FINANCIAL INFORMATION ON LINE is ubiquitous. What would you like to find? There are company profiles, past histories, income estimates among others. Some sites are free, some charge a fee. Please let a board member know where your interests lie.
RAFFLE PRIZES are currently a problem. If you have or can recommend some raffle prizes for the Club, It would be much appreciated. Bev Altman is the coordinator of this activity.
TROJAN HORSES are still running around. This is a reminder that Zone Alarm, a freeware, is definitely in order. Trojan Horses ARE NOT VIRUSES and are not detected by virus scanners!
THE MID-2001 CD had 18 man-hours of effort put into it compliments of John Sleeman and Stan Hutchings. We are attempting to get the CD ready by the next meeting-no guarantees. It is 231 MB so far.
THE REAL MESSAGE this month is the availability of support programs that permit you to TUNE UP your computer:
http://msn.zdnet.com/partners/msn/bandwidth/speedtest500.htm will visually demonstrate the speed of your connection to the Internet. This will show you what you are missing if you have not gone DSL or cable.
Have fun.
Jim
Members attending: Jim Dinkey, Arlan Kertz, John Sleeman, Bev Altman, John Buck, Stan Hutchings, Nat Landes, Susan Mueller.
Arlan Kertz reports that Robert Mitchell's account is probably correct, and we are even -- nothing is owed either way. Arlan will formalize the numbers and let Robert know. Arlan needs a check from Nat Landes to the Secretary of State for $20.
Jim Dinkey reviewed the coming speakers: the October speaker is Nancy DeBiccari, Manager - Micro Center.
Jim Dinkey reported that we get people calling him who saw our information in the San Jose Mercury News. He refers them to the club website for more information, unless they contacted him after seeing the website. Our publicity manager is doing a good job.
Hank Skawinski will have unkind words to say about Microsoft Me and predicts there will be some grievous effects on individual users.
Patricia Corrigan has been assigned the Microsoft contact for November.
Thanksgiving is Thursday Nov. 22, the SPAUG meeting is Wednesday Nov. 28, so there is no real conflict this year. There are also elections scheduled for November.
Bev Altman reports the membership is OK, holding steady. John Buck has gotten four members so far this year. There was high attendance at Rick Altman's presentation. Perhaps digital photography is a special interest group material? Nat Landes has a friend who might be able to lead a graphics/digital photography SIG.
Jim Dinkey reports that Yuko Maye might prefer being an assistant rather than co-publisher. Susan Mueller will be the primary, and will ask Yuko to help out on occasion, when needed. Yuko can be the emergency backup. Bev Altman has the membership list, but not the mailing list.
Stan Hutchings reported that Bob Mitchell is a potential video editing speaker and/or SIG leader.
Nat Landes believes an e-mail handling application presentation may be of interest to the general membership. This might be a good topic to pursue.
Arlan Kertz would like a speaker on investments/online brokers/how to do it/online financial services. Potential speakers would be from Schwab, Smith Barney, E*Trade, etc. He has an account that allows him to pay his checks, move money between broker and bank, and other financial functions. Should we draw from the club experience, or from outside? We might be able to get a speaker from the National Association of Investment Clubs (NAIC). Should we have one meeting for investments, and one for banking? Jim Dinkey will ask his wife to schedule for January, if possible, a speaker from the NAIC.
Jim Dinkey will work on the club CDOM this Saturday, anyone interested should show up around 9 o'clock in the morning.
John Buck asked about data reduction on the SPAUG survey - is anything else wanted or needed?
Arlan Kertz suggested that a speaker perhaps should go first rather than last. A discussion ensued, the conclusion was the first choice should be left to the speaker, but we should encourage the speaker to go first by default. There are several advantages: if the speaker is first, CrossTalk can answer or address the speaker's topics, the speaker can contribute to the questions asked during CrossTalk, Arlan Kertz commented that some attendees may want to get out after the speaker and not stick around for CrossTalk, Bev Altman suggested that the speaker and the group can interface and network at coffee break, if CrossTalk is last, members can stay around as late as they want to.
Bev Altman reported the raffle prizes from Microsoft were not very good; we are really low on prizes, and could really use some more good ones.
The meeting adjourned.
Jim Dinkey reports a problem with Microsoft XT Office: if it sees you've changed your machine, it may think you are trying to run the software on a different computer. Then Microsoft's anti-piracy software may require you to insert the disk again, or may refuse to recognize you as the authorized user and disallow many functions. This is especially irritating at 30,000 feet in an airplane.
Gene would like to know how to remove icons from the system tray.
Answer: Start-Run-msconfig, and uncheck appropriate boxes. CNET www.cnet.com/ has information available, enter the phrase 'remove system tray icons' in the search box. Here's one link.
Pacific Bell DSL is reported not working on a user's computer. Answer: shut down the computer, that is turn off the power, then turn off the modem, wait at least 30 seconds. Then first turn on the modem and then restart the computer. If that doesn't work, contact tech service.
There was a report of Port 2F8 and 3F8 conflicting in Windows 95. The Settings-Control Panel-System-Devices shows no conflict. No new hardware was added, only applications. Answer: this may require a trip to Hank Skawinski. Perhaps the system ROM needs to be updated or adjusted.
Bob Mitchell reports he has had a lot of recent experience with video editing, and now feels qualified to help of the people who have video editing problems.
The digital camera has arrived! This is the era of photography without film. The digital camera marries the camera to the PC. Cameras are available in the price range of $90 to $17,000. Anyone can use them -- kids to professionals.
if you are in a hurry for photographs; if you need to take many experimental shots and not waste film; if you don't need conventional prints; if you want to e-mail the photographs; if you want to post the photographs on a web site; if you would like to be a better photographer.
you can delete bad photos instantly; keep trying to get a good shot until you are successful; you can just go ahead and shoot photographs after photograph trying to get the perfect shot; the resolution is fine for the web pages and e-mail.
cameras that provide the highest resolution cost lots of money, especially with accessories; digital cameras are not yet ready for the mass market, they are for prosumers not consumers; battery life is terrible, especially when the LCD is being used (rechargeable batteries should definitely be used!).
Rick gave an example using the Kodak DC280. It has a resolution of about two megapixels, costs in the $200 to $300 price range. He uses a PC card reader to connect it to a desktop, and a PCMCIA adapter for connection to a laptop. He recommended taking all photographs at the highest resolution available. There is a good website at http://www.shortcourses.com , which has articles on digital cameras.
For printing at the two megapixels resolution, five inches by seven inches is about the largest size that can be accurately and satisfactorily printed. Inkjet printers are just about able to handle the job, but the best results are from a real photo processor.
Robert Mitchell commented that he likes the HP 960C color inkjet printer for about $250; he has been completely satisfied with it. Rick advised that paper and ink can make a large difference to the printed output. Don't expect the print to have a long life unless you use special ink and paper. Some inks have been found to fade severely in just a few months when exposed to light and air.
Once you have a digital image, to reduce the file size, first "resample" to x pixels, 500 is a good value of x for e-mail and Web postings. Second, save the file (preferably with a new name). Now "compress" the file (experiment for best results). Rick showed an example where he took a file of about 500 kilobytes down to about 22 kilobytes. It is a good idea to save the original, because compressing the file loses information. Note: if you are posting the image on a web page, be sure to compress the file, and not use the HTML image tag attributes to change the size of the picture.
Rick demonstrated combining images by taking photos of Ginny, using a "mask" to separate her from the background, and copying the extracted portion to a clipboard. Then he opened another image, pasted Ginny's extracted image as a new object. He added drop shadows, feathered, and blurred edges. He suggested that if the background is a different color, adjust the contrast, hue or other color controls. The end result was that Ginny was placed on a completely different background than the original picture Rick had taken of her.
Costco is reported to have high-quality paper for about 19 cents a sheet (100 sheets for $19). If you want digital images from regular film, PhotoWorks http://www.photoworks.com/ in Seattle will develop film, provide photos (standard sizes, enlargements, etc.), scan the images, and provide a CD with three different image resolutions on it. You can also upload digital images and get prints made. Ofoto http://www.ofoto.com/ is another company that will provide a similar service.
Most digital cameras have both the digital and optical zooms. It is better to use the optical zoom as much as possible, the digital zoom can make the image very pixilated.
Color fidelity is pretty good on the computer screen, but printing requires RGB to reflective ink in the process. Software has a very large effect on the conversion. Film gives better results, but conversion software is limiting factor.
When you upgrade your storage capabilities, does it make a difference whether you choose SCSI or IDE standards? It can.
Anyone working with large files on the desktop or using a heavily trafficked server knows that slow hard disk performance can make the fastest processing system painful to use. If you're running into performance problems opening and saving files or multitasking on a PC or server, it might be time for a storage upgrade.
For most users, the latest IDE drive technology makes sense and is inexpensive and readily available. But if you're looking at servers, server appliances, or high-powered workstations, the age-old SCSI versus IDE dilemma comes into play. And the answer isn't as obvious as it once was.
The fact is, IDE (Integrated Drive Electronics), also known as ATA (Advanced Technology Attachment), is still the standard of choice for most desktop users. ATA drives are faster and less expensive than equivalent SCSI drives, usually about $5 to $7.50 per gigabyte compared to $15 to $18 or more per gigabyte for SCSI, not including the SCSI adapter. Most mainstream desktop PCs today ship with drives and motherboard controllers supporting the latest Ultra ATA/66 or Ultra ATA/100 standards. You can also upgrade most older PCs to those standards by purchasing an inexpensive controller card.
Ultra ATA/66 and Ultra ATA/100 transfer data between the hard drive buffer and system memory at very fast burst rates of 66 and 100MBps, respectively. Bear in mind, however, that when it comes to working with large files, burst rates are not as important as sustained transfer rates, which depend primarily on the drive's rotation speed, drive head, and servo technology. Today's sustained transfer rates max out at around 40MBps, so for most users an upgraded controller won't make much of a difference. Nor will upgrading to a supposedly faster SCSI drive. IDE device installation is also much easier to deal with than SCSI, as there are no configuration IDs, terminators, or complex driver problems to worry about.
Where IDE falls short, at least natively, is multitasking. For example, a developer or a video or audio content creator running a multitasking operating system like Windows® 2000 and making use of many devices at once will notice a definite performance hit with IDE versus SCSI. The same is true for users of IDE drives on a heavily trafficked server. Sure, the IDE interface supports four devices, two each on two separate channels. But a single IDE channel can only support a single transaction at a time, so while an IDE transaction is taking place with one IDE device, other transactions have to wait, and the other device on the channel cannot be accessed. Mixing hard disks with CD-ROM, tape, or other drives on the same channel leads to even more of a performance hit, as hard disks and these devices use two different protocols. You can sidestep this problem by putting your devices on separate IDE channels, but then you've limited the number of devices you can attach to your motherboard controller.
By contrast, SCSI is a much more intelligent interface than IDE, and is inherently designed for multitasking. Depending on whether you're using narrow or wide SCSI, a single adapter can support either 7 or 15 devices, each of which has its own intelligent controller and can work with the others to accept multiple commands at the same time. SCSI devices accomplish this with their native intelligent command queuing and reordering capability, which can take multiple concurrent commands (up to 64 or even 256 in some cases) for multiple devices, and execute them in the most efficient order for maximum performance. This is why SCSI-based RAID is the best solution for high-capacity servers.
SCSI also tends to put less of a drain on the CPU than IDE, though current Ultra DMA and bus-mastering IDE controllers can transfer data directly into memory, bypassing the CPU for most operations. SCSI also tends to be a bit ahead of IDE on the technology curve. The drives with the fastest rotation speeds and other performance enhancements tend to show up as SCSI drives first, then later as IDE drives. Finally, SCSI supports external devices; IDE does not.
IDE has been making major inroads into SCSI territory lately, particularly for workstations and workgroup servers. Adaptec uses its own technology to offer inexpensive IDE RAID (0,1, 3, and 5) controllers that feature multiple IDE channels, offer similar fault-tolerance features as their SCSI counterparts, and support for hot spare IDE drives. You'll find IDE RAID technology in many low-end workstations, servers, and server appliances, including Snap appliances. With the price of IDE drives getting more and more reasonable, a configuration of multiple hot-swappable drives can make a great high-performance, nearline backup alternative to tape. The performance of Adaptec's IDE RAID technology is fine for the small- and medium-sized networks and low-end workstations to which it's marketed. High-performance 3D workstations and application servers still demand SCSI, however.
SCSI is also feeling the squeeze in the external device market where USB and IEEE 1394, which are easier to configure, are becoming the buses of choice. IEEE 1394, with its fast throughput (up to 400Mbps), is particularly popular in the Macintosh and PC video editing applications. You can find external IEEE 1394 drives from Western Digital and other drive vendors. These usually have IDE drives at the other end of the connection. At the high end, Fibre Channel is taking over as the technology of choice in enterprise storage networking. Fibre Channel's higher throughput, scalability, and support for longer distances and multiple protocols (including SCSI and IP) and topologies, including arbitrated loop, makes it a natural for SANs.
Still, SCSI is the technology of choice for any internal storage or storage attached to a high-end workstation or server. It's also appropriate for server clusters that share a single storage system.
Both IDE and SCSI have amassed a number of different standards over time with different throughputs and other characteristics (see Tables 1 and 2 for more information). What you need to know on the SCSI side is that Wide SCSI, available in all SCSI flavors past SCSI-1, uses a 16- or 32-bit bus, rather than an 8-bit bus, so it can transfer twice as much data at a time. The two types of differential signaling, high and low voltage, were introduced to increase allowable cable lengths. Low-voltage signaling predominates today, as high voltage differential signaling proved to be an expensive solution.
The three generations of SCSI specifications have allowed SCSI performance to keep up with processing power and the needs of new applications. SCSI's original, 5MBps throughput is now up to 160MBps with Ultra 160 SCSI and soon to be 320MBps with Ultra 320 SCSI.
IDE has a similar upgrade path over time and a similar backward compatibility. IDE and ATA are interchangeable, as are Enhanced IDE and Fast ATA. The various PIO (Programmed Input/Output) modes use the CPU's registers for data transfer, whereas the DMA modes transfer data directly into memory. Today, you will mostly find Ultra ATA/66 and Ultra ATA/100 drives; just about all are DMA based. PIO is pretty much a thing of the past. The ATAPI standard, introduced with Enhanced IDE, supports all devices other than hard disks and has had some minor changes over time.
SCSI and IDE hardware have no problems coexisting on the same network or even the same system. For example, if you have a desktop system that is used for both traditional office and high-performance content creation applications, you can store the business-oriented files and applications on a mainstream Fast ATA drive, and add a separate SCSI adapter with a faster SCSI drive and whatever CD, CD-RW, tape, and DVD drives you would need for content creation applications and files. This gives you the best of both worlds, as you save storage dollars and still get the multitasking benefits of SCSI when you need them. There's also no reason why ATA and SCSI storage can't coexist together in the same network, server, or even storage appliance.
Be on the lookout for serial ATA, which is in a draft standard today and is likely to offer burst rates up to 150MBps in its first incarnation. USB 2.0, or Hi-Speed USB, available in mid 2001, will allow connection speeds up to 480Mbps (compared to USB 1.1's 12Mbps rate); and IEEE 1394 will also introduce a new version at the end of 2001 that will up throughput to 800Mbps.
As organizations provide Web access to more and more data, fast storage performance is becoming a necessity. Luckily, there are excellent high-performance storage options to choose from, and upcoming advances in storage technology will provide the storage power that future organizations crave.
| SCSI | Max bus speed | Bus width | Max bus len. | |||
| Interface | MBps | bits | Single-ended | LVD | HVD | Max devices |
| SCSI | 5 | 8 | 6 | - | 25 | 8 |
| SCSI-2 | 10 | 8 | 3 | - | 25 | 8 |
| SCSI-2 | 20 | 16 | 3 | - | 25 | 16 |
| Ultra SCSI | 20 | 8 | 1.5 | - | 25 | 8 |
| Ultra SCSI | 20 | 8 | 3 | - | - | 4 |
| Ultra wide SCSI | 40 | 16 | - | - | 25 | 16 |
| Ultra wide SCSI | 40 | 16 | 1.5 | - | - | 8 |
| Ultra wide SCSI | 40 | 16 | 3 | - | - | 4 |
| Ultra2 SCSI | 40 | 8 | - | 12 | 25 | 8 |
| Wide Ultra2 SCSI | 80 | 16 | - | 12 | 25 | 16 |
| Ultra3 SCSI (Ultra 160/m) | 160 | 16 | - | 12 | - | 16 |
| Ultra320 SCSI | 320 | 16 | - | 12 | - | 16 |
| IDE/EIDE | ||||
| Interface | DTR MBps | DMA mode | PIO mode | Devices |
| IDE/ATA* | 4.2 | 0 | - | 2 |
| IDE/ATA* | 3.3 | - | 0 | 2 |
| IDE/ATA* | 5.2 | - | 1 | 2 |
| IDE/ATA* | 8.3 | - | 2 | 2 |
| EIDE/ATA-2* | 13.3 | 1 | - | 2 |
| EIDE/ATA-2* | 16.6 | 2 | - | 2 |
| EIDE/ATA-2* | 11.1 | - | 3 | 2 |
| EIDE/ATA-2* | 16.6 | - | 4 | 2 |
| EIDE-ATA-3* | 13.3 | 1 | - | 2 |
| EIDE-ATA-3* | 16.6 | 2 | - | 2 |
| EIDE-ATA-3* | 11.1 | - | 3 | 2 |
| EIDE-ATA-3* | 16.6 | - | 4 | 2 |
| EIDE Ultra ATA/33 | 33.3 | 2 | - | 2 |
| EIDE Ultra ATA/66 | 66 | 5 | - | 2 |
| EIDE Ultra ATA/100 | 100 | 5 | - | 2 |
| EIDE/ATAPI | Device dependent | - | - | 2 |
| * Indicates obsolete technology. | ||||