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One group that has lasted is the First Osborne Group, which is still going strong, with 15,000 members, a year and a half after Osborne Computer Corp. went bankrupt. The company, back in business under new management, once had 90 people answering help calls from users. Now it routinely refers these calls to the proper FOG chapter. Admits James Schwabe, Osborne's marketing vice president: "They probably do a better job."
Barbara Gerk, who writes a regular column on user groups for the weekly magazine InfoWorld, believes that organizations like FOG will be around for years. When a computer has been orphaned, she says, "sometimes there's nowhere else to turn."