AGM ICENI COMPUTER CLUB 2015
7.30 p.m. Wednesday 15th April
Bourne Vale Social Club, Halifax Road, Ipswich IP2 8RE
AGENDA
1. Apologies for Absence
2. Minutes of the last meeting
3. Matters arising
4. Chairman's Report
5. Treasurer's Report
6. Election of Officers and Committee
7. AOB.
Please make every effort to attend our AGM and bring along a selection of your favourite interesting applications be they for desktop or mobile devices. We hope to have an HD webcam available to help present mobile applications on the big screen.
At our last meeting Michael presented the technical preview of Windows 10.
No official release date has yet been revealed, but Microsoft say no later than end of Summer. The initial experience looks similar to Windows 8.1 but it does boot straight to the desktop rather than initially via the touch interface.
The bottom toolbar of the desktop contained a new "ask me anything" search bar, a task view button which adds an option for multiple virtual desktops and a "start" type button which seemed to be a mash up of Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 in style and oriented towards apps over applications. The menu also still featured Control Panel, but in the final release this is likely to be removed in favour of the tablet/touch style Settings app to consolidate and remove duplicate functionality.
Windows 10 is designed to be one Operating System across all platforms/devices. There will not be Windows 10 for desktop and tablets, then Windows Phone 10 for phones, just Windows 10 sharing a common codebase. One exception here is the current Surface RT ARM tablets which will not get Windows 10 but possibly a later update to RT with a limited set of the new features.
Cortana, Microsoft's equivalent to Siri or "Ask Google" is built into the desktop search and can also be activated by saying "Hey, Cortana". As the feature requires an active internet connection Michael was able to show us this working live using internet access via a mobile phone and it seemed to work well and return useful results. For the technical preview of Windows 10 this feature is only available in the US, so we had to configure Windows for an American timezone.
The desktop also features a notifications centre which can pop up system notifications, reminders and application notifications such as incoming messages. This is another example of the coming together of tablet/phone features with the desktop and is similar to the OS X notifications system.
Gareth
Following our Committee meeting we now have the new programme for 2015/2016. As usual meeting may be swapped around or changed as circumstances dictate. There were a few other topics considered for example software used by Radio Amateurs, Model Railways and Machine language translation. All of these need a bit more research before being included.
| ICENI Future programme 2015/2016 | ||
| 2015 | ||
| April 15th | AGM + Interesting Apps | All |
| May 20th | Social Media | Gareth & Michael |
| June 17th | The Ubuntu Phone and its development | Gareth |
| July 15th | Networking - HDMI over Cat 6 and CCTV | Michael |
| August 19th | Summer Social Evening - Wooden Fender, Colchester ( Provisionally Booked\) |
All |
| September 16th | Computer Surgery | All |
| October 21st | Arduino /Raspberry Pi Developments | Peter, Duncan and John. |
| November 18th | Slide / Video Evening | All |
| December 16th | Gadgets and Party Evening | All |
| 2016 | ||
| January 20th | Winter Social Evening - Venue TBA | All |
| February 17th | Free Software | All |
| March 16th | Accounting Software | Peter et al |
| April 20th | AGM +MS Office 2016 and OpenOffice/Libre Office | All |
| May 18th | Programming | All |
Our meetings are held at the Bourne Vale Social Club, Halifax Road, Ipswich IP2 8RE , for a map and other details please see the website.
http://icenicomputerclub.org.uk
Currently both visitor fees and membership fees are in abeyance until the next AGM .
We are continuing our publicity for EAUG events , however their website has not been updated for a year now. So if you wish to know information please phone one of their contacts.
Meetings are at the Great Baddow Village Hall, on the second Tuesday of the month
opening at 7:30 p.m. for a start at 7:45 - 8:00 p.m.
http://www.eaug.org.uk/mtg.htm
For directions see below (note the new web addresses)
http://www.eaug.org.uk or 'phone one of the contacts on http://www.eaug.org.uk/ppl.htm
Drinks usually available.
See the Membership page of the website for more information:
"ICENI does not have any Insurance cover for computers or other equipment so please be advised that you bring machines to the club at your own risk."
However many household insurance policies will include cover away from home often with no increase in premium. (Ed.)
Our website has had to be moved since BT is no longer giving free hosting to customers and Peter was running the old website on his account. So Gareth has been fortunate to register a web address of our own and has generously hosted it on his own woolridge domain. All our old website data has been ported to the new site and a redirection placed on the old address. The old site will disappear some time soon.
If anyone would like a copy of the CD of our old newsletters this could be arranged.
I am open to suggestions on what people would like to have included in the website.
Our website URL is
http://icenicomputerclub.org.uk
Email to: iceni@woolridge.org.uk