Now that summer is over we can start to look forward to the fall and then the winter holidays. I know that my family and I are looking through the catalogs to find things to ask for or things to get to upgrade our computer. I want more RAM and my wife wants Adobe Illustrator and a graphics tablet. My son would like a game - any game, and my daughter wants her own computer. Well, we'll see what the holidays bring. I bring this up because of a couple of experiences some of us have had with mail order companies. I just ordered something from the Mac Connection and it was delivered exactly as ordered the following day - outstanding service! Someone else had quite a different experience with a different company and it took several phone calls and discussions with supervisors to set things right. Let's hope that your experience will be a smooth one.

Another thing we have to look forward to is the coming new year - 1999. We will be needing some new club officers and if you're willing please come forward and let us know. Our nominating committee is just starting to operate and will be looking for potential candidates for the various offices. We've had several new members join us this year thanks to Apple's renewed vigor and superior products. If you think you can contribute to the organization please don't be shy.

October is National Computer Education Month and to bring the theme to the main meeting we will be demonstrating some CD based encyclopedias and dictionaries. Most of the systems sold today include some sort of reference "books" on CDs but how many actually use them? I know that in some cases I found it easier to look on the web for something and then realized that I had the Grolier's encyclopedia right here. Oh well, maybe a brief lesson will help to remind us that it is there for our use!

Last month's main meeting was a big success. We demonstrated how scanners can be used to get documents and pictures into our systems for us to manipulate. Paul showed a couple of OCR programs to translate the scanned image into text and I showed how to get a picture into Adobe's Photo Delux or Kai's Photo Soap to be touched up and reprinted. Of the 10 people there 4 or 5 were interested in getting a scanner and I hope that the demo helped in their decision making.

That's all for now, remember I want to see you at the next meeting and please step forward and volunteer.

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