News from RISCOS Ltd No. 18 September 26th 2001 =================== Foundation Risc User Issue 6 ---------------------------- Due to holidays I gave Richard Hallas an extra 6 weeks to put together a bumper issue of the Foundation Risc User CD. As a result the next CD will follow in November in order to be able to carry reports from the exhibitions to be held during October. Thanks to all the contributors who continue to make the Foundation Risc User CD the most respected RISC OS CD magazine. If you have any ideas for articles you would like covered in future editions of Foundation Risc User then please send them to mailto:editor@riscos.com RISC OS Select -------------- After demonstrating the features of RISC OS Select to the Press a few weeks ago we are now in the final stages of testing for the first RISC OS Select CD. Already the Acorn magazines have given positive pre-views and I am sure that everyone will be happy with the new features we have started to introduce into RISC OS. If your cheque or Credit Card has been debited then we have received you application, so please don't worry. If you sent a payment in more than two weeks ago and it has not been taken yet, then by all means contact the sales department by telephone 02920 492324 or email mailto:select@riscos.com to see if your order has been received. The RISC OS Select Web Site --------------------------- The RISC OS Select Web Site is now live. Take a look at http://support.riscos.com/Select/ for the full details. The private area containing the downloadable components is being held back for a few days whilst we tidy up a few last minute items such as the automatic installer, so you will not be able to use your password to access it yet. Most subscribers should have received their password to access the site by the end of this week. Email contact ------------- There appears to be a considerable delay between new email aliases being set up on our server and those aliases being recognised by the Argonet email system. As a consequence users with argonet.co.uk email addresses have been getting their emails bounced incorrectly when trying to send emails to select@riscos.com and other riscos.com addresses. We hope the new addresses will correctly filter through as soon as possible. In the meantime if you have an argonet email address and get a bounce then try sending it to mailto:sales@riscos.com which has been active for a few years now and shouldn't have any problems. Change of email address ----------------------- We are still getting 20 - 30 bounces on emails sent out to Foundation members each time. If you have changed your email address or have never received email copies of this newsletter it is probably because we don't have your correct email address. Changes of email address should be sent to mailto:foundation@riscos.com This also applies if you haven't received an invitation to join the Select SmartGroup. RISC OS Select SmartGroup ------------------------- If you have not received an invitation to join the RISC OS Select SmartGroup, it is because we do not have a valid email address for you. If you have subscribed to RISC OS Select and would like to join the Group and have not received an invitation then please send an email to mailto:select@riscos.com and you will be sent an invite. Membership Renewals ------------------- In order to rationalise the differences in postage and VAT rates around the world it has been decided that there will be one membership cost in the future. That cost will include VAT where appropriate, but if you live in a non VAT country then the cost will still be the same as the VAT inclusive price to cover the additional cost of overseas postage. i.e everyone will pay the same price which is to be held at £35.25 until May 2002. Forthcoming Shows ----------------- The next RISC OS Show is the ARM Club Show, which is being organised in conjunction with ROUGOL and SASAUG. The two day RISC OS 2001 Show will take place on the weekend of 20th and 21st of October. The venue will be the Blue Mountain Conference Centre at Binfield, Bracknell. RISCOS Ltd will have a range of machines on demonstration showing the RISC OS Select scheme in action. The RISC OS 2001 web site is now online at http://www.riscos2001.com/ ANT Internet Suite ------------------ I'm sorry about the delay in shipping copies of the ANT Internet Suite to new purchasers due to some missing items from ANT. CD's will start going out next week. If you are looking for updates to the ANT Suite or have queries about it, Paul Vigay has a number of pages on his web site which may be of interest. http://www.vigay.com/cgi-bin/r?a=inetsupport DiscKnight ---------- If you haven't made a backup of the contents of your hard disc recently now is a very good time to think about it. Hard discs are very cheap at present and for about £80 you can get a 40GB drive. Before doing a backup it is a good idea to check the integrity of your current hard disc. The best product to use is the excellent DiscKnight program. http://www.armclub.org.uk/products/discknight/index.html DiscKnight is a disc checker and fixer for Filecore based E and E+ format drives. Some people erroneously refer to the RISC OS 4 longfilenames format as F+, but F+ only refers to floppy disc format. Hard discs use the F or F+ format. User Group Meetings ------------------- After invitations from the Bristol Acorn Users and the Manchester Acorn Users, I visited both of them in the last few weeks to give a presentation on the RISC OS Select Scheme. The attendance at both meetings was very high with some people having travelled almost as far as I had to get to the meetings. I was good to see many familiar faces even if I can't always put names to them. I hope everyone got the answers they wanted from the meetings and I am very happy to attend other user group meetings as long as I have a few weeks notice. RISC OS Resource Allocations ---------------------------- We recently took over RISC OS resource allocations from Pineapple Software. This was purely to ease administration of allocations and I should point out that it is business as usual at Pineapple for everything else they do, including the Virus protection scheme. Registration of Application Names, SWI chunks and other allocations are very important to ensure that applications don't clash with one another. An application to make the process of Allocations very easy is available from http://support.riscos.com/Support/Resources/Utilities/ Correction to last Newsletter ----------------------------- In the last Newsletter I stated that the two articles about the Dutch RISC OS Expo were written by Frank Kraaij who is the Dutch representative of MicroDigital Europe. Steve Turnbull, Editor of Acorn User has since told me that he gave me mis-leading information and that whilst the articles were provided to Acorn User by Frank, they were not actually written by him. Apologies to everyone concerned for the mistake. Replying to queries from this Newsletter ---------------------------------------- If you are responding to a specific query in this newsletter please use the appropriate mailto: address to reply rather than replying to the sender of this email. Also don't reply to the general foundation or admin email addresses as your enquiry may not get dealt with promptly. We try to reply to all enquiries within 5 days. But at peak times it may take longer to reply. If you have received this email in error, or wish to be removed from this list then please send an email to mailto:foundation@riscos.com with the subject REMOVE Membership numbers ------------------ Please quote your membership number on all correspondence with the Foundation as this will speed up our administration and avoid confusion over people who have the same name. regards -- Paul Middleton RISCOS Ltd ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Copyright ©2001 RISCOS Ltd. 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