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Each month members receive AUSOM News, our 44–52 page magazine packed with feature articles, tips, news and reviews on Macintosh computing. Almost all articles are written by our own members with very few reprints of material available elsewhere. Hundreds of country and interstate members maintain their memberships simply to receive AUSOM News.

AUSOM has a substantial library of manuals and other books relating to the use of the Mac and to general computing subjects. Particularly valuable to many members are the manuals for superseded versions of popular programs.
Download Library Catalogue (225KB)
The download file is a Zip archive. Double-click to decompress it and you'll find a folder containing the catalogue as a PDF, as well as spreadsheets in Numbers and Excel formats, which you can search or sort as you wish.

Online discussion forums are provided through our FirstClass bulletin board system. With over 300 users, this is a great source of help and advice on almost any Macintosh-related topic. The system also provides for downloading the latest Macintosh freeware, shareware, updates and demos. Use of the system requires payment of a fee additional to your basic membership subscription.The system is further explained here and the required software can be downloaded here.

Our AUSOM News magazine incorporates a list of experienced members who have volunteered to take phone calls related to the areas of their expertise. The advice so provided is free.

At monthly meetings, members have the opportunity to borrow from, or lend to, a large library of CDs and DVDs including programs, games and entertainment, and educational themes.

The AUSOM Store allows members to make on-line PayPal-secure payments for subscriptions and renewals, as well as for Discs of the Month and other AUSOM merchandise.

We have a main monthly meeting on the first Saturday of each month, with a major presentation and around 25 Special Interest Groups.

In addition, the following 'satellite' meetings are held monthly at other locations:

• A weekday meeting of the Retirees group, in Balwyn
• Two afternoon meetings held in conjuction with the Melbourne PC User Group, in Moorabbin
• An evening meeting of the Mornington group, serving Peninsula members

Click for general meeting information, or specific details of upcoming meetings.

Meetings give members the opportunity to talk face-to-face with club experts — some of them generalists, others advanced workers in particular fields. Special Interest Groups provide the chance to compare notes with others having similar interests and using the same programs.

A number of local and international businesses offer discounts to AUSOM members. Details of current offers here.

Each month, one to three compliation CDs and/or DVDs are made avaiable at nominal cost, saving members from the task of trawling the Net for shareware and other resources to assist with work on their Macs. Previous themes have included Games; Office Productivity suites; Graphics Tools; Clip Art, Fonts, Stock Video footage, Stock Photography, Sound Effects, Music clips.More information here.

For the benefit of those with slow Internet connections and/or low download limits, AUSOM publishes at nominal cost a monthly Apple Software Update CD containing all of that month's releases, as well as key updates from previous months.

If you have any question concerning the services that are available to you as an AUSOM member, then please call us on 0421 126 175. If your call defaults to the message machine, someone will call you back within a reasonable time to help you. Alternatively you may send us an email.