Vol. 30 number 4 April 2013 The newsletter of the Ottawa PC Users' Group Calendar OPCUG General Meeting National Museum of Science and Technology 1867 St. Laurent Blvd. Second (*first) Wednesday of each month, 7:30pm Beginner SIG After the OPCUG General Meeting, at the Museum. Linux SIG After the OPCUG General Meeting, at the Museum. Beer BOF (Wing SIG East), after all the SIGs, at 10 p.m. Liam Maguire's, 1705 St. Laurent Blvd. at Innes Rd. Please note that unless otherwise noted, SIGs meet at 9:00 p.m. (immediately following the OPCUG General Meeting). ____________________________ Coming Up... Wednesday April 10th, 2013 Speaker: Andrew Plumb Topic: Introduction to 3D Printing Andrew Plumb is an Ottawa-area electrical engineer who enjoys exploring the realms of 3D printing technology in his spare time. See his interview at: http://blog.makezine.com/2012/11/26/make-interviews-andrew- plumb/ What is 3D printing? How does it work? How does one choose between buying a personal 3D printer or accessing more advanced processes and materials through a service like Shapeways? The initial presentation will be at a relatively high level, covering the basics of 3D printing. Deeper dives into the details, including into such topics as the Open Source Hardware and Software options, can happen during Q&A at the end. A live demo of a MakerBot Replicator (v1; OSHW) will happen after the presentation (barring technical issues), and a range of personal examples and samples provided by Shapeways will be at hand to compare and contrast. Wednesday, May 8th, 2013 Speaker: Bert Schopf Topic: Digital Imaging on the run Wednesday, June 12th, 2013 Annual Pizza Night Speaker: Pierre Roman, Microsoft Topic: Office 2013 ____________________________ Courtesy of this month's presenter, we will be raffling off a truly unique item - an object printed on a 3D printer! We have been promised something "reasonably large and substantial." This is your chance to win a very special prize. Tickets are, as always, a good deal at $1 for one, a great deal at $2 for three or the unbelievable bargain of $5 for ten! ____________________________ March Prize Winners The raffle prize (a copy of McAfee All Access 2012 Software) went to Richard Aylesworth. The doorprize of a Bluewave accessory case went to William Palamar. Congrats to the winners and thanks to our generous prize donors. ____________________________ Letter of thanks from the Ottawa Food Bank (in response to the OPCUG Silent Auction in December 2012) 01/13/2013 Ottawa Food Bank La Banque d'Alimentation d'Ottawa Ottawa PC Users Group Inc. 3 Thatcher Street Nepean, ON KZG 156 Dear Friends: Thank you so much for your generous donation in support of the 0ttawa Food Bank. As you are likely aware, the Ottawa Food Bank is the primary source of food for 140 programs throughout the Ottawa area. In fact, just last month alone, 48,000 people had to turn to one of our member agencies for emergency food - 37% of these people were children. Since our founding days in 1984, we have always made every effort to lighten the burden that a family or an individual must deal with at this critical time of year. When a child is surprised to see that there is actually food in the refrigerator upon their return home from school, when a senior is given a box of groceries and thus able to stretch things through until the end of the month, or when a family is able to pay a bill and feed their family, without having to sacrifice one or the other, then their lives are enriched and our community becomes a better place to live for all. Rest assured that your contribution will go a long way towards ensuring that our good work gets accomplished, knowing that every dollar donated to the Ottawa Food Bank generates five dollars worth of food into the community. We thank you, as always, for your kind support. Yours truly, Peter Tilley Executive Director Please contact me personally to arrange for a tour of our Michael Street warehouse and see your investment in our community at work. ____________________________ Article Updating Windows Defender in Windows 8 by Chris Taylor In the May 2010 issue of the newsletter, I talked about a problem with Microsoft Security Essentials only updating once a day. Knowing that Microsoft typically updates the anti-malware signature files a few times a day, I detailed two automated ways of checking for updates as often as you want. Flash forward to Windows 8. I think Microsoft - while much improved over the years - still does not get security deep in the gut. I ran into a change in Windows 8 that irritates me. As I see it, the change was totally unnecessary and only serves to make staying secure more difficult. First some background info - I set Windows Updates to notify me of available updates, but not download them or install them. While not a best practice for most people, I do it for a couple of reasons. First, I like to see what is going to be installed before it gets installed. Second, I give a lot of presentations on my netbook. I don't want to have updates installed and require a reboot just before or during a presentation. I also should say that I keep a sharp eye on available security updates and never delay installing them more than a day or so. Now the problem. While Security Essentials under previous versions of Windows uses Windows Update to get signature updates, it quietly installs them on a daily basis even if Windows Updates is set to manual. This is fine with me because signature updates: never interrupt things; never require a reboot; and are always wanted. Starting with Windows 8, Windows Defender (Security Essentials' new name) anti-malware signature files are never updated automatically unless Windows Updates is set to automatic. And as I said, I will not set Windows Update to automatic. In the May 2010 issue of the newsletter I detailed two ways of forcing Security Essentials to check for updates more frequently than once a day: through a scheduled task; and through a change in the Windows registry. Unfortunately, the easiest way - through the Windows registry - does not seem to be an option in Windows 8. Fortunately, the scheduled task option remains. Please, Microsoft, don't take that away. From the Start Screen, type schedule tasks and in the Search panel on the right, click on Settings which will bring up the search results on the left side. Click on Schedule tasks. This will switch you to the desktop and open the Task Scheduler. Please do not ask me why you cannot search for Task Scheduler - the full and proper name of the applet. I also have no idea why Task Scheduler does not show up in the All Apps section of the Start Screen. When Task Scheduler loads, click on Create Task... in the Actions pane. In the General tab's Name: box, type Update Windows Defender. In the Description:, enter some text to remind you what this task does, such as; Windows Defender only updates automatically if Windows Updates is set to automatic. This task overcomes that problem and allows more frequent updating. On the Triggers tab, click the New... button. Select the Daily option. To check for updates more than once a day, in the Advanced settings section, put a check mark in the Repeat task every: box. While you can choose from the drop- down list, that only permits frequencies of every hour or less. Personally, I don't need to check that often. Rather than choosing from the drop-down list, you can just type a value into the field, such as 4 hours. Click the OK button. On the Actions tab, click the New... button. Click the Browse... button and navigate to C:\Program Files\Windows Defender and click on MpCmdRun. If you have reconfigured Windows to always show file extensions (highly recommended), it will show as MpCmdRun.exe. Click the Open button to return you to the wizard. In the Add arguments (optional): field, type -SignatureUpdate (don't forget the leading dash) and click on the OK button. If you are running on a portable computer, you might want to make two other changes. Click the Conditions tab. By default, the task will not run if the computer is on battery power. As this is not an intensive task, I like to run it whether I am on battery or AC power. I remove the check from Start the task only if the computer is on AC power. Also, since it does not make sense to check for updates if you are not connected to the Internet, put a check in the box Start only if the following network connection is available and leave it set to Any connection. On the Settings tab, I select the box Run task as soon as possible after a scheduled start is missed. Click the OK button to finish and close Task Scheduler. From then on, as long as you are logged on, Windows Defender will check for signature updates at the frequency you selected, whether you have Windows Updates set to automatic or not. Oh, and will someone ask Microsoft why they removed the system tray icon for Windows Defender? The tray icon in Security Essentials made it easy to see at a glance that antimalware was up-to-date. The arbitrary removal of the tray icon makes it more difficult to stay secure. ____________________________ Review Keeping Your Icons Straight by Alan German Do you ever have a problem with on-screen icons shifting away from their familiar - and carefully arranged - locations? You may, if you connect your computer to an external display, television, or projector running at a different resolution, or if you have a display that is capable of pivoting between landscape and portrait orientations and you use software to rotate the screen's contents. Moving all the icons back into their proper places can take considerable time - if you can remember what the screen originally looked like! [Hint - take a screenshot of your current screen layout and save the image, showing all your favourite applications and the location of their icons, for future reference.] What you need is software that will do the memory work - and undertake the revision process - for you. Enter IconRestorer. At its simplest, you just click on the menu button labeled "Save current desktop layout". Then, when you want to restore the desktop, the second menu button, labeled "Restore last saved desktop layout", will do the job. But, there's more to the program than this. In particular, multiple desktop layouts can be saved - and retrieved from a listing in the "Layouts" tab. And, there are a couple of tabs-worth of configurable options, plus choices of language and colour scheme. IconRestorer - quick, easy, and free! Bottom Line IconRestorer (Freeware) Freesoftland Version 1.0.8.1 SR1 http://fsl.sytes.net/iconrestorer.html ____________________________ Product Review Images to PDF by Alan German Suppose you have a bunch of JPG files that you need to include in a single PDF file. You could import them one-by- one into a word processing document and save the resulting file as PDF. Or, perhaps you could write a macro to automate the page production process. But, wouldn't it be easier if you could just drop the images into a program and have it create a PDF file? And, wouldn't it be nice if that program were free? What you need is i2pdf (image to pdf). The author (LMG Software) writes: "I wrote this for my personal use, as I wanted a light application, easy to use, and with a precise control over the final quality and size of the images stored inside the PDF." It certainly is light, with the .ZIP file download weighing in at just 1 MB. And, it is incredibly easy to use. The main program essentially displays a blank window with an invitation to "Drop your files here". Pressing a "Build PDF" button then brings up a dialogue screen with multiple options for customizing the resulting file. There are specific options for the quality and size of the JPG images, and parameters to be used in the start-up display of a PDF reader, thus providing part of the promised control over the final format. But, there are a whole host of other configurable parameters for even more precise definition. Pressing the OK button, brings up a dialogue box through which the PDF file can be named and stored as desired by the end user. It is worth noting that, by default, an additional file (in the form filename.pdf.log) is created in the directory where the main file is saved. If you have no need of this log file, it can be disabled through a check box under the Options - General tab that specifies "Delete the log if the PDF has been built without error". The program comes packaged with an excellent set of extensive instructions and screenshots. But, with only two buttons to press, creating a PDF file from multiple digital images really isn't all that tough! Bottom Line i2pdf (Freeware) LMG Software Version 1.0.43 http://web.newsguy.com/lmgava/i2pdf/ ____________________________ OPCUG Free Software Guide - Part 39 Compiled by Alan German and Micheline Johnson This guide features an annotated list of free computer programs. The software mentioned has not been reviewed (except where noted) nor have any tests necessarily been conducted. Consequently, no guarantees are provided that the individual programs will perform as described. Rather the list of available software is provided for the information of our members who may find one or more of the programs useful. MB-Ruler MB-Ruler measures distances and angles of images on the screen and distances on any on-screen map. The ruler and protractor are almost transparent so you can readily see the underlying application. Additional features are a loupe (magnifier), an RGB colour picker, and the ability to draw temporary shapes (e.g. lines, rectangles and ellipses) as markers on the screen. Current Release: Version 5.0 Web Site: http://www.markus-bader.de/MB-Ruler TreeSize Free This little utility shows you the size of each of your folders, including any sub-folders, and you can expand folders in an Explorer-like fashion in order to drill down to the file level. Scanning operations run in a thread, so you can see the initial results even as the program is working. Current Release: Version 2.7 Web Site: http://www.jam-software.com/treesize_free/ Q-Dir Q-Dir (Quad Explorer) makes all your files and folders really easy to manage. The program's operation is based on Windows Explorer, but Q-Dir provides views of up to four folders at once, and has tabbed browsing, for far more functionality! Q-Dir works on all versions of Windows, does not have to be installed, can be easily executed from the desktop, or carried on a USB memory-stick. Current Release: Version 5.47 Web Site: http://www.softwareok.com/?Freeware/Q-Dir Nuance PDF Reader 7 Get ready to rethink your choice of free PDF reader. This reader works with virtually any PDF file, converts PDF files to Word, Excel, and RTF via a hosted web service, uses annotation tools to highlight, cross-out, and underline text. It even fills out and saves PDF forms. Web Site: http://www.nuance.com/products/pdf-reader Wavosaur Wavosaur has all the features (cut, copy, paste, etc.) to edit audio files, produce music loops, analyze, record, and batch convert wav and mp3 files. The program has no installer and doesn't write to the registry. Current Release: Version 1.0.8.0 Web Site: http://www.wavosaur.com/ UltimateDefrag Free Jon L. Jacobi of PC World recommends an old public domain program, no longer available on the developer's web site, for defragging and optimizing your hard drive. UltimateDefrag Free has great optimization features, including the ability to select individual files to be moved so as to obtain faster access times. Current Release: Version 1.72 Web Site: http://preview.tinyurl.com/bylzvvq Core Temp This tiny utility is capable of displaying the temperature of each individual core of every processor in your system! You can see temperature fluctuations in real time with varying workloads. Current Release: Version 1.0 RC4 Web Site: http://www.alcpu.com/CoreTemp/ ____________________________ 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. 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 second Wednesday in the month, except in July and August, at the National Museum of Science and Technology, 1867 St. Laurent Blvd, Ottawa. Meetings are 7:30-9:00 p.m. and Special Interest Groups go until 10 p.m. Fees: OPCUG annual membership: $25 per year. Mailing address: 3 Thatcher St., Nepean, Ontario, K2G 1S6 Web address: http://opcug.ca/ Bulletin Board - PUB II (BBS): http://opcug.ca/default.htm Follow us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/opcug President and System Administrator: Chris Taylor, chris.taylor@@opcug.ca, 613 727-5453 Meeting Coordinator: (Mr.) Jocelyn Doire, Jocelyn.Doire@@opcug.ca Treasurer: Alan German, alan.german@@opcug.ca Secretary: Gail Eagen, gail.Eagen@@opcug.ca Membership Chairman: Mark Cayer, Mark.Cayer@@opcug.ca, 613 823-0354 Newsletter: Brigitte Lord, Brigittelord@@opcug.ca Email: (Mr.) Jocelyn Doire, Jocelyn.Doire@@opcug.ca Public Relations: Morris Turpin, PR@@opcug.ca, 613 729-6955 Facilities: Bob Walker, 613 489-2084 Webmaster: Brigitte Lord, opcug-webmaster2@@opcug.ca Privacy Director: Wayne Houston, privacy2@@opcug.ca Special Events Coordinator: Bob Gowan, bob.gowan@@opcug.ca Beginners' SIG Coordinator: Chris Taylor, chris.taylor@@opcug.ca, 613 727-5453 Linux / Open-Source software SIG: (vacant) Note: We added an extra "@" to the emails to reduce spam. (c) OPCUG 2013. 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 not copyrighted by the author. ____________________________ Newsletter by email: To receive the newsletter by e-mail, send a message to listserve@@opcug.ca with the plain text "subscribe NewsletterTXT" or "subscribe NewsletterPDF" (without quotes) in the body of the message. No subject line is required. To cancel e-mailing, send a message to listserve@@opcug.ca with the plain text "unsubscribe NewsletterTXT" or "unsubscribe NewsletterPDF" (without quotes). To change your e-mail address, cancel using the old e-mail address and re-subscribe using your new e-mail address. Cancelling the Paper Newsletter: You can help the environment and save us some costs by sending an email 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). Announcements Mailing List: To subscribe to the Announcements List send an email to listserve@@opcug.ca, leave the subject blank and 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 list server. OPCUG clock/calendar/calculator and mug: Check out the clock/calendar/calculator and thermal coffee mug sporting our club logo at the back of the auditorium at General Meetings! OPCUG insulated mugs are $15 and OPCUG clocks are $20. 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. Please note: If you bring anything for the recycle table, you are responsible to check on your way out and if the items you brought are still there, you must take them home with you.