Minutes of the November Meeting

By Doug Mullis, Secretary, Tampa PC Users Group
dmullis@tampabay.rr.com

Member at Large, Mary Sheridan, started the SIG portion of our meeting at 6:30 pm. We discussed whether or not you should defrag your PC’s hard drive. The consensus was that, although defragging does cause wear, if you first delete programs/files you no longer use and run Disc Clean-up before defragging, you minimize the wear and improve the efficiency of your machine. Always analyze your system to see that defragging is recommended. Also remember to run Disc Check after defragging. The entire discussion was humorously highlighted by a dialog between Merle Nicholson and Bob LaFave over what you should and should not delete from your computer.

Bob LaFave announced he is willing to present a session on Windows Restore Console during the SIG portion at an upcoming meeting after the first of the year.

At 7:00 we launched the new “Business” portion of our meeting. Mary announced the nominees for office for next year as follows; John Witmer for President; Kevan Sheridan for Vice President; Mike Hodges for Treasurer; Doug Mullis for Secretary; and Mary Sheridan for Member at Large. Mary asked for nominations from the floor; none was offered. The election will be at our Dec.14th meeting. We will also have our Christmas Party, and Smart Computing Magazine will be our presenter. Bring finger food or dessert if you wish for our party.

At 7:10 our Program Director, Doug Mullis, introduced our speaker for the evening, Mr. Dennis Elliott, who lectures primarily on PC technology to computer clubs in western Florida. He calls himself the Clone Evangelist and presented a 45-minute presentation with sound and graphics tracing the amusing evolution of the PC over a 25-year period.

According to D. J. Elliott, it all started at Xerox Corporation with a research project at Xerox Parc, CA, where they invented the mouse, the graphic user interface, the laser jet printer and the Ethernet. Xerox mothballed these new inventions, as they were not interested in expanding their product line beyond copy machines. Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak of Apple Computer and upper management of IBM saw the potential for PC’s, pirated these ideas and ran with them.

Don Estridge of IBM’s Small Systems Group went off looking for an operating system for their new small computer that they had spent a year secretly building. After failing to connect with Gary Kildall, who had an operating system called CPM, they sought out Bill Gates, whom they knew but who had never created an operating system. Bill assured IBM that he was up to the task. To his good fortune, his partner Paul Allen stumbled onto a real deal and purchased an operating system from Tim Peterson for $50 thousand. They then entered into an endless contract with IBM wherein they got a royalty for each computer IBM produced using their newly acquired software. We all know where it went from there.

Not only did Bill Gates take IBM for a ride, but also because of the open architecture of the IBM personal computer, anyone eventually could clone their machines. Compaq Computer was the first with a suitcase sized 50-pound portable and then Michael Dell did his thing to capture a part of the personal computer market. Few realized at the time how popular the personal computer would become at its inception. So here we are today, each of us with our own home computers.

Mr. Elliott ended by saying if we wanted him back, he has an equally interesting presentation on the Internet.

Following our speaker, we took a 10-minute break during which tickets were sold for our five door prizes. The winners were:

They’re being no further business or entertainment, the meeting adjourned at 8:15pm. u