The
Southern Highlands Computer Users Group Inc.
Assisting all members to explore and enjoy the benefits of Information Technology.
Monthly Newsletter
" Keyword"
January 2017
Committee members for 2016
President Rodney Andrews
Minutes Secretary Val Dickson
Treasurer John Oprey
Members Secretary Wendy Ryan
Editor Keyword &Webmaster Martina Oprey Mobile 0427223626
Phone 4862-1584
Phone 4862-1584
Please note: We are not computer professionals and our expertise is limited. If your
computer has a major problem, we can suggest a repairer to investigate your problem.
Our Education Centre.
The central point of all our activities for PC and Apple users.
Unit 5 and 6 HarbisonCare, 2 Charlotte St, Burradoo, 2576, NSW.
www.shcug.org.au
How to join SHCUG.
Visit our Education Centre and drop in at one of our weekly activities to collect an application form.
Payment can be made in cash or by cheque and handed to a tutor. Fees are $40 single or $60 couple.
Alternatively, send the application form and cheque, made out to SHCUG, to the following address:
The Treasurer,SHCUG,c/-HarbisonCare, 6/2 Charlotte St, Burradoo, NSW, 2576.
Renewing memberships.
Renewal forms are sent out each year in early December to all current members by email, with all the
relevant information needed to renew membership for the upcoming year.
Correspondence: Letters to the committee can be addressed to [email protected]
Weekly activities held in Unit 5 and 6.
Monday mornings, from 10 to 12 noon
Monday afternoons, from 1 to 5 pm.
First Tuesday of the month,
from 11 am to 1pm.
Wednesday mornings. Members Helping Members.
Apple Group
Genealogy Tutoring by appointment.
J&M Oprey
Richard Spear
Martina Oprey
Maxine Gray 4862-1584
4872-1960
4862-1584
4869-4958
Maxine Gray
4869-4958
Upcoming events.
Family History Workshop, January 20 in Unit 5, HarbisonCare
February 7, AGM at 10am in Scott Hall, HarbisonCare
In this issue.
1 Cover-page and committee members.
2 Joining and payment options, activities and contents.
3 Cleaning Bee. 4 From the President 5 New update for windows 10
5 Belarc Advisor 6 Spam that is not Ham. 7 Apple Photo App.
8 Notice Board.
By Martina Oprey
By Rodney Andrews
By Brian Graham
By Maxine Gray
By Martina Oprey
By Martina Oprey
By Martina Oprey
Page 2
January 6
Cleaning bee in full swing
Page 3
From the President
I hope everyone enjoyed the festive season and is assured of a very happy year ahead. The friendships I observe
prevailing at SCHUG’s rooms each Monday indicates that here at least all is well and I hope you will continue
to attend often to learn and share your knowledge and skills. It takes more muscles to frown than to smile, so
let’s save energy in that department at least.
I am very pleased with the results of the recent cleaning bee, undertaken in unit 5 and 6 HarbisonCare. I was
at the previous one which seems to have been four years ago. Thirteen members turned up at 10 am on Friday
morning, January 6, and after sharing out the jobs on the list, every body was soon seen busy at the task given
(see page 3). In less then two hours unit 5 and 6 were squeaky clean. A good habit to adopt is to have a yearly
summer clean up. So, my thanks to all who participated in this jolly event with positive outcomes.
I like to extend a warm welcome our new members, most of whom joined as a result of our recent open day. I
hope you will have as much fun at SHCUG as I have since I joined in 2006.
The Annual General Meeting draws nigh. I have been preparing the essential documents pertaining to the
presidency and other office bearers are also working to be able to present to you a full summary of our position
and plans. The agenda, president’s address and the financial statement will be sent out in advance of the
meeting for your consideration. We are aiming at a date of 7 February, 2017 for the AGM at 10.00 am in Scott
Hall to be followed by morning tea in unit 5. However that date needs to be confirmed as we cannot advertise
it until certain necessary documentation has been completed and received. That should be achieved in mid
January. The alerting message will be distributed at the first opportunity.
Our last committee meeting was on January 9 and all members of the 2016 committee have now retired and
all positions are declared vacant. This means that a new committee needs to be elected during our upcoming
AGM. It is hoped that many of our financial members will attend this very important meeting. The success or
failure to elect a full new committee for 2017 may well decide where SHCUG will be going this year and what
this new committee will be able to do for its members. Remember, it is your club, so assist us in our quest.
Nominations for election to the committee of 2017 are now sought and I have a list of nine nominees so
far. Persons being nominated require a seconder and must state, if only by signature in a space, that they agree
to be nominated. If only one person is nominated for a particular position that person will be considered
elected. If more than one nominee applies to a particular position, a vote of members will be required. Mr.
Victor Schweikert has agreed to act as chairman during the election procedure for office bearers for 2017.
Application forms for nomination to the committee are available on the day or on request during the weekly
Monday help sessions.
My best wishes to you all.
Rodney Andrews
President
Page 4
New update for Windows 10
By Brian Graham
Microsoft To Provide Additional Windows Update Installation Options With Creators Update.
In the Spring of 2017 (US), Microsoft will be releasing a new update for Windows 10 that the company is
calling the Creators update. While many of the features the company talked about back in October were for
the consumer, there are several features targeted specifically at enterprise customers. In addition to those that
have already been announced, thanks to a leaked build of Windows 10, Microsoft will soon let updates be
deferred up to 35 days. Microsoft calls this featuring, “Pause Updates” and will give a small bit of control
back to the user about the update process.
This delaying of installation will be helpful for reviewing updates before they are installed to make sure that
there will be no compatibility issues. But, honestly, the bigger benefit here is being able to stop updates from
installing when it is uncovered that a patch is breaking features of Windows 10. While Microsoft hopes that this
scenario never happens, seeing as it has already occurred several times with Windows 10, inevitably it will
happen again. While 35 days may not be enough for some, it should suffice for most to defer upgrades for a
short period and if there are any major issues with a patch, it should be uncovered in that window of time.
The build of Windows 10 that leaked is the Enterprise version of the software, so it’s safe to say that this feature
is coming to corporate world and is not only for consumers. We don’t have an exact date on when the Creators
update will arrive but feature-completion will occur in January and will be followed by several weeks of bug
smashing and refinement.
This Creators update, which will bring new consumer and enterprise features to Windows 10 and is in the final
stages of having new features added, is set to arrive in April. Microsoft had previously stated that the update
would arrive in the spring and now we know the exact month. The exact date isn’t known but this OS release
will come out several weeks before Microsoft’s Build conference which sets the stage for that event to focus on
future updates coming to Windows 10 beyond the Creators enhancements.
And then there is the hardware. For some time, we have been hearing that the company is planning on
releasing new hardware in the spring of 2017 and the rumours and whispers behind closed doors seem to align
to this strategy. For starters, DigiTimes states that Microsoft is planning to launch the Surface Pro 5 in Q1,
2017 and while I do not know the exact date of the Pro 5 release, it would make sense if the company released
it alongside the updated OS, which arrives in April. Further, at CES last week, nearly every major PC vendor
announced new hardware with Intel’s latest chips which means that Microsoft’s premium-priced and speced
laptops/tablets, are now running on older silicon. Considering all the issues Microsoft has had with Skylake
chips, it’s reasonable to expect that they will move quickly to Kaby Lake.
I can’t imagine Microsoft releasing brand new hardware with an older OS bit to only upgrade it a few weeks
late with the Creators update, based on Digitimes Q1 release date. Logically, it would make sense to release
both software and hardware at the same time. If this holds true, we could be seeing a Surface Pro 5 and
Surface Book 2 alongside the Creators update sometime in April.
But wait, there’s more; Hololens is approaching two-years old. While the public release of the device happened
several months after the first-showing of the device in January 2015, from a technology perspective, the
hardware is getting a bit stale. I’m not saying that it’s a bad piece of hardware, but with an additional 18+
months of time of development under their belt, the HoloLens we know today is not the same one used
internally.
I have heard that Hololens has re-entered into production which means that either a second iteration of the
device is now in production, or they are building more of the first gen. Still poking around for more details but
if Microsoft releases a new line of Surface devices and shows off an updated HoloLens while releasing the
Creators update, that would make for one heck of a month of April.
Page 5
SPAM that isn’t Ham.
SHCUG members, who regular send and receive emails, would be familiar with the Spam box of their email
application, finding mail there that wasn’t requested by them. For those who like a bit of trivia, the use of the
term ‘Spam’, which is a trademarked Hormel meat product, is supposedly derived from a Monty Python sketch
in which Spam is included in every dish on offer at a restaurant. The term ‘Spam’ has since become ‘Internet
slang’ for unsolicited commercial email (UCE). These emails often promote dubious products such as pirated
software, get-rich-quick schemes, chain letters and pornographic stuff.
You can identify email Spam by looking for the following criteria.
• Anonymity : The email address and identity of the sender is hidden.
• Mass Mailing: The email is sent to large groups of people.
• Unsolicited : The email is not requested by you, the recipient.
Besides the above, there are less formal characteristics that are typically found present in email Spam. First of
all there is usually no easy way of stopping these emails from cluttering the Spam box. This is because email
Spam is seldom sent directly by a company advertising itself but usually sent by a so called “spammer”.
Spammers are companies that are in the business of distributing unsolicited email. To avoid being tracked, this
email Spam is usually sent from an international IP address. The purpose of these email Spams is to promote
scam activities that would require the user to give the sender his/her financial and/or personal information.
However not all bulk email is seen as Spam. Some is permission-based, meaning that the recipient has asked to
receive it. This happens when a user, visiting a website, voluntarily agrees to receive newsletters or other emails
from a site or from an online store. This is known as "opt-in email”. Unlike Spam, opt-in email usually offers
some kind of benefit to the recipient such as discounted prices on goods or any other free information. Sending
unsolicited emails to online clients who did not agree to receive this information, is considered Spam.
How do spammers get our email addresses! The answer is, they sometimes buy them. Email addresses can be
bought for little money. Fifteen million email addresses can be purchased for as little as $129 (USA dollars).
Another way to obtain email addresses is by using software programs, called “harvesters”. These harvesters can
literally pluck names from websites, newsgroups or any other service in which users identify themselves by their
email address. As a protection against harvesters some websites do use software programs that can poison these
harvesters by generating bogus email addresses or directing the harvesters to a site that does not exist. However
the use of poisoners, filters and blocking software can be expensive and Spammers are cunning as they always
attempt to circumvent any new round of anti-Spam software put in their way.
Internet Service Providers (ISPs) too are troubled by the amount of email Spam that is being sent at present. In
order to operate on the Internet, ISPs have to purchase bandwidth, the "space" it uses to transmit over the
Internet. As the volume of Spam directed through the ISP increases, the bandwidth it uses becomes crowded,
often slowing down your Internet access. To overcome this, the ISP must pay for filtering software, which can
also slow access or pay more to increase the amount of bandwidth he uses. The extra cost attached to this is
often passed on to you, the subscriber. To get an idea of how much bandwidth is consumed by Spam, America
Online estimated that one-third of the 30 million daily email messages it transfers, is Spam. We need no longer
wonder why ISPs and users alike view “email Spam” as an unwanted intrusion in their mailbox.
In Australia, the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) is responsible for enforcing the
Spam Act 2003, which prohibits the sending of “unsolicited commercial electronic messages”. If a message has
an Australian link, it originated or was commissioned in Australia, or originated overseas but was sent to an
address accessed in Australia. The Spam Act covers emails, mobile phone text messages (SMS), multimedia
messaging (MMS), instant messaging (iM) and other electronic messages of a commercial nature. Consumers
can directly report such alleged misuse through the Australian Cybercrime Online Reporting Network.
Anyone wishing to learn more about Spam, Google “How does Spam work”. M Oprey
Page 6
Apple Photo App
Moving the photo library to a separate drive.
During the past months we have seen two Apple users coming to the Monday afternoon sessions, asking for
help with Apple’s new Photo app. Both members wanted help with transferring their entire photo library onto
a USB drive and external hard drive. One member had well over 1300 photos stored in her Photo application
and also a dozen or so folders, including several slide shows. Find below information about ‘how to do this’.
Managing Photo Libraries:
Photos can comfortably manage hundreds of thousands photos in one single library. But some people wish they
could break up the library into several smaller, easier-to-manage, easier-to-back-up libraries. For instance you
might want to maintain a Home library for your own personal photos. Create a Work library for images that
contain all the photos connected to your business. In Photos this is all possible, including transferring the entire
Photo library onto a removable drive.
Creating New Libraries:
Photos provides a built-in tool for creating fresh new libraries, allowing you to switch among several of them.
This is how it works: Quit Photos. Hold down the Option key whilst opening Photos again. When Photos starts
up, it senses that you are up to something and offers you the chance to create a new library or to open an
existing one.
Click Create New. In the dialog box (see picture), type a name for the new
library (Trip to snow), and then click Save. You are offered not only the chance
to create a new library, but also to choose a location for it if it is not the
Pictures folder you usually do use. When Photos finishes opening, you are left
with a blank window, ready to import photos. By using this technique, you can
create as many new photo libraries as you need.
Swapping Libraries:
Once you’ve built yourself at least two libraries, you can use the same Option-key trick to switch between them.
When the dialog box, shown above, appears select the library you want to open in the list, then click Choose.
(If you don’t see the library you want ‘click Other Library’ and look for it on your hard drive.) When Photos
finishes reopening, you’ll find the new set of photos in place.
The System Photo Library:
Only one ‘library’ can be your system library—the one that gets synced to all your other Apple devices, via
iCloud Photo Library. You can switch libraries as often as you like, but the ‘other libraries’ contents will not
show up in iCloud or on your other gadgets. Only the ‘system photo library’s does.
To designate the current library as the System Photo Library, choose Photos—Preferences—General: click Use
as System Photo Library.
Merging Photo Libraries:
Every time you change to a new system photo library, Photos merges its contents with your existing iCloud
Photo Library online (and on your other devices). That’s kind of handy, actually, because it gives you a way to
merge several libraries into one. Please note, however, that every time you choose a different system library,
your iMac turns off iCloud Photo Library. You have to turn it on again in Photos —Preferences—Cloud.
Some of the above information has been taken from: Photos for OSX: The Missing Manual. Anyone wishing
to have the complete Manual may copy it from my USB drive, during the Apple Group Sessions.
M Oprey
Page 7
Notice Board
The
Southern Highlands Computer Users Group Inc
is proudly sponsored by
Members please note
the
AGM
will take place on
Tuesday 7 February
at 10am
in Scott Hall, HarbisonCare
All members welcome
to join committee members
for morning tea
in unit 5.
Membership renewals
Membership fees for 2017
can still be made by sending
cash or cheque to Treasurer by post.
Alternatively,
visit our Education centre at
HarbisonCare Burradoo
on Mondays, between 10am and 5pm.
See Martina for application form and
receipt.
Page 8