Messages

226

General Software Discussion / Re: Flexible File and Folder Organizing Tool

« on: November 28, 2007, 12:26 PM »

You can create a virtual folder in Windows by using junction points (called reparse points in Vista). A few links -

http://www.bitsum.com/shjunc.asp
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/205524

simple cmd line app - http://www.microsoft...ndDisk/Junction.mspx

e.g. if you have c:\docs\taxes, you can do
junction c:\imp c:\docs\taxes
junction c:\tax c:\docs\taxes

and both will point to the same physical folder.

For tagging you can take a look at 2 promising apps - taggtool and tag2find.

Don't get me started again on what WinFS could and should've been

227

General Software Discussion / Re: Best password manager?

« on: November 28, 2007, 12:09 PM »

Roboform rules all - one of the few apps I paid for within days of trying it out.

228

General Software Discussion / Re: Going back to XP

« on: November 28, 2007, 12:08 PM »

sounds like your first 3 pcs need to be rebuilt -- if you didn't have issues with each of them, you are not doing this build-your-own-pc thing right.

That sounds like the First Axiom of DIY pc's - If you're not having issues (and having to post to 10 msg boards), you haven't tweaked it enough!

Also known as - If you Build It, They will come.......... (problems i.e.) 

229

General Software Discussion / Re: Google GDrive: Coming Soon

« on: November 27, 2007, 07:46 PM »

I hope they don't make a local copy of the file before the actual upload - that doubles the space needed and it could fail. What they SHOULD do is use volume shadow copies in Windows, so that they get copy-on-write semantics and that way I can modify the file and still not lock it for uploading, while not using any extra disk space. But I doubt they will, I've never seen any program outside imaging software use it.

230

General Software Discussion / Re: Making a custom XP cd

« on: November 27, 2007, 07:40 PM »

I just made my custom xp cd -

- RyanVm's update packs (ryanvm.net) for post sp2 updates, IE7 and othe rmisc tweaks
- used nLite to remove all kinds of junk and make it unattended (except for cd key)
- added all the drivers from driverpacks.net

Total size was 350MB with no major compoents removed from xp! Tested under VirtualBox and it works great. My next step will be to make one with sp3 rc integrated.

231

General Software Discussion / Re: How to: Pimp your Ubuntu!

« on: November 27, 2007, 04:44 PM »

I find it funny and ironic that the Linux folk spend so much time and energy trying to look like Windows

232

General Software Discussion / Re: Making a custom XP cd

« on: November 27, 2007, 03:47 PM »

It's a PCIe card that XP recognizes without issue.  If you mean XP won't boot from such a beast, then press F6 during the standard XP blue-screen setup (when prompted) and you can install the 3rd party drivers that came with the SATA/Raid controller.  Then it'll be a permanant part of your XP install.

Or am I missing something?

I know I can do that. The point is I only want to have 1 install disk which works on all hardware. So I'm integrating the drivers into the install image.

233

General Software Discussion / Re: Google GDrive: Coming Soon

« on: November 27, 2007, 01:10 PM »

data-save speeds are stated to be as fast as local storage.

I think not ! Not unless google is giving me a new broadband provider thats as fast as my SATA hard disk
And I'm hoping the free storage is closer to 10gb than it is to 2. After all, gmail already gives you 5gb free space and google has to do one better than all the other free storage providers.

234

General Software Discussion / Making a custom XP cd

« on: November 27, 2007, 03:49 AM »

As I said in my last post, I'm going to try and go back to XP from Vista on my new pc and see how it goes. After reading the recent news of how XP SP3 brings huge performance gains and how some apps like Office are 2x slower on Vista, I feel I have all the more reason to do so. It'll be a fun little adventure either way.

Since a normal XP install doesn't support SATA/Raid or any of the other new hardware, I'm going to make a custom boot cd. I've been reading the usual forums and links, such as nLite, driverpacks.net, msfn forums and there is just an unbelievable amount of customization going on - its all a bit overwhelming! And it turns out there are a ton of apps to bring most of Vista's gui to XP, so naturally I want to do that as well

Has anyone else made their special XP cd and what did you put on it? I will update with my progress and share any custom config I use.

235

General Software Discussion / Re: Going back to XP

« on: November 25, 2007, 12:50 AM »

Believe me, I have tried to eliminate driver problems and hardware issues. I can run a burnin test or memtest86 for 10+ hours with no errors. Vista in safe mode and Linux live cd's will also run fine. But in Vista, I will still get the BSOD about once a day. The builtin troubleshooting tools in Vista are no help and I've tried stable and beta versions of drivers.

I may have bad hardware, or maybe the drivers for Vista are flaky. In any case I am also not impressed with the performance (or lack thereof) so I have nothing to lose by going back to XP.

This is the 3rd or 4th pc I've built and the first time I am having issues. Almost makes me wish I'd purchased a dell with a huge discount instead.

236

General Software Discussion / Going back to XP

« on: November 24, 2007, 03:57 AM »

I've decided to dump Vista and go back to XP I didn't make this decision lightly since there are a lot of things about Vista I like, but I don't think I have a choice.

After a lot of research, I built a new pc in mid August (after Intel's July 22 price cuts), It has really good components - P35 motherboard, 2GB Ram, quad core Q6600. I expected Vista to fly on this. Unfortunately, I have had nothing but problems. From constant blue screens which have reduced as I installed every hotfix and patch I could find, to application crashes and inexplicable behaviour, I never quite feel in control of the machine. I've run all sorts of hardware stress tests, memory diagnostics etc and everything is fine.

It had gotten to the point where it was unusable and I do all my computing on my laptop. So I'm going to backup all my data, do a clean format and its back to good old XP. I'll miss the search feature the most I think, and the UI but its just not worth the hassle.

237

General Software Discussion / Re: Programmer Wanted for Project

« on: November 21, 2007, 01:11 PM »

How about using OpenOffice to parse the word document? I don't know how scriptable OO is but you should be able to open it up and get document statistics that way.

238

General Software Discussion / Re: Visual Studio 2008 has gone RTM - free Express downloads, too

« on: November 20, 2007, 02:58 AM »

LINQ and C# 3.0 are huge. I've been playing with it for a long time and have still barely scratched the surface. As for the IDE I hope they've fixed the various bugs in VS 2005 which caused all kinds of slowdowns.

Does Orcas have a XAML design surface and proper support? I hope that enough people start using it soon.

239

General Software Discussion / Re: Implementing Leopard features for Vista?

« on: November 16, 2007, 11:42 AM »

The hardlinks point to the data in the backup drive. If the data is modified, the new file is going to get copied as well when the backup is made.

240

General Software Discussion / The best RSS reader?

« on: November 14, 2007, 04:16 AM »

I know this has been covered before, but I want to focus on some specific features and see if there's anything new. I haven't really gotten on the whole rss bandwagon completely because I just find it easier to visit websites. I've tried a lot of readers (desktop and web) and I've decided I don't care for a lot of web 2.0 features like tagging, social networking etc, since they don't matter as much as the core. What I really want is :-

- get the entire article and keep a copy offline. If the article is not available in the feed then it should cache the web page with all images etc
- get all the comments too
- find duplicate content (since many blogs link to the same article) and keep only 1 copy

Other stuff like opml import, watch folders etc are very common now. What I want is for my reader to basically store all the news I don't have time to read, and then let me catch up later on my laptop when I'm not connected. I also want the entire article available forever if I want to keep it.

I've tried greatnews, feeddemon, sharpreader etc and none of them cache content or work in this way. Are there any others out there?

241

General Software Discussion / Re: What is the currently best Desktop Search software?

« on: November 08, 2007, 03:54 PM »

I tried Archivarius and didn't like it, because it doesn't have a preview pane. I don't want excerpts from my file with matching highlights, I want to see the entire file and then search for that term in it. This is how X1/Yahoo and Copernic do it and I'm afraid anything else (Archivarius, GDS) just doesn't make sense!

242

General Software Discussion / Re: Implementing Leopard features for Vista?

« on: November 08, 2007, 03:45 PM »

TimeMachine will not backup to the same disk, like VSS will do. Nor will it backup over the network, or to anything that is not a dedicated disk or is not HFS+. In that respect it is more limited but that really doesn't matter. Its so simple to setup and use that for many users, its the first viable backup scheme.

If I have a baseline snapshot in TrueImage, and then 10 incrementals, I would expect to mount one snapshot in a single drive letter and then be able to browse my entire drive. This is what VSS and TimeMachine both allow you to do. The difference, and its a key one, is that with Vista you have to know where to start - the exact folder or file, and then you can browse. With TimeMachine, its all interactive and you can choose to browse anywhere. Its possible because of the special hardlink support for directories that Apple implemented. This is also possible in Linux today with a number of programs such as rsync, rsnapshot and ext3cow. But of course none of them are as usable as the Windows/OSX versions.

To me TimeMachine is a moderatley impressive backend (hardlink for directories, fsevents) coupled with a fantastic frontend (the flashy UI, integration with AddressBook and Spotlight). I still believe that technically the backend in Windows is superior and I see no reason not to have that frontend too.

I don't think backup programs should use propietary file formats. Keep them as files, compress them transparently (if on Windows) and that way other apps and OS services can use them. You know what, I feel sufficiently strongly about this that I may start writing my own

243

General Software Discussion / Re: Implementing Leopard features for Vista?

« on: November 07, 2007, 07:04 PM »

Carol, what you propose is quite possible except for the extra layer of indirection needed to mount the image so it appears as a filesystem. That is what TimeMachine does so nicely, the backup snapshot appears to everyone else as a regular copy of the data so its easy to search, index and view. With a VSS snapshot, I must use some kind of Volume explorer thingy to do so and its not always available, so it won't get indexed automatically.

I haven't used incremental snapshots in Acronis but I wonder if mounting them gives me access to the complete filesystem, or only the files that changed in that snapshot?

W.r.t. VSS vs TimeMachine, using hardlinks is quite clever, but as mentioned in the review, TM does not work at the block level which is a big disadvantage. Microsoft has block level shadow copies and it makes a huge difference. Windows Desktop Search could also be rewritten to search any 'previous versions' in addition, that would require no core OS changes.

244

General Software Discussion / Re: Implementing Leopard features for Vista?

« on: November 07, 2007, 12:59 PM »

nontroppo, I believe you misunderstood my post. My entire point was that even though Windows has very similar (and in some cases maybe better) technology under the hood, the implementation and the UI leaves a lot to be desired and is not as useful and easy to use as Leopard. And I was hoping that there are some apps that fix this.

The consistent design of apps and the system itself in the OSX ecosystem is one reason why everything works so well together. In Windows there are a million different API's and frameworks, and even though Microsoft is very clear (most of the time) about what they want you to use, developers (both inside and outside MS) don't always follow it.

245

General Software Discussion / Re: xplorer2 won the Epsilon award

« on: November 06, 2007, 05:05 PM »

xplorer2 is one of the few programs I bought, and I didn't even use it before paying! All you have to do is read the help file to see just how well thought out it is.

246

General Software Discussion / Implementing Leopard features for Vista?

« on: November 06, 2007, 05:03 PM »

I'm quite impressed with Leopard's usability features such as QuickLook and TimeMachine. Yet, I am also dissapointed that all of these are possible today in Windows (and specifically Vista), yet Microsoft and 3rd party vendors seem to lack the ability/desire to use them.

TimeMachine
.. is one of Leopard's most hyped features, and with good reason. It finally offers normal users a simple, consistent and powerful way to do backup and system recovery. But if you look under the hood, Vista has had this technology since long, ever since the Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) debuted in Windows 2003 server.

VSS is technically better and much more powerful than TimeMachine - it can offload the copies to hardware if present, it works on a block rather than file level, its districubted and extensible. But in typical Microsoft fashion, the UI (previous versions tab and System restore) is not nearly as easy to use, and much of the features are hidden since apps don't make use of them. e.g. in Leopard AddreessBook is aware of system snapshots and can search them. In Windows the only apps that seem to use VSS are imaging and backup programs.

I don't care for the starry backgrounds, but why can't this be implemented on Windows fairly quickly?


QuickLook
More than anything else, this is the one thing that stands out most in daily use. Yet most reviews never mention that Vista already has this too! Its called the preview pane and any app can register handlers for it, much like in OSX. So why don't we use it more - because the UI is clunky, its only in explorer and and once again, other apps don't take advantage of it.

Stacks, Spotlight etc
To me, these are not sufficiently different from the equivalent in Windows or that useful, so I won't discuss them.

247

General Software Discussion / Good websites/blogs/programs for managing money?

« on: October 30, 2007, 01:46 AM »

This is not really a topic for the software forum, but in my short time here I've seen this site has a lot of members who are very knowledgeable, so I'm sure I'll get some help.

I'm a software geek who's clueless about money  I can spend days and weeks on tweaking programs and searching for the perfect utility, but not so when it comes to money. Even though I make a decent living, my savings do not reflect this because they don't grow like they should. I lost a lot of my savings a few years ago in the stock market and since then have been very hesitant. Currently I've put most of it in online banks such as ING which give me higher APR but thats pretty much it.

What are some good resources you recommend? There are way too many blogs out there, I don't know where to start. I also need some software to track my money and spending - I was going to get either Money or Quicken, but there are also some free web based alternatives like Wesabe, Mint etc which look very compelling (apart from having to trust a website with my account passwords). I'd also appreciate links to some good forums for personal finance.

248

General Software Discussion / Re: More Vista Fun and Games

« on: October 29, 2007, 08:15 PM »

This was to be expected. Any form of DRM/Activation check is going to be prone to this sort of overreaching paranoia. It doesn't matter if the creators did not intend it to act as such. Software by its very nature is unpredictable and once you code something that checks for certain conditions, you can be damn sure its going to get triggered in an unlikely (read untested/unanticipated) scenario. Happened with Steam, happened with WGA in XP, and is happening with Vista. This is a perfect example of how pirates get a better user experience than paying customers.

249

General Software Discussion / Re: Unique way to make Firefox load faster

« on: October 22, 2007, 11:20 PM »

Compressed exe's run faster because on modern cpu's, uncompressing takes less time than disk IO. This is the same reason why realtime encrypted filesystems (like EFS or TrueCrypt) can sometimes do better on benchmarks as long as the encryption algorithm is simple enough.

But I really don't see much need for this. FF is one of those apps which I load once and it keeps running always. I wish the devs would fix the huge memory leaks in FF, its the only reason I ever restart FF (that and adding an AddOn).

250

General Software Discussion / Re: Question: Quickest way to receive spam?

« on: October 11, 2007, 02:11 AM »

1. get a hotmail account
2. ????
3. Enjoy your spam !!

seriously, there is no step 2. I have my hotmail junk email filter set to high and its completely useless.