Bournemouth — Feb 19th 2008

The star of this meeting was undoubtedly the new MacBook Air, ably demonstrated by Lucy, the Assistant Store Manager of our hosts, Solutions. So light (at 3 lbs) that she was able to hold it up on the palm of her hand throughout the demonstration, while illustrating not only the slick design, but the abilities of the enlarged touch pad, echoing those of the iPhone in allowing rotating of pictures, as well as enlarging, diminishing and moving to the next all by use of finger movements. It is aimed at a very specific market - that of travelling office people with access to their desk-tops back at base, as there is no optical drive for CDs or DVDs. A more expensive version also comes with flash memory giving longer battery life and lightning quick access to the contents of the drive. Not for everybody this new machine!

Mick Burrell followed Lucy with an equally polished presentation showing us why we get, and how to avoid, spam. Most enlightening, and VERY useful. One piece of good advice sticks in the mind - NEVER send e-mails to several recipients with their address showing - use the BCC address box to hide them. And similarly, when forwarding emails, cut and paste the relevant piece into a new email, leaving out the lists of addresses that may have been passed on to you. Both these are faults to be remedied which otherwise give plenty of addresses to the spam merchants who are adept at extracting them from unprotected machines (usually Windows we have o say!).

After the meeting most of us adjourned to the Italian restaurant to continue chatting over coffeee or a meal.

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