PLEASE NOTE: In an attempt to make it a little harder for spammers to harvest e-mail addresses, most if not all, e-mail addresses listed in this electronic version of the newsletter have had the "@" symbol doubled. If you want to use any of these addresses, please remove the second "@" before sending. Vol. 19 number 1 The newsletter of the Ottawa PC Users' Group January 2002 ****************** OPCUG meeting dates juggled Please note that due to some conflicts with scheduling at the museum, we are unable to meet on the regular second Wednesday of the month for January and February. For these two months, the meetings will be as follows; Thursday, January 17th, 2002 Wednesday, February 20th, 2002 ****************** Calendar OPCUG General Meeting National Museum of Science and Technology 1867 St. Laurent Blvd. Second Wednesday of each month, 7:30pm Jan 17, S-Peer eases peer-to-peer meetings Feb 20, Ottawa Paradox Users Group Corel Bldg, 1600 Carling Ave. Third Thursday of each month 6:00-8:00 pm Internet SIG(I-SIG) Second Wednesday of each month, immediately following the OPCUG General Meeting at the Museum. Developers SIG Second Wednesday of each month, immediately following the OPCUG General Meeting at the Museum of Science and Technology, and occasionally at other locations in the region. Delphi User Group, 8:00 p.m. at Chapters Store in the Pinecrest Mall (at the Queensway) PIG SIG (or is it WING SIG?) After all the other SIGS. PIG SIG (i.e., Wing SIG) **** NEW LOCATION **** Good Times Cafe - 1125 Iris, corner of Baxter & Iris Please note that unless otherwise noted, SIGs meet at 9:00 p.m. (immediately following the OPCUG General Meeting). _________________________ Coming Up S-Peer eases peer-to-peer meetings At the Thursday, January 17th general meeting, the main speaker will be S-Peer. This company provides tools for enabling secure, edge of the network collaboration including file sharing, data sharing, white boarding, discussion boards, project management, and more. The following is a description of the product by S-Peer. S-Peer's aim is to leverage existing intellectual assets and relationships while operating within the confidence of secure network infrastructure. S-Peer provides collaboration software to Service Provider's and enterprises that encourages timely sharing of resources in a safe and secure manner. Current collaboration practices center on e-mail, conference calls, and costly face-to-face meetings. These practices are supported by time-delayed traditional services such as courier, travel, and records archiving resulting in "corporate amnesia." Thus the drive towards collaborative commerce has dramatically increased the value of information residing at the edge of the network individual's PC's. This in turn has lead to tremendous interest surrounding the peer-to-peer industry. Key to adoption will be policy-based authorization capabilities enabling users or IT to determine how shared resources will be shared, along with legacy integration, scalability, platform independence, and secure cross enterprise collaboration. S-Peer enables secure edge of network collaboration through its innovative software services providing: File sharing Data sharing Whiteboard/drawing Note pad Threaded discussion board Collaborative project manager Updating service (allows for automatic code/service updates) Rich set of API's that allow the organization to leverage existing legacy applications and resources into the S-Peer environment Security functions that focus on secure communication, and control over how shared resources are utilized down to a fine granular level. Example of S-Peer deployment A Research Organization will need to tap into outside centers of excellence and harness those resources towards a common purpose. It needs to bring together academic, corporate, and government resources and leveraging those resources to complete a given task quicker while reducing duplication of efforts. In such an environment numerous communities can be established with appropriate participation privileges and with rules determining which resources will be shared within those communities. Users can create and belong to numerous communities, and have the ability to determine what resources will be shared to a fine granular level. An example would be the creation of authorization policies that define who can share a specific resource within the community. Resources can range from simple document files to complete legacy applications and database integration. The scope of communities can range from a few to ten of thousands of users regardless of computer platform. S-Peer began as a project within Texar Corporation in September 2000 and the first product, S-Peer 1.0, has been designed to address cross enterprise P2P collaboration within a secure architecture. The product was unveiled at the second Peer-to-Peer Working Group meeting in Santa Clara in February 2001. Development has continued with a beta release of S-Peer being made available in January 2002. Version 1.0 of the S-Peer software application is scheduled for release in late Q1 2002. For further information contact Texar/S-Peer at 613-274-2241 or busdev@@s-peer.com. Late-breaking development A new feature, distributed search, has just been added to the search engine. In a distributed search, the user can search the content of community data, such as files in a file collection, and data in notes, outlines, and threaded discussions. _________________________ Orphans' SIG by Henry Sims The Orphans' SIG meetings seem to be interesting quite a lot of people, but they could be better than they have been so far. We have had sessions with a single topic by one speaker and others that allowed members to pose questions to more experienced members on a variety of topics. We hope to continue both kinds of meeting, but we need suggestions of topics and potential guest speakers (volunteers welcome!). We are hoping to open a Suggestion Box on the Pub where everybody can upload suggestions for topics, for new formats for the meetings, and for constructive criticisms. Until the suggestion box is available, any suggestions would be welcome if you send them to me at: ha4326@@rogers.com. Brigitte Lord has agreed to speak at the January meeting on "The Pub, How to Sign-on, How to Find Your Way Around it, and What to Expect to Find When You Do" _________________________ CLUB NEWS January raffle There will be a raffle at the January General Meeting. Courtesy of Microsoft's Mindshare User Group Support Program, we have a copy of Encarta Reference Library 2002. This huge library comes on five CD-ROMs and includes Encarta Encyclopedia Deluxe, Encarta Dictionary and Thesaurus, Encarta Interactive World Atlas, Encarta Researcher, Encarta Online Deluxe, Encarta FactFinder, and Encarta Africana. Tickets, as usual, are $1 for one, $2 for three, or $5 for ten. Help keep your membership dues low and buy some tickets on this valuable prize. At December's General Meeting, Bob Gowan won the much- coveted raffle prize from Microsoft, a full version of Windows XP Pro. _________________________ SOFTWARE REVIEW Partition Magic 7 by Chris Taylor Have you have ever been faced with the requirement to re- arrange your partitions on a nice stable computer that has been running for quite a while - and therefore has lots of programs installed and lots of data? If so, you know what a daunting task this can be if you only have the tools Microsoft provides to accomplish the task. You will find all sorts of excuses why it doesn't need to be done. All this so you can avoid starting over from scratch, blowing away your partitions (and of course the data), creating the new partitions, reformatting, reinstalling the operating system, and restoring from backups. When it comes to re-arranging partitions simply for convenience, such as deciding to create a partition to keep data separated from the operating system, even the thought of the amount of work involved is too horrendous to even contemplate. It doesn't have to be like that. For years, PowerQuest has produced the program PartitionMagic whose sole purpose is to allow you to re-arrange your partitions on-the-fly, without endangering the operating system or the data. It permits you to turn a weekend (or longer) project into an operation that takes mere minutes. I reviewed PartitionMagic 6 in January 2001. You can read that review at opcug.ca/public/reviews/partmag6.htm and I will try not to be too repetitive here. Let me just highlight some of the tasks PartitionMagic accomplishes smoothly and effortlessly and then I will detail the new features in version 7. PartitionMagic deals with every common file system used on PCs these days - FAT16, FAT16x, FAT32, FAT32x, Linux Ext2, Linux swap, and NTFS. It can create any of these partition types and convert back and forth between FAT, FAT32 and NTFS formats. You can split FAT and FAT32 partitions, and you can merge FAT, FAT32, and NTFS partitions. An included utility - DriveMapper - allows you to move applications to a different drive letter and adjust references in the registry, shortcuts, and .ini files so the programs continue to function. Also included is BootMagic, which allows you to install many different operating systems on your computer and choose between them on boot up, using a nice graphical, mouse-able menu. BootMagic supports everything from DOS through Windows XP, Linux, BeOS, and more. The list of new features in PartitionMagic is not long. The main ones are: Support has been dropped for the OS/2 partition types HPFS and HPFS/386. You now have the ability to merge NTFS partitions - version 6 could only merge FAT and FAT32 partitions. Support for disk size has grown to 80GB You can now split partitions below the root folder PartitionMagic now supports external USB hard disks. This support is only available through the Windows interface, not if using the "rescue disks" Videos on the CD-ROM showing how to perform different operations. This is a really nifty idea and PowerQuest has also made them available on their web site at http://www.powerquest.com/support. Select "PartitionMagic" from the Demonstration Videos drop-down list, then click a movie title to play. System requirements vary by OS. They start with a 486 with 32MB RAM on Windows 95 and go up to a Pentium 233 with 64MB RAM for Windows XP. Suffice it to say - if your computer is running anywhere close to decently, PartitionMagic can run on it! You can download a demo version of PartitionMagic from the PowerQuest web site that lets you try out the user interface, but not make any changes to your disks. If you already have a previous release of PartitionMagic, check the new features list to see if it is worth upgrading. If you don't have a copy of PartitionMagic, rest assured that this program can make adjusting your partitions a painless process. Street prices around town seem to be about $95. You can purchase it through their user group program at www.ugr.com/order/ for US$35 plus US$10 shipping. Use the order code UGEVAL01. _________________________ SOFTWARE REVIEW Incredimail - an email experience by Dave Burnside I've been looking for a better email program for years. But every email program I tried lacked the comfort factor I was looking for. Then one day my daughter-in-law suggested I check out a new FREE email program called Incredimail (www.incredimail.com). Well I decided to try yet another email program and downloaded the FREE version and installed it. Well within an hour I was convinced that I had at last found the email program that had eluded me for so many years. Here's what Incredimail offers for your emails: A background for your emails from any number of categories. It's like writing a letter on fancy letter paper with pictures on it. The capability to add a small animation to your email letter (e.g., a dancing ballerina, a bee hive, etc.) The capability to add your own pictures or animations to Incredimail (e.g., any pictures you have in electronic format from a digital camera, a scanned picture, etc.) The capability to add a sound file to your letter The capability to record your own voice into a sound file (.wav) and attach it to your email. All you need is a microphone which you can get for less than $10 Add life to your email by adding Emoticons to your email text. They are small happy face type icons, dancing letters, bouncing question marks, etc. Save any gif animation from your internet browser into Incredimail so you can use it in your emails. A selection of e-cards for all occasions (birthdays, get well, Christmas, etc.) A selection of vivid animated characters that announce the arrival of new email. The notifier will work even when Incredimail is closed if you are linked to the internet. My favorite is a turtle that comes out of his shell and says "You've got mail". You can even add your "written signature" as a signature to each email you send. You can change the "skin" on Incredimail to one of several colors or textures. The initial download includes a small collection of the various backgrounds, animations, sound files, e-cards and notifiers. You can then download additional ones from their large collection in their Online Gallery or get new ones daily from their Daily Gallery. Technically, Incredimail: will allow you to import all your old email, email folders, contacts, and address book from Outlook, Outlook Express, Eudora or Netscape. is available in English, French, Italian, German, Portuguese and Spanish, Swedish and Danish versions are coming soon. Supports multiple email accounts, including @@msn.com accounts Allows for new folders and sub-folders Allows for using "Rules" to direct incoming mail to specific folders or directly to the deleted items folder Allows saving of incomplete emails to a Drafts folder. Allows you to create Groups of email addresses in the address book Allows you to preview emails on the server without downloading them Allows attachments to be previewed in the email body. This is NOT recommended unless you have your virus scanner set to scan all files and email attachments. Is compatible with Windows XP, ME, 98, 95 Like most FREE versions, you'll have to put up with a small window in the upper right- hand corner with advertising in it. It also adds a link to their site to every email. You can get rid of the advertising and link by buying the Premium version for $29.95 US. They also have a Letter creator software where you can create your own email backgrounds. However, it must be purchased after a 30-day trail period if you want to continue using it. Overall, Incredimail is the best email client software I've run across. And the price is right (FREE or $29.95 US) for all the features that come with it. _________________________ REMINDER Ottawa PC Users' Group has a new domain name! To access electronic services (Web, email, FTP, Listserve, etc), please use opcug.ca, rather than opcug.ottawa.com _________________________ CLUB NEWS OPCUG mugs and multitools are in! Check out these great thermal coffee mugs and multitools sporting our club logo at the back of the auditorium at General Meetings! OPCUG insulated mugs are $15 and OPCUG multitools are $20. _________________________ Club News Reuse, recycle Bring your old computer books, software, hardware, and paraphernalia you want to GIVE AWAY to the general meetings, and leave them at the table near the auditorium's entrance. Please limit your magazines to publication dates of less than two years old. If you don't bring something, you may want to TAKE AWAY something of interest, so look in on this area. Any item left over at the end of the meeting will be sent to the... recycle bin. ____________________________ OTTAWA PC NEWS Ottawa PC News is the newsletter of the Ottawa PC Users' Group (OPCUG), and is published monthly except in July and August. The opinions expressed in this newsletter may not necessarily represent the views of the club or its members. Deadline for submissions is four Saturdays before the general meeting. Member participation is encouraged! If you would like to contribute an article to Ottawa PC News, please submit it to the newsletter editor (contact info below). Deadline for submissions is three Saturdays before the General Meeting. Group meetings OPCUG normally meets on the first Wednesday in the month, except in July and August, at the National Museum of Science and Technology, 1867 St. Laurent Blvd, Ottawa. Meeting times are 7:30 p.m. to 10 p.m. Fees: Membership: $25 per year. Mailing address: 3 Thatcher St., Nepean, Ontario, K2G 1S6 Web address: http://opcug.ca/ Bulletin board - the PUB II (BBS): Up to 33.6 kbps v.34, 228-8951 Chairman and System Administrator: Chris Taylor, ctaylor@@nrcan.gc.ca, 727-5453 Meeting Coordinator Tim Mahoney, timothyr@@cyberus.ca, 225-2630 Treasurer: Vince Pizzamiglio, vince@@monisys.ca Webmaster Brigitte Lord, opcug@@iname.com Secretary: (Mr.) Jocelyn Doire, jocelyn.doire@@opcug.ca Membership Chairman: Mark Cayer, Mark.Cayer@@StatCan.ca, 823-0354 Newsletter: Bert Schopf, bert@@blackbirdpcd.com, 232-8427 Email: (Mr.)Jocelyn Doire, Jocelyn.Doire@@opcug.ca Publicity: Morris Turpin, morris.turpin@@opcug.ca, 729-6955 Facilities: Bob Walker, skywalk@@iname.ca, 489-2084 Beginners' and Windows SIG coordinator: Duncan Petrie, petried@@onebox.com, 841-6119 Internet SIG coordinator: Norm Dafoe, ndafoe@@sirius.ca Paradox SIG coordinator: John Ladds, laddsj@@statcan.ca, 951-4581 Delphi SIG coordinator Stan Isbrandt, isbrandt@@trytel.com, 992-8141/729-7793 Orphan SIG Coordinator Henry Sims, ha4326@@rogers.com Developers' SIG Bob Thomas, BobThomas@@msn.com (c) OPCUG 2001. Reprints permission is granted* to non- profit organizations, provided credits is given to the author and The Ottawa PC News. OPCUG request a copy of the newsletter in which reprints appear. *Permission is granted only for articles written by OPCUG members, and which are not copyrighted by the author. ____________________________ To receive the newsletter by e-mail, send a message to listserve@opcug.ca with the text "subscribe Newslettertxt" or "subscribe NewsletterPDF" (without the quotes) in the body of the message. No subject line is required. You can help the environment and save us some costs by sending an e-mail to mark.cayer@@opcug.ca asking to cancel the delivery of the paper version of the newsletter (or ask him in person - Mark is usually at the back of the auditorium at General Meetings). To subscribe to the Announcements List, e-mail listserve@opcug.ca. Leave the subject blank. In the body of the message put "subscribe announcements" (without the quotes).Within a couple of minutes you will receive a confirmation message from the listserver. "Announcements" is a low volume list that the Board of Directors can use to get in touch with the membership. Subscribers can expect at least one message per month - the meeting reminder that goes out a few days in advance of the general meeting. Other than that, the only time it is used is when the Board feels there is some important news that should be brought to the attention of all members.