Ann Jones will be talking about Lotus Approach at our October meeting.

"Approach is a relational database application that is not only powerful and versatile, but also easy to use." That's the introduction from an old manual, and it's still true. Although the current version of Lotus Approach is targeted at professional developers for business information, there are many ways you might want to use it on your own PC; and if you have Lotus SmartSuite, you already have the program.

"But why would I want a database?" I can hear some of you asking. "I can just use my favorite spreadsheet." A recent implementation of a camp registration database will be used to answer that question and demonstrate some of the capabilities of Approach.

For more information on Approach check out IBM Lotus Software - SmartSuite.

Come and play a simulation game we dubbed "cerevisia in propinquo" (a.k.a. "beer game" ;-) by FORIO.

FORIO provides simulation-based management training and e-learning. They provide us with a simulated version of the famous "beer game" from MIT. It is fun to play. Usually played on a game board but the newer versions are now developed as computer simulations.

Participants should bring a laptop with ethernet connection, if possible. We'll set up a mini network (we will have a small hub) so that we can play the simulation during the session.

 gobeProductive

JB Burke will demonstrate gobeProductive. It is a combined word processing, spreadsheet, graphics package like MS Works, only it appears to be much more functionally rich - more like MS Office. It is a single, much less expensive, program than Office. Has some very neat features.

Purchasers are licensed to install it on every PC in their home, plus one in their office. Slightly different than MS, eh?

Meeting Review by John Eldred

Our April 15, 2002 meeting was held at our new IBM location in Menlo Park. This is a very pleasant place to meet. It is also conveniently located just off Route 101. The conference rooms all have automobile names. We met in the Jaguar Room. I noticed that there is a Packard Room. My dad was a Packard dealer in Oneonta, New York and I worked in the business for quite awhile.

Among the attendees at the meeting was Mark Price, who has kindly agreed to be the management advisor for our club. Mark works for IBM in Menlo Park.

J. B. had gobeProductive installed on his ThinkPad. His demonstration showed the main advantage of the product; it does everything in one place. Instead of having an "office package" with separate applications and different document formats, this product has tools for word processing, spreadsheets, charts, graphs, photo retouching, and presentations in an all-in-one application.

J. B.'s demo had a document with a toys theme. There was a photo of his grandson with his toys and a title box on the photo. The title was a layer that could be changed or removed. Also in this same document was a spreadsheet with columns showing how many toys his grandson might like a lot, like a little, or not like at all. The rows were months, indicating how his feelings changed from month to month. As J.B. changed numbers in the spreadsheet an accompanying chart linked to the spreadsheet would change. The text part of the document had totals from the spreadsheet. If a figure changed anywhere ( in the text, spreadsheet, or chart) the figure would automatically change in the other locations.

Text can be wrapped around graphics and when the graphic changes size or form the text automatically fits around the graphic. You can change colors, do drawing, and change frame shapes. Footnotes and headers are particularly easy to manipulate. You can have page number, date and time. You can read and write Microsoft Word files. Documents can be saved as PDF files. Many other formats are recognized so that documents can be shared. Documents can be posted onto the Internet.

Strange as it may sound, all of these things that J. B. demonstrated were done on a single document, with a single application!

Dave Johnson attended the meeting. Dave is Vice President of Marketing for Gobe Software in Portland, Oregon. He lives a few blocks from our Menlo Park meeting site and commutes to Portland. He is very friendly and freely answered questions we had about the product. There are 99 levels of Undo in the product. A Linux version is to be announced. Database functions will come later. They are working on Lotus compatibility.

Thanks to J. B.'s enlightening presentation, I left with a feeling that many of us spend too much time learning and using several applications. With gobeProductive we can learn once and save time by using a single application. Also, amazingly, when you purchase the product you are licensed to install it on all computers in your own residence, and on one computer where you work.

As a very fitting ending to my pleasant evening at the meeting, I was heading home, going south on Route 101, when I spied the following license plate:

MSFT H8R (This is really true!)

Submitted by John Eldred

Peter Hirsch will demonstrate some of the new capabilities of Microsoft's Windows/XP

Review by Hal Hosfeldt:

The February IBM PC Club meeting was held at 4300 Bohannon Road in Menlo Park, which is a new IBM facility. This is a good meeting location, and our club is fortunate to have an IBM facility in which to conduct
future meetings.

The topic for this meeting was Microsoft's Windows/XP. Peter Hirsch demonstrated several new capabilities of Windows/XP and maintained good audience participation. His presentation was well organized and the material was presented in a very logical flow that was easy to follow.

The demo and/or discussion of Windows/XP included the following:

• During the first two months the product has enjoyed a market of over 17 million licenses on a world wide basis.
• Upgrading to Windows/XP may involve changes to the BIOS, and DLL's. Some older hardware such as scanners may not work with existing software drivers and hopefully the hardware manufacturers have or will develop new drivers to support this new environment.
• Windows/XP is built on a Windows 2000 (or NT) base.
• During this demo it took approximately 40-45 seconds for this software to load on a laptop computer. This time can change depending on many factors involving the hardware and software. The startup time looked very good.
• Several users can be logged on to the system at the same time and it is easy to switch between users. A logon password provides protection for each user and each user can set up their own profile.
• The software uses "most frequently used" logic that favors applications that have higher usage.
• The "find" facility allows a search for files, parts of files, or phrases within files. Searches include wild cards (such as *.pdf) to work with files selectively.
• The user interface includes ICON's that are more colorful and more closely related to the underlying subject.
• Methods exist to hide or show specific menu's and sub-menus.
• Help has changed and has become very busy, and manufacturer's may add their own data. It's rather easy to go to an index for searching and the web can also be searched.
• This is only a partial list. Many other features were also discussed, but you had to be at this meeting to get the full benefit of what was presented. The presentation also included such items as new media player capabilities for music, a system performance graph, filmstrip capabilities for working with pictures, a new category view for control panel or an optional default to the classic control panel view, etc.

At the beginning of the meeting Peter Hirsch used a digital camera to take pictures of the audience and transferred these images to his laptop computer. These pictures were displayed during the demonstration which helped personalize the demo to include the audience. This was a very enjoyable and informative meeting.

Corel Update, by Marc Belanger, Graphics Product Specialist, Corel Corporation Corporate Headquarters in Canada.
Review by Hal Hosfeldt:

This IBM PC Club meeting was held at EPRI in Palo Alto following the closing of the IBM Mountain View location. Our thanks to Peter Hirsch for working with EPRI to enable our club to use their location for our January meeting.

A few business items pertaining to our club were discussed prior to the formal presentation. Our club is continuing to look for a permanent location to conduct future meetings. Having future club meetings at an IBM location is preferred, and an IBM location in Menlo Park is being explored. Ann Jones suggested a possible meeting place for February, and she will look into this and let us know. On a different subject, J.B. Burke noted that Hal Hosfeldt will not be available to continue as club secretary after the February meeting as Hal has other expanding business obligations.

J.B. Burke introduced Marc Belanger, Graphics Product Specialist, from the Corel Corporation Corporate Headquarters in Canada. Marc gave an enthusiastic presentation of "Procreate Painter 7" a software product that is a flexible and powerful tool to create, modify, or extend digital art. A version of Painter 7 is available for either the Windows or MAC system environments.

Marc used a separate product known as a "graphic tablet" combined with a "stylus" as these are ideal for enhancing the use of some Painter 7 features. The graphic tablet and stylus more closely relate to the tools, and the look and feel, an artist would use to create a painting. A mouse is also supported and might even prove to be an advantage for specific tasks such as editing and retouching photos. "Knockout 2", part of the Procreate line of software, was also discussed as it allows the user to preserve fine image details. Also "KPT effects" was mentioned as it allows for faster speed and control to customize images.

The demo included the following:

• The use of brushes and tools to mimic painting or other forms of drawing including chalk, watercolors, oils, crayons, pencil, felt pens, ink, etc.
• The ability to clone images and use the newly created image to create modify, or extend art.
• Painter 7 software can be used alone, or in combination with Adobe Photoshop, to provide digital artists or creative professionals with added tools to simplify and enhance the creation of art.
• The use of a pressure-sensitive graphics tablet appeared to be a substantial asset as Marc demonstrated the software.
• Grids can be invoked to simplify sizing and locating various aspect of the art being created.
• Compatibility with Photoshop makes it ease to move files between Painter 7 and Photoshop.
• Layers can be used to create and extend portions of the art and this greatly simplifies making additions, extensions, and changes. Names could easily be assigned to layers to simplify the process of merging and managing portions of the art.
• Extensive color management is simple to invoke and use.
• Brush sizes are easily changed to produce the desired result.
• The ability to select and/or zoom selected portions of images.
• Different effects could easily be added by selecting and applying different paper grain to an image.
• Text creation and manipulation appeared both easy and flexible.
• The use of watercolor painting was demonstrated
• The ability to blur and sharpen images provided additional control of the effects needed to develop the resulting art.
• "KnockOut 2" is a plug-in that provides enhanced Adobe Photshop compatibility. It includes features such as shortcut keys, menus and commands similar to those found in Adobe Photoshop. New color support facilitates working directly with CMYK images instead of converting to RGB and losing color accuracy. A list of features is summarized in the KnockOut 2 handed out during the meeting.
• "KPT effects", also used with Painter 7, is a collection of plugin filters designed to provide added capability to the existing Adobe Photoshop features. With KPT effects the user can perform image transformations add effects with added speed and control. Using "KPT effects" it is easy to include lightening, geometrical shapes, separate an image into color regions, water spouts, smoky swirls, and more.

During the meeting Marc gave each club member a quality key chain showing the "procreate" trademark. Ann Jones and Jeff Forman were selected as winners of the drawing and the prize was a copy of the Painter 7 software. At the conclusion of the meeting discount pricing for the product was offered to those in attendance via a "Corel User Group Order Form".