President's Message

February 1998

EACH APRIL the DACS Board of Directors elects officers to conduct the day-to-day business of the organization. In accordance with our incorporation and bylaws, these officers must be paid-up, dues-paying members of the Danbury Area Computer Society. The Board is looking for members interested in sharing the leadership challenge for the year ahead. If you have some time, energy, and enthusiasm, we could certainly use your help. Officers Sought Since I have decided that three terms is enough leadership for any organization to endure of an incumbent president, I will be looking forward to reading a new President's File in future issues of dacs.doc. While we have a number of members and officers active in leading DACS, there is room for you to help. Whatever level of interest and time you have, please let me know. We need you and the fresh enthusiasm of your ideas. The election of officers will be held at the April board meeting. Any DACS member may run for any office. If you would like to be an officer, please speak with me. If you'd like to help in any capacity, you should also attend the board meetings, which are always open to members and which meet on the Monday following the General. New to DACS With the cooperation of the weather, the January Advanced E-mail meeting was held as planned. With the help of Wally David, we reviewed the ins and outs of the mailbox, and discussed attachments and forwarding as well as a number of protocol and spam issues. The meeting was well received, and we will undoubtedly be repeating it in the future. New to Windows The February special New-to meeting will feature Windows. The meeting will be held in the Danbury Library at 7:00 p.m. on Wednesday, Feb. 11. At this meeting, we will explore the Win95 interface, the Control Panel, the Explorer, right- and left-clicking empowerment, and much more. It will be an excellent opportunity for you to learn or review this popular OS interface. The new version of Win98, which we expect to be released later this year, will build on this platform. The time you spend expanding your knowledge of Win95 will ease your transition to the upcoming version. New-to-the-Net In March, we will be circling back to the Internet with our original New-to-the-Net program. We'll start with a discussion of the Internet's origins, during which you will learn how to set up a dial-up icon to your network provider, and hear an overview of browsers, search engines, bookmarks, and e-mail. The March meeting will be held in the Danbury Library at 7:00 p.m. on Thursday, March 19. Other New-tos To continue bringing special programs and initiate SIGS of the greatest interest to our members, we are preparing a special survey, which will be ready by the next General Meeting. Please pick up the form at the front desk and take the time to complete and return it to us, preferably by the end of the meeting. Your input and suggestions will help us plan the focus for future New-to sessions and give us ideas for new SIGS. T1 Surfing Gene Minasi, our DACS vice president of locations, has been working on obtaining permission for DACS to have access to the Danbury Hospital's T1 line for the Internet surfing part of our general meetings. We appreciate all your efforts, Gene. Thank you. The combination of "always on" and virtually unlimited bandwidth will set the stage for the next cycle of our network computing experience. The speed a T1 line offers places us in a prime position to appreciate the possibilities of online connectivity in the future. All we need do is to stretch our imagination a bit to see and understand the many business and personal opportunities that lie ahead. To the avid computerist, "always on" may be the "party on" madras of the next millennium.   - Tom McIntyre mcintyre@eci.com

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