First of all, a big thank-you to the vendors and to the PMUG volunteers who worked so very hard to make the August Swap Meet a successful event. Due to the high temperatures, attendance was a little smaller than usual, but everyone seemed to have a good time. Many freebies were given away as the evening came to a close.

An important note for those of you who use Microsoft Office. Thanks to Allen Watson, PMUG's secretary, the Macintosh division of Microsoft is sending down a presenter for the October General Meeting. Allen worked for several weeks to make this happen. So Office 2004 will be the presentation in October. Please let everyone know about this so that we have a good turn out for this event.

MacCamp is coming up shortly and many times people ask when future Camps will happen. October 15-17 is for Fall 2004, and April 15-17 is for Spring 2005. Remember: every MacCamp is a great place to learn new things and to share with others.

Technical information
Firmware on older computers needs to be updated before you install System 10. Many people with older iMacs are getting into deep trouble by installing the System without checking for this. If your computer did not come with System 10 installed on it, go to the Apple website and download the correct firmware updater for your machine. If you run it and it says you are up-to-date, then you're OK. However, if you run it and it tells you to "shut down your machine and follow the instructions in the Read Me file," you need to do that. Make sure you have printed the instructions and follow them to the letter. If you’re not sure, take your machine to a consultant or Mac computer store to have the firmware updated.

Back up your data
Time after time, I talk to people on the phone who have lost data in a file or even lost the whole file because they do not make good backups of what they are working on. Each time you open your document, do a "Save As" and rename it to something to identify it to you as the changed document. Suggestions for this are: today’s date, or put "a", "b" or "c" after the title. If the work is really important and costly to reproduce, archive each day's work on another hard drive or other media like CD-R. When the project is finished, archive it to CD-R and then delete all the extra copies from your hard drive. Even CD-Rs fail sometime, so doing a couple of copies is well worth your time and effort.

Serial numbers
Serial numbers need to be written down in several places so that when you need one it's easy to find. Many companies print the serial number on the plastic or paper CD sleeves which get lost or forgotten. If the program came with a manual, then write the serial number inside that. If not, how about a spreadsheet or even a text file that you print out. You might even put a copy in your safety deposit box. Along that same line, think about keeping a diary of all your passwords and your ISP information. Keep these kind of records so that if the computer crashes, you can rebuild all of your information without having to call the ISP. For all of you who are saying "but I already have all this in my computer," it won’t help you when your hard drive dies. So print it out and put it somewhere safe. One suggestion I got from a dot Mac user is to save this information in your dot Mac folder online, so that you could access it from a different computer. That is a good idea—if you remember your dot Mac account password.

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