Messages

76

General Software Discussion / Re: What is your boot time?

« on: November 23, 2008, 06:41 PM »

unless you have a really sucky DHCP server, you're not going to shave even a second off your boot time

-f0dder (November 23, 2008, 12:28 PM)

Hmm, are you calling my DHCP server "sucky" f0dder? Anyway, in theory, I'd tend to agree with you on that point, but in practice, I've seen a definite improvement by assigning a static IP instead. Besides, on a home network with just a handful of PC connected, it's not a bad idea to have static IPs for each one

why do people obsess over boot time, anyway?

-f0dder (November 23, 2008, 12:28 PM)

Again, this is very personal. It may not matter to you, but it doesn't mean it can't matter for anyone, right? In my case, when I want to start using my PC, I want to start using my PC *now* or at least in a few seconds, not in 5 minutes. Imagine if each time you're going to use your car (I don't have a car, btw, but the example is good  ), you'd have to wait for a few minutes until the car "boots up". To some people it wouldn't matter, but I'm sure others would find it very annoying.

77

General Software Discussion / Re: How to make a local copy of an ancient Web forum?

« on: November 23, 2008, 12:31 PM »

I would consider DonationCoder to be an average sized forum

-Paul Keith (November 23, 2008, 09:48 AM)

From the forum's frontpage:
Total Posts: 139,067
Total Topics: 14,933

IMHO, this forum is rather on the large-ish side ....

Anyway, maybe mouser can tell us the size of the forum's back end database in MBs, so we can have at least a ballpark approximation of how big a forum database can be. Yes, I do understand that it may vary GREATLY, depending on whether attachments and/or images are allowed or not, but still it'd be better than nothing

78

General Software Discussion / Re: What is your boot time?

« on: November 23, 2008, 01:29 AM »

Where was I when this thread started?!?! 

I'm sort of a "boot time junkie" so I try to minimize it as much as I can. Not that I reboot very often, but I hate having to *wait* for my PC to start

Anyway, I've just finished reading all this thread and thought about giving my 2 cents on the subject

MS Bootvis, which is not supported by MS since XP was released, can do this for some users, but I have found that it cannot complete its goal if you are running a dual core processor, which I am.

-J-Mac (January 30, 2008, 11:27 PM)

Are you sure about that, Jim? Because I'm running a dual core CPU and Bootvis runs just fine 

A few tips that I've found do decrease, in some cases noticeably, startup and shutdown times:

- Check your (Windows) services. You're most likely running more services in Automatic mode than necessary. The ultimate reference site to find out which services are really needed is Black Viper's
- Make sure you boot from your fastest partition and try to keep it small and defragged
- If possible, try to assign your PC a STATIC IP (<- This one really made a difference in my case) instead of letting it get a dynamic one assigned by a DHCP server (probably a router or another PC)
- Defrag your prefetch folder (<- this one also noticeably improved my start up time). The simplest way is to run

[Select]

defrag.exe c: -b

from the Command Prompt (replacing "C:" with your boot drive letter if it's not "C:")
- Use Bootvis to see what's going on during boot time and identify executables and drivers that might be causing unnecessary delays
- Use Autoruns to prevent a number of unneeded programs from running at startup (I mean do you *really* need the "Java online update program" to run on EVERY boot?)

By using all of the above (and maybe a few others that I can't remember now) I've been able to bring my system down to a very fast 45 seconds total reboot time, measured from when I press the green restart button until I can see the desktop wallpaper again (I'm using auto login since I'm the only one using this PC). Not bad 

79

Living Room / Re: Open DNS is s***ware

« on: November 22, 2008, 06:34 PM »

Thanks for the info, Gothi[c]. I didn't know of those public servers (I mean 4.2.2.1-6) until now. I think the only public DNS servers I knew about were the well publicized OpenDNS.
I've heard good things and not so good things about OpenDNS but in the end I decided they weren't providing such a noticeable advantage compared with my ISP DNS servers to justify the change.
Anyway, I've now set up 4.2.2.1 as my secondary DNS server in case my ISP DNS server isn't reachable (which doesn't happen very often, but still)

On a related note, while googling this subject I came across a little (as in 36,864 bytes-little  ) and very useful app called DNS Tester. Yup, no prizes for guessing it's a DNS tester. Surprisingly, it was the only tool I could find that allows you to test the response time of different DNS servers. It's free and open source, though it doesn't seem to be updated anymore.
By using DNS Tester, you can tell for sure whether OpenDNS, your ISP's DNS servers or 4.2.2.1 is faster. In my case, it was my ISP's, so I'm sticking with those. By the way, both OpenDNS and 4.2.2.2 seem to be about the same in speed.
Unfortunately, there seems to be a bug in that program (or at least on my system it does) that prevents it from testing more than 1 url at a time (it's prepared to test many).

80

General Software Discussion / Re: List of newbie questions regarding software

« on: November 21, 2008, 08:25 PM »

Paul, I don't think it lets you save the tasklist as a "session", but you can easily overcome that by first creating a "default" tasklist, and then opening it and saving it with another name to keep the "default" one unchanged and have it available later as a sort of template. You can then work with the newly saved tasklist and save its state whenever you like. The program also gives you the option (in Preferences) to keep a number of backup copies of each tasklist.

81

General Software Discussion / Re: How to make a local copy of an ancient Web forum?

« on: November 21, 2008, 07:41 AM »

Teleport Pro is supposedly the best of its class, but it's a bit expensive. It's probably worth taking a look at it, though, to see if it has the features you need for this job.

82

General Software Discussion / Re: List of newbie questions regarding software

« on: November 21, 2008, 12:28 AM »

Have you tried the Open Source donationware ToDoList?

From their website:

ToDoList is a rare form of task management tool, one that allows you to repeatedly sub-divide your tasks into more manageable pieces whilst still presenting a clean and intuitive user experience.

ToDoList has been in continuous development for the last 4 years and is an ongoing project.

Your tasklists are stored in XML which provides many opportunities for advanced formatting and printing using stylesheets.

I think it fulfills several of your requirements

83

General Software Discussion / Re: advice needed.....FirstDefense-ISR, ShadowProtect, ShadowUser, Rollback Rx???

« on: November 18, 2008, 12:48 AM »

Edward Mendelson from AppScout wrote a good article a while back praising ShadowProtect Desktop and (heavily) criticizing Roxio's BackOnTrack:


ShadowProtect Desktop and Roxio BackOnTrack: One's Killer, One's Deadly

84

Living Room / Re: Recommendations on Alternative E-Bay/Auction & Selling Sites

« on: November 18, 2008, 12:31 AM »

Here's a comparison chart of several such sites:

TopTenREVIEWS 2008 Online Auction Sites Product Comparisons

Not that I have *any* sort of trust in TopTenREVIEWS' objectivity, but at least their feature comparison charts seem to be not too biased.

BTW, I haven't tried any of those sites, so I can't comment on them.

85

General Software Discussion / Re: 'Everything' is one FAST file search engine

« on: November 14, 2008, 11:39 PM »

Does "external file managers" include everyone's Explorer? 

Edited: -and if so; HowTo ??

-Curt (November 14, 2008, 07:38 PM)

Not sure if I understand what you mean  , but opening files and folders in Windows Explorer is the default behavior of Everything.
Just right click on any item of the list and choose "Explore" or "Explore Path". It should open the folder (or the older containing the chosen file) in Windows Explorer.
What I did was modify that behavior so that they open in Total Commander instead 

86

General Software Discussion / Re: Excel help: Showing multiple, seperate ranges on top of one another

« on: November 14, 2008, 10:00 PM »

Have you tried nesting the functions?
i.e. =INDEX(OFFSET('Vahik Haddadian'!$A$2,0,0,COUNTA('Vahik Haddadian'!$A:$A),5),1,1)

Not blindingly elegant, mind you, but maybe effective

Update: took me a while, but I think I've just understood the problem    Ignore my previous post

I think you may be missing an INDIRECT function somewhere there, so that G2 gets evaluated.
The formula would probably have to be

[Select]

=INDEX(INDIRECT(G2),1,1)

Let us know if that solves the problem

87

Living Room / Re: Tech News Weekly: Edition 46

« on: November 14, 2008, 07:51 PM »

Highly unlikely it will last. spammers are used to this sort of thing, they'll be setup elsewhere in no time.

-Ehtyar (November 14, 2008, 07:20 PM)

I know, it's inevitable. I guess it was just a bit of wishful thinking on my part ...

But eventually it's all about raising the costs for spammers, to make their business less profitable and therefore less attractive. If they're forced to other, and more expensive, hosts, a reduction of spam may be feasible.

88

Living Room / Re: Tech News Weekly: Edition 46

« on: November 14, 2008, 07:18 PM »

Excellent job, Ehtyar 

And great news about that spammer company being taken down. I did notice a reduction in spam in the last few days. Let's hope it lasts ...

89

General Software Discussion / Re: What's your music player of choice?

« on: November 14, 2008, 02:56 PM »

J-River Media Center - I bought this a long time ago but hardly ever used it. But after doing all these rips I dusted it off and used it to get the album art for a LOT of my albums. It's got the best album searcher I've seen. I don't know if the free "Media Jukebox" has the same album art search, but it's worth a look if you're trying to get the art for a lot of albums. Other than that it seems very responsive and feature packed. It's got some similar custom column features as foobar2000, but I wasn't able to get it to display AccurateRipResult tags at all (I guess they're written as APE tags, which MC12 doesn't support in MP3s). The program also looks pretty darn good IMO.

Media Monkey - This has a lot of potential. It's definitely worth a try. For some reason ($ probably) they made the program insert a little link to Amazon next to the Artist/Album/Song Title of each song when you select it. I would expect to hit these accidentally constantly during normal use, driving me even more insane.

-Hirudin (November 14, 2008, 02:29 PM)

Re: J-River Media Center
A lot has been said about their behavior towards their customers or prospective customers and their support, in this and other forums. Arrogance and disrespect pretty much sums it up. I wouldn't use their software even if they paid me to do it.

Re:MediaMonkey
An excellent media player and an even better organizer. By the way, those annoying links to Amazon can easily be removed, as explained in this thread of their forum

90

General Software Discussion / Re: 'Everything' is one FAST file search engine

« on: November 14, 2008, 09:51 AM »

Beta 1.2.0.323 is out. Type & Extension columns added plus some more minor stuff.

Changes

added support for external file managers via the ini file

-nosh (November 14, 2008, 02:29 AM)

If I can set it to work with Total Commander, I'll be very happy 

Update: I can !!!

91

General Software Discussion / Re: I am looking for a file browser that is optimized especially for networks

« on: November 12, 2008, 11:27 PM »

Shades, do you mean this Total Copy?

92

Living Room / Re: How the Web Was Won: An Oral History of the Internet

« on: November 12, 2008, 04:14 PM »

I've just finished reading this article (yeah, I know, talk about "I'll read it later"  ) and I found it very, very interesting. Thanks, mouser, that was an excellent read.
It is somewhat centered around the USA, but it can be forgiven since it was written by a couple of (I think) American journalists whose public is mostly American.
Anyway, in case you missed it when mouser posted it (and considering that before I made this post this it was buried in page 14 of the Living Room forum), I do recommend this article for anyone who wants to really learn how the Internet was created and how it developed

93

General Software Discussion / Re: Excel help: Showing multiple, seperate ranges on top of one another

« on: November 11, 2008, 12:55 AM »

Is there a way to use pivot tables to take all different named ranges and combine them all into on pivot table?  I assume it would use the "consolidate multiple ranges" in the pivot table options.  However, is there a way to set up pivot tables so that they don't do any kind of calculations on the data (like sum, count, average, etc.) but instead, just lists the contents of the data?

-superboyac (November 10, 2008, 07:17 PM)

I'm not sure if this is what you want to accomplish, but this page looks relevant. As an alternative method, they suggest using MS Query to combine multiple named ranges from an Excel file.

94

General Software Discussion / Re: Transmute Bookmark converter - free & works with most browsers

« on: November 11, 2008, 12:42 AM »

Mozilla Firefox : Firefox 1 & 2 are supported as well as Firefox 3, with its new database model.

-SKA (November 10, 2008, 01:09 AM)

 

Great find, SKA! Thanks for the info. This is the first bokkmark/favourites converter, that I know of, that handles the new Firefox 3 bookmarks format

95

General Software Discussion / Re: Total Commander 7.03 for Windows released!

« on: November 09, 2008, 01:04 PM »

What is totally beyond my grasp...why do I have to use F8 to delete something when there is a beautiful button called 'Delete' on a keyboard that is (more or less) in the same position already for more than 15 years?    UNIX roots? Come on, give me a break! In my opinion, anything that takes getting used to has a structural/basic design flaw.

-Shades (November 09, 2008, 11:17 AM)

 

I'm a Total Commander user and I can confirm that selecting a file and then pressing the "Delete" key will in fact delete the file. Actually, that's the key I use, I don't think I ever used the F8 key to delete a file in TC

96

General Software Discussion / Re: 'Everything' is one FAST file search engine

« on: November 08, 2008, 01:31 PM »

I've just tried Everything and I too am impressed by its speed 

Since my default search tool has been so far the Total Commander search feature, I'm wondering if anyone has succeeded in integrating the two programs. I can easily add a toolbar button in TC to launch Everything, but how do I "export" the search results from Everything back to TC? Can it be done? Any ideas? Thanks

97

General Software Discussion / Re: Total Commander 7.03 for Windows released!

« on: November 08, 2008, 01:23 PM »

- Shift (or Alt) + LMB drag -> move,
- LMB drag + quick RMB -> move,
- Ctrl + Shift + LMB drag -> Create shortcut,
- Shift + RMB drag -> drag menu -> Copy, Move, Create Shortcut, Cancel and associated app menu (ex. WinRAR)

-fenixproductions (November 08, 2008, 06:13 AM)

Wow! Thanks fenixproductions! I knew about the first three, but not the (very useful) fourth one  

98

General Software Discussion / Re: Battle of the Free Online Storages

« on: November 08, 2008, 01:18 PM »

I'm now calculating essential MBs.

-sazzen (November 08, 2008, 10:05 AM)

sazzen, if you end up trying out ADrive, I'll be very interested in your experience, since it's my # 1 choice too

Also, since my first post, I've found the very interesting Backup Review website, filled with information and reviews about these services

99

General Software Discussion / Re: RegBench - Registry Benchmarker Utility

« on: November 06, 2008, 08:16 AM »

Has anyone else benchmarked their Registry before and after a Registry optimization/defragging? I'm curious to see if I'm the only one who saw almost no difference in access/read time.
Please post your results if you've done so.

100

General Software Discussion / Re: What application is stealing my keystrokes?

« on: November 04, 2008, 09:26 PM »

Does anybody know of an application that lists the applications, hopefully in order, that are grabbing keystrokes.

-tinjaw (November 04, 2008, 01:23 PM)

Not exactly what you need, but Keyboard Shortcuts Assistant may be helpful in catching out the offending app