June Business Meeting

MVPCUG Meeting Minutes

MVPCUG General Meeting

Minutes, Meeting of Tuesday, June 4, 2002

The MVPCUG general meeting was held in the cafeteria of Whitesboro High School. President Joe Madeira called the meeting to order at 6:05 p.m.

Business Meeting

Officer's E-mails - There have been some e-mail changes for MVPCUG officers that were published in the Newsletter.

Help is still needed with the Newsletter and with planning club programs. Anyone wishing to volunteer should contact Joe.

A new Internet Service Provider is being sought for the club's website due to rising prices at BizOnline.com (a.k.a. Borg). USAdatanet.com is being considered. Bill reported that they would give the club a break if enough members sign on with them for Internet access. Their monthly rate is $9.95 and includes unlimited e-mail accounts and 10 megs of personal web space. We are awaiting a quote from them for hosting our web site. They also offer several options of dial around service available to everyone and automatically available for Internet customers. One package includes $0.10 per minute up to $0.99 for as long as you talk. Any states not in the Northeast plan are $0.10 per minute up to a maximum of $1.99 per call.

Minutes of Last Meeting - The May, 2002 minutes were approved.

Treasurer's Report - The May Treasurer's report shows total inflows of $436.81 and total outflows of $851.82 for a net outflow of $415.01. The major expense was the yearly $400 premium for the club's liability insurance. The final May balance was $5,835.43. A motion was made, seconded and approved to receive the treasurer's report and put it on file with the minutes.

Club meetings will not be held in July and August. The September meeting will be held at the Maennechor on Flanagan Road in Marcy. A motion was made, seconded and carried to give the Maennechor a $25.00 donation for use of their facility.

Summer SIG Schedule:
Quicken SIG will not meet in July and August.
Internet SIG will not meet in June, July and August
Basic Training SIG will meet in June, July and August.
Q&A SIG will run all summer.

The Bus to the PC Expo still has seating available.

Presentation

At 6:35 p.m. Joe began a presentation on Alpha Five version 4.5. It was planned that a representative from Alpha Software would be here to present but no one was available. Joe has been evaluating Alpha Five.

Alpha Five v4.5 is relational database management software. The Table element is used to describe database fields and to contain database records. A Form can be designed to input database records according to a particular Table definition. Rules can be set up for data entry to enforce field entries, date formats and capitalization. Changes can be made to field definitions and applied to existing records in the database. "Genies" are available to provide the user with templates to use as a starting point for Table definitions.

Reports can be designed to present selected database information. "Genies" are also available to provide templates for report formats.

In summary, Joe reported that the tool was fairly easy to use and had good functionality. Alpha Five v4.5 is brand-new and costs about $140.00.

The presentation concluded at 7:58 at which time we had our door prize drawing.

Door Prize Drawing Winners
#	Prize	Provided by	Winner
1	Assorted Paper	club funds	Vincent Coyne
2	Alpha Five v4.5	Alpha Software	Edward Gaffney
3	T-Shirt	Alpha Software	Steven Gorrell
4	T-Shirt	Alpha Software	Ed Roberts
5	Alpha Five v4.5	Alpha Software	James Praznik
6	T-Shirt	Alpha Software	Joe Madeira
7	CD: Websters' Dictionary & Thesaurus	club funds	Stu Culp
8	Power Control Panel	club funds	Jerry Finkelstein
9	CD: AMA Medical Guide	club funds	Bob Jones

The meeting was adjourned at 7:58 p.m.

Respectfully submitted,

Marsha Thayer, secretary