Since the beginning of the AOL/Computer Basics SIG in November, we feel we have been able to provide a comfortable place for those with questions on some of the features on AOL, or the computer, to come and ask those questions.

The average attendance is 12 (fluctuating between 8 and 15), and we cover about 6-8 topics in an evening. We have covered such things as how to send an e-mail to more than one person (including how to send BCC), various ways of sending hyperlinks in an e-mail, how to do a scan disk and defrag of your hard drive, setting up shortcuts to access your Favorite sites, how to organize your favorite places and how to save them to a floppy disk, how to zip and unzip files in an e-mail, importing and exporting Gedcom files--and the list goes on. No question is considered to be too basic, and since we try to take just one question at a time everyone is encouraged to feel comfortable with the answer before we move on to the next question.

Following each chat we send out a recap of the things discussed in an e-mail so everyone can have it for reference. We advise them in the first mailing that if they do not wish to receive this the next time they join us, just to let us know and we will not send again. On the other hand, some of our attendees asked if they could receive our mail even if they are unable to be in attendance, and we now have a mailing list of 20.

Following are some examples of the feedback we have received:

Thank you so very much for courtesy and help there is so much for me to learn and your plain and simple easy to understand language is or will be most beneficial to me

You and the others who host the Beginners Chat truly deserve our most sincere thanks for the fine job you do. All of us much appreciate your taking your time to help all of us. The recaps you send following the Chat give us a permanent record to turn to when we have a problem and remember having seen your solution.

Thank you. Sitting in on your chat helped me with a lot of questions.

I'd like to thank you for all the information that you've sent over the past few months, it really helped me out alot, especially with the defragment. Again, thank you.

We invite you, or anyone that you feel might enjoy this type of a format, to join us Tuesday evenings at 7PM in Golden Gates. (AOL Only) We might not know the answers to all the questions that are asked, but we will sure try to find answers to those we can't answer at the time they are asked.

GFS Hope and GFS Jackie