Calendar Creator Plus, which is currently being used to print the calendar on the back of the I/O Port, and the fact that an incorrect entry caused an error in the October I/O Port, which showed Super Saturday as taking place on Oct 10, instead of the correct date of October 17. Max's Computer Show is October 10.

Microsoft Windows 98 - a member had a problem with drivers for Windows 98, and Don showed how on either Windows 95 or 98 one could right click on My Computer, select properties, and click on the Device Manager tab, and look for entries with a yellow circle over the device. This indicates a device which is having problems with the driver, and if you click the plus sign, click to highlight the individual driver, and the select properties, it will tell you the device status, and possibly help identify the problem.

Terminate All Running Programs Before Install - You see these instructions everytime you install a new program, but how do you know what is running? And why is it running, if you did not do anything to start it. To address the second question first, if you right click the start button, select explore, it will open up focused on the Start Menu. One of the elements under Start Menu is Programs. Click the plus sign, and Programs opens up. Look in this list until you find StartUp. Click StartUp, and if you see any icons on the right hand pane, those programs will be automatically started every time you start the program. If you don't want them automatically started, click on Programs, then click on File, move the mouse to New, and then over and up to Folder, and let up the mouse button, and a new folder, entitled "New Folder", will be created under programs. It will be highlighted such that you can type a new name -- type "dont start". Then move the elevator bar for programs until you can again see StartUp, click it to display the programs on the right side, move the elevator bar on the left until you can see "Dont Start", then click on the top program in the list of StartUp programs, move to the bottom of the list, and holding the shift key down click on the last program. All of the programs in the StartUp folder should be highlighted. Put the mouse on the highlighted area, press the Right Mouse Button down, and drag them all until you see "Dont Start" light up on the left. With Dont Start lit up, let up the right mouse button and you will get a menu to Move, Copy, Create Shortcut, or Cancel. Select move, and all programs in the StartUp folder will be moved over to the DontStart folder. If you now reboot your computer, none of those programs will start up. If you want to see what else is running, hold the Ctrl and Alt keys down while you press the Del key once. A window will pop up showing you all running programs. You probably need most of them, but if there are some you feel you don't need, you can hightlight them and select end task, and shut them down too (until the next time you reboot, at which time they will reappear).

Quicken 2098 - A member reported a problem with his date changing to 2098, and this upset Quicken. I can understand why Quicken is upset about the date changing 100 years into the future, but I don't know why the date is changing. Perhaps he has a hardware problem (it was a new computer) so I suggested he take it back to the dealer.

Aptiva Off by 1 millionth - Another member reported a problem with his Aptiva, and I had never heard of the problem, but at a later meeting he reported receiving a notice from Aptiva indicating they had discovered a bug, and telling him what to do to solve the problem.

Writeable CD Roms - Drives capable of writing CDs continue to fall in price; one member reported units at Best Buy for under $300. Before you replace one CD Rom Drive with another be sure you know what you are buying. Some drives only write cd roms, and you need your old drive as well to read them. Other, more expensive, drives, both read and write.

Faster Speed Computers - Regardless of when you buy a computer, you will probably find a faster computer on the market just a few months after you buy yours. However almost any computer on the market today should be fast enough for most applications. The faster ones just let you make a mistake a bit quicker .

Character Map - This is one useful utility that existed in Windows 3.1, and is still available in Win95 (and I assume in Win98), but it is not normally installed unless you specifically check that you want it installed. Using Character Map you can see how individual characters in a specific font will appear, and you can select one or more characters, have Character Map copy them to the clipboard, and then paste them into a word processing program.

Daisy Chain - The question was raised about what does Daisy Chain refer to. The term goes back to wreaths that children used to make with Daisys they picked from a field. They would take one Daisy, then take a second Daisy, wrap the stem around the first part of the the stem of the preceeding Daisy. They would continue, with the end of one Daisy being "connected to" the start of the next Daisy. Computer devices, like external SCSI devices, are Daisy Chained, by cables that run from the output of one device to the input of the next device, which is then connected by a similar cable from its output, to the input of the next device, etc.

Type of Scanner Port - There are scanners available that run off of SCSI cards, others run off of IDE cards, and some of the newest ones use the new USB (Universal Serial Bus). It looks like USB may be the thing of the future, because rather than Daisy Chaining 7 devices like SCSI, USB can daisy chain more than 100, and concievably you could have a keyboard, mouse, and perhaps even a monitor, on a USB cable. USB is new, so you may want to hold off a little longer, but it certainly is something we should see more of in the future.

Serial or Parallel - What is the difference between serial and parallel. With a serial device you have fewer wires, and the data bits go down the wire one at a time, sort of like soliders in the cafeteria chow line. With parallel, it takes more wires, and the data bits go down the wire 8 bits at a time, like the soldiers finished lunch and are now on the drill field marching eight abreast. Serial devices include mice and modems, parallel devices would be like printers, external cd roms, etc. Serial cables can be longer than parallel cables. Originally Parallel ports were output only, but now they are bi-directional, in fact there are two styles of bi=directional parallel ports, ECP following a Microsoft standard, and EPP following an Intel standard. Most bi-directional ports are both ECP and EPP compatible.

Will VB work on Dos and Use a Mouse? The first version of VB certainly did run on DOS and use a mouse, but I do not believe that the current versions of VB still come in a Dos Version. If that is what you need, you might ask around and someone may still have one of the old DOS versions they are not using, but that was several years ago. I am almost certain that VB2 had a DOS version, I am not sure about VB3. VB4, VB5, and VB6, as far as I know, work only in Windows.

Receiving a Fax -- At the request of an audience member, we showed how to set up Inbox to receive a Fax, either in attended (where you click on an Answer Now button), or in an unattended mode (where it answers on the nth ring).

Zip Drives vs Super Disk - We discussed the differences between the zip drive (100 mb cartridge) and the Super Disk (120 mb cartridge, but the drive can also read 1.44 mb floppy disks). After the meeting Docia and I spent over an hour trying to install an external Super Disk drive she won when Imation was here. We don't know whether the problem was with the Luggable, or the drive she was installing; she is to try it on another machine, and report back next month.

Windows 95 on Floppy - A member wanted to install Windows 95, but did not have a CD rom. We told him there were copies of Win95 on floppy disk (as I recall it took about 30 floppies).

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