Well, Apple announced that in the 1st few weeks of their on-line Apple Store they have made over $12 Million in sales. The new line of Power Mac G3's seem to be a hot seller. These new Macs are capable of 500 or greater Mhz speeds, soon (I think) of getting up to a gigahertz. I envision home systems with giga everything - giga RAM, giga and up to tera sized hard drives, giga speeds. These systems will be capable of running some small countries and large businesses.
On a related note I checked out the Apple "Store within a Store" at the Warwick CompUSA. While I was browsing around the Mac Software shelves I saw 3 Power Macs being sold in a matter of 30 minutes. I was able to give 2 people my number and a little info about our user group. As a matter of fact one of those families showed up at our December meeting and have become members! Welcome to Sky and her family! It was encouraging to see that there was a decent display of Apple products and not just computers but including printers, scanners, and all sorts of peripherals. The software shelves were well stocked also, but it still seems that it's a tiny part of the store. The titles on the shelves are strictly Mac only, but if you look at the titles in the rest of the store you will find some products that are Mac/Win. It would be nice if they double shelved the dual system titles so that the Mac section will be properly represented.
Our Christmas meeting and auction was a great success. The club was able to purchase and auction off some Mac Games '98 CD's ( I have 2 left) and some Zip disks. I had to miss most of the auction because I forgot to bring in the games and had to run home to get them (I did get back in time for them to be auctioned). The auction is something we do twice a year and it's a good time to pick up some useful stuff or get rid of some of your stuff that's taking up space.
Helen Anger told us about her experiences in getting some photos on a "Photo Disk" and then getting them on her system so that she could print out her Christmas cards and letters. After much trial and help from some of our members she finally succeeded and she brought in some for us to look at. That was a good piece of work Helen and thanks for sharing your story. This is also an example of why user groups are so important. There is usually someone you can turn to and ask a question or get advice.
Well, our January meeting is coming up and it's our annual business meeting and elections. We will hear from the various board members about the shape of our group, how much money we have and how many members we have. Then we will elect the 1998 board of directors. We need your support and you can help by coming to the meeting and voting for your choice for the board. That's all I have for now, but I hope to see you all at the main meeting!
Want to learn more about the Rhode Island Apple Group? Select this link, or send me email!
