We had a look at the main leading edge Microprocessors, AMD, Intel and the Apple M Series.  We added the Nvidia GPU to the mix for interest. In order to provide a basis for understanding the architecture of the processors, we had a quick review of the structure simpler processors using descriptions of the Intel 8085 and the MOS 6502.  You can see the presentation by clicking here.

The topic of the day was Payment Systems.  This is a huge topic, but we narrowed the scope by focussing on our objectives to review in particular PayPal, Apple Pay and Google Pay to understand what they are and how they compare to using a debit or credit card.  As you can see from the attached slides, we covered systems used in the UK with a brief history, went into a bit of detail for the credit and debit card process and then compared PayPal, Apple Pay and Google Pay.  You can see the presentation by clicking here

The topic this month was the transition of the UK telephone network from analogue to digital landlines.  There is plenty of confusion and poor information around and there are actually 2 big changes happening.  Firstly the connection to homes will be an internet connection with no separate voice channel and increasingly this will use fibre cable.  Secondly, the transmission and switching of voice calls will use VOIP, Voice Over Internet Protocol technology rather than circuit switching. The attached presentation covers dealing with the legacy and the new options available.  Click here to see the presentation.

Chris demonstrated how he converted an old laptop from Windows to Linux. He covered the following topics:
- The development of Linux and its relationship to Unix.
- The reasons for updating the laptop with Linux instead of a more recent version of Windows.
- The hardware requirements for Linux.
- The detailed process of installing Linux and common applications.
- Chris then showed us Linux in action with several essential desktop applications.

Click here to see a copy of the slides.

Since the meeting, I noticed a 15-page article titled “Linux Distros - The Ultimate Windows 10 Upgrade” in the April 2025 edition of PC PRO. This article compares eight “distros” in detail and provides practical implementation information.

This month we watch a presentation "Light Years Ahead - The 1969 Apollo Guidance Computer".  This was given by Robert Wills.  He covered the development of the computer, the programming and how it performed during the Apollo landing.  Famously, the computer displayed multiple error codes during landing and Robert explains what was happening and why.  
The presentation is from the National Museum of Computing archive and is available to be seen on YouTube at ​https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1J2RMorJXM

This month, we came back to AI.  This time we were not looking at how it works, but rather how we can make use of the plethora of AI tools that are already available either as standalone AI apps or integrated into software and systems that we already use.  Quite a bit of the meeting was taken with live demonstrations.  As well as the presentation, I am providing the demo script to show what we looked at. Click on presentation or demo script to access them.

We discussed password security and password managers in March 2023.  Two years later and it was time to cover this important topic again.  Did you know that the average internet user has about 100 different accounts.  The presentation covers poor password management, how passwords are stolen;  good practice in managing your passwords and how password managers can help.  To see the presentation click here.

At our February meeting, Dave Waymont gave a talk entitled "Quantum Algorithms".  This was a follow up to the talk at the Maths and Physics meeting entitled "Qubits and how to make them".  Dave's presentation showed us how the characteristics of a Qubit could be translated into Quantum circuits with various Quantum gates (everything now has Quantum in front of it), and thereby perform calculations.  The number of algorithms which run faster on a quantum computer is (currently) very limited.  A super talk and we all went home to rest our brains!

The intended title and subject of the topic was "fix-it" software for Windows (10 &11).  However, a bit of investigation revealed that the market for problem resolution applications has hugely diminished both because Windows 10 & 11 are far more robust than earlier versions and contain all the utilities needed to resolve and avoid most problems.  The presentation gives an overview of common  Windows problems and provides links to a few of the websites describing how to go about their resolution.  We also went over recommended maintenance actions.  The presentation can be seen by clicking here.

In this, the 3rd session we have had on the history of computing, we covered events that primarily occurred in the 1980s or later, albeit with lead into the story where it helped.  The main topics were personal computing in the UK, the IBM PC and compatibles, operating systems, the RISC architecture and ARM, World Wide Web and a mention of AI.  Obviously, this breadth sacrificed depth somewhat.  The slides can be seen by clicking here.