APCUG Reports
January-March 2008

Friday morning began with a breakfast sponsored by Pinnacle, the video editing software. Anthony Martorina’s presentation was excellent. This is truly a complete editing package. At the end of the presentation all attendees were given a copy of Pinnacle Video Studio Ultimate, version 11. I will surely use this program. Anthony also demonstrated some of Pinnacle’s hardware items. I liked one so much, the PC TVHD Stick, that I ordered one from Best Buy after the demo. It is a device that receives broadcast digital TV and displays it on your PC. After breakfast, there were eight education/tech sessions. They were: How to Increase Membership, Interest, & Speakers in Your UG; Fight Spam with Firetrust (MailWasher); Finding and Retaining Volunteers; Tech Soup; Program Chairs, When Things Go Wrong; Acoustica: Creating a Podcast, Composing & Remixing Music; How to Create a Power Point Presentation; and Ai Squared: Zoom Text Lite High Res Screen Magnification. I checked out a couple during the first sessions. In the second, I attended Dan Goldstein’s presentation on Acoustica’s Mixcraft 4.1. This version won’t be released for another month but I plan to get a copy for my granddaughter ($51.96 after a 20% UG discount).

Lunch was an APCUG-sponsored event. We sat with the Region 9 folks and its APCUG Advisor, Melvin Weekley. The keynote speaker was Dwight Silverman; the topic of his presentation was ‘Running Windows on your MAC.” At the conclusion of lunch we all received a copy of the book he co-authored with Larry Magid, “Windows Vista, A Quick Guide to Mastering All That Is Vista.” After lunch we attended the Vendor Forum. At this event the attendees and the Vendor Sponsors exchange ideas. The main topic was – as it always is – how to get presentations for the groups. While “Presentation In a Box” has met with limited success, the subject of Webinars (live presentations across the Internet) was met with much enthusiasm. We must explore this avenue using Skype or some other application. Some additional hardware may be required (Web camera, etc.) but the vendors seemed excited about it as well. The day closed with the Vendor Fair. Here we had snack food and got to visit with the APCUG Vendor Sponsors at their respective tables. At the end of the event, a drawing was held for prizes donated from the vendors. Frank won two items: Acoustica’s Spin It Again and Disk Director Suite 10 by Acronis. I won Roxio’s Easy Media Creator 10. Ilene came up dry. Many thanks to Roxio for providing bags to hold the Vendor’s giveaway items. The previous two years, no one thought of doing that. So much for Friday!

Saturday started off with a Corel-sponsored breakfast. It was a fine meal and a Corel presentation followed. Evelyn Watts demonstrated several products. The first was Word Perfect Lightning. This program allows you to organize information about a project you are preparing before you start the actual writing. You can download the beta version free at the Corel site. I may give it a try. I have been writing hundreds of articles over the years in a DOS-based program called The Semware Editor. Maybe it’s time for a change. The next product was Media One plus. It allows you to organize your photos and put together slide shows, among other things. It also includes a nice print utility. Third was Paint Shop Pro an excellent photo editor. The latest version includes a Learning Center to help you along with your tasks. The final product was Painter Essentials. It looked quite interesting. It will convert your photos into what looks like a painting. Evelyn did a great job and she is always entertaining. At the end of breakfast, they announced the winners of the 2008 Photo Contest and surprise, my photo of Civita di Bagnoregio tied for third place in the Landscape category. Who couldn’t love Civita!

There were eight more education/tech sessions in the morning. They included: Working with Other UGs on a Common Project; PC Renew; Stump the PowerPoint Expert; Virtual Technologies (VMWare/Virtual PC); How to create a Win-Win Partnership; Verbatim: Where’s Your Stuff Storage Going; Computer Security; and Marketing Your User Group Search Engines. The session I wanted to attend during the first group was full by the time I arrived so I missed out. I had other commitments during the second set of sessions.

Raxco sponsored lunch. After lunch, Raxco’s Greg Hayes gave a presentation on Windows File System and Improving Performance. It covered a history of Windows file systems including FAT 16/32, NTFS and the new ExFAT. I think it was a bit “high end” for most but Greg certainly knew his memory. There were eight more sessions in the afternoon: Ai Squared: ZoomText Lite High Res Screen Magnification; Reallusion: Making Movies Like a Rock Star; How to Setup a Secure Home Network; Trend Micro; How to Create a Successful Product Review Program; Project X; Moving From Online Contacts to Real-Life Friends; and Identity Theft.

Saturday night, Microsoft sponsored an excellent dinner and the Mindshare folks, Sheri, Chris, Joel, and Larry showed off Windows Live OneCare and Windows Home Server. It was an excellent presentation but I had set up my own computer protection system and have used a server on my network for several years now. Again, by the end of the evening I was “done in” and crashed for the evening after a nightcap of Paisano!

The final day of the APCUG Conference began with another fine breakfast sponsored by AMD. After the meal, Scott Shutter of the Notebook Division talked about the future of AMD notebooks. He pointed out that digital imaging was becoming a dominant factor in notebook technology. With the advent of AMD Explorer, users will see a whole new way of handling photos, videos, and music files. You’ll be amazed at how unique it looks. It will launch this week and will be available at no cost from the AMD Web site. Don’t be the last on your block to have it. Their new Puma will have a 4X increase in video performance. It will have 802.11g & n, AVIVO HD technology, HyperFlash, and support for DirectX 10. Much of this is possible due to AMD’s acquisition of ATI. The next generation of AMD chips will combine CPU and video technology on the same chip! Next, Simon Solotko of the Desktop Division spoke about the future of AMD in the desktop arena. In desktops look for quad core processors, HyperTransport, and “Cool’n Quiet” technology while still using the less expensive DDR2 memory. The future of AMD looks bright and I left the session quite impressed with their presentation. After a short break, the APCUG Annual Summit Meeting took place. There was a short business meeting and the presentations to the winners of the Web Site and Newsletter contests. The final item was the presentation of the annual Jerry Awards. That was it. Ilene asked about attendance at this year’s affair and it was down according to my recollection. A few years ago attendees numbered 300 plus. This year it was well under 200. Let’s hope they can attract more attendees next year.