Election of Officers:
Members in attendance nominated and elected by acclamation the following officers to serve in 2005:  Program Director, Steven T. Higgins; Membership Chairman, James Crissman; Pulicity Director, Chauncey Ross; Treasurer, Estelle Onyett; Secretary, Robert Dalecki; Vice President, Darlene Graham and President, Lawrence F Rodack.

Treasurer's Report:
Treasurer Larry Stadtmiller reported the ICPCUG account has a balance of $680.64.  The members accepted his report.

Program:
Darlene Graham spoke of the features of the Word Perfect 12 word-processing application.  WP's "reveal codes" feature allows users to view the formatting used in a document.  The formatting is similar to HTML coding used in Web pages. The "reveal code" feature is accessed by pressing F3 or selecting it through the appropriate menus.  With "reveal codes" displayed, a user may edit content by drag-and-drop.

WP makes using tabs, indentations, margin adjustments and label formatting easier than other leading word-processing applications.  It has more predefined templates than other word-processing programs.  And, its document-format-conversion function is extremely versatile, allowing users to open documents made in other formats and to save WP documents in formats of other applications.

WP also offers more options for tracking changes made to a document by multiple users, allows margins to be edited in an opened document and is capable of undoing more than 200 changes to a document.  Printing envelopes and labels is easier with WP than other applications, it creates document files about half the size of those made by other word-processing programs and it has -- what some consider an advantageous feature -- not talking paper clips.

Other advantages of WP over other leading applications may be found at www.wpvsword.com

Program Director Steve Higgins discussed the problems created by spyware and advised members how to eliminate spyware on their computers.  Steve recommended Lavasoft's Ad-Aware SE 1.05 (http://www.lavasoftusa.com/software/adaware/ ); Spybot Search & Destroy 1.3  (http://www.safer-networking.org/en/index.html); Ccleaner (crap cleaner) (http://www.ccleaner.com); and Merijyn's CW Shredder (http://www.spywareinfo.com/~merijn/downloads.html). Hijack this (for example, (http://majorgeeks.com/download3155.html) was recommended for restoring a user's control over designating the home page to which a browser will open.

Steve also directed a tour of the Almighty Search search-engine Web site: http://almightysearch.com/(S(tshleu55zd1pedreppr2dj2x))/Default.aspx), the Fire Fox browser site (http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/), the Thunderbird e-mail client site (http://www.mozilla.org/products/thunderbird) and the People Finder search site (http://peoplefinder.com/). Steve cautioned that the Plaxo business-card-exchange site http://www.plaxo.com  is "a bit intrusive."  .  

 Open Forum:
Members discussed Gateway's remote help service, which allows a technician to take remote control of a user's computer to diagnose and solve problems.  Other topics of discussion included experiences in dealing with technical support and help-desk personnel who are stationed in other nations, ink-cartridge issues and new, instant-encryption functions for credit-card purchases.

The next meeting of the ICPCUG will be held Tuesday, December 21, 2004. There being no other business, the meeting was adjourned at 8:54 pm.

Respectfully submitted,

/S/
Chauncey Ross, Publicity Director
per Robert Dalecki, Secretary