Messages

301

General Software Discussion / Re: To cut or not to cut - The lousy MS Office ribbon

« on: April 14, 2007, 05:13 PM »

Carol, what I was trying to say is that the Office time took the risk to totally revamp the interface and break backwards compatibility to make it better, after they did a lot fo research to find out what would make the best UI. All the complaints about the ribbon bar are that its too unfamiliar, not about its usability.

The biggest market for Office is business desktops and I imagine all new employees would count as new users But I agree that the majority of people will have to undergo a significant adjustment period for Office 2007 and Vista. Is that a good thing? Depends on how you feel about change!

302

General Software Discussion / Re: To cut or not to cut - The lousy MS Office ribbon

« on: April 14, 2007, 05:17 AM »

If Office 2007 were an Apple product, everyone would be dancing and doing cartwheels over the simplicity and the ease-of-use. I want choice as much as the next guy, but there's a lot to be said for a consistent approach that serves 99% of my needs.

Most of the complaints are from people used to their shortcuts and menus from previous Office versions. Give both to a new user, let them discover how things work, and I bet they'll like 2007 much more.

303

General Software Discussion / Re: Source Insight IDE: it seems to be different, and better!

« on: April 13, 2007, 01:14 AM »

No browse database for C# or any .NET languages For C++ you get a nice call browser, .NET languages get a class designer and 'Find all references' as well as a common object browser which will look up symbols, but nothing more powerful.

I wish they'd taken more time and finished that feature in for C#, because C# and .NET are an order of magnitude easier to parse and have much richer metadata compared to C++.

304

General Software Discussion / Re: System Safety Monitor

« on: April 12, 2007, 03:45 PM »

There are many free anti-spyware programs you can use instead. Two things to remember -

1. most decent anti-virus programs detect malware
2. spyware protection doesn't need to be realtime. In fact in all the tests I've done and read about, I've never seen an anti-spyware app catch something before it ran.

You can try SpywareTerminator, Superantispyware (on demand is free), as well as the old warhorse Spybot S&D.

305

General Software Discussion / Re: Source Insight IDE: it seems to be different, and better!

« on: April 12, 2007, 03:40 PM »

Ok, I am frustated with this thing  The main reason I'm evaluating is to let me see function call graphs (calls, called by). SI has a 'Relations window' which does this, but it has a mind of its own and doesn't always do what you want. I select a function and the relations window is supposed to track it and update, but sometimes it'll just stay stuck and flash a stupid 'working' when in fact its doing anything but !!

And the help file is not very helpful. Lookup a command and it tells you what the command does, but not where to find it and how to run it.

I did manage to find some useful info when it did work as expected. Maybe I need to learn how to use it a bit more, but I don't see myself using it consistently.

306

General Software Discussion / Re: Don't be fooled, Vista wants new hardware

« on: April 12, 2007, 06:11 AM »

Sorry, but WinFS was taken out back, shot, strangled and buried. There was some talk about how the code was going to be in SQL Server, but for all intents and purposes, WinFS on the desktop is dead

The next Windows version is codenamed Vienna (or Windows Seven) and is probably at least 3-4 years away (they have to ship Longhorn server first). Who knows what we will (or won't) see in it. Microsoft's biggest strength and weakness has always been backward compatibility, which is why Windows has to carry a lot of baggage and cater to corporate customers who pay the bills and who couldn't care less about new end-user usability features, as long as they get their yearly fix of Windows, Exchange and Office. If you only knew about the stuff that MSR (Microsoft research) comes up with that never makes it into the final product, believe me you would cry!

Do I sound bitter yet

307

General Software Discussion / Re: Don't be fooled, Vista wants new hardware

« on: April 11, 2007, 11:07 PM »

I'm glad they removed the database filesystem thing... not needed for most people, very expensive to have running, and replaced by the desktop searched

Ah, but WinFS was so much more than just search. Even though some of the search functionality is in Vista, a lot of what they really wanted to do is gone. e.g. in the earlier beta builds, My Documents, Music etc were virtual folders that would aggregate the docs and music found on your system. That was a step in the right direction, so people wouldn't have to worry about where their content is saved (a lot of people simply save files on their desktop).

Search was just one part of WinFS. The other big thing was relationships. You could link, e,g an eamil you received in Outlook (which btw you could see in a virtual folder called Emails, and not have to open Outlook), to the people it mentioned (which would be in your system wide Contacts, not just the email address book), which would be linked to all the documents/pictures which mentioned those people. All this would be done automatically given the right metadata. The ideas behind WinFS were to expose all information in a uniform way instead of being tied to apps that understand a propietary format, and let the user make sense of it. They were very radical, and very hard to implement, and perhaps too much of a change for most users. But all this was demo'd back at PDC in 2003 when Longhorn was announced and damnit, I want that!!

308

General Software Discussion / Re: Directory Opus 9

« on: April 11, 2007, 10:56 PM »

Yeah, count me in as a devoted xplorer2 user! I like the programs philosophy of doing the correct thing w.r.t how the OS behaves. e.g. its one of the few if not only file managers I tried that would correctly display the Explorer namespace including all extensions. So I can choose to go to locations like 'Control Panel', 'Recycle Bin' inside it, and the display columns will show me content specific to those, instead of just being a file manager for files and folders. This extends to proper drag and drop support, context menu handlers etc. Its one of the reasons xplorer2 is so well behaved and flexible.

What got me excited over DOpus 9 specifically is the breadcrumb bar which is one of the best features of Vista's explorer.

309

General Software Discussion / Re: Source Insight IDE: it seems to be different, and better!

« on: April 11, 2007, 10:08 PM »

What a coincidence, I just started using it today for a huge C# codebase. I'm still learning how to use it but at first glance it seems to be a bit 'wierd' - the funky color scheme, not understanding Visual Studios .sln format and having to add files manually, and not knowing what click does what.

310

General Software Discussion / Re: Directory Opus 9

« on: April 11, 2007, 10:04 PM »

How does DOpus compare to xplorer2 (zabkat.com). I bought a license for that since it seemed to provide the best power user usability features without extra frills. I use it mostly in the dual pane view with a lot of keybaord shortcuts. But the upgrades have been few and far between and since I'm upgrading to Vista soon, I'd like a file manager built for it. DOpus looks good but the kitchen-sink list of features worries me a bit.

311

General Software Discussion / Re: To cut or not to cut - The lousy MS Office ribbon

« on: April 10, 2007, 06:17 PM »

Thats funny, because guess what, Schumi does race in an automatic !! F1 cars don't have a stick shift, they ahve paddle shifters that control an auto transmission, except it doesn't have a torque converter but is a manual gear linkage with an electronic clutch. There is no way a manual transmission can ever match its performance, response time and reliability.

The same trend can be seen in many high end performance cars and is trickling down slowly. Look at BMW's SMG, Audi's DSG, the various variants of CVT etc. The old manual tranny is a an old fossil whose time has gone!

Its pretty ironic that Windows and Office are becoming more and more Mac-like (the emphasis on glossy, lickable UI's, lack of options and customizability) while the Mac moved towards the other end (being based on BSD) with OSX.

312

General Software Discussion / Re: Drupal is f*cked

« on: April 10, 2007, 05:33 PM »

How does Drupal comapre to Joomla. I need to setup a CMS/Wiki/Forum hybrid and Joomla looks like it has enough plugins to do the job. But I don't really know how to admin Linux.

313

General Software Discussion / Re: Vista Tips, or things you'll want to disable right away

« on: April 10, 2007, 01:42 AM »

Its hard to make the GUI in normal use feel 'faster' - most of the time the cpu and gpu are idling, and even a pc from 5 years ago could do overlapping windows. However, start playing videos, have an unresponsive app or two, drag the windows around, and see how quickly the screen repaints and what the overall effect is. This is where Vista (and OSX with Quartz Extreme, and Beryl, and pretty much any composited desktop with display buffering) will shine. GDI has been accelerated but only for drawing. Vista has a completely new unified memory architecture that can page video memory and use it uniformly, alogwith the gpu.

I agree with you on services, I do the same (manual start). But it requires expert knowledge and many times can do more harm than good, esp if you turn off rarely used but important services. For a normal user like my friends/parents, I'd advise them to leave such things as they are!

314

General Software Discussion / Re: To cut or not to cut - The lousy MS Office ribbon

« on: April 09, 2007, 09:23 PM »

I love the ribbon. It takes some getting used to, but once you get over that, it really make sa lot more sense. You can't argue for an interface with menus nested 5 levels deep and hundreds of tabbed dialog boxes just because its familiar!

Install these - http://www.microsoft...n&DisplayLang=en

They add a 'Get started' tab that links to online video tutorials as well as help for users of earlier Office versions.

315

General Software Discussion / Re: Vista Tips, or things you'll want to disable right away

« on: April 09, 2007, 09:17 PM »

Turning off Aero is not really going to give you a performance boost, unless you have an ancient graphics card (in which case you probably should not be running Vista anyway, and Vista won't give you the full Aero experience to start with. Aero will never use software rendering). Aero is completely HW accelerated and uses your GPU for all the effects.

As for services, I use dto do that with XP, but in the end its just not worth it, IMO. Anything which is not getting used is simply going to be paged out, and will not affect the system. I haven't experimented with Vista yet though.

316

General Software Discussion / Re: Don't be fooled, Vista wants new hardware

« on: April 09, 2007, 07:00 PM »

You have to remember the design process for Vista -

1. build a brand new 3d accelerated graphics stack that allows video compositing, real time previews and is truly next gen

2. expose it as only a bunch of transparent window borders. Never mind that Vista can do everything all those Beryl/Compiz videos can do and more. DO NOT expose any of this functionality as a public API because users or 3rd party devs will NEVER want to take advantage of it.

3. Dumbify the UI as much as possible. Blow up all icons and dialog boxes to twice their normal size. Hide all information that might confuse a user (if said user was a caveman). LESS IS MORE !!!

4. Ditch every single concept your research dept came up with for innovative file management and presentation, instead scramble to add security checks to everything and rewrite all of Vista in unmanaged code. Focus 99% of Explorer's dev effort on the breadcrumb bar and 'stacks', which 99% of users will never even get to see, much less use.

I am only half kidding. Vista is a sad reflection of what could have been. Believe ot or not, under that very pretty and mostly functionality-challenged shell lies a relatively good OS.

317

General Software Discussion / Re: Don't be fooled, Vista wants new hardware

« on: April 09, 2007, 05:30 PM »

I use Vista Enterprise at work on a dual Xeon (quad core) box with 3GB RAM, and its the best OS I've ever used. Going back to XP at home feels a little dated. However, this is absolutely useless for me as a guide to how Vista will run on my home pc, since the work pc is such an unholy beast!

btw, Vista uses a lot of RAM due to SuperFetch. You don't want memory lying unused anyway. Most of the slowdown comes from the indexing as well as the constant drm and integrity checks that Vista keeps running.

318

General Software Discussion / Re: Why is it so hard to find a decent image organizer?

« on: April 09, 2007, 05:18 PM »

I haven't been able to check back in for a long time, thanks to everyone (esp JeffK and Darwin) for all the info! I've just tried ExifPRo and it is indeed amazing, I like its interface the best both in terms of looks and the speed. It also serves well as a way to tag my collection. The one thing it lacks is a way to query photos based on tag, like Photoshop Elements/Lightroom.

However, I'm beginning to think that Ill never find anything that serves all my needs. The main reason I want tagging is it makes it really easy to find a given photo. I use tagging extensively to manage my 35gb music collection and would be completely lost without it. And I would love something similar for other types of media, not just photos but video/documents etc. Thats a discussion for another topic though.

Size of the catalog/time to index is not so much of an issue for me as its a one-time cost. The spped of viewing a catalog and scrolling thru thumbnails is much more imp and it seems in this area ExifPro is the fastest.

Other programs I'm keeping an eye out for are the new versions of FotoAlbum and AcdSee Pro.

319

General Software Discussion / Re: Super Flexible File Synchronizer Pro says Zaine

« on: April 05, 2007, 12:33 AM »

How does SFFS compare to Goodsync (www.goodsync.com). One of the features which I find useful from their website is that goodsync will autodetect when external usb drives are connected and run the sync job, thus making it one less thing for me to worry about.

320

General Software Discussion / Re: suggesting: "best encryption"

« on: March 30, 2007, 12:38 AM »

Would you risk encrypting a large external hard drive (300gb and above) with TrueCrypt? With an encrypted container, my fear is that a single bad sector is going to affect the entire TrueCrypt file/partition and thus my data will be los. I'd feel much more comfortable with a bunch of smaller containers, bu tthat sort of defeats the point and you are back at encrypting individual files.

321

General Software Discussion / Re: Zinkmo - IE favorite and Firefox bookmark synchronization and sharing

« on: March 26, 2007, 10:01 PM »

This looked really promising until I saw that you have to access the favorites by using the special Zinkmo menus, and it doesn't work withg the regular IE and Firefox favorites. IMO this takes away some usability.

322

General Software Discussion / Re: Why is it so hard to find a decent image organizer?

« on: March 15, 2007, 08:14 PM »

I'm going to have to try Photo Collector out, thanks for the mini-review!

A bit more about XMP vs IPTC - the whole photo tagging things is a big mess and no one seems to agree on how to correctly implement it. But there's a standard called IPTC Core that seems to be thw way forward. Check out iptc4xmp.org for the gory details. I wouldn't care for it but I spent a lot of time tagging my photos in PSE before I knew that most other programs don't do XMP.

323

General Software Discussion / Re: Why is it so hard to find a decent image organizer?

« on: March 15, 2007, 02:23 PM »

This guy has a pretty detailed writeup about the ideal image organizer. Its a wishlist for Picasa 3 but is a good read. And his mockup for the UI looks really good.

http://picasamusings...st-for-picasa-3.html

324

General Software Discussion / Re: Recommendations for good copy/move software?

« on: March 13, 2007, 04:23 PM »

Now THIS is what I want in an image organizer!

http://picasamusings...st-for-picasa-3.html

Its a pretty detailed article about what's missing in Picasa but is more general in scope. There are also GUI mockups and I must say this looks like the ideal photo management app. If only Google listens and makes it so!

325

General Software Discussion / Re: Recommendations for good copy/move software?

« on: March 13, 2007, 01:46 PM »

One of the best file copy tools is supposed to be RichCopy, a multithreaded file copier with a nice GUI. Unfortunately its a Microsoft internal tool only and though there are many some download links on google, none of them work.