Arkansas Oklahoma PC Users Group (AOPCUG)
by Benny Conner, who has served many areas of AOPCUG leadership
Editor's Note: AOPCUG is a wonderful group for those interested in learning more about computers and their use. I joined the group around 1994. I asked Benny to share some of the history of the group as well as plans for the future, and this is his story. LST
I started with the user group about 1989. That was right before Windows 3.0 came out. We were all busy learing how to edit our autoexec.bat and
config.sys files so we could get the best performance by allocating the ram by loading Dos High, creating ram drive's, loading our cd rom and sound card drivers and things of this nature.
The first AOPCUG meeting I attended I was thoroughly impressed with the knowledge of people like James Stevens, Greg Disch, Jason Patillo and many others who were willing to share information with members and help them with computer problems.
James had an old Osborn with an 8088 processor in it that he would bring to the meetings. We all had 8088's until the first 286's came out in the early nineties. The 286's were about eight to twelve megahertz so one can imagine the blistering speed of the old 8088's.
The early user group meetings were geared more about learing dos and dos commands. We learned to create a lot of dos menus that would enable you to start a program by hitting one key. Most menus were bat files with batch files configured to start and load a particular program.
As the operating systems and computers have changed we have all adapted very well to the newer more user friendly systems. Now the softwares that are out there are large and complicated and we spend a lot of time constantly learning and teaching each other to better use the power we have at our fingertips.
The future for the club is looking good. We have a few new people willing to serve as officers and I will assist as I have in the past. We plan to keep it going and hopefully recruit some new people who will teach us about things like Linux.
Companies like Microsoft are still sending the club videos and software that we can learn from and do demonstrations with.
As far as the future goes with technology it is never settled. Technology is moving at such a rapid pace and changing so often that the future is going to be constantly changing. The problem we have to face in the future is having time to learn and experience all the new softwares and hardwares that are being created. That is what makes our group so unique is we get to relate to each other our experiences with the technological gadgets and toys
that we all buy one of sooner or later.
Some have digital cameras, some have video editors, some have web cams, and some have lap tops and the list goes on and on. We get to see and hear about how these items influence our lives and we get to learn from each other about how to better use these items. It speeds up the learing curve by seeing the item or talking with the person that has a particular piece of hardware or software.
Personally I feel like the computers are going to get smaller and more powerful, they will be combination computer and wireless communicators. One device to keep track of our busy lives and communicate with any one any time. The more information we can carry with us the more efficient we can become.
Editor's Note: If you'd like to learn more about AOPCUG or join the group, visit their website here.
| 
