BEYOND THE iPAD BASICS, PART 2

MBUG May General Meeting
WEDNESDAY, May 11, 2016 – 7:00 to 9:00 pm
Hilltop Park Center
871 Jessie Street, Monterey
FREE to MBUG Members and the General Public

Jeffrey Fisher, a volunteer instructor in the Computer Technology Center at The Carmel Foundation, returns at our May general meeting to continue the discussion of iPad features.

This second iPad session will be more about personalizing your iPad, including creating your own icons, working with Siri, and playing with folders. He will present more iPad tips and tricks (via the App Store) and using Google Search. As always, Fisher welcomes your questions to drive a great deal of what we cover.

Be sure to bring your iPad to the meeting, if you have one, and follow along as we explore.

Fisher was a math major at San Diego State University and spent six years at Burroughs as a programmer and systems engineer. He also has thirty-one years at Hewlett-Packard as a field software/systems rep, did pre/post-sales support, acted as a project manager for his clients’ larger projects, and wrote Linux classes for internal training of HP’ers and customers. He was Tech Support Manager for six years at HP SoCal regional offices, finally retiring six years ago.

For questions in advance, contact Fisher at jeffreyfisher59@gmail.com. For a summary of Beyond iPad Basics, Part 1, see Joe Asling’s Meeting Notes article on page 6 of the MBUG May Newsletter.

WEBSITE FAVORITES REVUE

MBUG December General Meeting
WEDNESDAY, December 9, 2015 – 7:00 to 9:00 pm
Hilltop Park Center
871 Jessie Street, Monterey
FREE to MBUG Members and the General Public

For our December general meeting, we will be back at Hilltop Park Center for our Holiday Get-Together, a combination of informal discussion, sharing of favorite websites, and party time and door prizes.

Out-going president Joe Asling will start things off with a presentation on podcasts, reviewing what’s out there and some of the interesting things you can learn through podcasts.

In-coming president Jeff Helms will provide an update on “Best of the Year” technology, highlighting devices such as the new Amazon Echo and video fobs.

Any attendee is welcome to chime in and comment on his or her website of special interest. This is also an opportunity for informal Q & A on computer-related questions.

And don’t forget . . . we will want to hear your QUESTIONS for THE ANSWERS given on page 3 of the December MBUG Newsletter! Hint: Information for formulating some of the questions appears throughout the Newsletter.

Bring a family member, bring a friend—come and join in the sharing! For information, contact C. Lake at lakelyn@comcast.net.

ARE SMARTPHONES REPLACING PCs?

MBUG November General Meeting
WEDNESDAY, November 11, 2015 – 7:00 to 9:00 pm
Canterbury Room, Canterbury Woods
651 Sinex Avenue, Pacific Grove
FREE to MBUG Members and the General Public

Are PCs becoming obsolete? Many people find they are using their smartphones almost exclusively for many tasks previously done on their PCs. A recent report from Kleiner Perkins (venture capitalist in Menlo Park who invests in information technologies) shows that smartphones now exceed PCs for everyday Internet usage.

Smartphones allow you to do almost everything a PC can do—and they can make calls as well. Are smartphones replacing tablets? Will smart phones themselves be replaced in the next revolution of computer development? At the November meeting, MBUG Board member Norma Dunipace will discuss these issues and present some survey results on how people today are using their PCs and their smart phones.

The presentation will include how computers have evolved and some statistics about where we are today. What do current users expect from their computers/Internet devices? Are personality traits of the next generation partially driving the development? What do the experts such as Walt Mossberg think? Is there technology available that allows us to turn our smartphones into mini PCs and use them for productivity work?

Norma Dunipace retired in 2007 as Manager of Technology Licensing and Industry Sponsored Research at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Her computer use includes a desktop, a couple of laptops, an iPad, and an iPhone, and she writes “I am not a computer expert, but I need them to do the things that interest me. I find I am doing more and more on my phone simply because it is convenient.”

Looking to the future, Dunipace notes that although membership in MBUG is still strong, it has been declining and aging in recent years and that Club Mac of Monterey has ceased to operate; she asks, “Should we broaden our interests?” This promises to be an interesting discussion that has implications for MBUG’s direction in the coming year. Come join us!