The news from Cupertino seems to get better every day. The stock price is way up showing Wall Street's confidence in Apple Corp. The G3's are selling very well and the new G3 Power Books are "steam rolling" the competition. On August 15th Apple will begin selling the new iMac G3 - the latest innovation for home computing. In case you haven't seen it the design is sleek, with its "Bondi blue" translucent case. It is reminiscent of the original Mac Classic - monitor screen and drives in one unit with a matching keyboard and mouse. It's selling price will be an unbelievable $1299, and CompUSA is offering an $800 coupon for peripherals with the purchase of the iMac.

In order to get the iMac off to a great start Apple is having another Apple Demo Day at CompUSA on Saturday Aug 15th. If you can drop by and say hello, or better yet offer your services as an Apple volunteer. The Apple web page has a section for user group members and a place where you can register to be a participant of the iMac event (http://www.info.apple.com/imac_launch). There will be Apple reps there to do the actual demos and help sell the systems, and the volunteers will be there to hand out promo materials and answer general questions.

Even before the iMac was on the market several peripheral makers were offering printers, disk drives, Zip and Jazz drives, scanners etc to fit the new USB ports of the IMac. With the coupon from CompUSA you could get a very nice G3 system for less than you think. I probably would have waited until now to get a new system if I had known how great the new systems were going to be.

I heard that the July picnic was a great success, good attendance, good weather and good food. In the middle of a heat wave I think the pool was put to good use. I'm sorry I couldn't be there, but I was having my own picnic under a tree eating my MRE surrounded by my fellow soldiers all suffering from the heat. It was a tough 2 weeks but as usual we accomplished what we had to do and then returned to civilization. It took me a few days to lose my military mind set and start thinking like a civilian again, but sitting down to the computer really helped my get back!

Now I want to see more of you at the general meeting and hope you bring either something to sell or money to buy! Also I would like to see you at some of the SIG's since I hear that some of the meetings have been sparsely attended. Please support the SIG's and the hosts, let them know that their effort is appreciated.

Want to learn more about the Rhode Island Apple Group? Select this link, or send me email!