April 1999 Meeting Report
by Howard L. Bonar
Secretary, Alaska Computer Society

The April 1999 meeting of the Alaska Computer Society was held at its regular location at Providence Hospital starting at 7:10 pm.

Questions and Answers

The meeting started off with the question and answer session as so many people were still coming in. The first problem discussed was a member having difficulties getting Internet Explorer 5.0 to load up. It kept returning error messages about the video drivers. The consensus was that the video drivers needed to be upgraded to Microsoft certified drivers for that card and Windows 98. The user should check with both the card maker and Microsoft to get the correct ones.

Another member reported a problem of his system locking up when switching between Netscape and the Office 2000 beta version of Excel. The advice was to check the available resources by going into Control Panel, select System, then Performance, to see if that will indicate anything.

The last problem brought up was a member not being able to get his peripherals to work going though a switch box. The advice was to make sure he had bi-directional cables between the box and the computer. Some devices require the two-way communications to operate.

Meeting

The official meeting started at 7:25 pm. President Gene White introduced the board members, SIG (Special Interest Group) leaders and volunteers present.

Ed Caldwell reported on the membership cards and the discounts being offered by some merchants. Howard Bonar reported on the software evaluation program. Several free demo disks, try-before-you-buy, and some freeware offerings were up for grabs at the evaluation table.

Gene White again reported on the recruiting effort for volunteers to take over the functions of SIG, Publicity, and Volunteer Coordinators. Any one interested in one of these functions should contact him or any other board member.

Warren Enyeart reported on the approaching AITP (Association of Information Technology Professionals) Infocom 99. It will be held on April 27,28, and 29th at the Egan Center in conjunction with the Armed Forces Communications Electronics Association Conference, and the State of Alaska Career Day.

There will be daily keynote sessions, a Job Fair, Career Day, a free general public program track, and three continuously running mini-shows. There will be a significant price break for early registration. For more information, check their web site at www.InfoCom99.com

Ed Caldwell announced that ACS would have a table at the show and we need volunteers to man it. Sign-up sheets were at the registration desk for each of the three days.

Bronwyn Hillman reported that the Windows 95/98 SIG is going into suspension because of the low turn-out at the meetings. It will be reactivated when there is sufficient interest.

Howard Bonar reported on the progress at the AARP Information Center computer training lab at Northway Mall. Six of the computers are now networked and connected directly to their Internet service provider ServCom (Sinbad) just down the hall. With this new capability, AARP will shortly be starting classes on using the Internet. It may be time for ACS to get an Internet SIG started up to take advantage of these facilities. If someone is interested in heading up such an effort, please let us know.

Every one attending the meeting received a beta copy of Office 2000. It is a full copy of the premium edition with all of the applications included which span seven CDs. It will die on the first day of August unless the commercial version is purchased.

There was a mix-up at Microsoft when the preparations for the trip here were made and the advertised door prizes didn't get shipped. One lucky person did win a set of PC speakers in the drawing for the door prize.

The Presentation

Mr. James Campbell of Microsoft who was scheduled to make the presentation was transferred to another department. Mr. Allen Childress of the Microsoft Channel Marketing and Partner Consumer Education departments stood in for him.

Allen started off with a brief review of the history of the Microsoft Office Product Line. Office 4.3 was the first version and offered Integration and consistency between the applications. Office 95 was the first to take advantage of the 32 bit architecture. It offered further advances in communications and integration. Office 97 offered more intelligence in answering users questions about "How do I"? It also introduced Outlook 97 which provided personal information management including calendar, contacts, tasks, journal, and notes. Office mail included further web improvements.

Office 2000 progresses the suite to a web production tool. It permits sharing documents across the web, and self repair of applications. If a file becomes corrupted, the program will ask for a specific disk so that it can repair or replace whatever is amiss resulting in a reduction of down time.

One of the major benefits is personalized menus. Because of its adaptation to the web environment, it may be considered the first global application suite. It offers support in 38 languages - all inter-connectable. Its focus is on information sharing, collaboration, and universal viewing. It can connect users to enterprise data with a minimum of effort and complexity. Data can be analyzed using a web browser.

There are several variations of the suite offered. The Beta Office 2000 suite is the Premium version and includes Microsoft Word 2000; Excel 2000; Power Point 2000; Access 2000; Outlook 2000; FrontPage 2000; and Publisher 2000. It also includes PhotoDraw 2000 but it was set to expire on 3/31/99 so will not be functional in this configuration.

The Standard suite has Word, Excel, Outlook, and Powerpoint.

The Small Business package drops Power Point and adds Access.

The new outlook email system has a number of new features that will be very useful for anyone receiving a lot of mail. With the built-in filters, email can be routed directly to a folder, including the recycle bin. Messages in the in-basket can also be color coded so that mail from key correspondents will stand out in the listing. They can also be prioritized and sent to an urgent action file.

In Word, they have now added the feature that, when trying to open a Word Perfect file, the WP to Word converter is automatically loaded. Now you can double click on any spot on an empty document and begin typing there. When selecting a new font, a sample of each one in the list is displayed. A collection of sample documents are included which provide useful templates for many tasks.

The Clipboard has been enhanced so that now, up to 12 separate items can be pasted to the clipboard. The first line of each entry is displayed for easy recall. Pages can be spruced up using "Themes" which include type fonts, backgrounds, paragraph layouts, and title designs.

Documents posted to the Internet/Intranet can be subscribed to. Any time the document is changed, you will be notified by E-mail. When a document is posted for collaborative editing, "post-it" notes can be attached on each line for discussion purposes. The notes are saved separately and can be printed with the document or not, it will be your choice.

Another neat feature is the auto-spell check in the language you are using. If you type a German phrase, it will be checked in German. 38 languages are supported.

Power Point has been enhanced with several new features. You can now create tables in PP. You can drag and drop clip art into PP. It is now possible to use .jif picture files as bullets in your PP presentation.

Users were urged to back up their key files and data before installing the software as it has not been fully debugged. Anything can and probably will happen if you are not prepared. If you have previous releases of Office 2000, you need to uninstall it first before installing the Beta 2 release. You must have at least 200 mb of disk space for the complete setup of the Premium code on disk one. Additional space will be required if you install the contents from other disks. If you have an older version of Office, you must select Custom Install during installation so that you can choose where to install Office 2000. Check the readme file on disk one for the latest additional information.

Members were urged to fill out a registration card at the meeting. They would then be notified by E-mail of a questionnaire which would be posted on the Microsoft web site. If enough people responded, the Alaska Computer Society would receive a copy of Office 2000 Premium Edition. We were assured that the information would not be used for any commercial purpose. All members are urged to fill out the form so we can get that software.