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I'm a little discouraged by the tagline "RSS for bloggers". It sounds like it's very much a tool specifically geared toward bloggers who like to grab content from other blogs they may also want to blog about. Do you think it's a good RSS reader if it is judged by that function alone?

How could I make switching between the Realtek device and the Sennheiser USB headset really fast?

Normally, to do this, I have to do the following:

1. Click Start, Control Panel.
2. Open Sounds & Audio Devices
3. Select "Audio" tab
4. From "Sound Playback" devices choose the wanted device from the dropdown list
5. Click Apply, then OK.
6. Close control panel

In short, it's a huge pain in the ass and this really is something that I want to be able to do on the fly. Any ideas?

Nope.. she's in the US currently so I suppose that's what she's interested in. But I greatly appreciate your offer for help.

My sister asked where the best place would be to get physical prints of some of her digital photos, and I had no idea what to answer with. I've never done this myself, so I turn to you. Do you have any favorites, and why? Know of any reviews? Thanks.

Don't know -- I know where you're coming from, though.  Even an application that is seemingly perfect, knowing it's abandoned just makes me . . . abandon it.  I loved, for example, Lektora -- but it went for a long time looking abandoned.  I think it's back in development again, but . . . I don't feel like launching Firefox or Internet Explorer for it. So it goes.

Now that you mention it, Lektora does look cool as hell . Is the project dead?
But yeah.. I don't like using anything that isn't worked on anymore. Especially since nothing is perfect and can always use improvements.. so if I use software like that with the knowledge that those bugs will NEVER be fixed.. what's the point? May as well use something that is still actively being worked on.

Just wondering.. any idea on whether it is still being worked on? Of course it may be too soon to ask this.. but if there is one thing I have a hard time doing it's using software that is not supported anymore.

Oh crap.. RSS Bandit looks really good, actually . Have to give that a shot. I don't know why I have never considered it before, but judging just by the screenshots, I already know I'll like it better than Greatnews, if for no other reason than that it has a vertical layout!

Picajet FX is probably a good contender. Back when I tried it once, it kept crashing on me so I got rid of it and never tried again.. but it looks very interesting. It may have been an issue with my system as well. It's particularly interesting to me because it seems its MAIN FOCUS is image organization, which is just what I'm looking for. I tagged my images using APE tonight though and I just love it. Its organizational features are truly amazing. ACDSee doesn't even come close, I'm afraid. ACDSee has many great things going for it, but image organization isn't one of them.

I just started tagging images with ACDSee... and find that it sucks at it. I can't even drag multiple tags onto one image at the same time? It will take me twice and thrice as long to tag everything if I can't do that.. and APE does it just fine. I think I'm back to APE for image organization. Good try, ACDSee, but at organization, you suck. Sadly . I like the speed of ACDSee and just about everything else about it. But organization is the key feature that I need in an application of this type, more than anything else in it. APE just wins in that department. For now.

Just thought I'd update the thread with another shy highscore. Tried to beat myself

MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAAAA -- on my laptop!

That's great   - anyone speak German?

I do.. and so do half the people at DonationCoder.com it seems

Congrats. FARR & its author deserve nothing less

I use Process Explorer and have that replace the default Windows task manager. Too bad . Looks like a neat tool.

I just found this "on accident" and though I'd share: http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,15806386

You'll appreciate it if you've been wondering about Omnipage 15 for whatever reason

I needed to check the video (http://www.netjaxer.com/demo/) to get how it's meant to work. Looks cool, are you using it?

Haha.. me too! I didn't know what exactly they meant. To me it's sort of pointless because all Netjaxer seems to do is open IE-based windows in which your web apps run. What's so much better about that than running the app in your browser? I don't really get the point, and no I'm not using it. I'm perfectly happy running all web apps I use in Opera or Firefox, if need be.

your views on photoshop elements has been very illuminating. i'm beginning to get an urge to try it again. i tested it when doing the shootout but i may have been unfairly biased against it. the tagging method you've described certainly sounds like a good organising method. the start up speed would annoy me if it's slower than acdsee as i tend to open and close programs very often rather than leaving them running all day. or, more importantly, i may just want to check a single image for a few seconds and then move onto other things - i certainly wouldn't want to wait for photoshop elements to open up just for that.

also i guess i'm not much of a tagger - though, i do see it the way of the future.

maybe i'll give photoshop elements a quick once over but as i gave up using adobe bridge because of it's startup delay i think acdsee is probably what is most suited to me.

perhaps we just sit in different camps - there are those of us that still feel most comfortable with the logic and order of a tree hierarchy and then there of those of us that appreciate the power of the tagging system.

I think tagging/labels are brilliant and are very much in the future of all sorts of electronic organization methods. Folder structures are a think of the past for me.. and will be even more so once we all get Vista. Just the fact that Vista very much includes the philosophy behind tagging as a core way of organizing files is a good way to give an example. Of course some people still will prefer hierarchical folder structures and that's fine.. but just TRY tagging and you should see the benefits rather quickly

Also, I wouldn't say photo management is not one of APE's main functions. It is. APE has a very good organizational component, so I don't see how one could say it's not one of its major components. It does come with other tools and it is sort of an all-in-one deal, but that doesn't make the organizational component any less good. I'll stick with ACDSee for a while and see how I like it though.

As for APE's start up speed.. APE is not an image viewer. It's an image management/organization/editing program. So it does take a little longer to start up. I recommend Fast Stone Viewer for a viewer or even IrfanView or XNView. Then again if you have and are happy with ACDSee, you get both in the same program. Organization AND viewing, because ACDSee does start up pretty quickly.

Another great thing about Azureus is that it comes with a load of cool plugins. uTorrent has no plugins at all AFAIK. Azureus plugins are found here: http://azureus.sourceforge.net/plugin_list.php

I used the Autospeed plugin and it worked great. I have no idea if it ever affected my download speeds, but it just worked and my download speeds were mostly good. One extremely important thing you have to realize about download speeds is that they depend on the quality of the torrent you are getting. If you get a "healthy" torrent and your network setup is correct, you are more or less guaranteed to get good speeds. If you get "sick" torrents, you can be on a 100Mbit connection and you'll still get shitty download speeds. The combo of correct network setup (possibly also network tweaking) + healthy torrents is the single easiest way to make sure you get good download speeds. Of course other factors are in the equation as well, but if you stick to this simplified equation, you should never have problems really. For me, it works that way.

For Azureus, this is a must read as well: http://azureus.aelitis.co.../wiki/index.php/Main_Page

Make sure to read the following two Wiki entries: "Why you need Good settings for high download speed" and "How to further increase your download speed: find out all about the Average Swarm Speed and Availability and Good Torrents in general"
There's a ton of other very useful information on that Wiki, but the above two are MUST reads as they don't just tell you some basic and some advanced stuff on torrents in general but also because they tell you just what to do to maximize download speed.

[I don't think it has "auto-launch .torrent files from <this folder>" yet]

What I really like about µTorrent is that the developer, ludde, is a nice guy who's very open to suggestions. You can usually find him on IRC/EFnet in #winprog. Torrents (and the .torrent file) can be moved from your "in-progress folder" to "download done" automatically, very suitable for automatic extraction tools or remote checking (if you can't do remote desktop but have ftp access, it's still easy to see if a download is done).

I don't think it has "auto-launch .torrent files from <this folder>" yet, but ludde would probably not mind adding it (it's a feature I use a lot in rTorrent on my linux box - fire and forget like). Oh yeah, and there's a web-based control interface coming.

All this while *still* keeping it LEAN_AND_MEAN

It does . I agree. I really like uTorrent. But I also like Azureus. I never had problems with Azureus and always loved it. uTorrent has only been cool since v1.5. Before that I can't say I liked it, and I tried it out. I didn't exactly actively ditch Azureus for uTorrent either. I just happened to reinstall Windows recently and when the question of torrent clients came up, I tried uTorrent, liked it, and stuck to it so far. Azureus is an excellent torrent client and the main reason it is so much more complex and big than uTorrent is because it has more features and is FAR more customizable. So for those who are into heavy customization, Azureus is your answer. For everyone else, uTorrent does extremely well

Does anyone use a service like this? I never have and don't really intend to... not in the near future anyway, but my sister would like to know what the best digital photo print service is out there? I can't help her outright as I really know next to nothing about the topic, but I thought some of you may, so here is your chance to share your knowledge and help a sister out
Just in case you are confused about what I'm talking about, here's my shot at a definition: under "digital photo print service" I understand a web-based service that will let a user upload digital images from his/her computer and then order physical prints from the site. The better the price/quality/service ratio, the better the service, of course!

Links, reviews, opinions, experiences... it's all welcome. Post away!

TIA

[is]

So you say, so you think, but there really is no reason to be so scared of wireless networks. Apparently, the AEP encryption method has never been cracked before, ever, and that's what most people who have a clue about WLAN's today use to secure their wireless networks (WPA with AEP/TKIP). I also happen to think that Windows is a good operating system. Now, that isn't to say that it is flawless. Obviously, it's far from flawless and has its problems, just like any other OS. Ok, perhaps Windows has a few more problems than other OSes out there... , but if you know what you're doing, once more, and you're used to Windows, it is very stable and will work reliably for a long time. At least that has been my experience over the years.

Today and perhaps for years already, it has been easy to set up wireless networks, on the spot, and securely. It may be a matter of opinion, and I invite anyone with an opinion on this to step in and voice it because I am curious about what others think about this issue.

I can't wait. This is such an excellent idea

Crap.. I wish I had been around when this topic was started. There is no way in hell I will read all of the above. I want to jump on the Vista bandwagon ASAP because I'm very excited about Vista. I've read a lot about it and can't wait to use it. It's not just another Windows version, just like that.. it's a major overhaul of everything that's under the hood, which makes Vista very intriguing and interesting to me. What I don't look forward to is having to buy a new computer :/

[can]

My friend and I don't have any wireless equipment in our apartment. When we moved in we discussed how we were going to set up our LAN. Since he was using copper-bound ethernet at work and just had rolled a major upgrade of that network's capacity, we went for good ole cable as well. So far is has paid off very well: our network is fast, reliable and superquick to extend when friends come over with their laptops.

Yes, sometimes it were nice to have wireless access, if only for making it easier to "relocate" our computers. However we don't regard this is as a tradeoff since we value security much higher than comfort and we both know so much more about ethernet than about wireless.

To make a boring story short: unless wireless networks can easily be secured (and I mean secured, not just pretended protection) I will not consider it when setting up networks.

They can easily be secured

Trust me, I did set it up correctly. I just never used bandwidth throttling/limiting or whatever you want to call it. You could say it's obvious it would hog my connection then, but hey.. I like to dedicate 100% of my bandwidth to downloading when I download something. I don't use that feature with uTorrent either though and web access seems faster. If I remember correctly, I could actually use the web just fine with Azureus running and downloading, but things were noticeably slower. Anyway.. doesn't matter. I'll stick with uTorrent for now. Thanks.