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

Mary Sheridan, Member at Large, started the SIG portion of our meeting promptly at 6:30 pm. She announced that President Kevan Sheridan was out of town (in snow country) and would not be conducting tonight’s meeting. As Mary spoke, a PowerPoint presentation of past meetings and conventions was shown courtesy of William LaMartin. We were reminded of the Spring FACUG Conference in Kissimmee Mar 4^th through the 6^th. Those planning to attend were announced. Mary also encouraged members to attend TPCUG Board Meetings the first Thursday of each month starting at 6:30 pm at this site.

Discussion on Microsoft’s Service Pack 2 carried over from last month. There have been eleven security updates to XP since Service Pack 1.

We discussed Windows Messenger and whether we need it. If you use Internet Explorer, you are probably stuck with it unless you do a registry modification.

Bruce Register brought up a problem he was having sending JPEG photo files over Outlook Express. The solution was to send the photos in a zipped folder.

It was announced that Peggy Pulliam, our immediate past Secretary, died on Feb 3, 2005. There was to be a memorial picnic for her at MacFarland Park on Feb 13th starting at 2:00 pm. William LaMartin passed around an excellent picture of Peggy taken at one of our events.

At 7:00 pm our regular meeting commenced under Mary Sheridan’s leadership. Mary introduced our presenter for the evening, Bob LaFave. Bob’s main topic was Google’s Gmail.

Bob started by suggesting we subscribe to Staples’ discount coupons email notification. They also have an online rebate system that speeds up the rebate turnaround. CompUSA gives TPCUG members a 5% discount if you go to their special checkout desk (on the left as you face the front of the store). You must show your membership card, and that brought us to the realization that most of us have expired cards. Mary will get new cards issued.

Bob now explained Gmail is a web based mail service. It is separate from your current Outlook Express, but can be forwarded by you to your email account. You can only get a Gmail account by invitation from a current user. Bob says there are advantages to having more than one mail service. He then demonstrated the ease of setting up a Gmail web page and some neat features it claims. Get in touch with Mr. LaFave if you want Gmail.

At some point during our meeting, Mary asked if the members were interested in a presentation on Linux. By a show of hands, many present did want a presentation.

No door prizes were available at this meeting so we concluded at 8:15 pm. u