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President Frank Leonard opened the June 16 meeting of the Sacramento PC Users Group with a show of hands from new folks present for the first time. "My goodness," Frank exclaimed, amazed at the large show of hands that rose up from the audience. "I think that is the largest show of first-time hands that I've seen in quite a while. Welcome." A round of applause from the audience echoed Frank's greeting.
Help Wanted
Conceding he was “a little fragmented” over the many recent changes in the users group, Frank regretfully announced that we are losing our Webmaster, Dave Eden. He will be resigning from his Webmaster’s post in August. Dave has been grueling over our Web site for four years. Frank noted that Dave will be sorely missed, though he isn’t leaving the group—Dave was actually elected president of the Davis chapter recently.
However, Frank reminded the audience that we need to find Dave’s replacement as soon as possible. “As a user group, when we get a volunteer, we tend to just turn that portion that they’re volunteering for over to them and let them go with it, within certain bounds of course. So, I’m asking for volunteers to be our next Webmaster,” Frank said. “We need not only somebody that can be the Webmaster for the group, but that can also coordinate and oversee a staff of at least five or six different people.” Frank added that the Webmaster coordinates with two or three different people at CalWeb, the Internet service provider that hosts our site.
The Webmaster works from home and is not required to attend meetings. The Webmaster’s primary commitment is to the integrity of our Web site. In response to a question, Frank estimated that the job would probably require 10 to 15 hours of work per month. Frank asked anyone interested in the job to contact him or any other officer as soon as possible.
Volunteers who transform the meeting tapes into a text file for our newsletter play a critical role for the users group. Frank mentioned that for the May issue, only two people were available to do the transcription work: Terry Naleway and Kathy Anderson. Frank said that we really need a group of volunteers to do the transcription work, and this work makes the meeting available for all our members to read. Our meeting report has won awards and kudos in the past, and the report is invaluable for the large majority of members who don’t come to meetings on a regular basis. Frank concluded by asking the audience for their help: “If you know anybody who can help us out in that respect, we’d certainly appreciate hearing from you.”
eBlue Blues
The users group continues to keep an open mind about the new eBlue section of our Web site, and Frank invited everyone’s feedback. “The biggest problem I saw with
eBlue this month is that it wasn’t up when the printed newsletter came out,” Frank admitted. “The reason for that mainly was staff availability and the fact that it’s so new. We hope to have that rectified within the next month or so.”
Frank expressed his appreciation for the eBlue feedback we have received. If you have ideas or constructive criticism about
eBlue, Frank had some advice and comments of his own: “Don’t be shy. E-mail us or give me a call and let us know what works for you. I really want
eBlue to work, and if it’s not going to work I want to find whatever will work for us. So, within the next two or three months, if
eBlue doesn’t fit, we’ll go on to something else.”
Our 1999 Scholarship Award
Frank introduced scholarship chairman Don Mongeau, who had a $500 scholarship award to give to a deserving high school graduate this year. Don began with a brief introduction: “It’s my pleasure again to introduce to you a very worthy student from the community. We get many applications each year, and it’s a great joy to go through them and to see the quality of students out there.” With that, Don called up the winner of the 1999 SPCUG scholarship. “This year, we’re awarding our scholarship to Michael Calcagno, who comes from El Camino High School. It’s the first time we’ve given a scholarship to a student from that school. He’s very active in sports and community activities and an excellent student. For Michael, this is the latest in a number of scholarships he’s won. Congratulations, Michael.”
When the applause died down, Michael addressed the audience briefly. “I’d just like to thank you for this award, and I plan on sticking around for the meeting and see what this group has to offer. Thank you very much.”
Needs Assessment and Outreach
Frank called to Edwin Holloway to wave from one of the side tables of the meeting room. Edwin was circulating an educational needs assessment form so we can determine the subject matter for classes and other SPCUG services we can offer. Edwin will also have the forms available at the July meeting if you didn’t get an opportunity to fill one out in June.
Edwin is also working with Access Sacramento to put together a one-day community outreach event. The first event will be held on Saturday, September 18, at the Coloma Community Center at 4623 T Street in Sacramento. Though this event is still being put together, Frank described the event this way: “The event will likely be an afternoon where you can bring your computer down and get it repaired by professionals. Maybe there will be a swap meet, and maybe some classes with hands-on training. Sacramento Access includes ten computers, all hooked up and linked together on a network. They have Internet access; these are powerful Pentium II computers from Hewlett-Packard. We’re hoping to put together some classes there.
“We’ve already got a number of people, myself included, who are going to volunteer their time. If you have some ideas on what we might do for that Saturday, your feedback is very important to us. So pencil that in to your schedule. No excuses.”
Extreme Freebies
Frank introduced Ken Hopkins and Milt Hull to talk about present and future programs. Milt started the report by announcing that he brought leftover goodies from the Windows 2000 eXtreme Event that Microsoft held earlier in the day. Goodies included a free copy of Internet Explorer 5 and trial copies of MapPoint 2000 and FrontPage 2000.
The evening’s speakers were both from hardware companies, and Ken admitted that hosting two hardware companies at the same meeting was a rarity. Ken asked the audience to let him and Milt know how they liked the program and if they would like to see more hardware-only presentations in the future.
Ken’s Video Spoof
As the folks lined up for the meeting’s Q&A session, Ken played a satirical movie trailer called Y2K: The Trailer, which was a satire of Hollywood disaster films. It came from the TrailerVision Web site
(www.trailervision.com), which features trailers for movies that don’t exist. Trailervision, a half-hour TV special comprised of 90-second trailers for movies that were never made, aired on the Sci-Fi Channel. Y2K: The Trailer is just one of the many trailers available.
Plug and Play the USB Way
Ken introduced our first speaker with a personal story. Ken wanted a way to connect his and his wife’s computer without affecting the warranty for his wife’s computer. He found the solution in an Entrega product, and was so impressed he invited the company to present their products to us. They sent regional sales manager Keith Noah.
Keith’s enthusiastic message was single minded: How easy it is to plug in peripherals with USB. A quotable quote was based on his analogy of buying a lamp for your house. You bring it home, plug it in, and turn it on. Ken wondered, “Do you have to go down to your basement and reboot your house?”
Keith challenged the savvy audience with questions about USB, and to raise their hands if they knew the answers. Most everyone knew USB stood for Universal Serial Bus. But a few hands went down when Keith asked, “How many of you think you heard of that maybe a year ago, or two years ago?” Even so, Ken was impressed with the combined knowledge of the audience. “Boy, you guys are so knowledgeable. But, USB has really come of age and is now coming to the forefront of computer technology.
“So, if I was to have come to you a year ago and said, ‘You know what? I’ve got a new port, a new kind of port, and it is on every PC. It is fast enough to handle anything you throw at it; it is auto sensing, auto configure, and auto install, so you just plug something in and it works, and by the way you can plug in as many things as you want into that,’ would you guys all have been excited about that? Of course. That is what USB is; that is what USB does, and it is here today.”
Ken continued by describing what USB can do. “As I said, USB is really the new standard for connecting things, peripherals, to your PC. It is also Macintosh-compatible. So it is the new standard. You’ve all dealt with serial devices, right? What’s a serial device? A modem. What else? A mouse, a lot of times. Digital cameras, at times. Who’s got a Palm Pilot here? Some of you guys have Palm Pilots or handheld organizers. Those are serial, right?
“Serial is going away, eventually. USB is the new standard. Parallel the same thing. SCSI? It’s the same thing. So everything is really starting to move over to USB. Virtually 100 percent of PCs and notebooks shipping today have USB built-in.” To emphasize his point, Keith handed out some of Entrega’s USB adapters and hubs to the audience so everyone could get a hands-on look.
Keith continued by explaining what’s been taking USB so long getting here. “For a long time, manufacturers were building USB ports on the PC because they were ready for it. The problem was the operating system did not support USB. What happened was about five years ago, Intel, Microsoft, and Compaq got together and they said, ‘Look, if we really want to sell more PC technology, more software, and more processor chips, we need to make them much easier to use.’ So what came out of that was
USB.
“So Microsoft said okay, we’ll build USB into our OS. Compaq said okay, we’ll include USB in our computers. And of course, Intel said they would support it in their processors and motherboards. Well, Windows 96 never shipped. Who has a copy of Windows 96? So we had a little snag there. Windows 97? I didn’t even get the beta version for that. Finally, with Windows 98 we have full OS support.”
Looking ahead, Keith presented a table showing the growth rate of USB: 80 percent growth year over year. “So really, like I said, the whole market is moving this way.” Later on, Keith declared that “by the end of 2000, serial and parallel devices will just disappear.”
In response to a question, Keith admitted that for Windows 95b or OS/2 USB was “a little kludgy.” So if you ever have a question, Keith said to “definitely check the box, call the company before you buy something if you are concerned. But for the most part, we do recommend Windows 98 strongly because it is much better in documentation.” In fact, a USB upgrade card requires a PCI slot on a 32-bit bus system, as Keith pointed out. PCI-slot availability is of particular concern in laptops. Another constraint is that USB is presently unidirectional, so it would be limiting to convert, say, a printer with bidirectional communication to
USB.
Though Keith was quick to differentiate Ethernet from USB technology, he used it to accentuate its speed: “How fast is Ethernet? 10 MB per second, right? So USB is actually faster than Ethernet at 12 MB per second. If you think about USB just being designed really to connect peripherals to your PC, it can handle everything you’re going to throw at it.” Keith pointed out that this included such broadband data worlds as video.
Keith continued by noting that unlimited expandability is the second outstanding feature of USB. “Out of one single USB port you can plug in up to 127 devices,” Keith said. “Now, who would want to plug in 127 devices? I am not sure.” But it’s virtually unlimited. However, Keith mentioned that “each device daisy-chained to another is shared. So everything you plug into a single USB port or daisy chained USB ports are sharing that 12 MB. There are some PCs with two USB ports. Your port configuration will vary with different computers, but chances are that if the computer has two USB ports, it is still just 1 USB, which means it is sharing 12 MB.”
Finally, the other cool thing about USB is that it is, as Keith put it, “auto everything.” Keith asked the audience a question to make his point: “How many of you have gotten a scanner home or some peripheral home and it did not install easily? The drivers are encoded onto the device. So it is intelligent that way. It automatically goes out to the operating system and grabs the drivers. Then it configures it for you and knows what ports it is going to. When you are done with it, do you reboot? No, you just go. You are going to take your scanner over to your friend’s house and install it in two minutes and show him how neat it is."
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Another way of saying this is that USB does not require an IRQ. And perhaps this explains the answer to an incidental question that, at least for USB speakers, “USB eliminates the need for a sound card,” Keith said.
As Keith emphasized, Entrega makes no USB peripherals; it makes only what connects them to computers. These include upgrade kits, converters, hubs, a USB Hub with Built-in Ethernet adapter, Virtual COM Port software, and cables.
Upgrade kits add USB ports to older computers. Converters make it easy to connect existing parallel printers and serial port devices to the USB ports on your computer. Hubs (not to be confused with network hubs) let you turn one USB port into several. Multifunction hubs give you USB, serial, and parallel ports all in one hub.
The actual connection comes in the form of a USB cable, which carries both data and power. Keith had some caveats about the cables. “The maximum length is 16 feet—5 meters. What you see out there are some people selling what are called extension cables; you’ll see them labeled as A-to-A cables. They are bad. Don’t ever buy or use extension cables. We don’t make extension cables. The reason is, if you extend the length of a USB cable, it will fail.”
In response to a question, Keith said that you can add a hub or another device and go another cable length. “The only rule of thumb you really need to worry about is the maximum cable length is 5 meters, or 16 feet,” Keith said.
The last thing Keith wanted to talk about is their software, particularly Virtual COM Port. As Keith explained, “Entrega has come up with software; it is shipping now in all of our serial devices or it’s a free download from our Web site; it’s a small program. What it lets you do is reassign a COM port. So when you install this USB-to-serial converter, it is going to take the next available COM port on your system.” Virtual COM Port will also let you reassign your software application to talk to that COM port that it doesn’t normally know how to talk to.
USB is so fast it has opened up some new applications, and Keith talked briefly about USB networking and Entrega’s product in that arena, USB Net. USB Net is about the size of a numeric pager. “You plug one end into one PC USB port and the other end into the other PC USB port; those systems are instantly networked. There is no Ethernet. You just plug it in and it works,” explained Keith. Keith also explained the advantages: “So all of a sudden I can transfer you a 5 MB file in 30 seconds. We can do head-to-head gaming. I can print off your printer, and you can use my CD-ROM, and it is small enough to carry in your pocket so that no matter where you go you can always be connected to any system out there.” Best of all, USB Net is cheap; it sells for $79, but Keith had a special USB Net price for attendees: $39.
Ken wrapped up his presentation with a pitch: “Why buy from Entrega? You knew I had to get my plug in: All we do is USB. So consequently, we have the widest line of products. I want you to feel confident that if you buy anything with the Entrega name on it you know where it came from. Entrega is the only company that engineers, manufactures, and designs everything in the U.S. on their own. We feel we give better quality, and we are not going to compromise on quality.”
The Big Picture World of ViewSonic
The best introduction to the second presentation was the monitor sitting on the computer table to the left of the stage. With its brilliant color and pinpoint image sharpness, it easily distracted the audience’s attention from presenter Moises Alonso. Moises told us about ViewSonic and introduced ViewSonic’s monitors with a discussion of some of its new technologies.
Throughout Moises’s presentation there was an emphasis on safety, energy conservation, ergonomics, desktop space management, longevity, and even the recyclability of the manufacturing materials in ViewSonic products. The company is actually a design and development business, which licenses and tests its inventions manufactured by other companies. Moises was also proud of ViewSonic's TCO ’99 certification, which meets the world’s strictest ecologic ergonomics, energy, and emissions guidelines.
Moises started with some new technologies invented by ViewSonic. “One of the new technologies that we brought out this year is called SuperClear technology. Basically we increased the phosphor treatment. We used different types of chemical polymers in our phosphor treatment so that when they’re illuminated by the electron gun inside the tube they stay illuminated a lot longer. We’ve also used a different type of filter in the glass that works like a magnifying glass.”
In essence, SuperClear offers the end user better color purity and saturation, much sharper contrast, and a less distorted, brighter picture. Tube life is about 55,000 hours, or a minimum of about five years of use. In response to a question, Moises said it didn’t matter whether the usage was continuous or intermittent.
Moises skipped over flat-panel monitors to first talk about the next best thing. “The next step before you go from a regular monitor to a flat panel display is Short-Depth (SD) technology. It is much more affordable, but you won’t see another price drop in SD monitors probably until the end of this year.” Judging from Moises’s comparisons, the same desk space would accommodate a screen that was about 25 percent larger with SD tubes. The tubes also allow for a larger usable deflection, or viewing, angle.
ViewSonic monitors have built-in software that saves energy and optimizes its useful life. Moises referred to what he called optic read software, which has two or three different standby modes. Moises explained, “You can put it on standby so that when you press a key the keyboard turns on. In all cases, the heating elements will usually stay on. That means that with a key stroke, within a second or two, usually about a 3.5 to five-second delay, your screen will reappear. In a complete sleep mode the heater turns off, so it is going to take about 15 to 20 seconds.”
Thus the software changes the traditional use of screen savers, unless you have something on your display you want on all the time. So, Moises said, “I would recommend the screen saver. Other than that, I would recommend a power saving software, like the alpha green that comes with the ViewSonic monitors.”
Moises’s use of slides was effective throughout his presentation in conveying ViewSonic products, including their flat screen CRT, the PT795. “Another technology that we offer is called perfect flat. This is a perfectly flat tube, horizontally and vertically. It is an aperture grill type of tube. Most of you are probably familiar with aperture grills. Sony Trinitron is a version of an aperture grill. ViewSonic has its own plastic tube; it’s called the SonicTron. This particular tube has a 0.25 aperture grill in the center, 0.27 in the corners, but is completely flat. When you look at it, it almost looks concave. But that’s an optical illusion; it’s very, very flat. It runs up to 1920 × 1440 maximum resolution.”
Moises also tied into the previous USB presentation from Entrega. “The SonicTron is also equipped with four USB ports, so you can daisy chain about 127 different items. And that is what you are going to see a lot now in monitor technology is USB connectivity. It is an actual USB hub. So you can plug a printer or any other device right into the base of the monitor itself. This monitor also comes with what we call our ARAG7 anti-reflective coating, eliminating a lot of overhead lighting problems. The cost on this monitor is just under $1,000.”
Moises had more up his sleeve. “The other product I want to talk about is the MB90. This is a 19-inch multimedia monitor. This is a 19-inch display, 1600 × 1280 at 76 Hz; it’s got two integrated speakers into the bezel and a 10-watt sub woofer built into the base. This is also USB compatible. This thing rocks. Optional headphone and microphone jacks also built into it. It has an integrated microphone in the bezel.” A 21-inch version is also available with resolution at 2048 × 1536 pixels.
ViewSonic’s panel displays, trademarked ViewPanel, were next on Moises’s list of topics. Moises said ViewSonic now has sizes ranging from 14 to 18 inches, and larger-sized versions in 19, 20, 21, 25 inches are coming out at the end of this year and the beginning of the next. Moises also mentioned that ViewSonic was considering marketing 42-inch plasma displays for the home user.
ViewSonic’s flat panel LCD monitors run anywhere from $899 to about $3,200. The LCD monitors come with a three-year backlight warranty. The 18-inch LCD monitor has 1280 × 1024 true resolution, a point Moises cautioned the audience about. “Be wary about purported ‘maximum resolutions’ when you are buying liquid crystal displays. True resolution is always better than just the maximum resolution.”
The space- and energy-saving features of the new LCD monitors Moises touted were obvious, but he also covered some of the finer points of today’s panel technology. Chief among them was active matrix and direct digital design configurations. Active matrix consists of actual transistors painted onto the glass. The contrast between active matrix and the old STN technique is like, well, night and day from the standpoint of speed, contrast, resolution, viewing angle and, of course, expense. And ViewSonic’s designs are totally digital, with no digital to analogue to digital conversion. “With the new VP150 you don’t have to buy a digital video board; you have it incorporated into your system,” Moises said.
At this point Moises turned to higher-end needs of the graphics and other professions by introducing a ViewSonic product called SuperPress. Moises asked, “Do you always have that problem where your color coming out of your printer doesn’t match the color on your screen?” If so, SuperPress will eliminate it. “SuperPress is called a color calibrator. It allows you to adjust the color on your printer and your screens so they match perfectly. It’s great for creating design press, photography, computer animation, web development, all that fun stuff you like to play with.
“And if I’m in Los Angeles I can look at somebody’s work in New York and Boston and calibrate their work so that it matches my color scheme. It comes with calibration software, hardware, and it also comes with this cool book and monitor. If you’re really doing a lot of color type of work, pre-press production, working on those types of systems, designing posters, designing color, things that require a lot of color saturation and precise color, you should always be using a color hood.” The color hood fits over a monitor to protect it from extraneous light. The hood costs about $150.
Moises concluded his presentation with some of the other ViewSonic products. The graphics series “is much more for graphic type of design, video games, surfing the Internet. Then we have our professional series which would be for our high-end users.”
Next was the E˛ series, ViewSonic’s low-end monitor series. Moises pointed to the 19-inch E˛ monitor as a great value. “That is a 19-inch product that is retailing for about $400,” Moises explained. “It is not a Short-Depth, but it does have a SuperClear technology, and for $400 I challenge you to find any other 19-inch monitor on the market with a three-year warranty with parts and labor, and one that is American-made.”
Moises concluded his presentation by returning to ViewSonic’s quality features. “ViewSonic has the lowest return and failure rate (1.5 percent) than any other monitor company in the industry,” Moises noted. “We test 10 percent of every product that comes in the back door. We have one of the highest customer service rates. We are also the only monitor company offering 24-hour customer service.”
Prizes Galore
After the audience’s enthusiastic round of applause, it was time for the best part of the evening: the door prize giveaway.
Chris Hurley, Ramesh Ganeriwal, Gerald Kirchhof, and Jonathan Bernard won copies of Activision games.
Joe Hurley, Irene Dieke, Bob Dorrell, Henry Mumm, Ron Lambert, Joan Sisler, Tom McGuire, Raynaldo Negrete, Bob Miller, Ferdinand Morant, and Heral Herrigstad won Entrega products including USB ports, hubs, and converters.
Cal Salls, Jay Schutte, Jim Davis, Mark Naber, Peter Robinson, Jim Bondeson, Ron Hitchcock, Bob Brown, Rolf Aalbu, Ed Ely, Tony Carter, Jerry Unruh, and Ken Morlock won all sorts of ViewSonic prizes including stuffed parrot dolls, T-shirts, caps, a sweatshirt, and a briefcase.
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Keith Noah of Entrega explained USB devices, Moises Alonso of ViewSonic showed off its
monitors, and we awarded a scholarship
