Washington Area Commodore User Group Minutes of the Board of Directors Meeting 21 March 1998 Board Meeting Attendance - Jorn Dakin, Alex Goodale, Geof Goodrum, Bob Mason, Lu Spriggs, Mike Ten-Kate, and Bill Walsh. Minutes - Minutes from the February meeting were not available. General Meeting - The meeting covered demonstrations of three personal finance/tax packages (Managing Your Money, Turbo Tax, and Kiplinger Tax Cut '97) by Alex Goodale and Lu Spriggs. As an added bonus, Lu provided an overview of low-cost graphics packages and free web-hosting services, we passed around Bob Mason's ferrite core mock-up, and received an excellent demo of the new floppy disk digital camera from Sony. Club attendance was good with a turn out of 23 people. Treasurer's Report - Jorn Dakin distributed and discussed the club's March financial report which showed a year-to-date income of $479.00, year-to-date expenses of $182.80, and a current checking balance of $2797.62. The Treasurer's report was accepted. Disk Sales - Total sales were $75.00 broken down as follows: MS DOS/Win95 ($39.00), VB Runtime Library Set ($24.00), 8 Bit ($9.00), Midi Set ($3.00). Membership - An updated membership roster was distributed. Current club membership stands at 51 members. Responsibility for contacting members on the nonrenewal list was divided up amongst Bob Mason, Geof Goodrum, and Alex Goodale. Board Business - A number of topics were discussed. --Geof Goodrum agreed to follow-up with TIAC regarding a $20.00 charge for arranging to have club e-mail forwarded to the club's Secretary who is handling all vendor contact/product review issues. Geof explained that he was not informed of this charge when making arrangement to have this service put in place. --Alex Goodale noted that Kathy Perrin has been tied up with work matters but she hopes to be able to devote more time to the Cursor in the future. Alex volunteered to continue working with Kathy on production of the Cursor. --The Board discussed Lee Huftalen's purchase of a used Amiga 1200 and a related software collection for the club's use. --The Board reviewed the option of purchasing a new Pentium laptop which would facilitate equipment set-up and breakdown at club meetings. Bob Mason noted that a good laptop can be purchased for as little as $900.00 and he agreed to keep his eyes open fo r advertised specials. Alex Goodale added that the Board would formally consider this purchase when a concrete buy proposal is presented. --Geof Goodrum said he will purchase some paper for his own account to offset the use of personal stock for the Cursor. --The Board agreed to the purchase of a quality cart for moving computer equipment to and from meeting. Geof Goodrum said he would pick up the new cart. --Geof Goodrum noted that Tech Expo has asked for the club's media package since they are considering advertising in the Cursor. Geof will respond to this request. Future Meetings - Bob Mason and Bill Walsh will demo Windows '98 (beta) and Partition Magic, respectively, at the April meeting. Bill's presentation will be video-based. The Board discussed potential future topics including web browsers (Lu Spriggs is planning to demo Opera and a freeware browser); digital cameras; Power Quest (Jorn Dakin noted he would provide Mike Ten-Kate with a URL contact); System Commander; email products such as Eudora; Goldmine's contact manager; security issues (encryption pro ducts, digital signatures, public keys, etc.); and a demo on how to install, configure, and use a 3D graphics card. Meeting adjourned.