A lively meeting this time and considering how many of us use Mail for our email client, there seemed to be something new for everybody. The tips given tonight were aimed at making us more organised in the way we use mail. Several people had brought laptops so were working their way through, following the presentation and sorting their mail in new efficient ways.

Being in a much smaller room tonight meant a cosy…

The February meeting at Dorchester had a mainly geographical theme.

Steve started things off with a demonstration of how the Mac can be used successfully with a hand held GPS device. Garmin, who make GPS devices, are slowly becoming more Mac-aware, so that if you buy a GPS with a USB connection, they have software (Road Trip, see www8.garmin.com/macosx) which can upload planned routes to the device, and download…

We had two very different but interesting presentations at this months meeting, kicking off the new year in style.

We had a visit from Trevor Metcalfe, who is a well known professional cartoonist. He has created cartoons for comics such as 'Whizzer & Chips' and 'The Dandy' to name but a few in his career. Trevor gave us an insight into his work and demonstrated how he utilises his Apple computer in his…

Our Musical evening started the new year on the right note! Steve Ryder gave a repeat of his demonstration of transferring vinyl to disc - really easy with a USB turntable and a copy of Audacity (free).
This was followed by a very comprehensive and well presented trip around Garageband, from Sam Adams.
Steve had come from Dorchester and Sam from Fareham to share their expertise, and it was much appreciated by all.
…

The first meeting of 2009 started with a bumper attendance and an excellent session. A particular welcome to four new members. Martin kicked off by guiding us through the history of Mac portables with examples from his own collection - mostly working. He had begun to think that his appearance at a meeting meant others stayed away! What rubbish! His well informed and enthusiastic presentation led to interested and lively discussion and we are all grateful…

This month is the 25th Anniversary of the first Macintosh and the meeting celebrated the occasion.
An original 128K Macintosh together with a range of Powerbooks (and iBooks) from the first Powerbook 100 through to the latest sleek Unibody MacBook Pro were on display for members to play with and discuss.
An excellent chocolate cake resplendent with an Apple logo made by Lionel's wife helped celebrated the occasion.

Disappointing attendance ensured…

A good turn out for our first meeting of the year and two new members - Nick & Susanna, welcome. As requested, many people made an extra effort to bring along their Macs so we had a good selection of machines to play with and explain just how you do the things that had some of us baffled. We couldn't persuade DVD Player to let us pause a DVD and take a screen shot though, so if…

Even better attendance than last time - it must have been the attraction of the mince pies that did it! This month there were two presentations. One by Michael showing some of the (useful) free applications that can be found on the internet. A dozen were featured, but had to be shown briefly, with a quick description of what they do. Anyone interested can have a list of the relevant URLs for downloading. The applications were…

This months meeting took a different approach, we concentrated on finding out what we all wanted from the meetings in the new year, producing a list of what we wanted to cover. In between the coffee and doughnuts we had a very interesting discussion covering the items below and even managed to solve a few technical problems members had as well.

Topics for 2009:
Adobe Indesign / DTP Alternatives
Adobe Photoshop / Elements…

Michael gave us his excellent presentation describing how he abandoned all his professional photo gear but recorded a day at Wembley with two grandsons using nothing but a compact camera and of course his Mac when he got home. Stills, a short movie and sound were all combined in iMovie to capture the atmosphere of the day and burned to DVD for distribution to the family.

There were of course the usual questions…