I think this might have been our largest attendance at a zoom meeting and as usual we had a lively discussion with a lot of good craic.
I kicked off with a quick follow-up from the previous meeting on 19th November, I wondered whether David H’s issues with Linux on his wife’s laptop might be due to missing a setting for US/UK keyboard during install, and Phil supported this view. We agreed to look at this again when we could meet in person. We briefly discussed the session with Digital Communities Wales and confirmed that we’d now wait to see what the Cardiff U3A Exec wanted to do about digital inclusion for our members. Phil noted that Cardiff City Council were now promoting a scheme to provide equipment to those on benefit. We noted a couple of new scams involving HSBC, Amazon and DPD – these had been reported on our WhatsApp group. Thanks. I also gave a quick demonstration on editing in the new WordPress Block editor and pointed to the Help files that might be of assistance too. Finally I drew members attention again to the Flipboard magazine and the link to it that now appears under the Computer Group menu.
We then went “round the screen”.
John was having some issues with his use of Lightroom Classic – I suggested that he brought this up at the next session of the Lightroom Pantry Group. [He did, and we then had a follow-up session]
Renee was experiencing a strange behaviour when using Powerpoint and Zoom (with Screen Sharing) where her cursor (on a Mac) seemed to disappear. I couldn’t think of any reason why this might be. Hopefully, it will resolve itself 🙂
Margaret described a very sorry tale connected to her “smart” hearing aid, an app that couldn’t be upgraded and the inability to pair the aid to her phone. Hopefully there will be a positive outcome but unfortunately this is only too likely to happen as suppliers don’t keep their apps up–to-date with changing technologies. She also advised that she’d managed to resolve her printer problem (from the previous meeting) after she’d found an old cartridge which when fitted had allowed the printer to spring back into life!
Christine described a problem that she was experiencing when using WiFi on her new Lenovo Chromebook. When connected to the same network and sitting near to another machine to play chess there was a lot of interference. I said this happened to me as well and the only solution would probably be to sit further apart – even in different rooms. It will be interesting to see whether this problem can be resolved.
Sianed told us about a C4 series on Amazon and noted that Amazon was increasingly being used as a search engine (rather than Google). I can understand why. Often I do a Google search that then leads me to click on a link to Amazon – why use Google in such a scenario!!!
Jim advised us that he hadn’t yet decided on his new laptop.
David H told us about the saga of the M&S hamper to his grand-daughter which led to it being left on the doorstep of her house fronting the street. When he’d complained he was impressed at the way the company had responded. Good customer service.
Paul was having some difficulty with his Google Contacts. He would report back on his progress. He also told the group that Aldi were now doing Click’n’Collect.
Marilyn was still having problems with her external SSD (MacOS) and was going to back-up the disk and re-format it as APFS as she now felt there was little need to have it formatted as Ex-FAT (for MS-DOS/Windows compatibility).
Stella was having problems with LastPass – I’m afraid my notes/memory on what it was fails me. Sorry. She also had reported a scam from 3 to the authorities.
Marie-Christine reported that the OU Photography course she’d hoped to have followed had to be abandoned due to a hack of the URL for the course. She had been recompensed however.
Mario asked about the nature of WordPress. I gave a brief outline of what it was and why it was not just a blogging platform but a website design and delivery tool in its own right.
Don reported that after the previous meeting in trying to improve performance of his machine, he’d removed unused extensions from his Chrome browser and this had helped. He also described how he’d solved a problem of being unable to do double-sided printing from Word 2007 by emailing the document and then printing from the email. Magic!! He also reported that he’d had excellent customer service recently from Amazon in the matter of a wildlife camera he’d purchased.
Ann gave a big thumbs-up to Paul for his advice on purchasing a kit to copy VCR to DVD. She was glad she’d spent a little more to get a kit with a Help Tutorial guide but reported that the transfer was not quick!! She also advised us that Google Play was no longer available (needs clarification – not sure what this refers to) and that she was still having problems with the Sky Internet Service slowing down.
Finally Mike announced that he was well-satisfied by his upgrade for less cost from TalkTalk – to their Fibre65 plan. It was better and cheaper. Isn’t it a shame that you have to lobby and threaten people to get the service you require, which is not what they’re delivering.
Again, we’d run out of time, so my proposed session on Google settings had to be postponed. I may actually write it up as a blog post instead.