Washington Area Commodore User Group Minutes of the Board of Directors Meeting 18 April 1998 Board Meeting Attendance - Jorn Dakin, Alex Goodale, Geof Goodrum, Bob Mason, Kenley Mays, Lu Spriggs, Mike ten Kate, and Bill Walsh. Minutes - Minutes from the February and March meeting were distributed and read. March minutes were amended to change "Goodman" on second page to "Goodrum." "Tec Expo" was corrected to read "Tech Expo." The February minutes and the remainder of the March minutes were approved as read. General Meeting - The meeting began with an announcement by Bob Mason that the REMJEM BBS (one of the oldest bulletin boards in the D.C. area) will cease service after a good run of 10 years. Bob explained that pressing work demands forced him to close the BBS. The rest of the meeting covered Bill Walsh's video demo of Partition Magic by PowerQuest and a demo presented by Bob Mason of the Windows '98 beta. Club turn out was a little light at a total count of 18-20 participants. Treasurer's Report - Jorn Dakin distributed and discussed the club's April financial report which showed a year-to-date income of $787.00, year-to-date expenses of $369.80, and a current checking balance of $2818.62. Jorn noted that he just paid the club 's annual insurance bill which totaled $162.00. It was noted that it is not clear whether this coverage is mandated by the Government Center, however, Geof Goodrum noted that it's better to err on the side of safety. The Treasurer's report was accepted. Disk Sales - Total sales were $47.00 broken down as follows: 11 PC disk sets ($33.00), 2 VB Runtime Library Set ($4.00), 1 Midi Set ($6.00), 2 8-Bit disks ($4.00). Membership - Current club membership stands at 49. Board Business - A number of topics were discussed. We discussed the option of including back copies of The Cursor on the WAC web site. Geof Goodrum noted it didn't make sense to put the current version of The Cursor on the site since receipt of the paper copy of the current month's issue is an inducement to join the club. Alex Goodale noted that we could include back dated copies (covering a year's worth or more of editions) and then periodically purge the file. There would be no need to include disk space intensive graphics. Text-only files would be fine and would take up relatively little space. Alex Goodale noted that he will again check with Kathy Perrin to see what her schedule looks like and when she might be able to devote more time to helping prepare The Cursor. The Board reviewed again the option of purchasing a new Pentium laptop which would facilitate equipment set-up and breakdown at club meetings. Bob Mason noted that he had been tracking laptop prices but getting the Board's approval to buy would be diffic ult given the rapid turnover in advertised specials. Alex proposed that a $1,000 ceiling price be approved by the Board. This Board approved this motion. Bob Mason noted that he would develop a laptop spec sheet and circulate it to the Board. In gener al, the Board agreed that we need to shoot for the best CPU possible (150 Mhz was cited as a minimum). A one Gigabyte hard drive and a minimum of 32 Megabytes of RAM was judged to be sufficient. Alex Goodale noted that he could donate a used 14.4 modem and CD-ROM drive if needed. Items like MMX were deemed optional. The Board approved a motion that club dues will drop to $11.00 for any new members joining in June or later. This policy will apply to the current and future years. Geof Goodrum asked Mike ten Kate to forward copies of the billing dunning notice received from TIAC regarding the fee for arranging mail forwarding to Mike ten Kate's home e-mail account. We discussed the upcoming June swap meet. Geof Goodrum agreed to work on the flyers for distribution at the May meeting. We discussed other ways of stimulating interest in the meeting. For example, Alex Goodale noted we could announce the meeting in t he Washington Post's Fast Forward insert. Geof Goodrum noted that he will take other steps such as sending fax announcement to radio stations, placing an announcement in the Computer Users newspaper, putting out UseNet announcements, and posting the meeti ng time and date on the WAC website. Finally, we discussed the possibility of posting signs on major roads outside the Government Center the day of the meeting. Bob Mason said he would look into options for preparing signs. Kenley Mays announced his new e-mail address is grayfeather@inmind.com. Future Meetings - Bruce Kanner is planning a demo of the Goldmine contact manager for the May meeting. Lu Spriggs will also demo the Opera web browser and a second freeware browser. Alex Goodale might also demo the Netscape 4.0 browser in a head-to-head comparison with an IE 4.0 browser demo by Bob Mason. Future potential topics include the 3D graphic card installation and demo discussed at the March Board meeting, digital cameras, and a possible demo of Microsoft's Front Page web design tool by Mike ten Kate and/or Lance Cutlar. Meeting adjourned.