Computer Club

On Saturday morning I again went to the Sunshine Coast Computer Club Meeting. Each Meeting hosts three tutorials or presentations and yesterday I did one of the presentations on Blogging!

You can use one of the club's laptops but I used Trish's laptop this time. I connected it all up to the 'giant screen', put on the microphone and off I went . Unfortunately Trish's laptop is pretty slow so there were several periods of 'dead air' as we waited patiently for a new web page to come up or Powerpoint to reinvigorate itself again and begin to work properly. I had created a Powerpoint Presentation and I needed to move between the presentation and Firefox on the internet.

The photo is of one of the members who was sitting nearby.

I am doing another presentation in a couple of weeks. It will be on Choosing The Best Internet Service Provider For Your Needs. Many Computer Club members seem to find themselves locked in to Internet Plans which don't suit their needs and for long contract periods. They are then 'stuck' with a service which doesn't allow them flexibility to do some of the things they want to do as they become more used to what their computer and the internet can do.

Unlike 'Texas Lou" who is on an Unlimited Downloads plan at 1500 speed for US$19-95 per month, some people here are stuck with 400MB plans for AUD$39-95 per month. Most new internet people seem to go with Bigpond (the biggest Australian ISP formerly government owned) which though having the best service has the worst and most expensive plans.

I will be pointing people towards a web site called "Broadband Choice" which can be found at: http://bc.whirlpool.net.au/

There is a "Wizard" there with which people can type in their phone number and then run through their internet needs and come up with a list of ISP's which most suit their needs. I am one of of over 250,000 registered members of the site. The page also has a ranked list of the ISP's that members belong to and also a ranked list of member's preferred plans.

After the Vista reinstall the computer seems to be working OK. Sometimes it still hangs between the beginning 'flash screen' and when Windows starts to load but this happens very occasionally and seems to depend on how the computer was previously shut down. All in all I am delighted with what I have achieved.