Mount Airy Learning Tree's Computer Volunteer Group

Meeting Notes for 10/20/2004:

We discussed creating a CVG brochure/handout as a promotional device to
generate donations for the group.  We will need new digital photos of members
at work...(and a logo).  We could pass these out to schools, corporations, etc
that might be upgrading equipment and need to get rid of older PCs.

Greg suggested having recipients of Gwynedd-Mercy PCs write thank you letters
to Sister Anne and the IT staff at the college.  We need to stay in contact 
with Sister Anne, who has said she would see about getting Gwynedd-Mercy
Academy's equipment donated to us as soon as it is replaced.

Kevin got the Slackware Linux server running on a Dell with a 2.7 GB hard
drive.  It's running on 128 MB memory, which should probably be upgraded.
He demonstrated AbiWord, its word processor and Gnumeric, an Excel-like
spreadsheet program (all free Slackware programs).  He did a quick run-
through of Gimp, its Photoshop analog.

An interesting feature of Slackware is its ability to represent 4 separate
desktops (sessions) at once, allowing scrolling/scanning from one to the other
with a mouse click.  Also it has the ability to increasee or decrease the
screen resolution, simply by using Ctrl/Alt/arrow key, eliminating the need to go
into the control panel and display.  He connected the server to the Internet
through the router.

Though the program at the Church will concentrate of Microsoft apps, we
(Kevin and I) believe that participants should be able to experience Linux, since
it is  gaining in popularity, worlwide.  As knowledgable computer users, they
should be able to move from platform to platform.  And, of course, it's free!

Jamal and Juerico stripped parts from "dead" PCs, learning about hardware in
the process.  They learned how to calculate the size of a hard drive from
specificatons listed on the drive.
Cylnders x Heads x Sectors x 512= bytes of storage.

The organization of the workroom continues.  We need to find a (free) source
of shelving so we can free up worktables, allowing us to leave works-in -
progress on the tables from week to week.  This will make allow efficient
use of our time at CVG.


 Jonelle Lawrence

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Gregory W. Jenkins
Program Director/Instructor

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