PACS 2007-2008 Meeting Schedule
Date Presenter Topic
September 15, 2007 Dave Harding Software Freedom Day
October 20, 2007 Joel May Some Things You Might Not Know About Google
November 17, 2007 Bill Wolfe Future directions for Microsoft products
December 15, 2007 Steve Deming Microsoft's products for spyware and malware protection
January 26, 2008 Jody Gibney Symantec will be speaking about current and future Norton products.
February 23, 2008 Cancelled due to weather!
March 15, 2008 Anne Chase DriveSavers Data Recovery More info
April 19, 2008 Dave Marra Apple's new Leopard OS. More Info
May 17, 2008 Douglas Dixon, Manifest Technology Tech Trends and Toys 2008 More Info
June 14, 2008 (2nd Saturday)   Smart Computing More Info

March 15: "The Care and Feeding of Hard Disks"; Anne Chase of DriveSavers Data Recovery

It's a fact that the hard drive inside your Personal Computer or Macintosh will simply stop working one day. When it does, all your files will be inaccessible and in a worst case scenario you'll lose everything you've ever created! What would you lose if your hard drive crashed right now? Your contact files, financial data, perhaps your business records, photos, music? Fortunately, there are preventive measures you can take to protect yourself from a complete information meltdown. Attend this session and learn how hard drives work and why they fail; how to run effortless backups of critical files to guarantee data is never lost and inside tips on recovering lost data when a hard drive crashes.

April 19: "Introducing Mac OS X v.10.5 Leopard!"; Dave Marra, Senior Systems Engineer, Apple Computer

Packed with over 300 amazing new innovations, Mac OS X v10.5 "Leopard" features a completely new desktop and Finder environment, making it even easier to quickly browse and locate your files; Quick Look, to view the contents of your documents without opening them; Time Machine, a revolutionary automated file backup and recovery utility; Spaces, an exciting new way to keep your Mac clutter-free and organized; Dashboard with Web Clip, to create your very own Dashboard widgets; iChat, for high-quality video and audio conferencing, remote screen sharing, slideshow and presentation delivery; along with significantly updated versions of Spotlight, Safari, iCal, Automator, Mail and much, much more! Discover Leopard today!

If you're a Windows user, don't skip this meeting as Dave will also touch on features such as Boot Camp (to run Windows natively); Windows file sharing, to connect to Windows networks; and iTunes.

About Dave Marra: As a Senior Systems Engineer for Apple, Dave Marra has conducted more than 500 technology presentations, keynote addresses and workshops for schools, Mac and PC user groups, businesses and other professional organizations across the United States and Canada. His specialty areas include digital multimedia, internet technologies and Mac/PC integration. For more information about Dave, please visit his web site at www.marrathon.com.

May 17: "Tech Trends and Toys 2008"; Douglas Dixon, Manifest Technology

We love our electronic gadgets and gizmos, from set-top to desktop to pocket-sized. And each year there's a new wave of them, obsoleting all that come before in a lust-inducing display of bigger (or smaller), faster, better, cheaper, and snazzier.

This year kicked off as usual with the annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, followed by the Jobs-fest at Macworld. CES is just huge -- some 140,000 attendees trying to visit 2,700 exhibitors spread over 1.8 million square feet.

CES showcased more than 20,000 new products -- a lot of stuff! Doug Dixon will dig through the pile to highlight interesting new ideas, especially for home and personal entertainment. This will be an opportunity to understand developing trends in new technology, and to explore the latest options in fun new devices and gadgets.

Key themes include:

  • Flat-screen TV gets bigger, better, and thinner, and more connected. This is the year of real, 'Full HD' to the home, the beginning of OLED displays, and time to get ready for the end of analog broadcast TV.
  • Connected homes free content to move between the living room, den, and bedroom. But do you want TV on your PC, or PC features on your TV? And what's the right kind of box to bridge the two, from the cable company to Apple TV?
  • Portable media players add video and connectivity, while mobile phones add media and Internet, both overlapping into Internet radio, streaming video, and Web access -- plus GPS mapping and navigation.
  • Wireless is everywhere: Wi-Fi and WiMAX, neighborhood and home, with wireless Internet to the PC, wireless video to the TV, wireless USB to devices, and even wireless power. Bluetooth stereo frees your music to flow to remote headsets and speakers.
  • Still cameras shoot reasonable video, while camcorders shoot great stills. All while today's memory-based camcorders shrink to the size of a soda can and still shoot in HD.
  • Portable storage continues to amaze with continued growing capacity and shrinking size, with solid-state drives (SSD) starting to make sense for laptops. Sneakernet still lives, both for sharing, and for moving content within the home.

June 14, 2008: Smart Computing Magazine

Smart Computing magazine is geared for the novice to intermediate computing enthusiast. Articles cover general tips, software tutorials, and reviews and provide simple, sensible explanations "in plain English". Subscribers also get complete access to special areas of their web site. Free telephone support for your computer problems is another great benefit.

Subscribing through this link and indicating that you are a PACS member in the User Group field provides a free subscription for PACS to use as a door prize for every five paid orders.

The publisher also produces CPU (computer power user) magazine for advanced users or those who'd like to be. Web access with a subscription from either magazine gives you access to archived issues of both.

NOTE: We make every effort to list events well in advance - but sometimes things happen, and speakers, dates, and events are subject to change. We post updated information as soon as possible.