Last Updated: Wednesday, July 15, 1998
The Rhode Island Apple Group -- Rhode Island's First Apple Computer Club! P.O.Box 6081, Providence, RI 02940-6081

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Thoughts from the big chair...

 July is here and that means our annual RIAG Picnic! Our main meeting will be the picnic on Sunday July 19 (MAKE A NOTE OF IT!) at Russ Severs house. Every year Russ has allowed us to invade his home and use his back yard and pool for our fun and games. There will be a list of who is to bring what to the picnic printed in this newsletter. We always have a good time and we don't even have to sit in front of a computer monitor! I remember that the first one I went to did turn into a computer meeting - after eating we all wanted to see Russ's computers and we ended up working on a few problems and questions. Well that didn't happen last year, just eating, badminton, volley ball and swimming.

By the time you read this I'll be living in a tent playing war games for my annual 2 weeks of adventure with the Army Reserve. That's 2 weeks of no computer, no Internet, no e-mail and no games. It also means that I can't make it to the picnic so have a good time and I'll be thinking of you when I'm eating my MRE's (combat rations).

MacWorld Expo is also happening in July. This time it is in New York on July 8 to 10. Mark is going and will write a review of his adventures there. I don't know if Apple is planning anything as dramatic as last year's keynote speech by Steve Jobs, but it should be interesting. Already this year they have announced future plans for the Mac OS and some very nice new G3 systems with lower prices.

Dave Angell, John Gentile, and Aasta Johannson at CompUSA on 14 June 1998!There was an Apple Demo Days event at CompUSA last month and our own David Kerwood was hired by Apple to be one of the demonstrators [photo, l-r - Dave Angell, me, and Aasta Johannson at the event]. He was showing off his new G3 Power Book and running Mac applications and even Windows 95 using Soft Windows. He was running things faster on his system than they run on a real "Wintel" machine! Good job David!

This seems to be a time for people to think about upgrading to a new system. The prices of systems are falling and new technology is being introduced. The G3's are out now with the G4's on the horizon. The new Mac OS X is being talked about for release next year that will take advantage of the G3 and G4 chips. Memory chips are a lot cheaper as well as other peripherals like printers, scanners, modems and hard drives. Better cheaper and faster are the key words for the upcoming months.

And speaking of upgrading, my travails with the system crash have been solved and last month's meeting was the demo of Norton's Utilities. Since our demonstrator couldn't make it we needed a last minute fill in, and Dick Horton came to the rescue and did an outstanding job at explaining what the various parts of the program were and how he uses them to keep his Mac in top running form. We owe Dick a big "Thank you for your efforts!"

Well, that's about it for now. I've got to go pack my duffels and get myself into my soldier mind set. See you next month and have a good time at the picnic!

John Gentile

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