Hi WAMUGers,
As Matt Healey was overseas, the February Meeting was conducted by
Peter Hinchliffe who opened by mentioning that word (not the MS
version) has it that OS 10.5.2 is just around the corner and rumour
has it that the changes are substantial.
Peter also reminded the assembled multitude that next month's Meeting
is the AGM and we need as many members as possible to attend. The
AGM is when your Committee Members are elected and Matt Healey, after
more than ten years as President, is standing down and all members
are urged to consider serving on the Committee. (not an onerous task)
The future of WAMUG is in your hands.
The usual Q & A then followed which confirmed the unwelcome news that
FilemakerPro V8.5 will not run on Leopard but V6 will and it is
unlikely that a patch will be forthcoming. If you are running V8.5
you will need to upgrade to V9 which will set you back A$271 plus GST.
We were then introduced to 'Bento', Filemaker's little brother.
Peter informed us that 'Bento' is Japanese for 'lunchbox' which I
thought was rather strange but the program has some extremely
powerful features as well as a few on the downside. Layout is
attractive, functional and fully searchable with an easy drag and
drop capability. It relates well to Address Book and iCal and the
user interaction is very similar to the modules in iWork and other
Mac applications such as iTunes. One of the major downside
limitations is its inability to handle a range of fonts and font
control in general is poor. Peter demonstrated a very good example
of Bento in action with his own collection of recordings from vinyl
in iTunes with the music playing from within Bento.
At A$79, Bento is quite cheap as databases go, but be aware of its limitations.
The next demo was on MS Office 2008 which retails at A$229 for the
student and home editions.
There is not a lot to shout about in this version as Entourage is
very similar to that in 2004. The most changes appear to be in Word
although apart from the new Publisher function, they also seem to be
fairly cosmetic. Files are now compatible with docx in Office 2007
for Windows.
Excel has a new method of creating and handling sheets and as with
the other modules, employs Smart Art graphics. (try saying that
quickly) Word and Excel now have a photo button which interacts
with both iPhoto and Filemaker. There is little change in Power
Point.
After some discussion, the Meeting was wrapped up with a further
reminder about the first Tuesday in March. Hope to see you there.
Cheers
Ian
PS: This was written several days ago, prior to the release of 10.5.2
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