One of our members has devised a plan for assigning who to bring what and that is somewhere in the December newsletter. We always seem to have a lot of goodies and plenty to drink so I hope to see all of you there and bring a guest!
My family had Christmas a little early this year due to the fact that I finally did get my new "Monster" PowerMac. It's the 6500 model with 275 mhz and comes with the Creative Studio Bundle. I "got an offer I couldn't refuse" in that Dave showed me an e-mail message from an employee at Apple Corp who offers her employee discount to Apple User Group members. I told this story to the members at the last meeting, and that offer still stands. I have the copy of the message if anyone wants to see it. I don't know what is left of the items listed, but it included Power Macs, PowerBooks, Laser Printers, monitors and a lot of peripherals.
In looking at what's new in the computer world it seems that the Mac clone business doesn't exist any longer. Apple couldn't come to an agreement about licensing since they wanted compensation for all the R&D. Motorola, UMAX, Power Computing and all their associated brand names will shortly be gone from the market. They will sell off their existing stock and honor warranties. I guess that the bottom line is that if you want a really good price on a Mac OS power system look for the clones on sale. I would wonder about future compatabilities and upgrades though.
The RIAG is the only Apple group in RI that still supports all the Apple systems. Our members use all kinds of "mature" systems like the Apple II's (e, c, GS), Apple III's and a whole bunch of earlier Macs. For this reason I was a little upset last week when I received word that an Apple II GS user has been trying to find some help in the state and was unable to do so for many months. This lady called all over the country looking for help including Apple's help line. They told her that the closest user group to North Providence is a group in Bridgewater, CT or a group in Massachusetts. She finally was able to hear about us from Joe Kohn who publishes an Apple II and IIGS newsletter called Shareware Solutions II. One of his contributors is Dr. Cynthia Fields from Wakefield, RI. He also knows our own David Kerwood and with these connections he suggested that she contact us and gave her Dave Angell's number. She came to our Apple II SIG and we were able to reconfigure her hard drive with a new system and she was thrilled. I was pretty upset with Apple so I called them and talked to their help line people and asked them what groups they had listed in the 02920 zip code area, and the tech said "none". I then had him look for the RIAG and he said "yes, here it is!" I made him link all RI zip codes to the RIAG so that this problem should not happen again. Anyway, after this long story I want to welcome Kathy Turcott as a new member and hope that any future problems can be handled a whole lot better.
I want to say Happy Holidays to anyone I will not see this month, but I hope to see you at the main meeting. I'll be the one with the big "new monster computer" grin on my face!
Want to learn more about the Rhode Island Apple Group? Select this link, or send me email!
