Welcome to Weobley

Weobley Community Access Point (CAP)

Weobley CAP is situated in 'The Rookery' which is adjacent to Weobley Primary School.

We hold two sessions each week on Mondays from 2pm until 3:30pm and also Thursdays from 7pm until 9pm. Time in any of these sessions may be arranged by telephoning 01544 318789.

Our purpose is to give residents of Weobley and surrounding area the opportunity to use our Computers,Broadband Internet, Software etc. free of charge.This facility is especially of use to people who do not normally have access to such equipment.

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Volunteers required

If you would like to become a volunteer CAP representative and/or a committee member and attend the occasional session to assist with supervising etc. Email bcholley@tiscali.co.uk or telephone 01544 318789

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There are so many programs you can download free from the internet it makes you wonder why anybody buys software any more. For instance, instead of paying upwards of £80 for Microsoft Office, you can get an equivalent completely free of charge. OpenOffice contains a suite of programs including a word processor which can read and save Word documents, a spreadsheet which can read and write Excel documents, presentation software pretty much as good as PowerPoint and a database which is easy to use than Access. You also get web editing tools.

Open Source software is produced by enthusiasts world wide and so you benefit from all the innovations and updates as they are approved. OpenOffice is administered by Sun Microsystems Inc, so has a good pedigree. You can download it from  www.openoffice.org/

FreeWare is software which is offered free in the hope of either attracting you to buy the next version or contribute to the continued support of the software by sending a donation. Here are a few of the offerings:

Sticky Notes is an electronic version of Post It Notes. You can put them up on your desktop to remind you about things you need to do. You can hide notes by pressing Ctrl+Alt+H and reveal them again by pressing Ctrl+Alt+S.  The colour can be changed and the level of transparancy.  You can download Sticky Notes free from www.sticky-notes.net/windows-sticky-notes-free.html

AutoHotkeys is a really useful utility for creating short cuts to your most frequently used programs or to enter text phrases you use a lot. For instance, on my computer pressing Alt and N brings up a notepad document with lots of important information I need regular access to. Alt and E brings up Windows Explorer and Windows Key + S puts my signature on emails or documents. I've also got a hotkey for entering my bank sort code and account number. I came across this application when I was suffering from RSI and it was a life saver (or perhaps finger saver). You can download it free from www.autohotkey.com

A word of warning though. Some of hotkeys may interfere with existing hotkeys already in a given application or in Windows. I found this particularly true of Vista. Windows Key + P and Windows Key + W minimises open windows. It doesn't do any damage but temporarily locks your system so, if you use a password you have to re-enter it, if not you just click on to the user icon to get back to where you left off. The solution is to avoid using these combinations. All my other hotkeys work.

CCleaner we discovered preloaded on our machines at CAP. It's a little piece of software which cleans up your computer and helps it to run faster. Because of the inefficient way that Windows operates and many applications too, a considerable number of small files remain in your system long after the applications have been uninstalled. Also a lot of temporary files, associated with shortcuts, and registry entries can clutter up your system. CCleaner gets rid of them. When we used it at the CAP it got rid of hundreds of redundant files and speeded up the computers quite a lot.  You can download CCLeaner from www.ccleaner.com/download

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