A well-attended meeting with some first in-person attendees – welcome Lynette, Yvonne, Janet, Ossie and Peter, and welcome also to Kate, Sue and Mo who were experiencing Zoom attendance for the first time. Please excuse me if I’ve forgotten a welcome. Admin was never my strongest point.
So, I started off with introductory remarks which were a pretty close repeat of those from the previous meeting, so I won’t repeat them – look here for them.
I quickly looked at the Notes from the previous meeting and mentioned the issues raised by Ian, John Mitchell and Anne which I’d added as Topics – look here for them. I hope to put more of these replies/answers/responses to members issues in Forums from now on. It’s what I created that area to do.
I also encouraged members to download Signal, create an account and then let me know their mobile telno. so that I could add them to our Computer Group on that platform.
We then turned to News and Jonathan and Paul had added some very interesting articles to the Flipboard magazine which I urge you to take a look at. Anyone can add to the magazine, just click on this link to become a Contributor.
Any problems with getting on Signal, or becoming a Flipboard contributor, please let me know.
Two issues that were raised at the last meeting were the process of getting photos from your phone to your computer, and Google settings. The technology let me down whilst trying to demonstrate the former, so I’m written up both topics as blogposts which will appear as soon as possible.
I indicated that Security and Privacy would be an issue I would cover in the next meeting.
So we turned to members’ issues:
Paul advised us that 192.com kept personal detail about us if we used the service (an online equivalent of Yellow Pages) which we might wish to be removed. [I’m not sure this will worry too many of us as you have to create an account and then pay a minimum of £15.99 for 6 searches.] Paul please correct my unerstanding, if I’ve got this wrong. He also told us that TalkTalk were raising their prices again and he now had to pay for UK calls, which he hadn’t had to before. He finally commented on the articles he’s added to Flipboard and suggested we might be interested in the ones on Privacy – storing cookies on phones (Android???); and the ability to track parcels (currently only in the US).
Jonathan told us about the articles he’d added to Flipboard on Windows 10/11 security and cleaning-up a Windows 11 machine which had improved the performance of his laptop remarkably.
Margaret told us that she’d been experiencing a strange failing with her Tiscali email service in that it appeared that it was not being consistently sent. It’s worth noting that Down Detector is a good place to start if you’re having problems with your Internet Services. I haven’t researched the problem in detail, but searching this site may be helpful. [Tiscali is now part of TalkTalk.]
Yvonne reported that her laptop was running slowly – I didn’t write anything else down here, so can’t add anything. Sorry!
Lynette told us that she’d been disturbed by her machine (Windows 10) not being able to be closed down because it was doing clean-ups. This may be related to an upgrade being done by Microsoft [these are done on Tuesdays] which had not been completed. I always advise not to set upgrades to be done automatically. I definitely am not saying, “don’t do upgrades”, but I am saying “do upgrades when you want them to be done”.
John Mitchell bemoaned the fact that he was being pestered with requests to switch to Edge as the default browser. This is of course a nuisance, and I thought that there was an option when the pop-up was shown to request that it not be shown again. [I could be wrong, here!]
Stella was upset that she didn’t seem to be able to transfer recordings that she’s done off her TV on to her PC, as she’d been able to do previously. Paul reminded us that we’d touched on this before and that recordings from TVs are now tied to that TV, and are not transferrable. [I also mentioned with little confidence that she might try formatting her media as FAT-32.]
Jenny enquired whether any member had experience, and could recommend, any sources for refurbished equipment. I expressed the view that I was very sceptical of the value of refurbished equipment unless it was backed-up by some guarantee/warranty , but others remarked that some public bodies regularly released surplus (or redundant) equipment to the public which might be usable. [I’m not convinced.] She also asked whether she should be concerned about a) the amount of memory that apps take up on a phone, and b) how “secure” they are. My reply was – very little, and that they were increasingly more secure because of biometric security and the transition towards FIDO.
Don mentioned something about internet browsers, but again I haven’t written enough down to remind me what it was [Duh!!]
Janet enquired about when items deleted, actually got deleted. Members responded that this was something that could be set in Preferences/Settings, but that you can go into the Trash Can/Bin and delete individual or groups of files at any time. She also enquired about whether she needed to buy internet security software. The group was supportive of my response that Windows Defender is almost certainly adequate for those in our situation.
Renee reported that VirginMedia were really annoying her with the latest “upgrade” they had done to “improve” her broadband. I told her I (as I always do when upgrades are being offered) was waiting for a while before I upgraded [you need to switch the router/hub off and on] She also shared that she’d encountered a situation with photos disappearing from WhatsApp. I advised that this was a feature that was set by the person sending the photos, and applied to messages as well. Signal also had disappearing messages that you could implement.
Anne bemoaned the fact that Windows 11, that she’d been forced to move to having upgraded her Windows 7 laptop, was not intuitive. I offered the opinion that this was a common issue especially as you get older. We want things to stay the same, and just get on with doing the stuff we know how to do. It is for this reason that I hope to do some sessions on the changes to what you can do on your phones, as I’m well out-of-date in my knowledge here!
