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BRMUG BRMUG October 1998 Newsletter This is the index of the October 1998 BRMUG Newsletter: Features: Finally Regular Columns: Front Page News by Isaac Traxler October Meeting BRMUG Picnic! Apple News Software Review Coming! Apple Tidbits Nisus for free! Apple Stock Graphic Utility of the Month (VistaScan 3.0 and MagicScan 4.1) by Glenn Matherne Web Page of the Month (TidBITs)by Isaac Traxler Non-Essentials (Chess Lite 4.0) by Glenn Matherne Essentials (Graphing Calculator)by Isaac Traxler Cartoon by Pete Steinfeld Return to BRMUG Newsletter Index Front Page News Ocotober Meeting The October meeting will be held at the Louisiana Public Broadcasting (LPB) facility on October 15th, the 3rd Thursday of the month, at 6:30 P.M. This month's meeting will include a tour of some parts of LPB along with a demonstration of the value of the Macintosh to LPB (thanks Don Ballard). The meeting will start at 6:30 P.M. The usual presentation/Q&A format of the meeting will be altered to mkake the most of this opportunity to learn about LPB and how they use their Macintoshes. This change of meeting location is for this month only! We will return to the Bluebonnet Library next month with our normal format. LPB is located just at 7733 Perkins Road (north side of Perkins just east of Essen). This month, we will adjourn to Calendars after the meeting for food, fun. and conversation (Perkins, just west of of Essen). NOTE: Map to LPB & Calendars. Return to Top of Page BRMUG Picnic! On September 19th, BRMUG held their annual picnic. The weather was nice. The food was great and plentiful. The Volleyball had to be seen to be believed. Despite a delay getting started (thanks to early morning showers), the picnic was great. Thank you to all who participated and I hope you all had as much fun as I did! Did I mention the food? There was plenty of food including chicken, hot dogs, hamburgers, potato salad, baked beans, corn on the cob, rolls and colas. Next year we are going to need to bring more tables (nowhere to put all the food). Volleyball - if you were there -- you saw it. If you were not there then I just don't think you would believe it. Hey Don, have you recovered yet? I guess I don't need to mention the team that won all the matches. I can't wait until next time! Return to Top of Page Apple News Apple will hold a big press conference on Wednesday, October 14, at 11:00 am at the Flint Center in Cupertino. At this press conference they will announce: fourth-quarter financial results, year-end financial results, the first large-scale research data on who is buying iMacs, and a major new release of the Macintosh operating system (System 8.5). Return to Top of Page Software Review Coming! Chris Smith of Masque Publishing has sent BRMUG a copy of 9 Big Ones to review. Big Ones's is a CD containing the following games: F/A-18 Hornet (air combat) Crystal Caliburn (pinball) Pathways into Darkness (3d Adventure) Glider Pro (fly a paper glider around a house) Marathon (3D Adventure) Loony Labyrinth (pinball) A-10 Attack (air combat) Pegleg (shoot-em up arcade) Warcraft (real-time graphic stratedgy). Look for my review next month and demonstrations at the November Meeting (our annual Games meeting). Return to Top of Page Apple's Tidbits CNET named the iMac Most Innovative Product. Jeff Goldblum is featured in two new Apple commercials. Andy Grove (chair of Intel) praised the iMac as the first example of the future of computers. Newsweek ran a favorable article on the iMac (Barbara Kantrowitz, Oct 5). Sure seems like Apple is getting a different reception than in the past. Return to Top of Page Nisus for free! You can download Nisus Writer 4.1.4 for free (after filling out an online form and agreeing to allowing them to send you periodic e-mail offers to upgrade to the newer version ). Nisus Writer is a very good Word Processor with many unique features that normally sells in the $100 to $150 range. If you need to write in multiple languages or like macros this may be the product for you. Their market-share was steadily increasing until a couple of years ago when they committed to OpenDoc and completely rewrote the product for that now-dead environment. This is clearly an effort to regain market-share for an excellent product that bet on Apple. Visit http://www.nisus.com/> for more information. Return to Top of Page Apple's Stock This has been a weird month for Apple on the Stock Market (the same could be said for many other companies). When stock prices first started going down -- Apple went up, getting ever closer to $40 a share. Then they started going down. The week of October 7 through 11 was downright bizarre. During this week, no significant revelations came out about Apple. It was just another normal week in the life of Apple. Their stock started the week at a little over $34 a share. The price slowly dipped to about $32 by Wednesday. On Thursday the stock plummeted to below $29 a share. Friday brought the price back up to $35 a share (buying Thursday and selling Friday would have made you a tidy profit). Volume was heavy all week. Apple's current average is over 4.4 million shares a day traded. Each day last week exceeded that (Friday was almost 6 million shares -- somebody made the money). Based on the expected announcements of the October 14th, I expect to see their stock go up even more. Apple's Market Cap is now $4.7 billion. Times have really changed since Christmas 1997. Apple was below $13 a share with the forecast of a bleak future. Average volume was below 2 million shares a day. Wall Street could not get far enough away. Today, Apple is clearly of interest to Wall Street. Tomorrow - only the Shadow knows. Hint: To keep up with the current stock prioces on Apple, visit <http://www.yahoo.com/q?s=AAPL&d=5d>. This will use Yahoo's stock quoting service to show you Apple's current status and a chart of the last five day's performance. Return to Top of Page Graphic Utility of the Month by Glenn Matherne This month's graphic utility column is a comparison of the updates to the scanner controller programs, VistaScan 3.0 and MagicScan 4.1 by Umax. These controllers work with the Umax Astra, Powerlook and Mirage families of scanners. They will also work with the Linocolor scanners made by Heidelberg Press that feature Umax scanner engine. I came across these scanner programs while reading Rich Ford's Macintouch column, a few weeks ago. MagicScan 4.1 is an update to the controller program for the Umax professional scanners. VistaScan 3.0 is an update for Umax's new USB scanner, the Astra 1220U. The next day, a reader responded that MagicScan 4.1 worked great on their Astra 610S. Another reader commented that VistaScan 3.0 worked well on their Astra 610S. So, I put them both to the test. I used an Astra 610S connected to a Performa 5200 with 24 Mb of ram and Mac OS 7.5.1 at work and downloaded the VistaScan 3.0 software. At home I used an Astra 600S connected to a Performa 5300 with 48 Mb of ram and Mac OS 8.1, and downloaded the MagicScan 4.1 software. Then I tested the VistaScan 3.0 on the Performa 5300 with Mac Os 8.1. Each program was accessed as a plug-in to Adobe PhotoDeluxe 1.0. I found that Vista Scan 3.0 is the quicker and easier to use of the two programs. It has a wonderful user-friendly interface and has some neat screen filters found in Hewlett-Packard scanner software. It also has a large preview area and helpful filtering effects. The catch is that the colors are not as exact as a professional would like, but they are the same saturated colors and razor sharp images that we have come to expect from Umax scanners. MagicScan 4.1 is an easy to use professional strength program. It is both accurate and easily adjusted to correct for distortions in scanned images. The images scanned with MagicScan 4.1 are lower in saturation and contrast than those of VistaScan 3.0. This is because professionals often synchronize the scanner to Apple's Colorsync 2.5 software and or prefer to correct their colors after the scan. Predictably, both programs differed in memory and space requirements. Because MagicScan 4.1 is a professional program it does need at least 16 MB of memory. I recommend at least 32 MB of memory to avoid problems while scanning. On the other hand, VistaScan 3.0 will work with 12 MB of memory. I recommend at least 16 MB. Both work great with Mac Os 7.5 or higher. I recommend Mac Os 8.1 to increase your performance. Both files are available for free down load at <http://www.umax.com/. VistaScan 3.0 is a 17.8 Mb file. You need to select Mac Os and Umax Astra 1220U to get to the VistaScan 3.0 update. You can also get the Umax copier program for free. Don't get the Presto PageMaster OCR software, as it conflicts with Mac Os 8.0. MagicScan 4.1 is a large 20 meg file. You need to select a Powerlook or Mirage Scanner and Mac Os to get to the MagicScan 4.1 software. Although the Umax website is fast, plan on catching a movie or a ball game while it down loads. So which one would I pick. I like them both. If I'm printing a scanned image on to Kodak Photo Weight paper, I would use MagicScan 4.1. If I m in a hurry or scanning picture for the internet, VistaScan 3.0 works just fine. Really... The neat thing is that I wow my peers every time I use the copier program to scan and print documents. One suggested that I could print my own counterfeit money. Another said that it was like having your own office. Interesting...I could be my own boss and make my own salary... Return to Top of Page Web Page of the Month by Isaac Traxler What is TidBITS TidBITS? In their own words Welcome to TidBITS, a free, weekly, electronic publication that covers news . It has been around since April of 1990 and started out as an e-mail based distribution. It is now available for e-mail or web access and has been translated into 8 other languages (Chinese, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, and Spanish). TidBITS was started by Adam Engst (author of several Internet/Macintosh books). Over the years TidBITs has grown from an e-mail-based Newsletter, to add a web site, to an integrated publication with a complete searchable archive. Over the years they have published many important stories and dealt with many of the issues that have faced the Macintosh world. More details about TidBITs history can be learned from their story web page. TidBITs is many different things. It covers news in the Macintosh and Internet worlds. Many software products are reviewed and compared. Reviews are constantly revisited when new versions come out. Tutorials appear frequently. Overview/informational articles are quite common (refer to last month's explanation of file formats). In many ways, TidBITs is the epitome of evangelism. It provides the feel-good information about the Macintosh. It provides the information that helps bridge the gap between the Macintosh and the rest of the world (Internet/communications/PDAs. It provides tutorials that not only show you how to use a product but also explain what you can do with it and why you would want to use it. I heartily recommend this as a weekly read. Reading this publication frequently will keep you informed of many of the things going on in the Macintosh world, introduce you to many things that you know little about and help you find new ways to use your Macintosh to solve daily problems. In many ways, it does the same things that user groups seek to do -- educate, inform and reduce frustration. Return to Top of Page Non-Essentials by Glenn Matherne This month's non-essential program is for those people who like to play strategic board games like Chess, but have not found the right one. PC users have had a myriad of cool chess games, but the Mac world has been waiting for a really great one. That is until now. Sigma Chess Lite 4.0 by Ole Kajaer Christensen and Kaare Danielsen may just be what Bobby Fischer ordered. Sigma Chess Lite 4.0 is a freeware version of Sigma Chess 4.0, a full featured chess game with color 3D graphics. It features multiple chess sets and boards, a time clock, several levels of difficulty and the option to play the computer or a human opponent. I found that the computer chess player was far superior to any human player I've ever seen. In fact, I've been playing on easy mode for two months and haven't beaten the computer, yet. Neither have any of my peers at work. The only critcism I have is that the computer takes a long time to think out moves at times. However, it seems to reason out all of its options fairly well. Advanced players will be able to anticipate the computer's moves. All in all, this is a pretty impressive program. If you need all of the features, by all means purchase the full program from ChessBase. Most players will probably be happy with the freeware version. One of these days I'll be the grandmaster. For now, I have to take a few more lessons. I wonder if IBM's Deep Blue computer is taking students. Return to Top of Page Essentials by Isaac Traxler This month's topic is the Graphing Calculator. I have tried to choose freeware (or shareware) products for this column to point out how many essential but free (or cheap) tools exist in the Macintosh world. The Graphing Calculator is part of the Macintosh OS (on PowerPC machines). The Graphing Calculator is a really neat product. It has many features from high-end Mathematics programs built right in. It can do simple arithmetic (just type in the expression). It is better than most calculators because you can edit the expression just as you would in a word processor. Multiple levels of parenthesis are supported. If you can type the expression, it will give you the answer. It will also graph expressions (such as y=x+3 or y<2x-4). Imagine how helpful this is for doing certain homework. Exponents are no problems. You can use the mouse to move the axis around and see the graph at that point. You can click anywhere on the curve to see the value of the curve at that point. Trig functions are supported. You can take derivatives. It can even do some 3d graphs. The graphs can be copied and pasted into documents. It has a Demo mode. This is a fascinating demonstration of the power of the calculator and of the Macintosh. It also is a full tutorial on how to use the Graphing Calculator. Notice the preferences (you can set significant digits and other things). The full keypad option shows many of the functions this package supports. The Graphing Calculator is a powerful tool that is often over looked. It does not look like a regular calculator (no keypad with a small display) and it does not perform like a calculator. It really is a scaled down solver (like Mathematica). Try this one out. Return to Top of Page Finally by Isaac Traxler Well it finally happened. It is no longer a myth. The new Macintosh that the LSU Computer Science Department was going to get her (to replace her aging 7100) has finally arrived. I have touched it (a lot). I will provide more details in a future newsletter (space permitting).As for my impressions, I think the following sums it up: With all options forced on/maxed, Nascar Racing runs at over 45 frames per second! Return to Top of Page