This month's general meeting will be at 7:00 PM, Thursday, September 9, at the Chimacum Tri Area Center. The subject will be “What’s New?” presented by Gary Estes. Apple just hosted a “Music Event” where it offered up newer iPods, Apple TV, and iTunes. This summer has also seen new iMacs and a new iPhone. 

Additionally, Bob Snow will present another in our continuing series of Basic Mac presentations on "Basics of opening Mail attachments". He will do a presentation on how Mac users can identify and open email attachments, such as documents, movies, power point presentations. The handout for this presentationis at the link below. His program will begin at 6:30 PM, before our regular meeting begins at 7 PM.

Click here for the Handout on opening email attachments.

As always, this meeting is free and open to the public.

 This month's general meeting will be at 7:00 PM, Thursday, August 12, at the Chimacum Tri Area Center. The subject will be “A few of my favorite things: Turning your mac into a DVR” presented by Gary Estes. He will show how it is possible to digitize any analogue video, including cable and satellite TV, then save it on your computer or other Apple device, or to DVD for later viewing. 

Additionally, since Bob Snow will not be available for this month's meeting, Gary will present another in our continuing series of Basic Mac presentations on "Basics of iPhoto: getting photos from your camera into your computer".  His program will begin at 6:30 PM, before our regular meeting begins at 7 PM.

In July 2008 David Balog published an article in the Maintenance and Repairs section of the web site Interrupt19. He provided the results of his research on the question of whether it is better to put your Mac to sleep at night or shut it down.

His conclusion was “When you go home for the night, shut down your computer and turn off the power strip. At home, when you use the computer for even less time, shut it down when you aren’t using it anymore. Don’t forget to unplug it from the wall. Those chargers and transformers continue to draw power even when the computer is off.”

He said he found four arguments to justify using the sleep mode over shutting you Mac down:
“1. Sleeping uses less energy to wake a computer than booting from shutdown.
 2. Shutdown and Boot-up causes wear and tear on your Mac.
 3. The Mac must run its maintenance scripts every night at 3 am.
 4. OS X is so stable and reliable that it can run forever without a reboot.”
After studying each of these statements, which he called myths, he concluded that none of them were true.

If you are interested in the very detailed report on this questions you can see a PDF copy of the article at the link below.  His article is republished with his permission.

Article from Interrupt19

There will be no workshops in August, which is vacation time for the PTSLUG's free Mac SIGs at WSU. The Intermediate Mac workshop will resume on Friday, September 17th, 7-9 pm and the two Introductory Mac workshops will start up again on Friday, October 1st, from 10 am to noon and 1-3 pm. More information on those workshops will be sent out by email.

This month’s Intermediate Mac Workshop will be held at the WSU computer lab at 7PM, July 16. The program will be on Pages, Apple’s word processing and page layout program. More details will be available later when we post a notification for this class. There will be no workshops in August.
 

This month's general meeting will be at 7:00 PM, Thursday, July 8, at the Chimacum Tri Area Center. The subject will be “Downloading Library Audio Books” presented by Daniel Heaton of the Jefferson County Library. He will give an overview of what is available from the Library’s downloadable audio books and how to go about downloading them on a Mac. 



Additionally, Bob Snow will present another in our continuing series of Basic Mac presentations on "Basics of Address Book".  His program will begin at 6:30 PM, before our regular meeting begins at 7 PM.

Handout on the Basics of Address Book

Slide Presentation on Address Book Basics
 

Two workshops covering Mac basics were continued on June 25th, Mac Essentials from 10 a.m. to noon and Introdution to the Mac from 1-3 p.m. Both workshops are currently full. However, if you are interested and available on a standby basis for either of the July 23rd workshops contact Bob Snow at sherman101@mac.com. Let him know whether you want to use a WSU desktop iMac or bring your own laptop.

The handout for the June and July workshops is at the link below. The June workshops covered only the first section of the handout, "The Basic System". The remainder of the handout material will be covered in the July and September workshops. There wil be no workshops in August.

Click on this link for a copy of the workshop handout.

Due to popular demand, we will be repeating the May program, “Introduction to iWeb” on Jun 18 at the new WSU computer Lab location (north side of the main WSU building). We have most of the slots filled from our waiting list created from the overflow of people wanting to take the class in May, but there a a few slots left. We will be sending an email in the near future asking for reservations for this class, so please be sure you have signed up on our PTSLUG mailing list. If you are not signed up, please click in the box located in the upper left hand corner of this page.

Also, please remember that being a member gives you priority when signing up for SIG’s at the WSU lab. Please note that signing up for our email does not make you a member. You must additionally click on the “Membership” tab above, and follow the instructions on the resulting page.

Two basic Mac classes will be held on June 25th. These classes have replaced the monthly fourth Friday evening classes. The “Introduction to the Mac” workshop (1-3 p.m.) covers basic Mac operations for new Mac users and those who need a refresher on the use of the Mac. Topics covered are from “The Little Mac Book,” by Robin Williams, the textbook for the workshops. The “Mac Essentials” workshop (10 a.m.-noon) is less structured but also covers key, basic elements of the Mac. Both SIGs meet in the new WSU computer room in the Shold Business Park in Port hadlock.  Advance reservations are required and the classes are currently full. Requests for standby space are accepted. Both workshops will be offered every fourth Friday except for the month of August. For more information contact SIG Leader Bob Snow, sherman101@mac.com
   
The workshops have been limited to 12 participants due to computer space. Members fill the first spots and then it is open to the general public. If you would like to join PTSLUG, please contact treasurer Joe Braun.  Membership applications are on the "Membership" link on the PTSLUG web site.

This month's general meeting will be at 7:00 PM, Thursday, June 10, at the Chimacum Tri Area Center. The subject will be “Toast, not just for burning CD’s” presented by Gary Estes. Toast is a relatively inexpensive program for Mac that allows you to quickly burn CD’s and DVD’s, but also is helpful in converting video to different formats, capturing Youtube video, creating CD’s from vinyl, and much more.

Additionally, Bob Snow will present another in our continuing series of Basic Mac presentations on "Basics of the Finder". He will cover the drop down windows and what is available from the file menu. His program will begin at 6:30 PM, before our regular meeting begins at 7 PM.

Click on this link for the handout for Bob's presentation on the Finder

Click on this link for a PDF copy of the slide presentation

As always, these presentations are free and open to the public.