I actually did my first newsletter in December 1995. That makes 84 issues, and it is interesting to look back over the old issues and see what the topics were at the time. For awhile I have been running either the secretary’s report or the president’s message from newsletters that are 10 years old. This issue has the secretary’s report from December 1992.

A couple members suggested that I put more current material in the newsletter in place of the 10 year old articles. I would be happy to if they would write those articles for me. That notwithstanding, I kind of like the 10 year old articles. They remind me of a time when , although well over 10 years old in 1992, personal computing still had that new feel to it since there were so many new things coming out all the time. Of course new things still come out all the time, but, to me at least, for the most part they are just better versions of what we already have: Visual Studio.NET instead of Visual Studio (I don’t think anyone in the group cares much about that but me anyway); Corel Draw 11 instead of Corel Draw; Microsoft Access XP instead of Microsoft Access (see the 1992 article); 30 speed CD drive instead of a 1 speed CD drive; an 80 GB hard drive instead of a 1 GB Hard Drive.

What is really new since 1992? Well, I certainly like my digital camera, but its arrival didn’t have the same excitement as did the arrival of my first scanner (which was actually purchased in 1994). And, of course, nothing can compare to that purchase of an Apple IIe in 1983.

The early 1980’s were certainly an exciting time in personal computing. There was a buzz then—a bit like the Internet buzz we went through, perhaps five or six years ago. The personal computing excitement really carried through the early 1990’s, the growth of computer user groups being one indication. Our meetings of the TPCUG were exciting. At those meeting Microsoft, WordPerfect, Adobe, Corel, Delrina, MicroGrafix and other leading software companies gave us our first glimpse of many of the programs that are now standards: Word, Excel, Access, PowerPoint, Publisher, WordPerfect, Corel Draw, Adobe Photoshop and Acrobat. And many that were standards but no longer exist or just barely exist: Delrina PerForm, Comm Suite and WinFax Pro; MicroGrafix’s Graphics Suite. And don’t forget IBM’s OS/2. We had quite a few meetings devoted to that doomed operating system.

A lot was happening—and there was no World Wide Web. We had the BBS, and that was it. But the newness was wearing off. Version 2 of Access was not as exciting as Version 1; although it was enough to put Superbase, the first Windows database which was demonstrated at one of our meetings, out of business. And, as the excitement waned, so did our membership.

But in the mid 1990’s the Internet arrived to the masses with AOL and Prodigy fighting it out. And both companies gave presentations at our meetings. I thought, now, here is the solution to our membership problem. The Internet will revive an interest in user groups. Well, it didn’t. In fact, once the World Wide Web (not to be confused with the Internet) was generally available, people could find much more information about computers (and other things) there than they could by participating in a computer club. So, I think, the Internet, while a boon to us computer users, has been bad for computer clubs. It is just the way things work.

Also computers work so much better now than they did 10 years ago. Do you recall all the problems we had then getting modems to work so as to access the BBS. Back then hard drives were not auto detect. In a phrase, there was no plug-and-play. It was plug-and-pray. And if you needed a driver, you had to call the manufacturer and have them send it to you via snail mail—unless you were lucky and were able to download it from their BBS site on your 9600 baud modem.

So, times have changed, and, in my opinion, computer clubs are not as relevant to most computer users as they once were. If any of you have some ideas how to make our club more useful to computer users, I know we all would be like to hear them.

The club has changed, we no longer have a BBS since the web site has taken over that function. We no longer have a WordPerfect SIG since very few people have an interest in WordPerfect and few people probably think there is a need for a word-processing SIG, but they would be surprised at how much there is in Word that they do not know that would be of use. We certainly no longer have an OS/2 SIG. We do have a Microsoft Access SIG and a Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications SIG, but few attend, thinking the material too advanced for them (and it may be).

What is next for the group? It has been suggested that we drop the printed version of this newsletter, since it is also made available on the web. I have toyed with the idea—especially when I look at the extra time required to print it, assemble it for mailing and then mail it. But if I didn’t have the deadline of getting the printed version out on a particular date, then I might not get anything out.

So, what does this group need to get it really going again? Exciting computer times like we had in the early years. u