The Computer Club Newsletter

January 2004

By Ron Uncapher

The January 6^th meeting featured a demonstration of "How to Prepare a Meeting Presentation". Resources available in Tellico Village to make presentations using slide shows, videotapes, sound and the Internet were reviewed

The February 3^rd meeting will be held at its usual location, the Yacht Club, with Computer Basics at 6:30 PM. Computer hardware and software problems brought to the meeting in writing and questions from the floor will be addressed. At 7:30 PM Victor de Groote will present the features of FlipAlbum 4.0, an application that allows a user to create collections of photographs in the form of an album. The albums are a visual representation of a book, with Table of Contents, Index, and Cross Reference; with as many pages as required to contain the pictures selected. Pictures can be sized to occupy as much or as little space on a page as desired. The package provides the means to annotate the photographs or to write anecdotes, descriptions, family histories, etc. When the album is complete you can flip the pages manually or automatically at a selected pace. You can also produce a slide show. The program will create all the necessary files to burn a CD, so that other people can view the album without additional software. Two copies of the software have been provided by it’s publisher for use as door prizes for club members.

Many of you saw the presentation of Microsoft’s new release, Office 2003. You like the features but perhaps you don’t like the price. Well, there are alternatives and some are not quite as expensive. Sun Microsystems’s "Star Office 7" has near MS Office features in a word processor, a spreadsheet, and a presentation program. The presentation program is similar to Power Point. All the programs are backward compatible to the corresponding Microsoft programs. MS Office programs can be opened using Star Office and Star Office programs can be saved in MS Office, and other, formats. The price, on last look, was $79.95 retail. Look it up by typing "Star Office in you favorite Internet search engine.

If the price is still too high, check out "Open Office.org", Sun’s open source equivalent to Star Office. It can be downloaded for free at www.openoffice.org,  where you can also check out program features. It works. I have used it. I would not recommend downloading it unless you have a broadband Internet connection. The size is 63.5 Mbytes. That would take about 7 hours at dial-up speed, only about 3 ½ minutes at the current Pipeline speed.

Have you ever wondered how clip art and or pictures can be put into a MSWORD document? Be sure to first place the document cursor at the location where you want the picture. Then go to INSERT in the menu bar and click on PICTURE, then CLIPART. You can make a selection from MS Office or insert your own picture from a file. Browse the selection then left click your choice. Select the INSERT command from the pop-up menu. The picture will then be copied to your document. There are a great many sources of pictures and clip art if you look around a bit, both on the Internet and on CDs at electronic stores.

Once you get the picture in your document click on it. You can use the handles to size it. If you want to move it, left click, hold and drag it to the desired location on your page. Finally, right click on it and choose FORMAT PICTURE. Click on the LAYOUT tab and you will see several ways you can frame the picture with your text.

This is just the beginning of what can be done. Before you need a finished product, play with the different commands, picture types and formatting. You can do a lot to dress up your document or newsletter.

Before I go I must remind you to update Windows and your anti virus program.