Washington Apple Pi

A Community of Apple iPad, iPhone and Mac Users

How We Use Our Macs: Retired SIG August Meeting

By  Len Adler and Bob Jarecke

The WAP August ’06 Retired SIG meeting started on time with sixteen Mac users attending. Some members indicated they have belonged to the Pi since the very early years. The meeting’s theme was “How We Use Our Macs.”

All of those gathered indicated they are active Mac users and want to keep up with what’s new, even though some feel uncomfortable with the tumultuous and rapid change regarding computers.  So we have the conflict of wanting the current tools and methods to be around long enough to master them, while we excited to learn what is new and just over the horizon.

With the group’s interests ranging from digital photography to storing heritage photos to monitoring investments, there was plenty to keep everyone involved. Ever increasing amounts of data being generated by a variety of programs brought up the issue of filling our hard drives. Questions about how to slim down the items on the hard drive and use of external memory sources were skillfully answered by Bob Jarecke and others. A good rule of thumb mentioned was when your hard drive has ten percent or less available space, it is time to start clearing out what is not important or moving data to an external source. The hard drive will not operate well if filled to near capacity.

Our agenda for the September 28 meeting: “How we use DVDs.” This is an encore presentation of the main topic from the August general meeting. Steve Lemon will be a guest presenter.