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"Rarely" means rarely, as in not often. What exactly is your problem with my usage of the word, or are you merely being obtuse? I'm thrilled that you never get BSOD and appalled that you're so full of yourself that you assume that I fixed the problems by rebooting and your continued assumption that I loaded 95 and 98 drivers on my notebook. Like f0dder, my paticipation in this particular discussion is over. This thread has devolved into an argument highlighted by circularity and one that, despite now having posted on it three times, is of no interest to me.

If I get a BSOD something's wrong? Really? Thanks for the insight... You've completely missed my point, which was not that I was whinging about BSOD in XP being the fault of MS but rather that under ME with certified drivers my notebook was simply not stable. This suggests to me that there were serious problems with ME that cannot be explained away by incompatibilities between my OS and the device drivers that I was using. I got BSOD with my notebook out of the box. Regarding BSOD under XP, I rarely get them - I simply noted that it seems to happen more often than under Win2k. When I do get a BSOD under XP, I note the error code, research it, and fix the problem.

Anyway, I respectfully disagree with you about ME in particular, but agree with you about BSOD in general. This discussion needs to move on.

I purchased notebooks with each of the o/s's mentioned above (98SE, ME, 2k, XP Pro and XP Home) preinstalled (and desktops with 98 and 98SE), all labelled with the "Designed for Win [version here]" label attached, at least a year after the OS was released. I would rank ME far below the others in terms of stability. Whether these were driver compatibiltiy issues or not is irrelevant. As an end-user (and not a system administrator/techie) ME was a nightmare. All I did was install Office 2k on my ME system (which came with ME preinstalled and all the drivers were ME certified from the OEM - Compaq) and use it for light word processing and e-mail/net surfing, and it blue screened a lot more often than 98. So much so that I was leary of newer windows versions and stuck with the 98SE machine before discovering that 2k was a quantum leap over both in terms of stability. I switched to Win2k  late in 2001 and finally bought my first XP Pro machine in March 2004.  I'd rank 2k slightly ahead of XP Pro/Home for stability and speed, with XP far ahead of 98/98SE and ME dead last with a comfortable gap separating it from 98. I still use the original 98 machine, which has been upgraded to W2k, and it is ROCK solid (remarkable for a notebook that is 6 1/2 years old). The ME machine, too, shines with Win2k installed and is still in service with my sister, who uses it in exactly the capacity I had envisioned for myself when I bought it (light office duty and e-mail/Internet). I've numerous friends that had the same experience with ME preinstalled on notebooks/desktops from major manufacturers. The two XP machines see the most use now and are very solid, though I remain convinced (and it's a gut feeling only) that the Win2k machines (which saw two years service with me before I moved on to XP) were less susceptible to blue screening.

Just my 2 bits - an end-user's perspective.

So far so good... So far I've managed to create a couple of hard links. I'll keep playing with it.
That's pretty cool - I've made a couple of hard links and moved the files to different drives, and the hard links still work! Well, I guess that's what they're supposed to do, but I'm still impressed 

Hi Tomos,

No, I never did try it again. I'll do it now and report back...

Just to note - none of the PC Mag utilities are free anymore. You can buy individual apps for $7.95 or buy one of a variety of subscriptions to their utilities ranging, I think, from 7 days access through one year. The one year subscription looks the cheapest if you want everything currently available and want to be sure that you have access to whatever is in the hopper...

I'll wade in...
File Explorer: Dopus 8
Web Browser: Maxthon (1.57 - beta for 2 is fantastic though but not ready for prime time)

There are lots of others, but I live in the 2 above!

edit: how could I have forgotten Roboform and Clipmate!

PCMag has a numer of utilities that *might* will let you do this - I think they currently charge $7.95 per utility. I haven't used any of them but used to check for new apps from them fairly regularly when they were still free. I recall a couple, at least, that let you add notes to files or to assign custom "tips" to files.

Hi AdIyhc - I've never had any reason to contact Grisoft's (AVG's) support, so I can't comment  !

I use AVG too - at first the free version but for about 18 months the pro version. I upgraded to support development and so I could have it scan at sometime other than 8 am. I'm still running the anti-virus only, none of the rest of the security suite (I've not tried it). Overall, I've been using it for at least 2 1/2 years and have never had a problem.

Mouser - thanks for the link. It's articles and books like that that confirmed my impression that I was going about it all wrong. I haven't seen that book, but I've read a number of magazine, journal and on-line articles that stress that the slides should not overwhelm the audience with information and that, above all, the slide show should NOT replace the lecture but should rather augment it.

Like Lilly, I now use powerpoints very sparingly - more to display images and graphs than to display text. I find that when I do this, though, I often forget to turn to my presentation at all - i.e., everything is ready to got but I wind up talking for three hours and leave the technology alone. I like the fact that the class and I can deal with issues that arise during a lecture, without worrying about the fact that I KNOW that that exact point/issue is going to be repeated five slides down the line. What the students miss out on in terms of information transfer and, to a degree, structure, is made up for in being able to explore an issue "organically". Students feel that they can ask questions and interact with each other and with me naturally and as the need arises. As far as information transfer goes, students can read the textbook anyway - I think many Powerpoint based lectures fall into the trap of summarising the textbook - I know mine have. Powerpoints are great for presenting your own research, ideas, experiences, etc. but less so when the material being dealt is covered in the textbook. I used to find myself in the middle of giving a lecture like that and wonder what the hell I was doing in the classroom! Actually, coming from a British university, I feel much the same way about the textbooks that we use (though I did do my undergrad in Canada, about five minutes from where I was born!). Anyway, a Powerpoint lecture that walks the students through the assigned readings is GREAT for a newbie instructor finding his or her feet as it rigidly structures the flow and pace of the class. This is good for allowing the instructor to work up some confidence about public speaking. Once you hit the point, though, wherein you realise that you're only one step beyond standing there reading the textbook out loud to your class, it's time to move on...

Easy to see why I have no trouble talking for three hours, eh?  Sorry about the long-winded posts.

The teaching thing does take getting used to but I love it. I find it really rewarding and it keeps me on my toes - any other job I've had I've been able to feel my mind turning mushy because I just haven't been challenged. The greatest thing about lecturing is the very thing that TERRIFIED me before I started - the questions and debates. Students' questions not only keep me on my toes but also make me THINK. I've had more insights into my own research because I've been teaching something completely unrelated and had a student ask an insightful question than I would have believed possible. I used to think that teaching would seriously get in the way of my research but I find that it augments it. In fact, in the absence of teaching my creativity and interest in research fizzles rather quickly.

Lilly - I managed to neglect this thread for weeks so hopefully you've come to terms with your uncomfortable new class. I can relate to what you were going through, because I've been there too. My situation may be somewhat different because I've been sessional for four years but for three of them was at 75%. I'm applying for a couple of regular positions this year, though, and hope to make it out of non-reg hell!

Anyway, with respect to the insecurity that comes from being new to a course - I have definitely been there and know exactly what you mean about not liking having the students pick up on it. My advice is to stop trying so hard... I know, it's counter intuitive and if you are a perfectionist (and let's face it, you're a PhD candidate which means that you probably are!) it's especially hard, BUT: I've found that if I am putting so much into a class that I'm stressing about it all the time, then I'm not having fun in class and I'm on edge. Being on edge just leaves you open to the class scenting blood and going for the jugular. The fatal trap that I fall into when starting a new class is the feeling that I'm underprepared and that I don't know the material. One of my colleagues (no doubt fed up of my moaning about it) said: "Remember, no matter what, you are smarter than they are". My experience is that I am sadly not even the second or third smartest person in the room in an average class. However, the advice is sound if you think about it more as that you KNOW more about the subject that you are teaching than they do. If you can get this far, you can take the last step in relaxing, which is to realise that you really don't have to be omniscient up there - you don't have to know the intimate details of the text that you've had the class read, you only need to be able to discuss the key concepts and, hopefully, bring your own perspective to it - my experience is that the more of yourself that you can bring into the room, the better. When I started lecturing the real me was wetting myself somewhere far, far removed from the classroom while "instructor-me" crashed and burned in a pyrotechnical display of chin into chest mumbling and abstracted shuffling of lecture notes that I could not read because I had tried to cram so much onto a piece of paper that the text was minute...

I had two epiphanies: the first during my first year of lecturing when I started using powerpoints - what a crutch - and the second when I weaned myself off powerpoints during my third year. Just a random thought, and possibly one completely irrelevant to you, but in addition to the above, my use of powerpoints was more as a crutch than an aide and the more I tried to use them effectively (i.e. as something to augment what I was saying rather than letting the slides say it for me) the more of a crutch it became. Throwing down the crutch and staggering on by myself, so to speak, really gave me confidence and even when I'm lecturing on material that is way out of my area of specialisation, I don't really feel very stressed about it anymore. I could go on, and on, and on (and I already have) so I'll leave it at that.

YMMV - this has served me well teaching intro and second year courses, don't know how one would fare in an upper level class...

My main pst file is being repaired as I write this  I'm really not happy as I have become quite dependant on YDS/X1. Carol, did you have the same problem with YDS? I wonder if turning off X1's real time scanning of Outlook would remedy this?

I haven't run scanpst.exe in ages - I'll do it an report back here.

Outlook 2003 and X1 have been rock solid together since... whenever X1 went freeware (at least in the desktop version). That was no later than June (I think) so I've had 4 1/2 months of troublefree use. I'm running WinXP Pro Sp-2 and also have SpamBayes, SnagIt8, PDFConverter, Shutdown Add-in, and eAnnouncer running with Outlook.

Hope this helps.

Mike

PS I *did* have an issue with the previous couple of builds of X1 displaying a mosaic of Italian and English labels but this has been fixed in the latest build!

There's a free plug-in for Dopus that will let you do this as well. From the original posting on the Dopus forum :

Source Code Viewer is a freeware plugin for Directory Opus. It provides an enhanced viewer pane for viewing your source code using the freeware Scintilla control (http://www.scintilla.org). This control provides a host of features including syntax colouring, line numbering, code block folding, word wrapping and brace matching amongst others.

The plugin also allows you to edit your code, search for text, goto lines, add your own languages, etc.

Author: James Dickson support@jdnet.co.uk
Version 1: http://www.jdnet.co.uk/fo...um/index.php?showtopic=58
Version 2 (beta): http://www.jdnet.co.uk/fo...m/index.php?showtopic=119 -- See also: http://resource.dopus.com/viewtopic.php?t=992

Version 2 (beta) requires you to install a special version of Scintilla Text Editor (SciTE): SciTE with Extensions

I dither between Registry Medic and Registry First Aid Platinum, when I have a registry cleaner installed at all. At the moment I'm with Registry Medic 4 (though I have a license for RFA Plat 5) because I much prefer the way it organizes entries found by class (active-x plugins and com, start menu, recently used file lists, uninstallers, help files, etc.) as I find it much easier to navigate. For example, it's nice to be able to clear the start menu items and other no brainer stuff all in one go without trying to wade through hundreds (and with RFA it is usually hundreds) of entries. I also find RFA's default method of making changing registry entries to suggested alternatives the default action annoying, particularly when you first run it after a while are looking at 2500 entries or so. If I can get rid of 500 of them right away because I know that they are all related to the start menu (which I mess around with constantly, trying to organise it "best") then that saves me an awful lot of scrolling and reading...

Just my two bits. I wouldn't own current licenses for both products if I didn't like them. I'll probably load RFA on my other laptop, just haven't gotten around to it!

I'm ploddi... er, I mean plugging industriously away at it. Progress much better than at any point in the last six years but may be summed up as good so far but far from good! OK, cards on the table, I've a real external incentive to do this as a job has come up and they'll want to see at least drafts of some chapters, so this simply MUST get done. GIS section almost complete and must now think hard about 3-D morphometrics and stats!

I'm actually quite impressed by the Creative MediaSource Player. Like Carol, I've only got iTunes hanging around because I have purchased some songs through it. If I was really keen, I'd burn them onto CD and then re-rip them in unprotected format and convert to mp3 then lose iTunes. But I'm a lazy so and so...

OK I'm in too. Draft of the materials and methods section of my PhD. nudone, this will kill me!

OK... how many of us are graduate students - hands up! So far I've managed to cram a three year British PhD programme into 6 years and counting (actually, no one bothers counting anymore). There's no end in sight. Like Lilly, I often throw my hands in the air and scream about how much I hate my dissertation. The neighbours have gotten used to it and I am now considered local colour, rather than dangerously insane. Sigh...

Hmm... I'm liking mobmeter EXCEPT that it's using 11MB of RAM - having its window on top or minimized makes no difference. I'm going to give systool a shot next. I was a happy Everest (and before that AIDA) user until they ditched the freeware version. Their pricing is really reasonable, though... If you aren't changing hardware all the time, the last freeware version should be all you ever need.

atm I am using Feeddemon for RSS and OE for NNTP (and like f0dder ONLY for NNTP).  I got Feeddemon by virture of having purchased Newsgator a couple of years ago to read RSS from within Outlook. I got fed up of the limitations in Newsgator but really like Feeddemon so that investment long ago was not for naught!

I'm open to suggestions for alternatives, though, and am monitoring this thread...

DonL - I say steal away! Dopus has the same feature (breadcrumbs) so it's not unique to xplorer2 (I have no idea who originated it; very likely it was neither app...).